Grotesque

a memorable game is one where the player has to make tough, meaningful choices and sacrifices.

Pheonix Point has no 3D base emulation like in my above screenshot from Phantom Doctrine Pheonix Point has screenshots (arranged on a grid) of some bland 3D assets that masquerade as actual base buildings. So I don't even understand how you made a connection with what I've said and tried to convey in my previous post with what PP did, which was shameful in my opinion. So no, PP does not have a base depicted in 3D.

If a player forgets to bring ammo and does not savescum, be sure he will not forget next time. Also there can be loadout types that can be automatically applied on soldiers on ground missions. But alas, that is the new game philosophy of nowadays games: no responsibility, less punishment. What made the original X-COM games good was the fact that it was foremost a simulation, where the ammo you used to the last bullet was an entity on its own with a history or a cost. Like in Eve Online where every bullet has a price and it was manufactured by someone.

^Phantom Doctrine Xenonauts 2 should go full 3D in every visual aspect of the game The 3D assets could be in less detail (lower texture resolution and low polycount) but it would still be better with the aid of clever lighting than the flat 2D drawings of base rooms. And once you have it in 3D, object placement variation would be more easily attained.

Something gameplay wise is not boring/repetitive when the stakes are high, the players needs to constantly adapt (UFO fight encounter involves part random events, part player skill, part pilot skill), the game art is beautiful and when there are enough complex systems forming a whole and those systems are synergetic and have important implications during that particular event. High stakes Exotic materials scarcity The materials needed to greatly advance your tech via R&D should be acquired only from rare artifacts found only in UFOs. Not all UFOs are destined to have them, whatever their class. UFO interception scarcity Intercepting and being able to intercept an UFO should be a big deal. The majority of time, (more so at the start of the game) the player will not be able to catch up if them. Tension derives from uncertainty. An UFO must be relentlessly pursued by scrambled planes from different bases that are strategically placed. Planes should be able to tail an UFO until others from other bases can join the fight to increase the odds of success. This will put the player in front of a dilemma: wait for others but risk to lose the UFO or risk to be shot down (or sacrifice precious materials for repairs) but get the prize. UFO lethality No interaction with UFOs will come lightly. The possibility in gain of exotic materials will always cost large amounts of conventional resources and sometime pilot lives. Boredom always arises when there’s player complacency and lack of tension. Every UFO class/subclass has its special traits/maneuvers but not always. Game art Fallout 1's combat became boring relatively fast but what never got old were those death animations accompanied by exquisite sound design. Art could be stylized but planes and UFOs are in 3D. Hits must feel visceral, player receives visual & audio feedback, hits leave marks, planes physically react to hits, background reflects the area on the globe where combat takes place, etc Random events, pilot & external factors Random events Unexpected engine failure Pilot blackout while maneuvering Dud missile Weapon jam Overly aggressive UFO Lucky penetration Pilot adrenaline rush Pilot panic/ untimely ejection Fuel loss External factors Weather (storms/lightning strikes, poor vision, increased failure of planes, increased time for lock on) Time (day/night combat implications) Altitude (high altitude = poor performance for specific engines) (low altitude,=possibility for friendly anti-aircraft battery intervention, higher plane frame stress during maneuvers) Pilot stats (influences random events) Endurance (constant performance output) Spatial awareness (impressive maneuvers, extreme ejection, push the envelope) Mental toughness (panic resistance, feats of bravery) Zealotry (kamikaze tactics, self-sacrifice) Combat Combat takes place in three dimensional space. Combat involves simultaneous turns ( gameplay ethos similar to Phantom Brigade ) Combat involves different stages (long range and close range/dogfight) Long range: firing long range missiles and maneuvering for optimal starting areas for next stage. Close range: using short range missiles and autocanons. Players has access to predefined maneuvers. Player input is by combining different maneuvers depending on the situation. Newer planes and high pilot skill unlock more evasive complex maneuvers. Planes engagement duration is limited by the amount of fuel when engaging in combat (longer pursuit, lower on fuel, more agility) Player can trade fuel (external tanks) for agility. Player has the possibility to keep planes on mission past the point of no return (during UFO pursuit or actual engagement) by sacrificing the plane but not the pilot (ejection). Ejection always has a chance to injure the pilot and even a lower chance for death (ejection system failure) Player can trade chance to hit for security. Longer aiming time, more chance to be hit by the UFO. Player turn has a countdown. The firing arcs/zones of the UFO weapons are more broad as the weapon damage is lower.

