Akavit
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Posts posted by Akavit
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Burning grass seems to slow the game dramatically. If dozens of tiles are on fire, it takes a long time to transition between allied movement and player movement. It's a long hang where clicking on anything does nothing. Right after the hang ends, the fire will spread to adjacent tiles and the player's turn starts.
Not sure if this is a Community Edition issue or an XDivision issue.
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Must have been the result of a bad decision by some Yahoo in corporate. Anyhow, I've got my old tag back so thanks.
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All sorted out. Downloaded GoG's version 1.65 and got myself setup with the latest release of XDivision. Thanks.
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I think it's setting fault. If they went more modern or sci-fi it would've been more appealing.
Perhaps. Or it may have ended up looking like the new XCOM which looks a little too shiny. Sometimes I reduce the color saturation on the monitor to compensate for shiny games.
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It is possibleHowever, there is the non-gameplay difference that 3D requires more powerful hardware, consuming more mem and processing resources.
I can't see hardware being an issue anymore. Computer performance advances seems to have slowed down somewhat a few years ago so it's no longer necessary to upgrade to a new PC to play most new games. My 6 year old system has handled everything up to Divinity: Original Sin with no issues.
I prefer 3D games since the well-made ones invariably offer better gameplay. X-Com was great in it's day but Silent Storm completely blew it away in terms of destructible environment and tactics. It takes a 3D engine to pull that off because it's too hard to create complex environmental interaction in 2D.
Shadowrun is a fun game but not a great turn-based combat game. Without the storyline and RPG elements, combat would have become repetitive very quickly. X-Com style games rely heavily upon a good ground combat system for their success.
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Also I'm really hoping I can shoot a whole lot more bullets and actually run out of ammo in Xenonauts 2.
That would be good. I modded Xenonauts 1 to have increased LOS which helped a lot with this. Longer ranges meant fights started sooner and required more suppression fire to keep the enemy pinned so the squad could get new positions.
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2D isn't going to save anyone time or money unless a lot of the animations are removed and those remaining are reverted to X-Com choppiness. Xenonauts 1 was handicapped by its 2D engine and the need to build endless sprites. In fact, I believe a lot of good content was cut out because every new weapon and armor added meant creating a huge number of sprites to support them. Smoothing out the animations would exponentially increase the number of sprites required and burden the development team with even more work.
3D models are much, much simpler to work with once they're created. Want to change the color of combat fatigues depending upon terrain? Just re-texture a single model with six new camo patterns and it's done. A good graphics artist could wrap it up in a day. Try doing that in sprites and you'll end up rendering tens of thousands of new 2D images then entering the data for each image into sprite sheets.
Last thing I'd want to see is the staff occupied by the need to focus on labor-intensive sprites instead of working on new and improved gameplay features.
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Soldiers with demolition gear or other specialized gear might have a use for backpacks. Perhaps using any backpack slots should give an encumbrance penalty and the time unit cost for accessing it would be much higher.
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Further details on my thoughts regarding manufacturing vs prototyping.
At the beginning of the game, the world's manufacturing facilities are sufficient to keep the Xenonauts supplied with as much conventional technology as desired so long as the player controls regions with the appropriate facilities. The two limitations are cost of upkeep and delivery time. Order requests take 8-72 hours to fill depending upon the equipment requested.
The Xenonauts team has access to the world's best scientists, engineers and the latest cutting-edge tech to build complex devices. However, the rest of the world lacks the knowledge and machinery to produce these items. Xenonauts can have their engineers build prototypes but the cost in manpower and money is high. This would work more or less the same as manufacturing in Xenonauts 1.
The alternative is to send an engineer to an industrial center and invest money in upgrading their production lines to produce new items. This is a very expensive process and will tie up the engineer for some time. The more exotic the tech, the higher the cost and the longer the process. It would be much easier to upgrade an industry to produce a new type of assault rifle than setup for laser production.
Once an industrial center is upgraded, it will provide those items for free to the Xenonauts as long as that region remains friendly to them. Lose the region and the supply is cut off and may even be used against the Xenonauts.
Some items require rare materials and are not candidates for mass production. Anything requiring alenium or UFO components for example would fall under this category.
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Grenade spam could be counteracted if the inventory system assigns ammo and grenades to the same slots. Carrying 12 grenades means no room for ammunition or flares.
A light machine gun would be nice but keep the heavy. It was only overpowered because soldiers could easily carry more ammo than they could shoot off in a mission. Limit them to three boxes max and make it disappear a lot faster when doing suppression fire. Once the ammo is gone then the soldier would have to scavenge a weapon or make do with a pistol. All soldiers should have a holster slot with a sidearm and an extra magazine for it.
