Dix

.Modern fighting aircraft are sometimes armoured to the point that small arms are ineffective against large portions of their body, admittedly with tradeoffs in other aspects. (Eurocopter Tiger: "The Tiger's armour can withstand 23 mm autocannon fire".) Given the aliens are capable of building flying ships of massive size, and given their tech and materials advantages, it's not unreasonable to expect that even light alien ship armour is going to pose a severe challenge to anything man-portable, at least until we get much more powerful weapons. In regards to having just the first floor visible, I'd almost rather keep oversized ufo's as a two part mission, to reduce the disconnect between the two phases. (As ever, while agitating for anything smaller to be kept map accessible as normal, if it's not feasible to keep it all map accessible.)

Sacrifice in terms of booty, not your soldiers. That's just evil. Although, that tactic of sending a rookie over with a primed bomb would explain why the original X-Com never got seasoned soldiers who knew which end of the gun was which - they took one look at their prospective commander, and ran in the other direction as fast as they could go. Suicide belts just seem like a non-sensical item - except for a very limited subset of potentially unstable recruits, this would hammer morale, likely displease a large subset of your (richer) funding nations, and run the risk of a single lucky shot wiping out your entire squad or mission (combine suicide belts with an alien getting a bead on a soldier leaving the Chinook before you fully debark.) As has been said, the overtones that would carry over into the real world would also be potentially bad. You can imagine what a news outlet like Fox or the Daily Mail would make of a game that lets you turn soldiers into suicide bombers. Particulary if they pick up on the fact you could then use these bombers to target & kill civillians in any country of your choice. (I know that this would not make sense in the context of the game, but this does not always affect reporting in cases like that. Look at the Mass Effect 'alien ...relations simulator' stories, for one example. And in that case, what was reported wasn't even in the game.)

True, hence the suggestion for apropriate reclamation tech before it becomes useful to you. Selling it to the funding nations at the end of the mission (for less benefit than intact but currently unusuable kit) is also fine - it just seems odd that you would simply write off anything alien, under the circumstances.

Chris has done enough with Xenonauts (far better than I could have done!) that if he feels two-part missions are the best choice, then so be it, and I'll happily accede. (Given it is Chris's game, I'd need to do so anyway ). But if it's possible within the bounds of the engine/good game design to avoid that, even if only for smaller UFO's? Please, pretty please, yes. Immersion, atmosphere & flow of the game all benefit from avoiding a mid-mission intermission. Has this been verified? In the first post, Chris specifically lists small-medium UFO's as being non-enterable scenery, with a second internal map. Finally, just a thought: If two part missions will be in regardless - the Chinook could sometimes land on top of the largest UFO's, and you can then fight your way across it to an entry point. I realise it's probably not feasible at this point, due to the likely requirements for extra tilesets, etc, but it would be fun to see.

I may have misunderstood the problem slightly, then.

Seconded! It may not have the pedigree of X-Com, but it's a quality space commander sim. Oh, 44,128 and counting, 28 days to go .

I'm strongly in favour of keeping UFO's, even if just the medium ones, accessible on the map. Clearing out/locating UFO's as part of the sweep is always fun, and after all, this ship carried the aliens you are hunting down to earth, and then let them walk out of it. Smaller UFO's having cramped interiors would actually make more sense than having them as flying eggshells. (the smallest being inacessible also makes sense, just like a crashed fighter-jet). Big maps for big UFO's is good, personally speaking - X-Com Apoc had maps where most of it was the UFO. Perhaps only have a small portion of the map be external - if the larger ships will be at least partially procedurally generated, then this would simply be explained as your team being dropped off by the closest breach/portal. If two part missions on large UFO's becomes the final decision, then what anotherdevil said is true - make it clear it's the same mission. Most games I've played like that ending up feeling like two independant missions that the designers just bolted together.

I really like this idea, though I agree it would be good if it also depends on the enemy. EG, Alien robots/armoured units can be disabled by a direct rocket hit, but not always destroyed, while a squishy organic gets vaporised. Sensitive (ie, fragile) alien kit also being destroyed makes sense, but I have one suggestion there. Given this is Alien Junk , and therefore still valuable & unique on Earth: -Anything destroyed in a mission (weapons, ships that are blown up, etc) can be collected at the end as Salvage. -This can then be sold to funding nations for a smaller profit than intact kit, and/or it can be reclaimed for raw materials, maybe after the apropriate reclamation tech is researched. Perhaps reducing the cost of construction? Thoughts?

That wasn't the aliens. That was the bank foreclosing.

Yay - I've got a shiny yellow badge, after so long! So many cold, empty days watching all the cool kids playing the alphas, clutching my empty wallet, whimpering into the endless chill of the long, dark night of the soul..

'Grats. On an unrelated note, I've now got the urge to start humming the Jaws theme tune.