So the nuXCOM style underground base is out? if it were up to me, I wouldn't limit the player on how many "rooms" he can have in a base the only limit would be the energy needed to upkeep those rooms and the cost to dig deeper and deeper to accommodate new rooms. storages, labs, hangars, engineering rooms etc , each would have a different energy upkeep so if a player wants to make a huge base just with storage rooms (which would have lowest energy upkeep), he should have this option and flexibility

Hello! For Xenonauts 3, could we have the base concept and management similar to Evil Genius game? Thank you

The list menu transparency levels could by any chance be adjusted in the options for the Research Engineering Soldiers and Supplies tabs so that the beautiful artwork behind could be seen?

Oh man! Just reading the description of this mod makes me happy as a kid for Christmas! Thank you!

You just demonstrated that you don't have a clue what being extremely vocal on the forums implies. And then you ask inept questions like "what you want to achieve with this thread" like the ultimate fanboy you say you're not. Have I started threads demanding that the devs should rework game mechanics to my liking at once? I've only stated what are the flaws in my opinion and what would have made the game more complex, thus better. What I want to achieve with this thread? Immortality.

Your reaction is so childish and unfit, I don't even bother to give an articulate reply. All I have to say is that I am sorry that I point out the flaws (in my opinion) of your beloved game.

Tweaking the UFO health pool and making them unpredictable when their appear I think would make them a real threat in lower numbers. To reintroduce the transport mechanic by a mod at this point would involve changing other aspects aspects. Good ideas will always suffer if another mechanic is already in place. Predictability is not a good idea.

So the problem is not that UFOs that come in waves and are predictable, the idea is flawed?

Corsair plane was for a time the best plane in my fleet and without it I would not have resisted the UFO invasion. As for Fury, yes its skippable. Without the destroyer and dreadnought class it has no purpose. I only used it for fun. Any mechanic that makes player to delve in tough decisions is ok in my book. That is one of them. transporting precious cargo should be serious business. The fact that now the game does not even allow you to move scientists/workers says a lot about its complexity.

ZERO base assaults ZERO alien bases A couple of terror sites ( a red circle with an alien face in it) but my combat planes got to site it vanished.

Bases have limited space? In my playthrough, the original base completed the game with 2 squares empty. 3/4 of the gamelength I only used 2 labs and 2 workshops. Look at the number buildings you can construct and how low it is compared to past games. No alien contaiment needed. Infinite storehouse cappacity - you only need one. No need to have space to build a better defense canon because they autoupgrade (in past games, you needed space to build a better version, not just to tear down the old one because you would have no defece during construction) It seems to compensate for the low facilities number you can construct, devs made the command center and labs/workshops/barraks bigger. Your arguments are invalid because everybody knows that for the game to be balanced and be fun, tweaking the economy has reverberations in other areas of the game. Straw man fallacy again. In other words, the "current model of the game" (as you say) is balanced/tweaked for a simplified economic system that endorses automatization and cuts layers of complexity instead of adding them (like the game did with areal combat) Areal combat has also its problems because attacking the ufos with the right planes and armament, they always take 0 damage, hence no need for resources and repairs, hence no need for money/resource sink. And a way of stopping manufacturing abuse and making a hoard of money, just tie the production of expensive products to finite materials (alenium, alien alloys etc) that you take from ufos, tweak the ufo numbers and their rate of invasion, them make them harder to shoot down and always with a degree of damage inflicted to your planes. Tanks in the current game cost ZERO to repair. You can make 10 missions in a row with the same tank. Every time pops up with full health in mission. A proper designed X-COM game could have so MANY money/resource sinks that even selling lasers in bulk would not be enough to have everything at 100%. And then the real economic gameplay starts - making real, tough decisions. Making priorities. Boosting production to keep up. Trimming the unnecessary costs. Always fine tuning. Thinking ahead. Making plans to have room for bulding rotation. Adapting to new situations. And then really enjoying a facility that lessens the strain on your brain a little.

cargo planes that would need escort would have been exquisite. These assets were cut out before or after they received triple the money they asked on kickstarter? Because to me it seems that some were cut just because someone wanted the game out ASAP.

