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So - vehicles. Until now they exist in a separate Category from your Soldiers - but why ? Both need storage space, equipment and repair after getting shot at by aliens. Well - we call the "human storage space" living quarters and their repair "medical" - BUT our vehicles have far less options for customization and enhancement then regular soldiers. So - I propose a Framework to make the handling of Vehicles in general easier and blurring the lines between Soldiers and Vehicles. A Vehicle is equipped like a piece of Armor for a Soldier - changing the amount of space said soldier takes up in a transport and the types of Weapons they can equip. Instead of Assigning a "Hunter1" Scout Car to your Chinook, you equip Pvt. Max Muster with a "Hunter Scout Car" and a twin Browning MG Turret. Pvt. Muster will propably earn some experience and become a better Soldier while Driving/ Commanding said Scout Car. This shift would: Eliminate the necessity for a separate Garage screen (which has bugged out severly in my modded campaign btw.) Allows Vehicles to be affected by morale Allow Easier Customizing of Vehicles (Main gun, additional weapons, smoke launchers etc) in the Loadout Screen. Allow variable soldier size through Exosuits , Mechas or horrible biomechanical surgeries. Allow implementation of other restrictions for weapons - Perhaps only Soldiers in "powered armors" may equip a portable Gatling cannon etc. Perhaps you could even Enter/Leave vehicles with other soldiers - hop on the back of a Scout Car/Trike or Tank and use the vehicles movement.

I honestly had no idea what to call this suggestion when I was making the thread. So, when playing games like this you basically have to make a choice of how much you want to "save-scum". Some choose the ironman approach, which has even become an official setting in newer games, while others choose to reload missions and even turns if things don't go as planned. So I've been thinking -- how about an option to allow the player to save the game, but to regenerate certain things each time they do so? I'm primarily thinking of ground attack missions here -- you would be able to save the game, but each time you load the save game, the placement of aliens, civilians, and so on in the fog of war is generated again. This means that you would be able to "save-scum" by loading a mission if it goes badly, but that you couldn't do this to "learn the scenario by heart" to perfect your approach. Each time you reload, you're playing the scenario for the first time, especially if you were only allowed to save at the beginning of a ground assault mission when playing with this system. The map itself would be the same, but Of course players could use this system to repeatedly generate missions to make things easier for them by for example reloading if they find an alien in a good position, kinda like how you can start new games of Civ to get that perfect city spot with the exact resources you want and whatnot, but I think that it could also present a nice challenge to players who use it seriously, so to speak .

This may be a popular or unpopular opinion, I'd like to hear you guys opinion. So psi has been quite an important part of the Xenonauts, X-COM and XCOM games and have added mystery and unpredictability and overall improved the story. My problem is it featuring in combat. Start mission with well equipped squad. Let's do this! MG in the back spontaneously gun down the two in front of him. Move across the map making no tactical errors. Enemies are taken by surprise and barely have time to fire back. Two experienced soldiers run around cowering in corners. Make good use of my best shield guy in open area. Confidently holding his ground defending comrade behind him. Drop shield, stand up and both get shot. Finally at the UFO, all stacked up and almost ready, just have to reload. Rifleman fires at a wall pinning two of his mates. Allright that's solved and everyone is doing good. Shotgun wielding god who basically carried the mission so far get scared by a lizard or cloud or something and drops his weapon, runs into the ufo and is evenly distributed over the walls by reaction fire. I save the game and consider savescumming. End up just playing some other game instead. This is why I've stopped playing Xenonauts and most Xcoms. Psi for me just makes the combat arbitrary and unfair. When I get my own magic spells it doesn't get much more fun because both sides just kill themselves. It is in my opinion a game mechanic that punish you without a previous error or foolish move on your part. In chess it's not allowed to flick elastic bands at the oposite player's pieces, just like I don't like bs magic spells interfering in a TACTICAL combat SIMULATOR. Let me know what you think. Do I have a point or should I just git gud?

In X1 we essentially had four light sources in night missions: scenery lights like lamp posts the inherent flash lights of our troops (their illuminated vision cones) flares head lights of vehicles I'd like to see this system expanded a bit, as it essentially slowed down the pace of the game in X1 compared to daytime missions (because you would throw flares around one round, then advance in the next). low-light amplifier - a piece of head/eye wear for a soldier, giving him good sight in darker areas, but none in light regions (as the light amplification tends to overcast the surroundings of bright objects) thermal imaging glasses - same slot, portrays surroundings in false colours, but some aliens (e.g. the reptilian sebillians) are invisible to the user. Might show gas and heat pipelines through walls, whatever this might be useful for (blowing stuff up, obviously...) signal pistol - a secondary weapon that can illuminate a big part of the battlefield this round and can be fired indirectly over obstacles, and a smaller one next round, and then dies. Short life and big area compared to flares, maybe even a chance to stun enemies with big, night time adjusted eyes portable floodlight - a rather heavy utility item that must be placed down by a soldier and then illuminates a bigger part of the map compared to flash lights. As it runs on batteries, only limited use time. Some Psi vision system - reveals the location of living things, but not what they are. Civilians and Aliens as well as the type of Alien cannot be seen (something like a blue blob on the battlefield) For some of these to work, the blind fire system needs to be reworked - in X1 a soldier could fire at a tile with an alien with the direct aim function, even though he could not see the alien. Either this needs to be made impossible (or one soldier with low-light amplifier essentially provides the same bonus for every comrade) or weakened in terms of accuracy. Suppressing fire could still work to a degree. Any other idea you can come up with?

So, I read the prologue "Crimson Dagger" in the extras at the start-up of Xenonauts, and I was wondering, would the story of Mikhail Alexander and the 1958 Iceland incident make a good gameplay tutorial (If there's going to be one) for Xenonauts 2? If yes, it could later show how Kseniya Alexander got invited into the Xenonauts program, and have her become one of the many soldiers the player starts with. It's just a thought. Plus, the story of "Crimson Dagger" is pretty emotional. In my opinion, it could make the player REALLY pissed at the aliens, and give a nice good launch to start the game off with.