If structural damage during missions ever becomes a factor in the game that affects the geoscape situation, lasers and ballistics would become far more useful in many situations. Fighting with plasma and explosives inside a valuable manufacturing facility wouldn't be a great idea. Taking out a nest of reapers deep inside an alien base is a job for the big guns.
Any chance of cannons making it into the game? They're unrealistic but fun to have and it makes sense the Xenonauts would attempt to utilize existing tech to take out the toughest aliens that can't be stopped by a burst of 5.56×45mm. This also means the player would never be totally helpless if they encounter the big monsters before researching plasma. The disadvantage is that cannons would be a lot bulkier and less capable of sustaining the firepower over a long period of time due to cumbersome ammo requirements.
Regarding armors:
It would be nice to see a suit built for the sake of increasing speed and survivability (as in dodge bonus due to rapid movement) rather than just armor and firepower. It would have minimal armor value but work well with jump packs and use muscle augmentation to increase leg strength and coordination.
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Regarding ranks.
Why not consider letting players award promotions to higher ranks? This would happen whenever the soldier pool gets large enough to require new sergeants or officers, or someone with rank dies. Promotion from private to corporal happens automatically.
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Instead of teleport, give the wraiths a one-turn cloak ability that allows them to move unseen but not shoot. That gives the player a chance to guess where they've moved and either react or retreat.
With a new 3D engine, dynamic lighting brings new possibilities. Perhaps an alien that can create spore clouds that block light and vision. Similar to a smoke grenade but with a larger effect and it blocks enough sunlight to create a night environment in the area.
Nanobots that swarm through doors and windows that chew through wooden walls to collapse entire buildings within two or three turns would present a different challenge. Explosives and fire will easily destroy them.
Perhaps some goop aliens that interact with the environment and mimic the forms of inanimate objects then lie in wait for ambush? Why is there a mailbox next to that bench?
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The basic plot is as follows:
- Though humanity does not initially realise it, the alien fleet is not exactly an invasion force and wasn't actually expecting to encounter a sentient species on our planet
- They don't have the numbers to fight humanity on an even footing, can't call for backup and don't even have the resources to leave the solar system. I won't explain any further as it'll spoil the plot.
- Their plan is to infiltrate our society and entice us to destroy ourselves via nuclear war - generally by getting into positions of power and denying that the alien invasion even exists, and blaming the attacks on the other major power. "Infiltrated" nations do have officials under direct alien control, but in many cases the local populace genuinely believes their lies too.
The globe consists of ~6 regions (N. America, S. America, Europe, Africa, USSR, Asia?), split between NATO, USSR and Non-Aligned for purposes of the two DEFCON counters.
Each region has an "Alien Infiltration" score, and the % is represented graphically by how many countries in the region are partially / fully under alien control. This is basically your region relations score from Xeno 1, as it controls the amount of funding you get from the region and when it reaches 100% the region is lost entirely. Funding comes in political capital ... which effectively works just like conventional money.
The alien missions are delivered via multiple-choice Events (see the other post for full details), which will appear in all affected regions simultaneously and force you to divide your forces. Additionally, a small number of regions will have an "alien objective" in them - if not dealt with, these will cause the player severe problems. Part of the game involves detective work to figure out which regions contain alien objectives, as these are the regions you really want to be concentrating your forces in.
The resources you have under your control are:
- Global Strike Team - a team of 6 soldiers who can launch combat missions in response to events anywhere in the world.
- Local Strike Teams - up to 6 soldiers can be recruited in each region, where they can perform their own local operations or back up the Global team on a mission in their region (allowing up to 12 soldiers on a mission).
- Scientists - these are named genius scientists with specific research areas they excel / struggle at. They exist in your "global" base.
- Engineers - as above, but Engineers instead of Scientists.
- Squadrons - these are your aircraft (bought in squadrons of 5 planes), which are bought at the global level but then have to be assigned to a region. The squadron can gain experience in action - this is not lost if the squadron takes losses unless it is wiped out entirely.
Local / Global Forces:
The split between global / local forces exists primarily to give the player a way to permanently "commit forces" to a specific region. Building up a strong local force in a region is a significant investment and you will not be able to do it in every region, but doing so gives you significant advantage when dealing with events in that region.
Seems like a good foundation if done correctly. I'd be inclined to drop the local forces thing however and take a slightly different approach. Dealing with 7 different teams and trying to remember which team is assigned to which region and who's got what equipment sounds like a micromanagement nightmare of the worst kind.
