DNK

That is exactly what I intended to say.

Wow, thanks a lot. I'm thinking about adding some maps/submaps and more props, so I'll look into this. The game, imo, needs some things, like retail spaces, malls, and ponds, but really lots more vegetation. Not sure I'm up to the task of making new vegetation, but I will give it a try eventually.

To expound more on "player feedback through the UI": At the end of the month, the funding screen should include lists of positive and negative events, as well as a procedurally-created briefing screen for each region. This would have a basic letter, with sections for different types of activity (each would have more than several varieties, as well as certain parts that would be based on statistics). For example: And another:

Yup yup.Also, particles/collision detection for fired shots should come from the end of the barrel, not the middle of the tile. It seems it's that way now, and this causes friendlies to get shot in positions where the barrel is basically in line with their bodies. For example, you are shooting diagonally NW and another unit is 1 tile north of you, they get shot way more than they should. Not perhaps a UI thing, though.

Well, like I said, placing limits on this stuff is necessary, and including variety is necessary. There should never be 100% fighters-only missions, but they should become far more common as the player shoots down a higher percentage of flights in an area. Basic progression would be: unescorted ships -> increasing escort chance -> increasing number of escorts (1->2) -> increasing number of fighter missions. Finding the right balance to ensure continued ground missions/resources is important, of course. This should be a goal, actually: the player should be trying to keep the aliens off the ground altogether, and so long as they're just doing air-superiority stuff, the player is succeeding in thwarting the invasion. This should result in greatly increased funding and high ratings. It should also significantly reduce the rate of progression of the overall invasion (making that lack of resources less important). Additionally, pop-ups could come up, or in-game medals/awards given to the player's command unit when a certain number of days elapses without aliens touching down in a given region. We have unit medals/awards, why not have some for bases for how 'XCOM's performance in its home region is? This is a good way to give feedback to the player for what he's doing right (or wrong), as many newer players might be confused (as well as more experienced ones).

I think I saw some new props in your folders. Do you know how to add props/etc to the game?

RE: PROGRESSION My ideals for balancing. When a player succeeds: All of the following will have hard limits on how fast and slow they can progress. These will be increased by difficulty level. Basically, a very good player on Easy should find the game quite easy regardless of how well they do in missions due to slow progression and positive impacts, whereas at Very Hard, they would just be able to keep up with the progression limit. Increasing Fighter Escorts (Positive Feedback)- When the aliens aren't being shot down much, there won't be many fighters or heavy fighters. When their landing ships, scouts, etc, start getting destroyed regularly, then they need the escorts. This isn't impacted by player performance on ground missions, but just in the air war. This is an auto-balancing sort of feature. Reduced Flights (Negative) - Consider that the aliens have limited resources. The more ships they have to send for escorts, the fewer missions they can fly. This both rewards the player, as he sees lower alien activity, and makes the progression slower, as he has fewer resources and less money from missions. Increased Fighter-Only Flights (Positive) - This will increase player costs and reduce mission rewards. It's also realistic - if the aliens cease being able to land anything, they need to switch to an air superiority war and put the invasion on hold. However, allowing fighters to roam the skies unmolested should have a fairly low impact on governments' funding - it just slows down the invasion as the aliens are unable to fly normal missions while they focus on the air war. This is sort of like an overall ticker slowdown with an added flavor of almost pure air fighting (at its extreme). Ship Difficulty (Neutral-Negative) - Adding higher tier ships should happen more or less on schedule. This effectively gives players a fairly reliable progression (increasing with difficulty level), with only a reduction in advancement if the player is successful (but not the opposite). This is a way of rewarding players for success, while not punishing them too harshly for failure. Increased Base Defense (Positive) - When larger alien ships are shot down (base supply, cruisers, etc), it forces the aliens to do base attacks. They prioritize for: bases which house the aircraft that take down their own craft, the least defended bases, the most developed bases, and for bases with radar (as they're spottable from the emissions, whereas non-radar bases would be very hard to find). Basically, if a base doesn't have radar, it should have a very low chance of being attacked, unless it regularly does counter-air operations, for which the aliens would trace the planes back to their base easily from space. Even a highly developed "silent" base would very rarely be attacked. A suggested formula (per month): [attack weight] = [# successful anti-air missions from here versus large targets]x50 + [tiles in use in base]x3 - [air defense buildings]x35 + [if has radar installations/does an air mission]x100 Something like that. The overall likelihood would depend on month (with them not being possible in early months, like the first 6 on easy, first 5 on normal, first 4 on hard), number of bases, number of anti-air missions v large targets overall, and overall progression of the invasion. Fewer Terror Missions (Negative) - This is based more on ground mission success. The deadlier the player's ground forces, the less aliens are going to want to go on these more abstract sorts of missions, and the more they will focus on military and general invasion goals. This rewards good players, while at least giving bad players a chance to make up their low scores. Harder Ground Forces (Positive) - Obviously, if the player is doing well then higher armor/weaponry/races should be seen as a response. All of these should adjust readily over a few weeks. For example, air superiority missions and fighter escorts should shift their mix based on a rolling average "air score" from the player that takes into account just the last 30 days. Same for ground forces - if the player keeps losing troops, the aliens don't need to just send in the best of the best. Also, there needs to be variety all the same, so even if the air missions are set to "full air superiority", there would still be some non-fighter-only missions, for example. Another idea is to adjust purely on a per-region basis for most of this, with overall progression depending on overall global response. This per-region thing might not come into effect until the 3rd month (on normal, 2nd on hard, 1st on very hard), though, to give players a chance to get established with their first base and build a second before undefended regions started to get very advanced. Then, moving into a new area would be a much larger challenge after a while, as the invasion would be more advanced there (and the aliens might have been shifting resources away from well-defended regions to these ones). This advancement could be countered and brought down to that of the previously defended regions, though, by player successes, but it would be a lot harder than just maintaining in the already-defended areas.

