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After playing yall's game, X-Com just isn't the same. It kindof sucks. So many things are outdated and/or missing. I think yall have done an excellent game so far, can't wait to see the finished product.

Ok. I finally broke down and started it last night. I will be beating this infernal (and mean) game before October 9th. At which point I'll stream some of the new Firaxis XCOM <cough> Anyway figured I would post the link here. My stream is found at www.twitch.tv/hillhome The first day can be found here: http://www.twitch.tv/hillhome/b/320311072 Will update with future videos as they happen. You may now return to your regularly scheduled forum browsing.

Hi. I have created a forum - http://jaufo.forum-idea.com/ - a forum where everyone are welcome to discuss the idea of how to combine 2 great strategy games; Jagged Alliance and the X-Com games. I created this forum just to take the heat away from this forum, and I hope a lot of you come and participate in the discussion. When we have debated the idea enough, we can present the final result for Goldhawk and the theme behind Xenonauts to see if they think that it can be a game worth developing. --O--

The Kickstarter has gone live here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/69341191/xenonauts It's already got a backer even though it went live less than 5 minutes ago, which is nice! Any help you can give us would be greatly appreciated - this includes spreading the word about us if you're not donating! The demo is available for download on the page, so if any of your friends are unsure about the game, just tell them to download it and have a play. I'm really hoping that this Kickstarter will give us the funds to put together a small team to work on the game full-time so we can finish it far more quickly and to a higher standard than otherwise. Just to clarify - anyone who has already Premium pre-ordered the game will get access to all the Kickstarter Premium Preorder rewards too. If you've already pre-ordered and want to claim a higher reward, you can donate and email us and we'll add the price of your existing pre-order to your pledge. So if you have a Premium Preorder already and stick a $20 donation in, you'll get the equivalent of an $50 donation minus the extra copy of Xenonauts. Thanks for the support of all the people on the forum who have helped us out along the way - there's an awful lot of you! Special thanks to Kilrathi, who worked with us to set up the US company which allowed us to get around not being US-based. It was a lot of effort and I appreciate the tinme you sunk in. Let's hope this goes well - fingers crossed!

Build V10 is currently being uploaded onto Desura. This will be the Kickstarter Press Build that we'll be sending out to journalists so they can preview the game. Barring any serious crash bugs or things that are affecting gameplay, the .exe files will not change any further between now and the public release build - we may make some balance tweaks, update misaligned / broken tiles and update images, but we won't be making any further changes. This is simply because efforts to fix the bugs can end up causing more bugs, and we have to draw the line somewhere if we want to know we have a stable build for when the Kickstarter goes live. There are a variety of fixes, but here's the headlines: - Hidden Movement loop should be stopped. It was caused by aliens running out of ammo and then trying to fire their weapons anyway. - The Ferret should now have its LOS returned to normal. - The new props for the Industrial tileset have now been painted over in their undamaged forms. - Various mis-set tiles have been updated - Toggle Roof now defaults to being off rather than on, which should reduce confusion - Alien Light Drones (we need to come up with a better name for them than that) now have a less powerful weapon, so they can't one-shot your Ferret any more - Ferrets now have better ballistic armour and are less vulnerable to damage to Xenonaut small arms (friendly) fire - Typos and errors in the Xenopedia have been updated - The Alenium grenade sprites should be displayed correctly - The Basic Armour troops with Shotguns should vault walls correctly - Tooltips in the Air Combat now have appropriate line breaks so are a more reasonable size - Pressing M on the Geoscape no longer nets you $1m - Alenium and Alien Alloys now only sell for $1,000 or $2,000 each instead of 10x that - Alien fighters can now dodge missiles as intended The online manual is starting to take form at http://www.xenonauts.com/manual.html Please give the build a whirl. If there's any bugs, we'll want to know about them before we send it to journalists. Hopefully it'll basically just be a slightly more stable version of V9.5.1 though.

