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  1. Current mods I am using: 2 Map packs, Lore, Armored Assault, Dynamic UFO Spawn Playing the standard version (as opposed to CE) Primary group of soldiers: 2 months, consistent gains in every mission of +1 to 3 to 5 stats +2 TU Then I started deploying new guys. Yesterday 2 of my Corporals got promoted to Sergeants, their increase for that mission was +3 in every stat and + 4 TU. Several times in past missions I saw low ranked soldiers gain +2 stats - something that has NEVER happened to any of my 'primary' team. Right now it seems like low ranks get some crazy boosts in growth. not sure if this is relevant - I normally deploy 2-3 rookies out of 8 with my veterans (Commanders to Captains). As far as their activity during missions - the rookies do much less, they have only half the TUs of my veterans and spend much more of their time getting into position to be useful. All soldiers are always loaded at least to 100% of their encumbrance - sometimes with a bit of penalty for particularly weak rookies.
  2. I cant seem to find the file that contains the variables for new soldiers. Or the one for the starter group you get. Does anyone know where they are?
  3. I bought the game on Steam early access about a week ago. Still on v21 stable and really enjoying it (I've managed to clock in 31 hours at the creation of this thread). One thing that I still have little understanding of, is the attributes. I can guess what the obvious stats do, (such as strength, accuracy, TU, HP) but the not so obvious stats have me making "best guesses" on their effects. An example would be Reflex. My best guess would be that it affects(Along with remaining TU) whether a Xenonaut can take a reflexive shot or not during an Alien's turn. So, anyone have more detailed information on the attributes? I've tried searching on the forum, but couldn't find the necessary info. Also, the manual doesn't contain anything substantial either (Edit: probably should have been more attentive of the header in the manual, it's from 2012.) . I think it's worth noting that I've never played any of the X-COM games. Thank you for your patience and for my GOTY (even if it's still in testing!).
  4. 1. Enemy statistics I wouldn't mind having alien statistics available in-game. I do like the way you guys handled the GC, that you can't see hitpoints and such, but IMO after capturing/researching an alien, I should be able to view in-game how much hitpoints they got, what they're resistant to etc. Simply adding some stats to the end of autopsy report would be cool. 2. Enemy status Basically, make it similar to Air Combat in GC. Hover over enemy and it says like "unharmed" "wounded" "serious injury". Not hitpoints or percents, just "observable" info. 3. Soviet Union Now, this is a big one. There are three problems with Soviet Union. First, it encompasses countries that never were affiliated with SU (Austria...) Solution: move the borders a bit Second, it encompasses countries that never were an actual part of SU (Poland, Hungary *satellite countries/ vassals*). Some people may take offense to that. Do we want people taking offense to that? Solution: change the name from "Soviet Union" to "Warsaw Pact" Third, it's just so damn big compared to other blocks. Solution: split into SU West/SU East? 4. Charlie transport's space Right now, it looks weird, that there are 3 places left and soldiers cannot be put there. While I can explain it being the place for loot and booty, some may think it's a bug. Solution: remove three squares from Charlie or place red Xs over them 5. Alien names Just a really loose suggestion. The names are great and all, Sebillians, Harridan, they sound cool but are... out of place. How do we know they are called that? If those were soldier-given names, they would be "greys" and "lizards" and "flyers"; were they scientist-given, they would be "reptilians" "engineers" etc. The names are just out of the blue. But that's a minor nitpick from me. 6. Air Combat Evade Very minor, as we have keyboard shortcuts, but now, there is only one "evade" button in the craft control, which is seemingly random in choosing left/right. Solution: add another evade button on the other side of craft image, corresponding to the direction(right side of the craft, evade to right etc) 7. Crash log Now this is a big one from me. It's really annoying when the game crashes and you have no way of knowing what went wrong. It would also help you, the developers. Game crashes, I check what went wrong, try and fix it; post a bug report on forum "Problem with XXX, possible solution included". 8. Ironman backups Very minor, but it would be great if the game auto-backed up the previous save game. (game breaking bugs and all) (and please, don't give me "GIVING A WAY TO CHEAT" argument. If someone wants to save-scumm, he will regardless) 9. Soldier Equip screen improvement: Do away with collapsing menus. Collapsing menus are the work of Satan. Change the "switch role" option should be accessible by clicking the class icon, "set as default eq" should be just a button somewhere. The menus are just extra click here. (very minor, obviously, but would improve the looks and feel of that menu) 10. Research project Let me commence project even when there are no scientists left. (Especially that it auto-assigns all scientists to project, so I have to deduce guys from project, then commence etc, waste of clicks) 11. Ground combat While it's really cool right now, and I'm seriously liking it, there are some quirks: a) burst fire through window stops every bullet. Self explaining I think. I can get behind stopping one bullet, but not a whole burst. b) add smash window option for 5 TUs, to save them bullets (why not open? No new sprites needed with smash) c) Civilians running into UFOs, seriously that needs fixing d) I don't know how feasible that is, but taking control of nearest locals would be GREAT. So that I can get them out of the way, use local forces to bolster my attack etc e) I would love some "firing arc" view. Explanation: I hit a button, say "T", and around the selected soldier I can see green cone, as long as range, for effective weapon range and extra TUs needed for turn, yellow for 1 TU, red for 2 extra TU etc. Very minor and yet very useful. Bonus points: Perhaps make