Yes, this, absolutely.

I like the current system - or the original XCOM system, which is basically preserved. Modifications that would be nice: Cheaper base build costs - it would be nice to have more smaller bases and specialized bases, but with startup costs so high, I usually can't justify it. Smaller bases (6x6 or 5x5) - I like this idea, as it forces more specialization and more bases in general. Any installation with radar should be highly visible to aliens (radar is a huge positional giveaway IRL). Basic base defenses should act as a repellant, though, severely decreasing the chances of an attack, but with an increasing need as the game progresses. So, for the first few months, a single defense battery should suffice anywhere to prevent a base attack, but later on 2 or 3 might be necessary as larger ships come into play. Also, defenses reduce the number of aliens that do enter the base regardless, perhaps reducing some of their health as well, randomly. Command centers - should be optional, should be the most expensive part of a new base (so the actual costs is like $50K but the command center is $200K or something), and should be a requirement for only some of the buildings. So, everything but hangars doesn't require them basically. Why do you need a command center if there are no military units to command? I think adding all of these would add a lot to this part of the game.

I have the problem - after every combat, the game freezes at 0% CPU usage for a very long time. I think 10min last night, but usually more like 3 or so. It's yet to crash, though. I believe reloading a save does work at this, but I'll check later. Also perhaps killing only 1 alien avoids it, but I'm not sure. On a desktop, latest V18 on Steam.

So that video memory, what about integrated GFX? I have a crappy C2D+2GBRAM notebook I'm considering installing it on, but at 4.4GB it's a bit of a download if it's not going to work.

Note that you can damage corvettes, return to base, rearm (very quickly), and go back out and shoot them down with just 1 foxtrot with 4 alenium torpedoes so long as they are not too far. It saves their damage from the first attack, and corvettes seem to just wander about aimlessly a lot.

I was referring to precision lasers, as per my previous post. You can't make that much profit because you're limited by alloys on precision lasers at 6 per. Note that my math was off - I think it's just 550 alloys per month needed for that $650K figure.

