Akavit

I'm using Win 64-bit with no issues of the type you've described. It can't be the OS that's your problem. As far as video cards go, I'm just using an older nVidia card. I think it's a gtx 460 or something like that. Is there a chance that having the absolute latest driver is a problem? A one day old driver hasn't been around long enough for people to have reported obscure bugs regarding it.

Hey folks! I upped my pledge to $200.00. That leaves a scant 6 spots available of the most coveted position for the rest of you to fight over. I can do grim and dour for a good cause. $29,837 in less than 48 hours.

5% funded as of now.

You don't have to be under 35 to get the name option. It's the $200.00 option that includes a portrait that has the age requirements. I didn't go for the portrait option, just the name. If I wanted to I could probably provide a satisfactory picture though. I'd imagine that avoiding shaving for a few days and skipping sleep would help achieve the glum look Chris wants for all his soldier portraits. In further news, funding just surpassed the $1,500 mark.

It's over a $1,000 now. I've jumped on board. Hopefully Chris doesn't think I have a weird name.

I expect that as the AI project progresses, missions should become a lot harder. Yes, at the moment they are a cakewalk (for me at least) but that's primarily because the current basic AI is too dense to put up a fight. I just flush them out and kill them with sniper fire. In short, I think that it's way to early to make difficulty balance suggestions of this nature because boosting difficulty now will probably make things near impossible later when all the content (specifically AI) is in the game. When aliens start fighting as a group instead of individuals players will be glad to have a large team of trained soldiers for a mission. Making the game more difficult by increasing the incompetence of Xenonaut soldiers doesn't sound like a very good idea anyhow. It's far better to make sure the aliens are not incompetent.

The cone of suppression fire wouldn't have anything to do with individual soldiers. It's akin to the current fire system in which walking through a burning room will hurt a soldier. Walking through an area being saturated with bullets amounts to the same thing whether to soldier was previously suppressed or not. Note that only machine guns and their equivalents would be capable of conducting this type of fire. Implementing a suppression system in a turn-based game is going to be problematic one way or another. The initial concept proposed by Chris forces soldiers to react in one predictable manner whether or not it fits the situation. Variations of that such as the "takes more AP's to move and shoot" idea will result it soldiers running slower at times when speed is the only thing that will save them or shooting slower at times when fast shooting is the only smart move. The AOE approach results in damage being dealt out getting separated from the firing animation. That may be a minor issue but I see it as an acceptable trade-off to avoid the short-comings of the other proposals. Turn-based You-Go-I-Go games are inherently awkward anyway when it comes to timing and animation issues. They excel at providing tactical options, not believable cause and effect animations. The real problems I see with the AoE system I've outlined are with implementation, not the actual gameplay. First, there would have to be a graphic indicating the exclusion zone (probably streaks of tracer fire or energy bursts). Secondly, the movement system would have to detect the AoE and calculate a movement path that doesn't send players through (unless the player really wants to move through). Lastly, the AI would need to be programmed to avoid suicidal charges into the AoE. Accomplishing all that may very well be too complex for Goldhawk to pull off within an acceptable timeframe.

I'd have to say that I don't care for the AP loss thing either. While it works in some situations, it would be completely unreal and frustrating in others. Suppose that an alien flanks a soldier and succeeds in completely suppressing him? Now the soldier has no cover, cannot return fire and can't move to nearby cover. That isn't an accurate portrayal of suppression, but rather, it mimics the actions of those dumb victims in B movies who see approaching death and do nothing. While it's not the same as real combat, I'm guessing that suppression in paintball provides a useful model to examine. I've played plenty of games and I know what response players have when under heavy fire. They either duck behind their cover, run to the nearest cover, fall to prone or return fire. The first option (duck behind their cover) is the action that is portrayed by the AP loss model being proposed for Xenonauts. In paintball though, players only react that way if they have cover in the first place. If they don't have cover, they'll never just sit around waiting to be eliminated. Reduced accuracy however, is an effect of suppression regardless of the situation. I very much agree with putting that effect into the Xenonauts suppression mechanics. As far as movement goes, paintball players use suppression tactics in a chess-like manner. It's usually not possible to entirely prevent the opponent from moving but it is easy enough to create a lane of fire that makes all movement through that specific area very risky. What I'd like to see in Xenonauts is a three-fold effect. First, there's the accuracy penalty. Second, negation of reaction fire, Third, suppression fire creates an area of effect (cone-shaped) that stays in place for the remainder of the shooter's round and the subsequent opponent's round. Any attempt to move inside or through the AOE carries the risk of taking damage (greatly reduced if the soldier has cover). This system permits players to have more tactical choices. They can return fire with reduced accuracy, run in hopes of getting to safety or skulk behind cover. That system also makes it possible to use area of denial tactics when advancing on enemy positions. Firing machine guns at the corners of buildings will make it risky for aliens to rush around the corner and open fire. I'd also like to make a proposal for machine guns. They should have the option to shoot suppressive fire or short, controlled bursts. Suppressive fire would be the 15 round, inaccurate area of denial attack. The short burst option is there in case the player decides he needs to focus on putting a killing shot into a single enemy. I suggest the controlled fire mode because it's likely that at some point the player will be in a situation where only the machine-gunners are alive. At that point, ammo conservation and enemy kills will be critical.

