81dB

These deductions don't have to be big. Imagine if a soldier has ~80 max health and suffers an injury that puts him at 20 health. After being nursed back to "injured" state and going through PT, the soldier's max health is 77 on an average difficulty. The deductions would be more significant on harder levels, and more forgiving on easier levels. How much health is a soldier expected to have in the late game? Can we not use that number as the starting point? I don't imagine it would be easy to implement this into vanilla though at this stage of development, though. So, I'm hoping this can be modded in, but how much power do modders have over character development?

Veteran troops will still be valuable due to higher bravery/reflexes (and thus chance to hit). Note that veteran troops would only be "worse" if they sustained a lot of injuries during their career, which is realistic, and makes taking damage much more impactful. You'd have to adjust your tactics accordingly, and be more hesitant to send the more valuable soldiers to the front lines. Additionally, a high ranking officer whom you kept safe, such as a sniper, would have insane stats (as the starting stats are higher), and hurt that much more when he's caught by an unlucky, stray plasma shot. Veteran soldiers whose bravery stat didn't take a dive (from seeing too many friends die or sustaining too many critical injuries) would still be very reliable shots. This introduction of PTSD adds a new wrinkle to gameplay. If you worry about having soldiers who can sustain heavier injuries and survive, that's what rookies are for. Rookies would have higher health and strength (to wear heavier armor), therefore being better meat shields, but lower bravery and reflexes still make them a liability. Perhaps armor can provide a bravery boost as well, with better armor giving a higher boost. Realistically, you wouldn't expect an older 35+ year old squad leader to have the same stamina and speed as a younger, healthier individual. And you wouldn't expect a rookie getting his feet wet to have the steel nerves of a veteran when a plasma shot flies by his head. Most people tend to use sacrificial rookies on the front lines anyway. You wouldn't send an old captain to breach a room unless it was your only option. And while you might think to be "clever" by making the majority of soldiers a sniper, some maps have more close quarters than open field which make snipers less useful than other soldier types. Besides, these penalties can be reduced with technologies and research, so while early game has heavier penalties, late game would have more ways to combat those deductions. End game research may even nullify the penalties (though your soldiers may still have to go through PT to regain their lost stats). PT adds another wrinkle by making you decide whether to let a certain soldier fully heal up as a healthier soldier, or keep him in battle (when injuries and deaths are rampant). It makes sense that a soldier whose arm or leg wasn't properly given the chance to heal wouldn't function as well as one who was. I know improved medkits and bays are already in, but I was talking about having them be involved in preventing stat loss, as currently there isn't a big sense of urgency in treating wounds. Even when soldiers are bleeding, there's not a big sense of urgency because the soldier would still be able to heal up to full health. It just takes longer. There's only urgency when a bleeding soldier is close to death. There should ALWAYS be urgency in treating wounds. And you say bravery increases in groups? That's great! Groups of soldiers would have overall higher accuracy, but be more susceptible to splash damage such as grenades. Lone soldiers would have lower accuracy rating simply due to the fear of being alone. Another consideration is to have medals provide bravery to surrounding soldiers, but not the soldier wearing them. You feel much safer around a high ranking officer with lots of medals, but the high ranking officer may not exactly be braver for getting them. Perhaps he's seen too much s***. BTW, are reflexes involved in any calculations of enemy reactionary fire? A soldier with high reflexes should be able to peek around a corner really quick and back into cover without being shot at. It would give your front line soldiers a better chance of survival. You must remember that a soldier's starting stats are much higher, and therefore his/her potential ceiling is higher. Grooming a soldier is also much more involved. Instead of simply staying alive, the soldier must also stay out of harm's way if he/she is to have a long and productive career. Your well-groomed higher ranking officers would mean a LOT MORE to you. This makes their injuries and deaths much more emotional. Perhaps you might even have one of your starting soldiers win the war without sustaining a single injury. Imagine the stories that he'd have for his grandkids. Overall, these changes would make for much more realistic management, which I think Xenonauts would be better for. It would also make the game more unique and memorable by stepping away from traditional permanent stat gains. I can certainly understand that some people just want a modernized X-COM game though.