My biggest issue isn't the amount of profit (it's reasonable if not very generous), but the severe alloy limitations. That's where the balance needs to be struck, because even on the slimmest profit margins, a dedicated player can ramp up to infinite wealth soon enough. Currently, you have 12% profit margins, compounding every 32 hours with 15 workers and half a workshop. After 6 production runs (8 days), you have an extra $75K to double you staff and production rate. After that it takes 11 rounds (about 8 days again) to pay off a new workshop and 30 more workers. So, in just half a month you've managed to quadruple your production base... and for $650K in profits per month if expansion stops after that. Of course, you'd need 1,100 alloys per month to maintain that. So, yeah, compound interest is quite something. The fact that this game sets a limit on how much compounding can happen AND makes it a tradeoff between profit-production and gear-production (through scarce resources) is a perfect way to fix the original XCOM's runaway economics and add an extra dimension to production decision-making. Ultimately, balancing something (with no resource restrictions) that can ramp up to infinity within 2 months is impossible, so keeping it alloy-capped is the only real solution, other than making it unprofitable altogether. I believe the amount of alloys coming in regularly increases over the months, so you do get increasing profits from a strong manufacturing base, but you need to manage and plan it out properly if you intend to make good money. How much of your alloys can you divert from gear towards profits, and how many ships do you need to sack to get them?

Why not? Simple: make submap buildings include surrounding ground/props so they are a whole and complete map 'segment'. Then make "template maps" that have a basic outline (like a street down the middle with the alien ship area and Xeno ship area preset) and then fill the rest of these maps with these submaps. The submaps will be randomized by having multiple submap choices within each folder, right? And so you have a mostly randomized map each time you load it. This is how the original game did it, and I see no reason it can't be done now, today with the current system. So, why not yet?

This this this.

Why can't there be multiple access points? What is the issue with hills? It's such a missing component.

The whole map doesn't need to be procedural, just like it wasn't in XCOM. All you need are to have pre-made submaps (not just buildings but whole plots, including ground, props, and buildings) and then have 5-10 map templates each with multiple slots for premade submaps. Some submaps would be smaller, like 15x20, others larger like 30x40. Pretty sure that's how XCOM did it, and it worked pretty well. There was still a lack of variety, especially in farm maps which only had a small set of pre-made submaps (orchard, empty field, field, wheat field, sheds, house, barn), but the mod community can take care of that (though it couldn't due to engine limits in XCOM). I think this can be done with the current system: just allow submaps to include ground textures (already possible?), and then allow for a randomized submap building (I think also already possible) that will choose between a certain set, and then make new maps for these. Viola.

You can find weapon stat info by hovering the mouse over the weapons in the equip screen on the right (but only when you have 1 or more and only when it is unequipped - who knows why). In my opinion: Wolf armor is unnecessary for the early game. I rarely lose operators with jackal armor, save to friendly fire. I might put 1 or 2 guys in wolf - the guys who are my "rush in and find the aliens" guys. They usually have high TUs and are worth the extra protection. Precision lasers actually make a profit, yet are barely buffed against regular sniper rifles... expensive replacements that do little but CAN be turned into cash if you have spare manufacturing capacity (you should). Scatter/carbine/rifle lasers are worth upgrading to ASAP A lot of this, I think, is going to be rebalanced, though, so it's a WIP.

Well, you don't HAVE to hunt them, just capture the UFO, right? Also, there should still be some lone aliens, for surprises, but at least 2/3rds should be in a group of 2 or more, I think. Seems like that's not going to be the case much longer since it's being nerfed into just 2 hardpoints. I guess you're right, though, I just wanted a BIGGER missile truck for A-A Maybe I'm not the most balance-minded guy...

In V18, you can, but it's limited by resources. Precision Lasers sell for 75K but cost 60K+6K of alloys. It's just 9K per, but it basically pays off the workers' salaries over the month (assuming they build other things between lasers). I think that's a really good balance, something that just pays for the workers needed to make it in their off hours. It's hard-capped by how many alloys you have, and so doesn't expand into infinite production cash like in XCOM. Basically, just don't change that.

@Sathra: I'm trying to play a mostly unmodded game right now. I mean, once I've bored of vanilla, I need to have something to turn to, don't I? The only thing I'm doing really is extra maps since there are so very few in vanilla. Thanks for the feedback. For this, it's a real pity since it added so much based on the screenshots I've seen from earlier. An aircraft missile truck. I guess this would be too unbalancing, and seeing as all the aircraft are getting a do-over on stats right now, I'll just wait. Yes, debrief takes usually a couple minutes to pop up. Sometimes it doesn't and the game just hangs indefinitely with 0 processor usage.Also, further clarification for AI: just having them regularly group together and having groups act in concert using basic tactics (like 1 group pins down and another moves to flank) would make things really, really exciting. I realize now that it's a big work-in-progress. I just hope some challenging tactics get added in, instead of just having them run away or whatever. Building usage needs to be increased greatly as well. Challenging AI is AI that, when at a disadvantage takes cover and groups together in the better position (hole up in a building or something), and otherwise takes mobile, offensive actions to keep the player on his/her toes.