I'd suggest that the regional and political portion of the game be dealt with abstractly based upon the outcome of a small number of direct encounters between the aliens and the Xenonauts. The aliens don't have numbers for a direct assault so they try to infiltrate and capture resources while the Xenonauts drive them off and try to convince more nations to support the Xenonaut cause.
Xenonaut Organization:
All forces are global and there is no limit to the number of men that can be recruited as long as the salaries are paid. The player can organize forces into the following:
ground forces
1. specialist (individual soldier)
2. squad (2-6 soldiers)
3. strike team (combination of squads, specialists and tanks assigned to a specific transport)
4. platoon (2 or more squads, strike forces and/or tanks and specialists)
5. task force (any combination of specialists, squads, strike teams, platoons, scientists and engineers)
During play, it's likely that the various units and their transports will be moved frequently from one base to another instead of camping on a single base.
Air Power
squadron (4-20 fighters)
strike force (1-2 transports with or without fighter squadron escort) A second transport means up to 12 soldiers and two tanks could be deployed at once or a backup team can insert if the first team needs to evacuate.
Non-Combat Units
Scientist: assigned to friendly science labs to turn them into project centers for new research. Will act as the team leader.
Engineer: assigned to industrial complexes to manage prototype production. Later on they can also be used to upgrade industrial complexes for regular production of new equipment.
All of the above units can be assigned to any friendly military base. Soldiers, engineers and scientists can be assigned to labs and industrial complexes. The different levels of organization are just to help the player quickly locate soldiers and assign them to various locations and missions. Giving nicknames to the squads and specialists makes it easy to pick the right team for each mission.
There would be a single overview screen where the player can see all the active units, which group they are assigned to and the location of each group.
Geoscape setup:
Besides the 6 regions mentioned in the OP, there are also multiple cities, military bases, science labs and industrial complexes. There should be quite a few of these because they can be captured, damaged or destroyed during the war.
At the start of the game the Xenonauts can be allied with NATO or the Soviets. The alliance gives them the authority to commandeer any military or industrial complex in friendly regions by sending a team to occupy it. Dropships operate from military bases, scientists research at labs, and engineers upgrade industrial centers or build prototypes of new gear. Soldiers can garrison any facility in case of alien attacks but won't have drop ship access for rapid deployment unless they are at a military base.
Friendly cities will provide bonus income every month.
At the start of the game, the aliens have overwhelming firepower and just about every possible advantage on the battlefield but the Xenonauts have the full wealth and industrial might of half the world. Alien strategy is outlined below.
Aliens lack resources for a full invasion so they will first try to infiltrate a region's government to gain full access to those resources then instigate hostilities between nations. If that fails they may try to cow the governments by terror missions. Other strategies involve capturing bases, labs and industrial centers or simply destroying them. Because of their superior technology they will invariably have much success in the early game and close the wealth gap between the aliens and the player.
The player will need to root out alien infiltrations, stop terror missions and protect the world's bases and installations while also convincing unfriendly nations to support them. Missions that take place on military bases, labs or industrial centers run the risk of damaging or destroying the facilities. It will be necessary to choose between using powerful weaponry to destroy the aliens or deploying small arms and light ordnance to minimize damage to the facilities. Does the player abide by a scorched earth policy that prevents aliens from capturing valuable resources or retreat and hope to recapture them soon? This makes every action in a ground mission important since it has a direct impact on the player's situation in the geoscape.
The game should play out with the two sides fighting over resources and the resulting destruction making resources harder for both to obtain. By late game though, the Xenonauts should be able to fight with advanced tech instead of relying solely upon over-whelming industrial might.
Aliens win by either destroying the Xenonauts or by subduing or infiltrating all the governments.
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On the topic of helping players understand the role of stats...
Something that would be handy is a "training grounds" that players can access at any time. Players can assign soldiers to team red and team blue then proceed to field test to their heart's content with no fear of negative consequences. This would provide actual feedback on how the stats interact with the combat and permit testing of new gear and armor without waiting for a real mission to arrive.
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I'd favor a pretty strong shakeup in the stats area.
Health System:
1. Blood
3. Morale
4. Status Effects
Physical Stats:
1. Action Points (starts around 6-7 points and can increase by 2 with experience)
2. Move (permanent stat)
3. Strength (permanent stat)
4. Stamina (can increase with experience)
Mental Stats:
1. Bravery (can increase with experience)
2. Awareness (can increase with experience)
Weapon Skills
1. Shooting (permanent)
2. Throwing (permanent)
Here's a brief overview of how the system might work.
