TiLT

My head is swimming with all the possibilities that would never really work in the campaign game. Imagine stuff like a mission where your squad is vastly outnumbered and outgunned. Your sole objective is to return to your lander with at least 50% of your squad still alive. Or a mission where you're supposed to retrieve a specific object from a UFO and escape safely with the object intact while aliens keep spawning at the edge of the map. Maybe even take it a step further. Imagine a mission where you have to escort a bunch of civilians safely through an alien-infested area.

Actually, this idea isn't half bad. In the same way that the Total War games have both a campaign mode and single battles, perhaps Xenonauts could have premade battles where you have a specific, predetermined squad with a specific, predetermined loadout trying to get as good a score as possible. It's not something I've ever thought about for the X-Com games before, but now that it's been mentioned, it seems like an "obvious" inclusion.

I'm not asking to skip or autoresolve anything. The "hold the UFO for 5 turns" objective removes the need for my solution in UFO missions because you can just head for the UFO instead of going over the entire map looking for a few stray aliens, but it leaves me vaguely unsatisfied and doesn't solve anything when it comes to base defense, base assault and terror missions. I mean, what happens to the aliens when you've held the UFO for 5 turns? Do they surrender? Do they blend in with the local population? Do they catch a ride back to their base? Do they just up and die? You can see how this leaves me somewhat puzzled. It's a nice game mechanic but doesn't feel right storywise. There's nothing unique about the non-UFO missions that removes the problems either. I remember having this issue often in X-Com for all kinds of missions. Even during base defense there'd be this lone alien hiding out in the upper levels of the barracks or whatever, making me go over every part of the base again just to take down an alien that is really supposed to be, you know, attacking. In base assaults of my own I'd take out the aliens I'd come across, then eliminate the alien leaders, only to realize that the mission hadn't ended yet. Cue anticlimatic corridor-hunt. Terror missions are so large and with such complex maps that it's very easy for an alien to end up in a place you don't look, further emphasizing the problem. Either every type of mission needs its own version of the "hold UFO for 5 turns" solution, or something else needs to be done to remove the burden of mopping up stragglers (which can and should be dangerous!). My suggestion keeps things interesting until the very end without feeling like an artificial solution. This is a very real problem, and I would be careful about underestimating it. If 1/3 of my time playing ground missions is spent looking for that final alien (which is a likely estimate in my opinion), that means 1/3 of my time playing ground missions is dull. That's not a good thing in any way, shape, or form.

Ah, that certainly helps for UFO missions, but not when there's no UFO present.

I just played the Xenonauts alpha for the first time, and I'm pleased. It plays better than it looks in the screenshots, and it certainly captures some of the X-Com magic. I'm sure you've already thought about this and have a solution for it, but in the off chance that you haven't, I feel that I have to point out that missions become a drag once you're down to the final few aliens hiding somewhere on the map and you have to carefully comb through every building to find them, often re-visiting old areas in case they've wandered in behind you. This isn't really all that fun, and it eventually makes you careless because you grow bored, leading to unnecessary deaths. I ended up just quitting the game after I had visited the entire map without discovering the final alien because it wasn't fun any more and I had seen most of what the current alpha had to offer anyway. In case you haven't already figured out a solution to the issue, may I suggest the following: When the current amount of living aliens on a map gets down to 20% or fewer (or so. The exact number isn't important) of the original amount, the remaining aliens become desperate and more aggressive, playing less carefully and trying their best to hunt down the player. No longer do they wander around in a tiny room on the third floor of a remote building. They'll charge out into the streets looking for enemies, even if it's tactically unwise. At this point the player has more or less won anyway. Alternatively have them focus their efforts on getting back to their UFO to protect it in missions that feature those. The exception to this rule should be aliens in or close to the UFO. They shouldn't start charging outside, but should retain their tactical advantage by waiting for players to come to them. This is the natural objective for the player anyway. An added benefit of this feature would be that the late parts of ground missions would become more tense if the player knows that the aliens have given up all hopes of subtlety and are now coming for them with everything they've got.

This is my first post around here, so I guess I'd better make it count. I composed a track heavily inspired by the tactical music in X-Com a few years ago, but never finished it. It turned out so well that it would be a shame not to share it with others who may be interested in it however, so here it is: UFO_Unfinished.mp3 Please keep in mind that it's unfinished and will remain that way (I have the source files, but no longer use the application they are for). The buildup at about 2/3 through isn't really what I intended with the track, and the stuff after that is just filler. Everything up to that however is how I wanted it to be and how I would do it if I ever was hired to compose music for an X-Com game (wink wink, nudge nudge ).