I used to play ironman mode in Mount and Blade. That lasted until the first time I encountered a glitch that trapped my party in an endless loop that I couldn't get out of by any method. It's because of bugs, mis-clicks, power outages, cats on the keyboard, etc. that I no longer play any game that doesn't permit multiple saves. Which brings me to another point, the last time I played the demo, it wasn't permitted to play on the hardest level without activating ironman. Considering that the mode can be toggled by the player as desired is there any reason to force people who want the biggest challenge to use an inherently risky single save policy? I enjoy a challenge but relying upon a single save file is tantamount to begging for file corruption. Never taunt Murphy.

Perhaps this is the wrong time and thread to ask this, but are you going to create a list of game improvements that will be added at specific funding levels? I imagine that's as important if not more so to the average Kickstarter contributor.

There's not a lot of posting but it's not quite dead either. New players that ask questions still get answers from a handful of people. Greyfiend and bMan also drop in every now and then to respond to inquiries about their mods.

I get the same bug as well with my non-armored machine gunners. I haven't tried them using armor yet.

The indie tactical shooter that has really good presentation is Interstellar Marines. That team would probably be able to pull off a successful Kickstarter campaign.

But if they had perfect knowledge and only one alien left they'd use it to hide as long as possible. hehehe

BG1 had a lot more freedom to explore than the second game. That's why I liked it better. There were lots of maps and interesting side quests in each one as well. Unfortunately, Irenicus ended up being a rather underwhelming foe during the boss fights. Sarevok was the much tougher to beat of the two. So BG1 had a much stronger climax than the sequel.

Never played Wasteland either but I'd heard of it of course. Fallout 1 I did play and that is on my list of all time favorites.

I can see it already... The mission goes haywire and Sathra has his veterans grenade the newbie scouts before running to the dropship.

In computer games, a scripted mission refers to a mission that has custom code which fires at trigger points (such as a location or an event). I've done enough modding to have some experience doing such things. For example, one could setup a mission so that a certain script fires when a soldier enters the ufo (perhaps an alien starts self-destruct sequence). Another trigger could be set to run if the alien leader gets wounded (calls for reinforcements). So no, scripted missions do not follow a script. They use scripts specifically written for the mission that fire events upon trigger activation. Whether or not they play out the same for each play-through depends upon how many non-linear triggers are incorporated into a mission. You have to think from the perspective of a programmer instead of a screenwriter. I doubt that Xenonauts will feature more than a couple of these types of missions though. It's not because they'd get dull due to linear gameplay. The reason is because well-coded missions require a lot of custom code. Furthermore, in depth testing of non-linear scripted missions is very time consuming since every possible combination of events has to be tested. Due to randomly generated maps location based triggers are unlikely to work well. Object based triggers that get randomly seeded into missions might be more viable however. While it's not quite the same as a scripted mission it would still add another element of interest in the game while keeping to the theme of random mission generation. Perhaps a multilated cow that spawns into the mission that grants a special research project if recovered would be fun. Another could be having a high ranking national leader spawn into terror missions. Xenonauts could be informed at briefing that saving the leader will result in a higher score and a cash reward. Letting the leader die results in loss of reputation in that nation and a lower score. If the terror mission is in a capital the stakes are even higher.

Goldhawk membership has hit 2000. Do I get pie for bringing this to everyone's attention?

I'm pretty sure it is still being developed. Chaos Concepts doesn't have a reputation for being good communicators. There is one active forum for the UFO: ET games: UFO Scene BMan is working with the development team and everything he's said so far indicates that the game is being worked on.

