Absle
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Posts posted by Absle
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I don't know what Xeno 2 will do, but in Xeno 1 the plot had been that the Iceland incident happened several years before the actual invasion. Although at the time of the actual game the Cold War was still going, things had settled significantly between NATO and the USSR because of the threat that they believed the Iceland incident foreshadowed. Xeno 2 may have something similar to deal with that concern.
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Also, I think the timeframe for Xenonauts 2 will only be a few months - I probably should have mentioned that earlier, but I guess I just forgot that little detail!
Of course, the timeframe in Xenonauts 1 is usually not much longer but time pressure isn't really an issue as you can stall out the game indefinitely provided you stay ahead of the alien invasion curve. I think I want to make things more time pressured in Xenonauts 2 and the ticking DEFCON counters might be a good way of doing that.
We could have something like a Doomsday Clock (of Watchmen fame) expressed in days until nuclear war starts and the world ends - the Xenonauts can slow down the clock by foiling the high-profile alien plans, but they can never totally stop the DEFCON counters ticking. I don't want players to be comfortable on the strategy layer; I think the looming threat of a doomsday counter would make it all pretty tense.
Indeed with the ideas of regions having their own local political capital and with this doomsday ticker idea, I'm not actually sure you need the two DEFCON counters ... you can just have tensions between the superpowers factored into the doomsday counter, which is simpler and easier to understand.
I really hope somebody reads this, I spent way to much time thinking about it
This is REALLY long, sorry, and sorry if any of this is outside the scope of the game or if it's just too much my own vision rather than yours. Feel free to tell me off all you like
I actually just came to this thread hoping to post about this. I have very few complaints about Xeno 1, but one of my biggest gripes was that the game was chronologically too short. It was relatively easy to win the war in under two years and "only" a few dozen thousand killed; compared to some wars just between humans that's nothing. Chronologically and socially speaking, it's a small blip in our history, not nearly an apocalyptic invasion from across the galaxy, and one could fairly easily argue that it was a good thing the aliens came considering how much tech we got from them. This didn't really matter so much because the game still had tons of hours and replayability, the lore was written as if the war had been dragging on for some time, and each month felt like a year.
A quiet war would have to be a much different story, our own Cold War lasted for decades, and in my humble opinion that's the sort of timescale Xeno 2 should take place over. And I feel like it fits well, rather than it being a simple choice of whether to spend the resources or not to outfit the local forces with more advanced equipment directly, it adds the option to quietly slip the tech into some file somewhere in a given region and let that become the "norm" there. It would be much cheaper but take much longer, and it had more consequences: say that you decide some USSR region is your top priority to defend, so you slip them your technology. Sure you've gotten a cheap way to increase that region's security, but now you've slipped advance alien weaponry to USSR and not NATO. You've altered the status quo and further escalated the Cold War and pushed up your DEFCON level.
You can mitigate this by giving both sides the weaponry, but that still escalates things a bit more and perhaps making them a little TOO confident in themselves. Maybe they don't need the Xenonauts after all? And sure you've made them a more formidable force, but that cuts both ways. If you ever have to take on missions where you're against other humans, you have to deal with tech you gave them. So for two reason now you can't give them your most advanced technology, keeping them still below your global force. And you can't just be passive all the time despite the improvements the local forces get. You need to make a show of force every once in a while, prove that your tech is truly superior and that you know how to use it. This strikes a nice balance and keeps you from just being a research house and arms dealer.
This also plays well with the character system, since it gives them the time frame needed to realistically change their traits, perhaps even retire or die, putting pressure on the player to use their resources properly while they have them. It could even go into a bit of espionage, the governments of the world are trying to get their hands on the tech that you now have a strong reason to tightly control. NATO has a cool new laser rifle? Did they steal it from us or did the aliens give it to them to push the balance where they want it? Where's the mole if it's from us? Is it too late to steal the plans back? Keep in mind the aliens want to repress technology in most areas other than weapons; they want to make one side feel like they can win the fight without letting the Earth have tech that could really threaten them.
Considering the time line, it would be a neat part of the endgame to push one of the two factions to win the space race in such a way that they can actually reach and threaten the aliens (assuming they're not just chilling out in orbit this time) and don't think they're so much more powerful than the other guys that they start shooting nukes. Obviously the aliens don't want this, so they'd be taking missions to push weapons tech and suppressing engine, navigational, and other more utility-type techs. This forces the player to strike a balance; almost any action they take to deal with the threat as a whole also pushes human politics closer and closer to the brink, doing more harm than good if they move too openly and too quickly. But you can't just be trying to clean up after the aliens all the time and keeping the DEFCON low, because at best you'll be moving laterally while the aliens are always escalating.
This allows for multiple strategies, perhaps even multiple endings. Perhaps you send a team with the best tech possible to deal with the aliens personally. Perhaps you manage to end the Cold War in the favor of one side or the other and leverage that to deal with the aliens. Maybe you even end the Cold War peacefully, allowing both factions survive to fight the aliens as equals.
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Well I'm a dumb. Just throw the folder, whole, into the "mod" folder? Also, I guess this means I'm going to have to restart the nice new save I have?
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Not to discourage people from proposing solutions to this, because I still REALLY want to try "Fire in the Hole," but after using to "check game cache integrity" to essentially re-install Xenonauts and remove the "Fire in the Hole" mod, the game works perfectly. Still, any ideas where I went wrong?
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So I decided to try out the community edition for a change of place after playing through vanilla a few times. I right-clicked on properties in steam and installed the Community Edition from the pull-down menu like I assume is normal for Steam installs.
Additionally, because the UFO map changes and gameplay changes sounded fun, I installed the Community Edition version of the "Fire in the Hole" mod found here:
Game starts up normally, new game starts normally, everything looks fine. Then when I went to equip and fiddle with my first squad they don't have any weapons or equipment on them, only ammo in their belts. Default classes are still there as well, but the entire sidebar that normally has all your weapons and such is just blank. You can flip between the "Weapons" and "Equipment" tabs ostensibly, at least you can press the buttons, but both are completely white and blank.
Anyone else run into this before? Did I do something wrong? Thanks in advance!
Xenonauts 2 - Further Strategy Development
in Xenonauts 2 Discussion / Suggestions
Posted
Perhaps a bit of a compromise between the two? You're absolutely right about how typically short term decisions should still matter in the overall strategy (like transferring equipment around the planet), but at the same time an overall short war really doesn't fit in my mind and takes away a lot of possible depth. Perhaps the strategic layer could be slowed waaaaaay down for several months of every year to deal with an immediate threat in a more reactionary way? During the rest of the year time moves far more quickly so you can work towards longer term goals and move your assets around with reduced opportunity cost in an attempt to predict where the aliens will strike next. You could still move assets around once time is slowed back down, but then you will have them in transit for a good portion of the alien's threat during that time. Then again, perhaps that's too close to what Xeno 1 already did?