Two recurring complaints throughout development have been: 1) For a joint NATO / Soviet organisation, the Xenonauts sure don't have much Soviet equipment. They do have Soviet soldiers, but their weapons are American and their vehicle is British. We used to be able to point to the MiG interceptor, but even that is now researchable rather than starting. 2) There's not enough different ballistic weapons - we only have one type of assault rifle, for example. The M-16 and the AK-47 actually behave quite differently in reality. While vanilla Xenonauts is not going to add any extra weapons or change the existing ones for design reasons, we've always said we'll make it as easy as possible for people to mod the game to their preferences. As such, the build now includes art for Soviet equivalents of the starting Xenonaut weapons, as well as a few unused NATO weapons we did while settling on the current selection. There is a total of 16 new images there. It's now just a question of altering text files to change the NATO weapons into Soviet weapons, or to add extra guns like AK-47s into the game. In fact, with the tool Quartermaster is working on it may even be easier than that soon. I was going to stick these in a mod, but without an installer we can't have it automatically loaded onto everyone's PC (yet). We might include the Soviet Weapon mod as an example mod to go with the final game though. The guns can be found in the directory /assets/weapons/ballistic. A few of the weapons are shown below:

I mean, I get it, this is fan remake of first game. But I fricking hate it when people are like "FINALLY true successor to XCOM series!", "I've been disappointed with XCOM fan games, but this one looks like it will actually be good" and "Finally good XCOM game after TFFD!" First point because of two reasons 1) Nothing can replace XCOM to me, to me only true XCOM game is good XCOM game with the name XCOM ( New game coming by Firaxis does change some features causing me being annoyed, but still better than FPS one and it does show promise in some respects) 2) I don't want to play XCOM clone games and comparing to original game, did everyone compare FPS when they were called "Doom clones" to Doom all the time? I want XCOM type games to be good on their own and not just because people are feeling nostalgic. Third point because my first and favourite XCOM game is XCOM Apocalypse(I still love original one, TFFD not so much because I don't feel like its true sequel) It feels kind of lonely with people hating it simply because they have nostalgia for first game, probably no helped by the fact that first sequel is basically expansion pack with all original weapon reskinned and slightly altered along with altered enemies to make game unbalancedly hard because developers didn't know about difficulty bug in original game. I've played other XCOM spiritual successors/fan remakes. I played UFO: Afterwhateverfirstgamewascalled and UFO: Alien Invasion. And I liked those. But not because I considered them "Worthy successors" but because they stand out as their own games. UFO: Afterwhatever series is essentially XCOM with Realtime with pause gameplay and conquering areas and such. UFO: Alien Invasion is freeware remake of first game(and its still in development), but with some many things changed/upgraded that it doesn't feel like its copy of original, it feels distinct enough that I don't feel annoyed. Though admittedly, if someone did remake of XCOM Apocalypse with all originally intended features in, I'd probably start worshiping that guy too Anyway, my point is that I feel like this game is ruined for me by people who keep claiming its "true/worthy/only successor" to XCOM series. Though people do that to UFO: Alien Invasion too so I'll probably get over it. There is that I haven't played Xenonauts much yet because loading times are too long at least last time I played. Also, game needs to be able to hold on as its own game, not just because fans want to play original game again. But considering that all XCOM fan games have so far felt like their own game(with exception of maybe Open Xcom and such games that are visually identical to first game I got no good words at those, if I want to play original XCOM, I play original XCOM.) BTW, why is it that all XCOM fan games have more realistic military style than original game? Original game was pretty much playing as G.I.Joes only with high casualty rate.