Hello everyone, Xenonauts uses a very traditional stat system, where agents take damage and heal up to full health over time, as well as being able to gain stats (bravery, APs, etc.) through battle experience/promotions. I'd like to offer a suggestion on stats that very few games seem to use, which in my eyes, would offer a more realistic and flavorful approach. It would be nice to hear everyone's thoughts! Health: New soldiers start out with higher health, e.g. 80-100 compared to the ~60 that current soldiers start with. However, with each successive injury, the soldier's max health decreases. The uglier the injury, the more max health is deducted. These deductions are permanent. Injuries may be adjusted to have a higher chance of causing bleeding, and consequently must be treated sooner on the battlefield. If a soldier is left to bleed, his overall max health will decrease further than if the injury was immediately treated. This places a higher emphasis on medics and keeping your soldiers safe, especially your more accurate/higher ranking soldiers. This will also encourage more tactical use of snipers, flashbangs, reactionary fire and suppression. Slight health increases may still occur, and your max health can increase past the baseline provided your soldier never gets hurt or suffers rare, minor injuries. However for the most part, soldiers will end up with less and less max health over the course of his/her career. This is more realistic, as "fresh meat" soldiers with little to no combat experience are as healthy as they may ever be, before they lose an arm and a leg in battle. Action Points / Strength: Similar to health, soldiers will start out with more action points and strength than usual, however injuries will deduct points, simulating limb injuries. You can't exactly run as fast as you used to after taking a plasma shot to the knee, nor can you lift as much weight as before. Of course, this may not sound fun, as soldiers are inevitably going to get hurt in this game, and strength is needed to make effective use of heavier weaponry. So, I propose a new mechanic to offset this: Physical Therapy. We can send new recruits to training, preventing us from using the soldier for 10 days, however they come back a better soldier. Similarly, we can send injured soldiers to PT, which would increase the rate at which they recover, as well as giving them a better chance of recovering more of their lost max health/strength/action points. However, we lose control of the soldier (like training) for a certain number of days, depending on the severity of the injury. Wounded soldiers, however, are nursed back to an "injured" state, after which they can either be used in battle again, or sent to PT. A wounded soldier implies a severe injury, while an injured soldier implies a minor injury. Therefore, wounded soldiers suffer more unrecoverable stat decreases. Tactically, you wouldn't want soldiers falling below half health, as that would trigger a wounded state. Perhaps medkits can be used to nurse a soldier back up to 50%+ health, preventing a wounded state on mission end (and therefore less stat decreases). However, I can see this sort of being a problem when fighting the last alien. A soldier fires at an alien, triggers reactionary fire and suffers a critical injury. Meanwhile, another soldier delivers the killing blow and the mission ends, whereas if there were another alien alive, the critically wounded soldier would have had a chance for medical attention from another soldier. This can be refined. Perhaps the lowest point of health suffered in battle is used to determine the significance of stat decreases, while using medkits in the field determines how fast a soldier is nursed back to 100% health. Soldiers that are tended to immediately will spend less time in the medical bay. Soldiers that are still bleeding or have unrecovered health when the battle ends are nursed on the ride back. It would be as if they were tended to immediately. This would favor the players who spend all their APs on killing (what they think is) the last alien instead of medkitting. Bravery: Bravery's a strange stat. Some soldiers may grow scared over the course of many battles, as they rack up injuries and see their fellow comrades die. Their PTSD may cause them to panic the moment gunfire starts erupting. Others may become more brave, from becoming numb/unafraid of death, seeking revenge, and/or accepting the fact that sacrifice is sometimes necessary to win this war. Personally, I would like to see bravery increase with every successive battle that the soldier completes unscathed or with only minor injuries. Bravery would also have a chance of decreasing when the soldier gets critically injured or a fellow soldier dies within sight. The lower the soldier's rank, the higher the chance/decrease. IMO, it's realistic for soldiers with little combat experience to have a lower starting bravery than soldiers with previous combat experience. Additionally, the enemies we are fighting are never-before-seen aliens with super advanced technology. Even the most battle hardened Vietnam veterans would be a little overwhelmed at the sight, at least at first. So, baseline bravery remains unchanged for the most part. However... Some soldiers are truly braver than others, while others are only brave because their friends are still alive. This can be done through a hidden, "True Bravery" stat. A soldier with high "True Bravery" would have a lower chance of losing bravery stats. He/she may even GAIN them when seeing fellow soldiers die (as they set out for revenge). The bravery stat that we see will be the "Current Bravery" of the soldier. We do not know how truly brave the soldier is until he is battle tested. "True Bravery" can also increase as the soldier is promoted, with the thought process: "There are soldiers depending on me. I must be fearless." To compensate however, soldiers gain bravery at a much faster rate (especially so if they complete missions unscathed), as they get used to fighting these new adversaries. Also, while a soldier can bravery points from being in unfortunate situations and/or having a low "True Bravery" stat, their bravery can be nursed back up if you keep them away from from seeing friendly deaths and out of harm's way. In this way, bravery is sort of an extension of Morale. Keep a soldier's morale high, and his/her bravery will increase quite quickly. Put a soldier in unfortunate situations and his/her bravery takes a dive. Perhaps only a temporary dive if you are a careful/caring commander. I haven't read up on how rank affects combat morale yet, but promotions seem to be handed out like candy in the current versions of the game. It would be nice to have promotions occur less often or be capped (such as having only 1 Commander, 2 Captains, 3 Lieutenants, etc. per base or # of soldiers), but be more meaningful. Perhaps they more significantly increase the bravery (and thus accuracy) of soldiers around them. Morale would take a significant hit if a high ranking officer is killed. I've never been in a war myself, so I would like to hear others' thoughts on this. Accuracy: While having soldiers with low starting accuracy and having them increase with experience is the traditional way to go in many games, I propose a different approach. Aliens are invading Earth, thus the soldiers we employ should be the best of the best. A soldier's base accuracy would be a lot higher implying that the soldiers we are recruiting are some of the best sharpshooters that Earth has to offer. Accuracy would signify how well a soldier can hit still targets in a controlled environment. Accuracy gains would be minimal and small to signify weapon familiarity, instead of actual accuracy increases. Perhaps accuracy could be linked to specific weapon types, such as Sniper Rifle or Shotgun. Many real soldiers probably have a certain weapon type that they prefer. You can add a small boost in accuracy if the soldier is using his/her preferred weapon type. Enough with the rambling: the new catch is that bravery plays a much bigger role in determining a soldier's chance to hit. A soldier with low bravery would spray and pray more than a battle hardened soldier would, thus having a lower accuracy rating. A braver soldier would get more use out of his/her accuracy rating, as he takes more time to line up the shot as opposed to worrying about staying in cover. With this change, you'd favor hiring soldiers with high accuracy ratings (if you didn't already), and hope that their bravery increases to the point of being an effective soldier that patiently lines up their sights. Bravery can be seen like a "confidence" stat. Gameplay-wise, new recruits would still have lower chance to hit in the beginning. Bravery increases are not guaranteed, so some soldiers may never reach their potential, moreso if they keep getting hurt. However, keep your high-accuracy soldiers unscathed and they will do great things for you. That does not mean low-accuracy soldiers are useless. They can be used on the front lines, equipped with heavy armor, or given machine guns to lay down suppression fire. Moreover, there could be an accuracy floor (e.g. 60), because we simply do not even consider soldiers who cannot consistently hit a still target 15-yards away. Alternatively, you can have newly recruited low-accuracy soldiers increase their accuracy quite a bit with weapon familiarity training. Reflexes: Reflexes seems like a stat that could increase with every injury, at least for balance's sake. Then, at least your low-max-health soldiers could have a higher chance of defending themselves from death. It's also a bit realistic that a soldier who's constantly getting hurt will grow paranoid over time, developing faster reflexes. Of course, reflexes can still be gained normally through combat experience, injury or not. Baseline reflexes remain unchanged. Another twist that can possibly be added is to have bravery affect your reflexes as well. A low-bravery soldier may at times be a bit trigger happy and kill a civilian, as he misidentifies the target in the heat of battle. Difficulty Curve I read from the difficulty curve thread that Chris wants to increase the baseline stats of recruits over the course of the game. If soldiers start out with higher baseline stats than usual, consider reducing the recruiting costs of soldiers over the course of the game. Then you'd have more and more soldiers (with high baseline stats) as you suffer losses. The cheaper recruiting costs signifies the increasing alien threat, as more and more soldiers are willing to put their lives on the line for the survival of mankind. Summary: - Strength, health and APs start high but decrease as soldiers sustain injuries. - Reflexes start at baseline but increase at faster rates. - Accuracy doesn't improve too much. Instead, bravery becomes the pivotal factor in determining chance to hit. A brave soldier with low accuracy still wouldn't hit things very well, nor would a scared soldier with high accuracy. - Bravery fluctuates much more easily, significantly increasing or decreasing during times of high/low morale. Lots of wounded and deaths will drop overall bravery, while unscathed soldiers will increase overall bravery. - Wounded/injured soldiers can do Physical Therapy to recover some of their lost stats. - High-ranking officers play a much bigger role, due to Bravery being a key stat. Other suggestions: - Would be nice to see technologies related to these changes, such as improved medical bays (early game), stem cell research and/or synthetic body parts (late game) - It would be nice to see a "preferred weapon type" for soldiers, such as Rifle / Sniper Rifle / Shotgun / etc. which give bonus accuracy when using the preferred weapon. This is to help offset the minimal accuracy gains over the course of the soldier's career. - For balance, you can implement stat floors, where no more deductions can occur. I hope to hear what you guys have to say. Even if all this isn't fully implemented in vanilla, it might give modders some ideas. It's quite a wall of text, so thanks to anyone for taking the time!