Health System:
The problem with hit points is that a soldier is usually either dead or alive. That means he's either putting out full performance or doing nothing. Replace HP with "blood", "stamina", "morale", "bravery" and "status effects." Instead of reducing HP, wounds will cause one or more status effects with bleeding usually being one of them. Besides bleeding, other effects might include "stunned", "suppressed", "crippled arm" (give those pistols a reason to exist) or even head shot (instant death).
Bleeding effects cause loss of blood. Partial loss of blood reduces all other stats while complete blood loss results in death. Standard medkits can stop bleeding but cannot replace lost blood (research option of rapid blood transfusion tech?)
All wounds and blood loss impact stamina. High stamina reduces the severity of stat debuffs caused by physical wounds so the lower stamina gets, the more the soldier loses combat effectiveness. Total loss of stamina renders a soldier unconscious. Painkillers can restore some lost stamina.
Morale is affected by various events (deaths, wounds, psionics, etc.) and as it drops, the soldiers stats drop. As it goes up, soldier stats increase. Bravery reduces the negative impact of morale altering events but has no impact on morale-increasing events.
Between cover and armor, soldiers can often avoid direct and lethal wounds. Even hits that are absorbed by armor will usually cause stamina and/or morale loss which still hurts combat performance. Unarmored soldiers are likely to take injuries from the splash damage of near misses which could result in bleeding.
A crack team that mops up aliens at the beginning of a mission may struggle to eliminate fresh alien reinforcements at the end of the battle even if all the team members are conscious.
Action and Move System:
This is nothing new. Shadowrunner, Temple of Elemental Evil, and Divinity: Original Sin use this system and it works very well. A soldier with lots of action points won't always be the fastest runner and one with high move doesn't always shoot the most. All soldiers should be considered highly trained to begin with but elites with a lot of experience can still get an extra few action points. Move would be a permanent stat that never changes once a soldier is recruited.
Strength:
First, it reduces the loss of "Move" from carrying a heavy load (heavy weapons or bodies). Second, it's used to determine throwing range. Third, it provides defense against various alien melee attacks. Last, it is used to determine the success chance of special geoscape actions such as door breaching and climbing.
Awareness:
This replaces reaction and covers additional functionality. Besides giving soldiers a chance at reaction fire, it also provides bonuses to action points, accuracy and increases the angle of view. Loss of morale and stamina will reduce a soldier's awareness so they will be less effective in battle over time.
Weapons Skills:
These just set baseline accuracy. Final weapon accuracy is determined by a weapon familiarity system like that mentioned by Chris in the OP (was also used in Silent Storm).
Inventory:
This is determined by inventory slots. Any soldier can max out the various slots for weapons, grenades, ammo and equipment if desired. There is no weight limit but each pound of weight does add a small penalty to the "move" score.
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The best part about X-Com was the destructible terrain and the only reason I purchased Xenonauts was to obtain a game with improved UI that offered similar tactical play and didn't require DosBox. For me to buy Xenonauts 2, it would have to substantially improve in this area. A proper physics engine (Silent Storm or Sui Genaris for example) would be a big plus.
I did not buy the new XCom because it appeared to offer no improvements at all in the environmental portion of the game.
Bullet holes, penetration, fires, flammable objects (not just explosive objects), impact, flying debris and other environmental effects would be fun. For its time, X-Com did an excellent job of making combat and the environment interact with each other. New games should be able to do a lot better. Divinity: Original Sin had some success in this area.
The move to 3D would be a welcome one. People have compared early 3D games like Neverwinter Nights to late 2D games like Baldur's Gate II but that's an unfair comparison. It would be more fair to compare Neverwinter Nights to Wasteland 1. The difference between modern 3D games and Neverwinter Nights is as big as the difference between Baldur's Gate II and Wasteland 1. 2D games also lose the ability to take advantage of many dynamic features and rely upon clever scripting to mimic things like bullet collision and lighting effects.
As for what annoyed me the most about Xenonauts? It was a toss-up between short LOS or the fact that the game barely managed to surpass X-Com's gameplay in the area of environmental impact. But the latter problem was likely the result of development being hog-tied by the 2D Diner Dash game engine. It's obvious that Goldhawk isn't going to make that mistake again.
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If the OP is still on the fence after a month, here's a reason to buy the game: Gog has it on sale for $17.50 right now.