Build V9.4 has now been released through the Desura client (though I don't think it is yet active for those doing the standalone download). Barring a couple of small new features and some bugfixes, this is basically the build that will be released to the general public along with the Kickstarter build (we'll also add new art as and when it becomes available). Please test it as much as you can. If there's any major bugs in the build, we need to squish them before public release for obvious reasons. The key new features are as follows: - We've added a new launcher window to the game. This is a bit ugly, but in terms of functionality it is a big improvement. There are two main reasons for this: firstly, the game will remember your screen resolution from game to game, so starting up is less of a pain in the ass (resolution can be set in the Options screen). Secondly, we've added the Quick Battle function, which will load up a Terror Site immediately after you place your base. This is basically for people who want to try the combat but don't want to go through the early game to get there, but hopefully you guys will enjoy it too. This feature will not be in the final version of the game. - A new alien type has been added to the build, a light combat drone that appears on the Terror Site. The animations are not yet all there for it (nor are the SFX) but they will be before the game comes out. In terms of role I think these drones will come into their own a lot more once we implement supression, plus the AI to go with them. They're intended to harass the player at long range with inaccurate long-range rapid fire weapons, but without suppression they don't really have their own niche yet. Still, I like them. They're kinda cute in their own way. We're working on a nice death animation for them too, which should arrive this week. - The Xenopedia has several new research images in it, and should display better than before. The only major issue with it is that the text is still being cut off prematurely. I need to look into that in a bit more detail, as it's a problem with the game engine rather than anything that our programmers can do anything about. - I've spent a little time on the Title Screen, scaling up the text and formatting it better to make it easier to read. There's still a problem with the text scaling here though so on a large monitor it'll still be largely unreadable (though better than before). - I've added some new maps to the game, and I'll try to expand them a bit so there's more variation. The Light Scout maps are smaller than before now, though the Scout maps are the same size. Should be better than before though. Obviously you can check out the (still WIP) Town tileset too by clicking on the Quick Battle. There's some new props floating around on the Industrial maps though, and I've designed them to have fewer buildings than before. - The MiG construction images should be working well now. There's three images that show the progress of the construction. - There's a new grenade explosion, so now it's a bit smaller than the massive explosion we use for the rockets and explosive scenery. There's also a new plasma-type explosion for the alien grenades, but they aren't throwing them yet so you're unlikely to see it. - We've put various bugfixes in place. These include fixes for building the MiG causing your engineers to disappear, or your money to vanish. Also, UFOs should display their size correctly now. Previously they were always displaying as Medium irrespective of their actual size. - There's also been a pretty major fix to the accuracy formulas. Previously shots were missing targets, but not scattering properly and so not deviating from their original shot path. This led to shots "missing" but frequent still striking their intended targets, effectively making weapons much more accurate than intended. The AI bug has not been fixed yet unfortunately, so I imagine you'll still encounter hangs in the ground combat. We'll release a hotfix for that when it arrives and we'll also fix any major issues you guys encounter in the testing pronto. We want to be sending this build out soon, so hopefully you'll see a flurry of activity from us over the next few days. The features we want to add to this build before it is complete are: 1) Adding Smoke and Nerve Gas grenades 2) Updated smoke / fire for the existing Frag grenade to couple with the new explosion animation. These will no longer generate fire, and the smoke will be thinner than the real thick stuff you get in the larger explosion. 3) There's a problem with the multi-tile rendering so multi-tile objects appear on the wrong layer and sometimes below things they should be (you can occasionally see this with the Chinook walls). 4) Extra art: - Light drone injury and death animations - Updated tiles (painted over versions) for the Town tileset and the new Industrial props, as many of the tiles are still currently 3D guides. 5) We'll add some civilians for the terror map. They're currently there, but don't have sprites so are invisible. 6) If possible, auto-toggle roof off toggle when a unit is behind a building I'm pretty tired now so I'm heading to bed, but give it a try and let us know what you think.

This is a small patch for Build V9.3 because for some reason I forgot to re-compile the .exe files before I released the build, so they are a bit out of date. This should: - Fix the game starting in a window and skipping the launcher. - Fix a bug where the game crashes if you open your inventory above an alien corpse (as the alien plasma clip images were incorrectly set) - Add a new image for the Alien Alloys research.

OK, so Build V9.3 is uploading to Desura and will be available as soon as it is authorised. I expect it to hit in about an hour, asuming the Desura guys are still online when the uplaod finishes. The following improvements have been made: - We have implemented a new Xenopedia screen that pops up when a research project is completed. This still needs a bit of work in terms of text scaling etc, but we'll have it done for the weekend. It is also not currently displaying the full research text (about 80% of it) so they end a bit abruptly at the moment. - The tech tree has been fixed so you can once again access Wolf Armour and Laser Weapons, and it has been expanded to include Alenium Missiles and Alenium Torpedos for your aircraft. The Alenium Grenade has also been added but I've not set it up in the game so it'll still be identical to a normal grenade until the weekend. Autopsies have also been added but don't give the +10% damage bonus yet. - The air combat now has a contextual menu that can be activated by right-clicking on any interceptor. This pauses the game and allows you to issue them commands without using the sidebar. - The air combat has been made marginally more balanced. Expect Corvettes to cause you some headaches when you encounter them. - Aircraft and vehicles now fill hangar / garage slots when construction begins have a WIP construction image. In the next build there will be three images that the game cycles through that shows the progression of the construction. - You now have to go through the Soldier Development screen at the end of a ground combat mission, as a lot of people didn't seem to know it existed. This now displays the Wounded / Injured days correctly after combat too. - The game now has an Alt-Tab icon. - A terror site is generate at 475 on the ticker. This is still incomplete but will hopefully be complete by the weekend. - The game ends at 550 on the ticker and shows a congratulatory screen. It also asks you to buy the game - this is just a test for the public release of this build. Bugfixes: Ground Combat: - Ground Combat can now start fter loading the auto save. - Weapon reload sounds added to the game. - Correct recovery time for injured / wounded soldiers will appear on the soldier development screen after ground combat missions. - Climbing stairs will work properly in the barn. AI: - AI is no longer ignoring vehicles on ground combat missions. Geoscape: - Equiping different rockets to your MiG will no longer cause the game to crash. - The notification can now be cancelled if large numbers of buildings were completed at the same time. - Fighters above ground will no longer "crash to the sea". - An alert window will appear if you cannot manufacture a plane due to not having a free hangar slot. - The game will no longer crash if you attack a landed UFO that has taken off again. - The game will no longer crash when tailing targets on the geoscape. - The chinook will no longer float above the target crash site after loading the auto-save.