Yes, yes, which is why I suggested the multi-map scenario to avoid having to make big maps. You can stitch a bunch of medium-sized maps together. I was a fan of those multi-step missions, even though they sucked at night (but every mission sucks at night). Just make the rewards worthy of the battle. Players would be willing to lose soldiers if it meant gaining a huge boost to their research, or PR. Sure, but this wouldn't occur unless you were losing a lot of soldiers in every battle. For example, for the first 2 months, you can beat every mission with only 12 soldiers, then you'd need 16, 20, 24, etc., as the aliens get more and more advanced, as well as more and more show up. You'd also only be able to transport 12 in the very beginning, and when you are able to transport more, you are able to afford more soldiers. But if you're playing on insane difficulty and you made too many mistakes, then yeah, you should lose the region (or game) as a result of having too few soldiers. That's kind of how it worked in the classics anyway. If you couldn't afford soldiers, you must've been screwing up royally lately. However, like I said earlier, 24 as a cap is fine for me. 16 soldiers and 2 vehicles is 24 slots total. I'm hoping we can replace those 2 vehicles with 8 soldiers if we want to. The multi-map scenarios don't necessarily have to be used on Earth missions, but instead in the end-game, when we are gearing up to raid alien worlds. In Apoc, you had to bring that many *because* there was no resupplying between every mission, and because the aliens' world would be infested with hostile forces (you'd think). It took a week or so to travel to the alien dimension and back, so bringing 30 soldiers with you was pretty common. You'd want to do as much damage as you could before having to pull out. I'm not sure what the end-game in Xenonauts would be like, but if these aliens are Martians, for example, then we'd probably want to bring at least 30 soldiers for our raid on Mars to do as much damage as possible before retreating. I just think that end-game should involve more than 16 soldiers, that's all. I can see how it gets repetitive for some, but to me, battles with high soldier count vs overwhelming aliens can get quite intense and fun. Explosives are also way more fun to use with high alien count. You'd still have to minimize losses if at all possible, because the cost of soldiers, equipment, and vehicles add up if you're not careful. Never hurts to discuss.