Then Alien bases should be from the beginning of the game already established and their influence increased as the game progresses. Also, in the old x-com: terror from the deep, there were ufos that attacked your base coming in very fast and that could not be intercepted. That could be two ways of modding the game so it would be not possible to completing it without having your base assaulted or an alien base assault.

Thats why you would have several workshops working in parralel producing more plane weapons than you would actually need in the case of loosing a plane with the weapons. And then a storehouse would really be important to store this equipment. And having a limited build space in the base, you would have to choose if you really need one extra storehouse and lose the build space in the detriment of some other important building. It's called forward thinking and planning. And losing a plane would be a big deal, not the miracle retrieving and you as a player would be forced to adapt and find new resources.

At a quick look at the game assets I discovered that there were certain units/weapons and planes not introduced: Saracen -plane Destroyer class ufo AK47 Flamethrower rocket launcher? DHVR Colossus armor one of each research workshop and barracks historic progression backgrounds were skipped nanotech workshop particle turret quantum cryptology center quantum laboratory training center! (that would have been extraordianary) heavy and medium drones xenopedia -alien alloy hardening -alien comms array Are there any plans for modders to reintroduce them in the game and give them rhe intended purpose? The collosus armour has the sprite animation in the game assets? Some animation with the the arriving squad drop pods would be so cool to have! something like in this video at 4 : 43

Of course that system had a fault that you can abuse it if you know well how the game mechanics works. I never said that abusing this in the original is OK and that should be replicated in Xenonauts. But the oversimplified management Xenonauts has just to avoid this (and maybe some other motives) instead introducing some kind of failsafes to avoid this is like throwing away the horse just because one bad horseshoe. You can't even transfer engineers and scientist from one base to another. That says a lot.

"And there are dozens of ways that could be implemented not to mouseclick a hundred times to properly equip your squad." I was referring to the overused example how old xcom was tedious at ammunition management and how this could be avoided to make munition manufacturing relevant. And this type of argument makes a Straw Man fallacy. Once you take away the ability of the player to also fund themselves, all the economic structure is just a facade which has reverberations in other areas of the game. It seems anything I say about an economic system that "could house more playstyles and give choice real weight" is translated by "ammunition management=bad" I rest my case.

If X-com stood up the test of time was primarely because of the setting the the hybrid quality it had. Not just because of combat because at this aspect it never really excelled. There are other games that did it better at the time. Its clear to me I am one of the few "purists" but all of you that find the in depth management of the bases tedious, you never liked x-com as a whole. And the overused example of soldier munition management thrown out here becomes a little tiresome, don't you think? Munition is/should be an important aspect. And there are dozens of ways that could be implemented not to mouseclick a hundred times to properly equip your squad. A. We should have an R&D system with more depth which could house more playstyles and give choice weight. B. No! Clicking four times for each soldier to properly equip with ammunition is tedious! Straw Man fallacy at its best.

The old X-COM (which Xenonauts wants to be its spiritual successor) had in fact two gameplay cores, combat and research & development. While Xenonauts has a well designed research tree and combat is good with nothing of notice added, its economic core is a failure. Everything feels railroaded and limiting and the fact that not even once in my playthrough (veteran difficulty) I had been attacked in the base or had to deal with an alien base, feels very unrewarding. There is an abundance of ufos, the resources are not scarce and their presence becomes trivial. Trying to streamline the economic aspect (whatever the reason) made it less hardcore but also more bland, reduced it to a checklist you have to tick. In the old games you really felt like an administrator in which was more rewarding when you managed to fine tune the many gears in motion for the optimum output. There are no in depth logistical decisions you have to make from an economic point of view. Some structures auto upgrade themselves (like defense structures that not fired one shot) and plane ammo (whatever its complexity) lies in infinite quantities. The number of structures you have to build to survive is laughable, their positioning in the base has no tactical meaning. The game does not make you to have hard choices or even entertain the illusion of choice. The plane-ufo combat minigame introduced is an example of a layer of complexity added that enriched the game. The tactical economic aspect did not received the same attention. X-COM is never about combat only. Is the intertwine between ground and air combat and the economic, R&D aspect of managing the conflict. There are a lot of things that could have been introduced to R&D to give it depth, and because of that Xenonauts, despite having some good to great aspects to it, left me wanting still for a proper X-Com style game.

start producing equipment and sell it on the market to keep up oh wait...