Hey everyone! I've been somewhat less active here, mostly because of business, and working on a different computer since my main one's display is screwed up But in the meantime, I've been inspired to LP! And seeing Xenonauts and other games, I felt the the urge to play, and why not get out my recorder? So here it is- Let's Play: X-COM UFO Defense (UFO: Enemy Unknown). If you'd like to keep with the videos more easily, you can (1.) Subscribe Here: http://www.youtube.com/user/BlockHappy?feature=mhee (Not asking for subscribers, just an easy way to keep with the new videos ) (2.) Keep an eye here for the latest video (Below. This won't be updated with the latest video immediately, though I will try Hopefully, Latest Video: [video=youtube;Ir2ULfJqQS4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir2ULfJqQS4 Sorry if anyone is bugged by this post! The main reason for it is so I can name people that wish to be named, which seems to be a trait in X-COM Let's Plays. So if you want to, say so in the comments and I will (Anyone that wishes to be named will be named in Episode 3 +) - Wolfy :3

X-COM didn’t change the world. In fact, even if you were a gamer through the early 90's, its possible the game flew under your radar. However this science fiction strategy title quickly developed a cult following and is widely considered one of the best turn-based strategy tittles of its era. With upcoming series reboot, this is the perfect time to look back at this innovative game that almost didn't see the light of day. Julian Gollop Born in Ludhiana, India was the grand creator of X-COM. He grew a passion for board games and he saw computers as a huge potential for making board games that had artificial intelligence. Gallop couldn’t receive any type of formalized computer programming training since it didn’t exist in the 80's. He purchased a book on assembly language and was essentially his only source of reference. He first programmed a game called "Laser Squad". Which is basically the turned bases soldier vs alien part of the game. He managed to incorporate destructible environments, hidden line of sight and the opportunity to fire. Laser Squad was so successful that he decided to start working on his sequel and his brother Nick Gollop helped port Laser Squad to the Commodore 64. They didn’t realize but the result of their labor would leave an undeniable mark on the industry. Microprose-UK gave them the deal and 4 people started working on X-COM. Julian and his brother Nick did all the programming and a few artists rotated through the project and near the end a sound designer added all the effects, but Julian estimates that only about 4 people worked on the project at a time. The original design was going to incorporate these suited government agents that would be featured in the game as members of X-COM. Players could base these characters in a city and collect information about alien activity (like spies) unfortunately Micropose had julian remove them since they were doing their own game based on men in black. Whatever that game was never saw the light of day. No one really remembers how the name came to be, but it’s likely a shortened version of Extraterrestrial Combat Unit. X-COM was nearly 3 years in production and about 3 months before it was finished Micropose-UK was purchased by Spectrum Holobyte and they were interested in Micropose-UK for its simulation games. The only reason Spectrum Holobyte didn’t kick the project was because their own testers petitioned for the game to release. X-COM released in 1994 for the PC and the PSone the following year. It had strong sales in Europe , but it was amazing that it sold well in the US. They rushed Terror from the Deep and then in 1997 they released 3rd version X-COM Apocalypse. It’s amazing how close we came to never seeing this game. I still remember Summer of 1996 , I walked into K-B toys and walked to the bargain bin and pulled out X-COM looked at it and it didn’t look interesting , but it was on sale for like 10 bucks. I purchased the game and my life has never been the same. I have been hoping for a remake ( a good remake ) since I finished playing Terror from the Deep. Only to have to play Apocalypse and another really bad version. Jullian and Nick Gallop still design strategy titles, They recently release Ghost Recon : Future Soldier for the 3Ds, which was not only a solid turn based strategy title, but ended up being one of the 3Ds' best launch game. I found out about this Xenonauts about 3 days ago and Im a Die Hard X-COM fan. With 2K's reimagining of X-COM it could put a hurting on sales for this project. One thing that 2K are not adding; underwater mission which were by far the coolest part of TFTD ( Terror From the Deep ). Of course it would be alot of work to add such a massive part to a game. I would highly sugges the addition of under water missions and keep it Original the way TFTD went about it. Nothing more nothing less. I will wait untill the BETA releases before purchasing.