I humbly disagree. You'd only need to make bigger maps and increase alien count to match a player's 30 soldiers. The player would have to spread his soldiers out, and have multiple front lines, as well as increased care in clearing out a map. Landing right in the middle of a big map with all the aliens surrounding you would make you wish you brought 30 soldiers, because your front lines are going to be suffering losses just coming out of the transport. You'd think that the aliens would've already taken up defensive positions after the crash to be able to ambush any Xenonaut transports. You can also add a "Troop density estimation" rating for alien UFOs, such as Light/Medium/Heavy, to recommend how many troops you should bring to this battle (16/24/32). Though, that's a lot of work probably, especially if you want to randomize elements of a huge map. In Apoc, it was pretty common to bring 24+ soldiers when you were raiding the alien world, because there were going to be plenty of alien reinforcements, and you wanted as many TUs per turn (aka soldiers) as you could get. With the right elements, even 24+ soldier battles can be quite tough and tactical. Morale also plays a bigger role, as losing a captain or colonel on the battlefield could make 3-4 other soldiers panic. You might have 5-6 soldiers dead, and 20+ injured after your raids are over. How about if the Chinook's carrying capability was lowered to 12, and the starting tank was removed? The player then gains transports that can carry 16, 24, 32 soldiers as they advance thru their tech tree and face advanced/increased counts of aliens. Then, if you can make multiple-part missions, similar to those cargo ship missions in TFTD. You would field 24+ soldiers, but you'd have to battle through 2-3+ maps without stopping. Your transport lands on one edge of the map, and you have to bring all your soldiers to the other side, thus loading the 'next map', and then you must eliminate the next map as well. Ammo, medkits, etc. would all play a bigger factor. You might even need a few full-time medics armed with only a pistol and 3 medkits. Maybe even 1-2 "supply soldiers", carrying various ammo and explosives. Explosives/rockets get quite heavy, and you can make demolition-type scenarios where having those high explosives would be very useful. This would also forgo the need for big maps, as you can chain as many regular sized maps together as you want. This might increase turn processing times, but Apoc had quite a lot of aliens on some battlescapes, and it handled it quite fine. I'd settle for 24 soldiers though, but 16 is quite low for a cap. 32 is my ideal cap, but I can see how that may seem unbalanced/overwhelming for others.