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I don't know what the oldest strategy game is but I did play a turn-based western gunfight game on the Apple II a couple times. Must have been around 1989 and it was copyrighted in 85. Pretty advanced for the day. heh
[video=youtube;MyBSH6aq17M]
I had fun though I didn't get much chance to play it.
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Korean spam bot?
As far as greatest turn-based games, I'd give second place to Silent Storm. It was a great game with many mechanics yet to be surpassed by new games but it did have a major few flaws (unpatched grenades anyone?). Alpha Centuri takes first place as the more I play it, the more I realize how carefully all the different elements of the game mesh together. It feels like it has a real ecosystem and economy for the game world where every action a player takes has a tiny effect across the whole planet.
I also have Hammer and Sickle which uses the Silent Storm engine and that should be a great game with improvements over Silent Storm but the scenario designer was ignorant. Every mission starts out with your squad face-to-face at point blank range with the enemy. Stupid and boring and a good way to take the fun out of what should have been a highly enjoyable game.
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Mine just showed up yesterday as well so it must be normal for USA delivery. Unpacked it but haven't sat down to look at it yet.
So now I've got 3 digital copies of the game and one DVD as a byproduct of participating in Kickstarter. Looks like some people might be getting Christmas gifts.
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I'd call the player avatar a squad leader or commander based upon the description given. It makes sense that the commander of the team gets information direct from HQ then passes orders to the team.
In regards to the role officers play in the game, I'd suggest considering the possibility of tying them into a hybrid initiative/I-go-you-go turn based system. This is something I've mentioned on another thread but I'll go into more detail here in terms of how officers could work with my idea.
In an initiative system, individual units roll for position in the turn order queue at the start of each new turn. AI units with an officer and the player team which is lead by an officer roll for initiative as a group using the officer's initiative rating. Once an AI officer dies, the members of that unit have to roll for initiative as individuals which means they no longer move at the same time. Since the officers tend to have higher initiative scores, those units will also tend to place lower in the turn order queue.
If the player's squad commander is knocked out of commission, the player has the option to promote another unit as acting commander to keep the team working in unison or just allow them to act individually.
It's also worth considering the idea of putting the officer's ability to roll for squad initiative on a toggle in case for some reason, the player wishes to let the team fight individually. Perhaps this would be an advantage if for some reason, the player decides it is best strategically to let high initiative characters move first but wants to hold back the slower guys for use towards the end of the turn.
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Some concerns about an initiative system:
While it might be ok when fighting, when you're just moving and positioning units an initiative system might be very annoying as AI moves in fog-of-war will keep interrupting your own.
This is the only objection I've seen up to now that could pose a problem. Most games that use initiative systems don't have much long distance movement.
Some concerns about an initiative system:Also, initiative for AI units would need to be done in groups if there's any kind of cohesion planned for AI units (e.g patrol groups).
This could actually work really well and would tie into the officer system to create a blend between initiative and I-go-you-go. Suppose the game is at core an initiative system like the Temple of Elemental Evil game I demonstrated earlier. Now add in the ability of leaders to override individual initiative and provide it for their entire group (both player and AI).
Commaders and officers should be expected to have high initiative so they'd be more likely to win the roll than other units plus they'd keep their teams acting in unison. If the leader dies, their subordinates have to roll for individual initiative and now the squad no longer fights as effectively as a team. There's also the possibility of having a second in command who could step into the leader role.
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Deleted accidental double post.
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I like the way the move system is being proposed. Being able to move first then shoot or shoot first then move sounds good and avoids the move-shoot-move scenario.
I'm uncertain if there's an advantage to staying in place and using both the main and move action for a more powerful attack. If there is, I'd propose adding in a minor action that allows a player to take a step or two in any direction. If a player does this, they cannot use the move action as a move (so no move-shoot-move is possible) but can still expend it for the extra attack bonus.
In Shadowrun, the big problems with the move system had nothing to do with sacrificing firepower. It's that position wasn't too important once you got into decent cover and there wasn't much reason to move for most battles. That wasn't true for all fights though. On harder difficulty levels sometimes retreating fights were necessary to minimize enemy return fire. Other times there were computer systems to fight over.
In a game where both sides have to keep jockeying for the superior position, it's not a given that camping in one spot and shooting as much as possible is the best option. This is especially true if there are time sensitive objectives on the map.
[XCE 34.3][XDivision 99.45]
in X:CE Bug Reports
Posted
A little more playing and I discovered that on the farmland map, this is only an issue with the tall grass. It keeps burning forever as far as I can tell. The wheat fields burn out quickly.