Build V9.2 is released on Desura. This is mostly a stability / usability fix build, though it does have some new features: New features: - There's a new air combat GUI that has been (mostly) implemented. We still need to do a few more tweaks on it, both in terms of visual and code issues, but it's nearly done. Key new features are: spanky new visuals, a throttle control that allows you to speed up / slow down aircraft, tooltips and more visual feedback on which weapons are ready to fire and when. - We've added a Toggle Roof button on the ground combat UI which you can use to display buildings at ground level, which should be useful if your soldiers are behind a wall and you can't see that. We'll look at getting this turning on and off automatically but you'll have to do it manually for now. - You can now manufacture the MiG-32 once it has been researched. You need an empty hangar slot to do this. - You can move soldiers, vehicles and aircraft from base to base using the new "Relocate" button on the Soldier / Vehicle / Aircraft Equip screens. - UFOs should now contain the correct research materials for you to be able to construct laser weapons and wolf armour again. - Friendly AI soldiers will now appear on the Industrial tileset. They don't do anything yet. We'll plug them into the AI for the next update. Bugfixes: - The crash in June has been fixed up. For the remaining bugs, I think we've fixed quite a few but I don't actually know - I'll get Matthew to give me an update next week on what should be fixed. Essentially he's doing crunch in his real job at the moment so he's not about, and he compiles the changelog as far as bugs are concerned. I think this should be much more playable than before though. It'll be worth reading this post on what our plans are for the next couple of weeks. Should be exciting times for the project!

Last Thursday, Steam had a sale where it was reduced from $5.00 to $1.69 - did anyone else grab it? It's was my first time playing the game by the way, and it eventually led me here (I would have been in year 1 when it came out) Gotta say I am hugely psyched for this Xenonauts because of this! The alpha build seems so much like the original, but not to the point of complete emulation - and all the while improves on so many little things which make it so much more epic Can anyone recommend the other UFO games? I did some research and the reviews aren't too great, but I just want to hear your opinions.

Hey team, I've just finished of the first part of my marathon run on xcom, and modded the crap out of EU(no cheats). A mod that I found really handy was sebs ufo extender because it added some really nice useful stuff. I'm wondering if anyone knows of anything simlar available for TFTD? Failing that is it possible to use the PSX soundtrack for it as I did on EU?

Hello, in Ufo EU it was "easy" to choose the area in with the combat should be performed by shooting down the Ufo above one of the few terrain types. Which was your prefered area? I love the Woodland, Ice and Desert. But I hate the Mountains. Alith PS: I hope I didn't miss an area.