it so the firing arcs are shown from the "last place the soldier's in": without movement order, it is shown around soldier, with order, it shows around the last place he'll end up at. f) actual advantages and disadvantages to ducking: example: soldier behind low cover, when ducking gets more "blocked" from the shots aimed at him (so that alien shooting a standing soldier behind low cover has 50% block, ducking soldier 75%), but also gets penalties to aim(due to view obstructed by cover). Bonus points: ducking in the open lowering chance to hit, but increasing chance for crit; also boosting aim 12. Vehicle storage Very minor but would be very cool: a limited cargo space in vehicles, that might be used for a) vehicle extra ammo (should take much space, like one extra clip taking whole space) b) soldier extra EQ (ammo, grenades, medkits) c) perhaps collecting loot in the future 13. Dropship usage in GC This one would net you some great props from players. >Soldier is wounded and laying on the ground >Pick up soldier >Drop him in dropship >Wounded guy gets 50% more chances to survive would be great to cut losses on aborted missions and second one: >stun alien / kill new alien >realise mission is unwinnable at this point >bring corpses/EQ to dropship >earn research credit ONLY FOR THOSE as if the mission was won Might net some negative relations points for balance "Xenonauts flew in, killed some guys, collected them and ran the hell away, wtf is wrong with those guys". That's all folks, thanks for the read. If some things are present in the game and I haven't noticed them, feel free to insult me.
  5. Option to build the starting soldiers and such, also increase stats after missions on soldiers. This would save me nonsensically starting new campaigns over and over again to get the initial characters and stats I want.
  6. It took me AGES to understand / be sure about the fact that the new numbers of the post-mission screen are improvements in their skills. Yeah, a bit stupid of me - but can we please have a "before-after" comparison? That would also explain the amount of increase: Maybe the way to display it would be 64->65
  7. Hey there, apologies if this has already been posted. Amazing game by the way. It'd be cool to see exactly by how much characters have boosted their stats, post-mission. At the moment (unless I'm missing something) you only see their stats post-level up, so you can't tell how much they've been boosted.
  8. In the current game, experience/stat growth is fairly gamey in nature. You load up weight to train strength. I keep a list of characters to check off, making sure everyone gets their turn to have a reaction shot before I go for the kill. It's especially bad with the Light Scouts, which are farmable practically only for their experience. To a degree, this is what the "donating"/"airstrike" idea was for, but I want to propose a different scheme for expeience overall, so that players aren't so tempted to just go into missions for character leveling sake, alone. Potential is a scheme for growth-through-use experience that aims to control player's instinct to just spam a skill to train it that I first came across in the roguelike game Elona. Potential is fairly simple in concept - it's just an experience point multiplier that goes down every time whatever the potential is tied to ranks up. At 100% potential, you gain experience normally. At 150% or 50% potential, you gain experience at 1.5 or 0.5 times normal. Each time you rank up a skill, your potential goes down. For brevity's sake, I am spoiling the details. Those interested in its technical workings click: The short of it is, you gain stats over time as you sit in base, but your potential to gain more stats goes down - making it take longer, and giving you less and less actual stat growth as you sit in base, doing nothing but drills. You get a sudden boost to your potential when you actually use your character in battle, giving them expanded potential, and letting them train faster. But that practical experience isn't going to give you actual stats, it's just making stats gained from training come faster. Hence, the way to keep soldiers going at peak efficiency isn't so much to keep them constantly in battle, but to find the proper balance between being in downtime and being in battle. This, in turn, can help with the problem of players hunting down every UFO - since taking on a UFO means taking time away from character training, then the player will eventually have enough potential that they gain no real benefit from putting characters in battle over and over, while they are actively losing their training time. Another way to keep overpowered player characters from being a problem is to make the amount of experience (since we aren't tied to a strict "one reaction shot = one point of reflexes" model, but an experience bar that fills progressively with downtime) that it takes to gain a stat increase as the stats themselves are higher values. (A rookie with 50 in Strength might take half as long to train in strength as a veteran with 100 strength... or four times as long, if you want a harsher quadratic curve.) If you make soldiers passively train, (rather than spend money on training, unless you want to make spending money be an "intensive training" option) you can also include some research options involving training - for example, after battles with specific types of aliens, you can have "sebilian noncombatant tactics" research or the like, which would also provide bonuses to the rate of experience gain, making late-game recruits train up faster than early-game recruits. So could a training yard base extension. --- Affinity is a different animal, but it relates to the problem I have with all the soldiers in my squad being basically the same for any given amount of training, with only their initial randomization of between 50 and 60 in their scores making them slightly different. Affinity is a natural predisposition towards certain stats - it means that a character with a high affinity for strength, for example, would gain strength points faster than a character with a low affinity, with or without potential. Either way, this would mean that, while starting character strength is still largely ignorable, affinity would be a major difference in what characters you recruited.