My dead meat + robots were usually in my CQC squad, armed with stun-rods Then, once they've earned their stripes, I give them real weapons.

The only disappointment I have from that list is the 16 soldier cap. I was really hoping for 30+ soldiers to be fielded at a time during end-game battles. You wouldn't bring only 16 soldiers to try and capture a titanic battleship would you? Apoc let you field 36 soldiers with a very organized and intuitive UI. This kind of goes back to squads being in the game or not. In TFTD/UFOD (and Xenonauts from the looks of it), you split your soldiers up into squads randomly and on the fly as you did the mission. However in Apoc, you assigned them into squads before each mission. Squads can also be edited on the battlescape, for example in case 2 out of 4 guys are in critical condition and have to leave. There were two ways of using squads in Apoc: In the beginning, you would split your squads up into typical fireteams, such as 1 rifleman, 1 sniper, 1 shotgun, 1 grenadier. However, as you get more soldiers and bigger aircraft, you would then split your squads up into entire units. An example of 4 squads in the end-game would be: - 4 Close Combat Specialists (Shotgun, Stun-Rod, etc.) - 4 Snipers - 4 Riflemen - 4 Special Weapons You could then split these four squads up to do separate tasks within the mission, and not have to look "for that one guy that i sent over here, somewhere". Maybe you have the shotgun squad breaching rooms, while the sniper team provides cover fire from afar. Then you can send the special weapons with the riflemen to blow up the main generator on the other side of the map. It's also harder to remember soldier #13, than it is to remember "the sniper in squad 2". Unless my memory sucks, you were able to field 26 soldiers with an avenger in UFOD, so it kind of sucks shrinking the number down to 16.

Cool. Maybe these can be unlocked after beating the game once, to preserve the 'mystery'. And I never suggested behavior should be modified, simply multipliers such as the frequency of which UFOs appear (and thus terrorize, make bases, scout, etc.), and their stats. It'd be fun (for me at least) to play a game with high starting money and ridiculously high UFO activity, just to see how long you can hold out.

I'm not sure how easily this could be implemented, but it would be cool if we could have advanced difficulty sliders in the final version, similar to setting up a game of Anno. There would be sliders for all the difficulty variables and multipliers. Some examples would be: - Starting Money - UFO Spawn Frequency - Alien Stat Multipliers - Aggressiveness of AI - Research Rates - Anything else that can vary between difficulties You can see where I'm going with this. It would be much more diverse than the typical 1-option difficulty setting, and allow for easier/better customization of games. The default options can still be kept in the game, as the recommended/balanced difficulties. "Easy" would consist of all the sliders being on the left, while "Superhuman/Insane" would have all the sliders on the right. Here's what an Anno 1404 game setup screen looks like. Thoughts?

Perhaps if the aliens reach the Alien Containment they can free their fellow comrades? That'd be pretty scary if you're housing a lot of cryssalids. There can even be a few 'self-destruct' spots that you can activate to destroy the alien containment module using your soldiers if the aliens are advancing well. You can also make the scientist AI go straight for a designated 'panic room' (living quarters maybe?), making their actions more predictable, unless they panic. The cost of losing them is a good price to pay for letting the aliens find your base. Maybe you can even have an increase/decrease in costs for scientists, proportional to the number you let die/save. Except, in Apocalypse, scientists were limited, so you wanted to save them, especially those with 90-100 skill. I would imagine that all Xenonauts bases would be well guarded, with a smart, defensive layout. With a radar system installed, you would think they are geared up and ready to defend against the raid. Hell, a good explanation for why scientists aren't seen in the battlescape could be that they have already retreated into safe rooms when UFOs are detected near the base. Then we don't need to have scientist defense at all.

Well, squads immediately come to mind, though I'm not a programmer so I wouldn't know how hard that would be to implement. In Apocalypse, you were allowed (I think) 6 squads of 6 people, totalling 36 soldiers. Others, well, maybe I'll make a list some time later this week and post suggestions here. Been quite busy lately.

Yeah I was gonna say something about the UI elements being limited. I was hoping for the UI to look more like Apocalypse. Makes much more efficient use of the screen.

Scientists were present in Apocalypse during base raids and you had to protect them. Probably won't be the case in Xenonauts, I'm guessing?

Well, my only wish is that there are more than 6 ranks to be promoted to. At least 9!

I've run into a similar problem. Was fighting a UFO when I had to retreat. After the air combat screen disappeared, it gave me the message "UFO returned to space!", but the UFO icon remained static on the geoscape. Re-intercepting this icon would prompt another air combat battle.