Chris posted this on the old forum and it covers a lot of points that come up... repeatedly. (to put it mildly) As we've been around for a while now, a lot of questions keep poppoing up. In this thread, we've compiled a list of the most popular questions and our answers to them. Please check it before you post! Features from X-Com: Will there be blaster bombs in the game? Will there be Chryssalids in the game? Will there be psionic powers in the game? Will I still be able to sell manufactured items at a profit? Will there be night missions? Will there be underwater missions? Soldiers: Will I still be able to rename soldiers? Why are there no female soldiers in the game? Will soldiers equipment loadout be stored from mission to mission? Can I customise the position of the soldiers in the dropship? How do soldiers increase their attributes? How do soldiers increase their ranks? Does the player start with a team of well-trained soldiers? Vehicles & Aircraft: Will vehicles gain battlefield experience? Will vehicles be customizable? Will interceptor pilots gain experience or have stats? Weapons: Your choice of gun for (insert gun type here) is wrong! This is unrealistic! Will there be different variants on the starting weapons (eg. will there be a choice between AK47s and M16s for the assault rifle)? Will there be unique special weapons dropped by the aliens? Will there be melee weapons and melee attacks? Game Mechanics: What’s the thinking behind the different tiers of weapons? How does the cover system work? Will you tell me about armour and the health system? Morale. What’s the point? Will the player be able to call in off-map fire support (artillery, gunships etc)? Will there be weapon emplacements/defences in the base-defence missions? Can bases collaborate with research and manufacturing? Misc. Questions: Will you sell via digital distribution (ie. Steam)? How did you decide on the price of $29.99? Can you play as the aliens? Will there be multiplayer? Can the map be rotated? Will you have a beta test? Will there be a demo? How can I help out Xenonauts? ________________________________________ Features from X-Com: Q. I really liked Blaster Bombs in the original X-Com! They were so cool! Will they be in Xenonauts? A. No, we consider them to unbalanced a weapon to include. Being able to fire without LOS allows the player to hide his units away from danger, which enormously reduces the tension and fear in the game. They are also very frustrating to play against, as there is no real defence against blaster bombs and having to rely on luck in a mission is not good game design. Q. I really liked Chryssalids in the original X-Com! They were so cool! Will they be in Xenonauts? A. Something very much like them will appear in the game, except even worse. You’ll have to wait till you actually play the game to find out how though! Q. Will psionic powers be making a return? A. For the alien side, yes. For the human side, no. Psionics inspire tension and terror that conventional weapons do not, and for that reason it would be foolish of us to leave them out. However, they will not be available for the human side as they don't really fit with the style of game we're going for. Additionally, we feel powers like Mind Control vastly unbalanced the original X-Com. Q. Will we still be able to sell manufactured items for a profit? A. No, the player will be able to sell them but only at a loss. You will be reliant on monthly funding tried to your performance, or from selling captured items. Q. Will there be day and night missions? A. Yes, there will be. Similarly we intend to implement flares etc in a manner similar to the original. Q. Will there be underwater missions? A. No, but with a a showerhead and a little indoor plumbing, you should be able to enjoy the desired game experience. ________________________________________ Soldiers: Q. Will I still be able to rename soldiers? A. Yes, you can. Q. Will there be female soldiers in the game? A. No, I’m afraid not. This is not because of deep-seated prejudices amongst women, but because we’re using sprites. We already have to render every armour type with every weapon from 8 different directions, which is in the region of 100,000 frames of animation. If we had female soldiers, we’d have to double that. There will however be female civilians. This is the same reason why all the soldiers on the battlefield are white – there are ethnic soldiers in the art, but adding non-white soldiers would also double the number of animation frames required. *Update* Female soldiers are now present in the game! The developers decided that the differences between male and female soldiers in most armour types was negligible so the same sprites could be used on the ground. Different images are used where the differences would be noticeable, for example the basic armour and in the base screens. Q. Will soldiers' equipment loadout be stored from mission to mission? A. Yes. You won't have to re-equip them every mission. Q. Will we be able to arrange soldiers in the dropship in any order we want? A. Yes. If you want your toughest (or perhaps most expendable) guy to be the closest to the exit ramp, you can set him to start there. Q. How do soldiers improve their attributes? A. Soldiers learn and improve their skills by using them. A soldier who fires his weapon enough times on the battlefield will gain bonuses to Accuracy, while a soldier who has taken sufficient numbers of morale checks will earn a bonus to their Bravery (and so on for the other stats). These are running totals; the shots or morale checks could be earned across multiple missions. However, there is a cap on how many points can be earned on any one mission so ‘training’ your skills is not possible. One thing is for certain though – soldiers who get left behind in the dropship every mission won’t be gaining any experience! Q. How do soldiers increase in rank, and what attributes does it offer? A. Soldiers are promoted once they