Strykr

I'm not saying he would be called a Commander, I'm saying he is called a Commander.

So, yeah, Ishantil suggested adding Squaddie back to the mix. I would definitely support this idea, but I think there's a logistical problem there, because Squaddie (to my knowledge) is not any kind of military rank, and thus the owners of X-COM's intellectual property (2K, I think?) may claim legal ownership of the term. (Yes, I am aware the term is used repeatedly on this very site, but I'm a mathematician, not a lawyer.) I am kind of surprised that Commodore's not getting very much love from the crowd, but I do kind of understand the viewpoint that it's analogous to Admiral or General, which don't convey the appropriate amount of micromanaging and direct battle experience an X-COM/Xenonaut soldier could have. The point of this thread is that politically, the things most likely to get done when encountering resistance are the things easiest to do. Commodore would change 5 letters of a single rank, and Commandant would change only 3 letters. That is why, respectfully, any other suggestions are merely a waste of your time because they will never actually be considered by the game designers. And doing nothing doesn't really make you feel like you participated in a process greater than yourself, does it?

The player rank of Commander should definitely not be removed, nor is that the suggestion I'm making. The player rank of Commander is a major component of the atmosphere of the entire game. To be clear, I am NOT suggesting removing or replacing the Commander rank entirely, only the duplicate soldier rank of Commander that is below the rank of the player.

Oh good, then I withdraw my complaint. I like the sounds, it's just the balance that was noticeably off.

According to their Wikipedia pages, Commandant in the French army and air force is equivalent to NATO rank code OF-3, which is equivalent to the rank of Major in most of the American and British militaries. I will concede Commodore is a notably higher rank (OF-7) than even Colonel in most militaries (OF-5), which perhaps detracts from its broader appeal. However, the idea that we can't consider naval ranks is nonsensical, considering the Commander rank is generally only used in naval or air force militaries. Betuor, your Commander-in-Chief analogy is false because Commander-in-Chief is simply not the same title as Commander, despite the CIC being the head of the military. In the example I have described, the same literal title is used for two different levels of the command hierarchy. If rank 9 were actually "Supreme Commander" or "Commander-in-Chief" or anything similar, your analogy would be more appropriate. I can see how Commodore instead of rank 7 Commander might weaken the logical progression of ranks, but I really don't see how you could make the same argument about Commandant, a rank in the French militaries approximately equivalent to a Major in US and British militaries. They are not anywhere close to the same thing. And I'd really rather not add any more low-end ranks.

I have also had a difficult time finding a good sound balance. It seems the sounds I make (gunshots, screams, etc.) are much, much quieter than the sounds the aliens make, and there is little reconciliation between the two. For example, even with headphones on and at low volume, that horrible teleportation sound the Wraiths make makes me want to claw my eardrums out. Please soften sounds like that, or at very least, make them level in volume to other sound effects. I've noticed I've started deliberately avoiding Wraith encounters specifically because of that noise. That's not a behavior you want players to exhibit if you want to keep them interested in playing.

I think the ranks the way they are now are perfect, except for one observation: the Commander rank is used twice. This is the rank progression: 1) Private 2) Corporal 3) Sergeant 4) Lieutenant 5) Captain 6) Major 7) Commander 8) Colonel 9) Commander (player) I propose to the game designers that rank 7 confuses the narrative of the game, and should be changed slightly, but I am torn between whether I prefer Commodore or Commandant as an appropriate replacement. Both carry the same contextual (and importantly, alliterative) feel of "Commander" at rank 7 as a high-but-not-supreme rank. I believe based on previous comments Chris has made about rank design that this suggestion is the only one the game designers may consider. So which do you prefer as a soldier rank...Commandant or Commodore?

Recognizing there is a fixed limit on the number of ranks, there is only one suggestion I can offer which realistically has a chance of making it into the final game: Change the soldier rank of Commander to Commodore (or alternatively, to Commandant). This will improve the hierarchy of soldier progression, because as I mentioned in my earlier post, the "Commander" is always the supreme or penultimate rank, meant in X-COM/Xenonauts lore to embody the player directly, who has supreme authority in all decisions. The soldier rank of Commander existing (below Colonel) while the player is also referred to as Commander confuses the narrative of the game. I say this very seriously: this suggestion is the ONLY one about ranks the game designer is likely to even consider, as it should be. The soldier rank of Commander should be changed slightly to Commodore or Commandant, to distinguish it from the rank of Commander given to the player. If the number of ranks is fixed, any other changes are simply not going to happen, nor should they. Xenonauts is already a great game, that has faithfully stuck to its core vision of replicating the original X-COM with better graphics. The "Supreme Commander", Chris, deserves massive credit for that.