Perhaps, but their noble sacrifice has ignited something rather more lasting, no?

After all i've read in this thread, i'm really looking forward to fearing the uncannily clever Ai Reaper. All I want to see from the ai now is gatherer/herder missions - aliens loading civvies in to their ufos at gunpoint. To be stored and then fed to the chrysalids . (Or wait, are chryssalids from a differant game . I really need to download and play this thing, but I don't want to spoil the gooey chocolatey goodness of firing up the game for the first time and playing it all the way through, as Chris intended.)

Belated welcome, Gijs-Jan, and a few questions for you (apols if this was already asked - didn't see it in the thread.) Is there any chance that we could see the aliens try to fulfill objectives, as opposed to simply fighting? For example, an alien on a terror mission will actively focus on hunting civillians, they sometimes try to swarm the chinook, on a human base attack they try to do as much damage as possible to the facilities, free prisoners, etc.? Will aliens group together to fight, or will the ai make them act as individuals only?

Now if only we could recruit the Librarian..

Thought that was because you slipped the garbage collectors a bonus? The real question is, while you were watching that lovely distracting side-show, what else was going on in the house....

I'll have to stand by my statement. To be clear, I'm not holding the London Met up as flawless paragons or the #1 force in the world, but I have had personal experience of the following in other countries: -police stating "We have no transport. Come pick us up." when reporting a burglary. -arrest, prisnor & crime records that do not exist, full stop. Unless the police decide they are needed, and are then altered at will. -being physically assualted after asking police for help. -Riot police being deployed on a midnight raid on a university after a political rally. -Being asked how much I was willing to pay in bribes to get police help. Police always make an easy target, but if you compare the london police to many national forces, you will find that they are really not that bad. Not by a long shot. (Our experiences with drinking on the tube must be down to some other factor, maybe just random luck - I've seen much less drunkeness on tubes/buses since the ban went into affect, but that is again just my own personal experience.)

My trains have ranged from empty to normal - the expected crowds haven't appeared, and sometimes done the opposite. (I travel via London Bridge). I can sympathise with the bike situation & drunk passengers (Boris banning drinking on all London public transport has made me like the man just for that!), but suicides are ultimately beyond the control of the train operators. I can also sympathise with the staff and police. The ones you speak of (& to) aren't the ones who have made these rules, but they are the ones who have to enforce them (often with no lee-way allowed), and who receive with the immediate backlash when members of the public object, wether vocally or physically (I've seen both happen.) Not all police or station staff are models of diplomacy & tact, but to be frank, a lot of countries would give their right arm for a police force half as well trained and professional as the London police. I've also seen station staff go out of their way to help passengers and olympic tourists. I guess I'm just saying don't let the bad days & experiences become your sole focus of London transport, and blind you to the rest.

From my own (personal) viewpoint: a game doesn't always need a huge finish, but after all the effort a player can put into completing a game, something to reward you, and/or tie off the story is appreciated. (Even if they are just setting up for the inevitable sequel.) glaDOS and the turrets in Portal 2 singing opera to you is one example (esp. when you realise what she's singing), and Bastion's narrator rambling on while scenes of the everyday life you fought to restore appear around the credits give a nice epilogue to that story. Both games gave me a statisfied feeling, and, bluntly, satisfied customers are more likely to be repeat customers. I've also played a game which ended on a blank, black page with two lines of text (You've saved the world! Now do it again!), & restarted the game as soon as you pressed a key. All achivements & powerups stripped so that you played the exact same game as before. Not even credits first. That left a frustrated taste in my mouth, and steered me away from the developer's next offering.

Make the drones work for scouting, but less reliably than human scouts against certain enemies, while human scouts suffer a greater penalty against others.

This is where an incendiary grenade/flamethrower is your friend - just toast the building and let the cowardly alien scum burn!

One of the better explanations came from the UFO series by Altair - the invading force were renegades from their own civillization, with limited resources & ships, who needed Earth as an intact, life-bearing planet for their purposes, so they couldn't just bomb it. Of course, they did wipe out most humans with bio-weapons, but if the Xenonauts aliens regards Humans as one of the resources they desire, then they may wish to conquer and intergrate us with as little damage as possible. (Human history shows it's often easier & cheaper to rule a satrap or colony by using the power structures already in place, rather than trying to impose your own at anything except the highest levels. A functional but subservient society may also be more productive for their uses than a shattered, mostly extinct one.)

ahh - it's always nice to come in from the cold and bask in the crackling warmth of this thread

ooh, nicely put - you're on fire today!

(sidles round the corner whistling nonchanlantly, then legs it for all he's worth, quietly gibbering about "the chittering! the chittering!") He does stop off for a minute to bask in the glow of a funeral pyre at the giant crater, second on the left, and thinks, y'know, it might not be all bad..