have earned a set number of attribute increases on the battlefield (in any statistic), with later ranks requiring more attribute increases to attain promotion. Rank is not tied to the number of soldiers the player has – you can have a team entirely comprised of Commanders if you are skilful enough! Increased rank provides a bonus to the morale of the rest of the team (and therefore psionic defence). This also works in reverse, so bringing newly recruited Rookies along to the fight actually provides a morale penalty to the team, at least until they have earned their stripes in battle and been promoted to Corporals. Q. Does the player start with a team of experienced soldiers? A. The Xenonauts have existed as an organisation for over twenty years before the alien invasion fleet arrived, so the player takes control of a team of twelve highly-trained soldiers. These soldiers, consisting of eleven Corporals and one Sergeant, have significantly higher statistics than new recruits and therefore will provide the core of the player’s strike team in the early stages of the game. They are not expendable - try not to get them killed! ________________________________________ Vehicles & Aircraft: Q. Will vehicles gain experience and improved stats on the battlefield? A. Nope. Only soldiers will gain experience on the battlefield. Though vehicles technically have drivers and gunners etc, the player does not need to manage these staff or even provide them living quarters. This is to streamline the game and avoid feature bloat, and to encourage players to use their soldiers rather than relying on vehicles. Q. Will I be able to customise my vehicles? A. Yes. The player will be able to choose what weapons to equip their vehicles with (though there are some limitations on what chassis types can carry what weapon types). You will therefore be able to upgrade your vehicles, and equip them for specific missions, without having to research a whole new vehicle. Q. Will interceptor pilots gain experience and have stats? A. No. Air combat is meant to be streamlined and quick, as you'll be doing it countless times during the course of a game and it should not feel like a chore. Therefore we don't want to overcomplicate the process, and we think adding pilots would do that. ________________________________________ Weapons: Q. Your choice of gun for (insert gun type here) is wrong! This is unrealistic! A. This is technically not a question, but it crops up a lot. The starting weapons have been chosen to fill specific battlefield roles, and are based on stereotypes in gaming culture. In reality a shotgun may not be of much use against body armour, but anyone who plays games regularly intuitively knows that shotguns are excellent close-quarter weapons. The weapons chosen to fill these roles are reasonably historically accurate, but if there are elements of unrealism in their stats/battlefield role then it has been done for the sake of game balance, which we consider far more important. Q. I notice most of the starting weaponry is NATO weaponry - will there be Soviet weaponry like the AK47 in the game too? Also, why is there only one type of assault rifle etc - why can't we have 3 or 4 different types to allow greater customisation? A. There will not be other ballistic weaponry available beyond the basic starting gear. The reason for this is that there are already large numbers of weapons in the game at various tech levels, and we don't see the need to pad out the starting weapon selection unnecessarily. Additionally, all the starting weapons have a set battlefield 'role' that is in keeping with the perception of that weapon (the shotgun is a superb close-range weapon, for instance). It could confuse new players if they had to choose between several slightly different variants of an assault rifle with only cosmetic differences between them. Players will be free to mod in their own weapon choices/artwork after release, but we do not see it as worth development time. *update* Goldhawk have released some additional weapon images for use by modders and have added a second assault rifle using the AK47 artwork for use by Soviet military NPC's. This is currently only obtainable from the ground missions. Q. Will there be unique, one off, items in the game like special weapon drops? A. No. The game isn't about 'loot' so we don't think it's fitting with the spirit of X-Com. Q. Will there be melee weapons and melee attacks? A. Yes, the starting stun baton will be melee only and will be used for subduing aliens in the same way as the stun rod in X-Com. There will also be a default melee attack using whatever weapon the soldier has equipped, the damage done based on the strength of the soldier (and possibly modified by the weight of the weapon equipped). There will not be any specialist melee weapons or attachments beyond this, however, as melee weapons don't make sense to the dev team in an environment where there are extremely powerful projectile weapons around - melee should definitely be a last resort only! ________________________________________ Game Mechanics: Q. What’s the thinking behind the different tiers of weapons? A. The starting weapons allow a player to equip his troops for whatever role he wants to use them in. Rifles are general purpose weapons and pistols are good for scouts, while shotguns excel up close and the precision rifle is a superb sniping weapon. Higher ‘tiers’ of weapons (ie, laser and plasma weapons in the original X-Com) will also have different variants for different roles, although the details of the ‘tiers’ have not yet been released. This is to stop ‘Give every soldier a Heavy Plasma’ syndrome that rather afflicted the original X-Com. In general, each weapon will be superior to its equivalent in the tier below, but be heavier, harder to aim and more costly to build and maintain. There are also a number of specialist items and heavy weapons that exist outside the general model listed above, for example the