1) Definitely support more ranks. Building a command hierarchy, by giving certain soldiers better opportunities for promotion at the cost of others is part of what makes strategy games like X-COM fun and immersive. 2) Strongly support more medals! That's contingent upon the medals actually meaning something, and not just being an endless array of "Medal for Killing X of Alien Race Y" that makes so many similar awards virtually meaningless in many multiplayer FPS games. 3) Memorial wall would be neat, but then I remember that I thought the same thing when I first saw the memorial wall in EU...then after seeing it the first time, I never really went back to it. Given the current staffing levels in Xenonauts' production, a feature like this would probably not be the most efficient use of the designers' time.

A few thoughts I have about the rank names: 1) About the "Commander" The rank of Commander at the top of the hierarchy followed by Colonel evokes a strong sense of familiarity (even if not entirely militarily accurate) due to the original X-COM and other space-oriented sci-fi. Battlestar Galactica, for example, follows this same relationship where the Commander is the top officer, and the Colonel is second in command. Part of what really adds to the "feel" of an X-Com game is the fact that the "Commander" is really just the truest avatar of the player. In X-COM UFO Defense, there was only 1 Commander (and you all know you gave that soldier your own name), and in XCOM EU, the Commander rank was removed, but the implication was that YOU were the Commander, and you were always addressed as such. During contests to draft rank names such as this thread, one would be wise to remember that in X-COM, you are the Commander, and the Commander is you. Switching the Colonel & Commander ranks as Xenonauts has done seems like an unnecessary shake-up of the familiar, but I can begrudgingly accept it. 2) Appropriate Rank Names There's a major style choice apparent in the ranks X-COM names, which it seems pretty clear the Xenonauts designers have picked up on. Below are all the ranks, save for one, collectively found in UFO Defense, Terror From the Deep, Enemy Unknown, and Xenonauts. What do you notice about all these ranks? a) Rookie b) Seaman c) Private d) Squaddie e) Ensign f) Corporal g) Sergeant h) Lieutenant i) Captain j) Major k) Colonel l) Commander The answer is: every one of those ranks is a single word. These ranks were selected for their simplicity, and decisively avoid creating new ranks by simply concatenating lower ranks. I would like to add more named ranks (after all, a chief source of joy in X-COM is watching your little chess pieces transform from mushy weaklings barely capable of holding a gun into majestic superhuman death incarnate), but to remain consistent with the proper atmosphere of an X-COM game, ranks like Petty Officer, Lance Corporal, Sergeant Major, Lieutenant Commander, or any rank with a number in it (i.e. 2nd Lt.) should all be avoided. Going against this single-word naming convention would do far more to break immersion than having 15 colonels in your squad ever could. 3) What other military ranks could we consider? To expand the number of ranks directly while adhering to the single-word rank rule, some other military ranks seem worthy of consideration, like Admiral, Specialist, or General. 4) What about other militaries? To me, the concept of military ranking in the X-COM organization is a multinational effort, where human soldiers from all over the planet join forces to combat an enemy much greater than itself. So why is virtually every rank identifiable as an existing rank in the United States military? The answer, obviously, is that Americans were the target audience of the games, and thus would identify better with military ranks they were more likely to be familiar with. But as times change, couldn't perhaps our military ranks be more multinational as well? Here are some ranks outside the typical American ones that might fit well into a multinational military organization like the Xenonaut forces: English: Commodore, Brigadier, Marshal, Cadet French: Bombardier, Cavalier, Commandant Chinese: Jiang (general) German: Stabshauptmann (staff captain), Unteroffizier (corporal) Russian: Polkovnik (colonel) I second Jmac006's wish to increase the raw number of ranks in the game, and (most) of the ranks I've mentioned above should be able to fit somewhere in a command hierarchy fairly easily without breaking the immersive feeling of leading a truly multinational military effort against an existential threat.