Yeah, it did, which was nice. Really should be an easy fix, just adjusting ambient light values for delta time between day/night. Yeah, there really isn't "AI" in the current build since toddlers are more mobile than these aliens. Sigh.

2.Recon: It was like this in the original XCOM, and I think it's vital to keeping the game a bit challenging and exciting. That process of discovery of a new map is always a thrill, and given how few maps are in the current game, a rare one. 2.Damage Localization: given how bad accuracy is, aiming for specific parts is just not realistic. That's not really how real-world combat works, aside from the odd sniper. 2.Dropship: it is as it was in the original XCOM, and it's necessary for not starting in the middle of an open field without cover. On harder missions it gives the player a chance to not get slaughtered from the get-go. 2.Hills: totally agree. 4.Base: not sure how it works now, but in XCOM the more strength, the better your throws. Not sure how strength is developed in this game, but likely through offensive actions (shooting, reaction shots, throwing grenades, etc).

I'm on my first playthrough, and I felt I'd just make notes as I went along on the current state of the game. I've played the original XCOM series quite a lot, and my first time on this game is on normal difficulty. Now commenting on build: V18.51 Steam GPL=Gameplay Issue, SUG=Related Suggestion, ART=Art, DES=Design, BUG=Bug likely, AST=Assets, SIM=Simulation, SYS=System IMPROVEMENTS GPL - reduced base micro, but perhaps too much ...SUG: one of the payoffs of the original was, after a good mission, getting to go back to base and look through the spoils and personally sell off and profit from what you got, even if it was random crap you never would use (plasma pistols). TWEAKS ART - crash sites should look it, not just like a landed UFO in pristine area ...SUG: bring back old ones, plus damaged props/scenery DES - middle east "walls" exist and have windows why? No closed-off compounds ...SUG: redo MEast assets DES - more information needed. ultimately, it's hard to make decisions when you don't have the info onscreen BUG - imprecise clicks: clicking on some things in base screen, etc, is off by a few pixels, v frustrating BUG - scatter laser sells for $1K only? BUG - the arrow keys do not immediately work after "HIDDEN MOVEMENT". The mouse must be moved first. MINOR PROBLEMS AST - limited guns ...SUG: US/SOV ARs+LMGs+MMGs+BRs+Snipers AST - limited planes ...SUG: more variety, like having a "missile truck" so you can be more tactical in engagements SIM - dusk? Played in the "dusk/dawn" zone but it was dark as night. ...SUG: variable lighting as a % of how far between hard night limit and hard day limit (not just on/off) SIM - excessive wall damage: MG does way too much damage to a wall. 3-4 shots should not take out an entire wall. ...SUG: vastly increase building health BUG - disappearing weapons: not sure why but some presets dont have weapons saved MAJOR PROBLEMS GPL - battle AI: terrible, just stand in place, crouching and standing up, seem directionless and unchallenging ...SUG: in-out of cover routine, flanking if unseen, more aggression less runawayrunaway ...SUG: setup random ambush spawn types in maps also GPL - battlescape limited: no forests, no empty deserts, no mountains, etc? XCOM had more... ...SUG: add more! GPL - battlescape 2D: no vertical component? XCOM had more ...SUG: add verticality for terrain SYS - really, really long battlescape cleanup: can take 3+ minutes to end a battle once the final alien is done. Sometimes it doesn't ever complete. Sometimes it takes longer to wait than it did to fight the battle. Randomly this doesn't take much time at all - I think on short missions it's almost instantaneous. FEATURE REQUESTS SIM - auto-resolve option: a bit complicated, but allow an auto-resolve that bases the results on results in the last X engagements. ART - grass props: it would be nice to have these so that we can have grass sprites and other terrain sprites instead of just purely flat ground. It looks nice, but it also is clearly totally flat. SIM/ART - Cloud shadows and more environmental effects. Would be nice to have snow, rain, moving (or even static) cloud shadows, lightning, time-of-day/weather lighting changes. That adds so much immersion for not-too-much-work. I think another indie game in development, Project Zomboid, has a good example of basic rain effects in isometric gameplay that are effective.