flamethrower and rocket launcher in the starting weapons. Q. How does the cover system work? A. Xenonauts uses a directional cover system. In an isometric grid, each unit has eight surrounding tiles. Each of the eight tiles provides a cover value to that soldier, and provides a measure of protection against damage coming from that direction (if a shot comes from between two tiles, a hybrid value is used). Thus a soldier hiding behind a stone wall will receive good protection from immediately in front of him, but if a soldier flanks him and shoots him from the side (or lobs a grenade over the wall so it lands behind him), he will receive no protection. Q. Will you tell me about armour and the health system? A. Each soldier has a HP value, and being injured reduces both the soldier’s current HP and maximum HP. The former can be healed on the battlefield using medipacks, but the latter can only be healed with recuperation time on the Geoscape after the battle is over. Soldiers can be sent into battle injured (up to a point), but suffer AP penalties for doing so. A soldier is considered ‘dead’ for the purposes of the mission if they reach 0HP, but they are not necessarily dead in game terms. A soldier has a chance of surviving the mission with a long injury lay-off, but this chance is reduced the more damage they have taken below 0HP, and after a certain amount of damage this falls to zero. Armour works by mitigating the damage received by a soldier, reducing the damage taken by a set amount. However, weapons also have armour mitigation values, which reduce the armour mitigation by a corresponding amount. An assault rifle and a precision rifle would do fairly similar damage against unarmoured targets, but the precision rifle would do substantially more against an armoured target due to its superior armour mitigation value. Q. Morale. What’s the point? A. Morale provides a measure of how likely a soldier is to panic and lose all his APs for the turn, or panic and start running away or firing his weapons in random directions. Morale also provides a soldier’s defence against alien psionic attack, as a frightened soldier is more likely to succumb to mental attacks. Morale is initially derived from a combination of their Bravery statistic and the ranks of the soldiers in the team. Once the battle begins it is affected positively by killing aliens and proximity to fellow soldiers, and affected negatively by injury and the loss of civilians and teammates (with a higher penalty for the loss of more experienced soldiers). Q. Will the player be able to call in off-map fire support (artillery, gunships etc)? A. No, for the same reason why the blaster bombs have been removed. Any weapons that don’t require line-of-sight (excepting a couple of alien psionic powers) remove a lot of the tension from the game because they reduce the danger that the player is exposing his men to, so we’re avoiding them. Q. Will there be weapon emplacements/defences in the base-defence missions? A. No. We want the focus to be on infantry combat, and besides it would be a lot of additional coding to implement. But mostly we don’t want to overcomplicate things. Q. Can bases collaborate with research and manufacturing? A. They can collaborate between bases on research, but not manufacturing. We found this is the best blend of convenience and realism. ________________________________________ Misc. Questions: Q. Will the game be sold over Steam or any other method of digital distribution? A. Yes, we intend to get the game on Steam if at all humanly possible. If not, then we'll look at alternative methods of digital distribution, such as Impulse from Stardock etc. Assuming the Steam contract is non-exclusive, we will also have non-Steam digital distribution alternatives for those of you who hate Valve for whatever reason. Q. How did you decide on the price of $29.99? A. We believe that Xenonauts is a large project comparable to many AAA titles in scope, and hopefully also in quality. Given that many AAA games are released at prices closer to $50 than $30 nowadays, we believe $29.99 is a fair price for the game. Also, much as we’d like to operate as a charity, members of the team have taken on significant amounts of financial risk to produce the game, so it would be wrong to operate the company as anything other than a business. We believe $29.99 represents a reasonable return on our investment without being so expensive it would price people out of buying it. Q. Can you play as the aliens? A. No, we’ve only got enough time to create one game. Plus it'd be far too easy. Q. Will there be multiplayer functionality? A. No. We’d have liked to, but unfortunately we don’t have the time or budget to make it a reality. Q. I have a new idea for an alien monster, why don't you put it in your game? A. Because all of the aliens have been concepted and are in the process of being modelled and animated, so it’s a bit late in the day to add new aliens to the game (no matter how exciting they may be). You could always mod them in after release though! Q. Can the map be rotated? A. No, all tiles are pre-rendered and touched up for that retro "painted" look. Q. Will you have a beta test? A. Yes, everyone who pre-orders the game will be eligible for beta testing. See the pre-order page for details. Q. Will there be a demo? A. Yes, we will make a demo available after the game is released. It will be the same content-limited (ie, it won’t feature the full tech tree) version of the game that had previously been used for the beta testing, but of course you won’t have a chance to influence the direction and balancing of the game with your opinions. Q. How can I help out Xenonauts and the dev team? A. The two most helpful things you can do are to participate in the community on our forums, and to pre-order the game when we make it available. We’d hugely appreciate both of those. If you want to join the team, see what roles we have available on our Vacancies page.