Well that's why Gazz suggested that the two ranges be adjustable in the configuration files. The reason I don't consider the suspense angle is because it only takes me a couple hours of playing a game before all the suspense factor is gone. Once I figure out the interface and the basic game mechanics it's a purely mental exercise in strategy. I'm not sure if any of you have played UFO:ET with the AI mods. Alien rushes in that game can be pretty deadly when they have both numbers and tech on their side. You don't want to get caught in the middle or outside of cover in that situation. Speaking of configurable settings, I'd like to see more and more games include the sort of options menus that were in the BMan mod to UFO:ET. I suspect that's a major reason why the mod was so popular.

That's where improving the AI comes into play. In X-Com the best strategy is typically to sweep from outside to inside to eliminate any potential for unexpected fire from the rear. It's a gamey tactic but it works well. Since the UFO and surrounding terrain isn't visible there's no incentive to take a chance going up the middle of the map. If players can find the position of the UFO quickly then there's a strong temptation to make a rush instead of carefully scouting the perimeter. With improved AI and some ingenuity in setting up the alien's starting positions, players wouldn't automatically know the best clearing tactics to use. A typical alien setup could place roughly 25% of the aliens inside the ship and the rest distibuted in squads within sight of the ship. Throw in a 15% chance that the alien distribution would be radically different and suddenly no player can automatically feel safest using any single tactic. I'd like to see a small chance that the aliens do things like start 75% of their troops on the edge of the map and the other 25% outside of but watching the UFO. Once players are spotted the "border" patrols can start moving from cover to cover to form a ring around the player. Alternatively, the aliens could occasionally put 75% of their troops near the ship and have the rest camped somewhere as a fire team. Basically, the AI needs to be able to communicate effectively in order to pull off a variety of tactics that make each mission more exciting. One mission they might choose to fall back and hide, another time they form squads and hunt for players, a third mission they may choose to form one large squad and rush the second soldier they see while firing rockets and throwing grenades (they'd guess that the first soldier is a scout). Computers are far more powerful today than they were when X-Com was made. There's no reason why superior AI can't be implemented to replace some of the randomness that was formerly accomplished via total FoW.

Well some time back Gazz did bring up a suggestion for Xenonauts that was basically what Gauddlike talks about. LOS has two ranges, one for spotting terrain and one for spotting aliens. Something like that would be nice but there was no confirmation that engine support for that functionality will be in the endgame. Kind of odd that new versions of games like Jagged Alliance invariably have a lot of attention given to improved graphics but the old basic systems such as LOS seem to either remain stagnant or get removed completely. Since I'm on a roll with topic twists, I'll have to locate a copy of Silent Storm sometime. I've always wanted to play a turn-based game that incorporates a genuine physics engine.

I'm not too fond of the fog of war used in many older games myself. I like it for exploration type games but in strategy games - as in X-Com's battlescape - it is just annoying if it is used on anything but buildings. It doesn't promote strategy at all but rather, forces players to form a battle line and do a systematic sweep across the entire map for no reason but to roll back the black overlay. If it's impossible to see a huge barn within pistol range of the soldiers the game feels way too limiting. I'd much prefer knowing where the cover lies and what possibilities there are for ambushes, flanking manuevers, etc. Blindly wandering around is silly and systematic sweeps are tedious.

Unlimited ammo is a factor that will dramatically alter the game and tactics used therein. This is especially true in an X-Com style game that has destructible terrain. My normal tactic for this type of game is to load the soldiers down with plenty of ammo and lay down swaths of fire as I advance. That's one reason why in X-Com I preferred lasers over plasma (I didn't want to use Elerium to make plasma clips). Unlimited ammo permitted me to level entire buildings at a distance with a hundred shots or so. At least the lower power of lasers provided some balancing mechanism. In a game where every gun has unlimited ammo there's no reason why a player shouldn't take the big guns and fire shot after shot into every building. If ammo is unlimited for all guns the above would seem more like an exploit than a tactic. Besides, part of the fun of using high volume of fire comes from seeing how many clips a soldier can burn up in a single mission. I don't really care much about the ammo issue for the new XCom though since the small squad size already takes away the interest I might have had. On a related note, I once played a game of online Mechwarrior 3 and didn't realize I got into an unlimited ammo game. While I was taking very careful shots to make each hit from my large cannon count everyone else was firing the same powerful gun as fast as possible.