  9. Hello all! First i would like to say that the game is very good so far! i'm impressed with the work of such a small team of developers. it tottally maintains the spirit of the original and it's better than the new xcom in many things. One of things is the music, it is amazing, and for me its one of the more important aspects of a game and its difficult to see games with good music. Well here goes my suggestions: 1. I find difficult to use grenades, they have a short range and very small blast radius. 2. There should be more explosive ammunitions, its fun! 3. the improving of stats could be different. I also get improved tu's or accuracy and nothing else. I think there could be other factors to improve strengh and bravery. 4. im only in begging of game, but i don't like how we breach the small ufo. The flashbangs don't stop the aliens from shooting in next turn, they are weak, i always find better to shoot them, so the flashbangs become irrelevant. Sometimes there are 3 aliens inside and there is no way to not get shot at. Maybe there is some tactic i haven't figured out. also many times it seems weird that so many aliens com from that small ship... its like they are stuffed in there. Also i find kind of easy sometimes to guess where they can be, maybe the spawn points could be improved or more varied. 5. I know some maps are still to improve, but some have no cover at all, specially desert maps. And i almost don't get city maps. but maybe that's beggining. congratulations!
  10. Understanding that we are a supposed elite force. Understanding that in a 0 to 100 scale 50 in the average untrained, and should be considered unqualified, citizen. In the first 10 troops we get, do not give anybody below 55 Strenght and 55 accuracy. My mother which is 70 has more accuracy than those guys and my father which is 67 is stronger than such guys. Those are the main STATS for any given soldier, being able to carry freaking equipment and shooting his weapon. Such people wouldn t even qualify at the end of basic infantry course. Such stats are for crack addicts not trained soldiers. Thank you. OBS: i know its minor but its SO MINOR this shouldn t be left out of the next upgrade.
  11. 1. Soldiers development system should be changed. - right now they gain 1 point of ech stat every ground combat, so i takes ~40 ground combat missions to make super heroes of whole squad , with ~100 of main stats (tus/ strenght/accuracy), - light scout short missions develop soldiers pretty the same as terror / big ufo / base long missions (maybe stats development and soldier promotions should depend on kills count and current rank of the soldier?) - soldier stat improvement should be more complex / not linear 2. It shame that shrike has the same speed as Chinook and Valyrie. (We can read a fine description abut new landing craft and its superior supersonic engines) Why not to put lets say : Shrike - top speed: 1800 km/h acc: 600 Valkyrie : 3000 km/h acc: 900 and Chinnok 550 km/h acc: 100 ? (It is chopper at last) I have already changed it in game files (it's half minute work). 3. to be continued later...
  12. Any chance that we could get included a little +1, +2, etc for when skills go up at the end of a mission? Just as an indicator of how much a particular skill has improved. Perhaps even some kind of indicator when looking over troopers at base to see how improved overall each trooper has become since they're been defending the earth.
  13. Not sure if it's just me, but the color of the stats on the soldier select screen and in the battlescape inventory menu seem a little off for a couple reasons. The lower a stat is, the greener it is, and as it gets higher, it gets a nice, dark shade of red, which seems a little backwards, but more importantly, it can be a little hard to read, especially if you're not playing it fullscreen, or in anything but a fairly dark environment; even making them yellow- or white-on-black would be good, anything except dark, saturated red-on-black.
  14. I've been playing the game for a while now, and I love it. I went through the classic X-Com routine of naming every single soldier, customizing their loadouts, and then watching them die horribly the moment they stepped off the dropship. The only problem is that I want more. Now that every soldier has their own preset name, face, and nationality, I don't feel like I have full control over them any more. I remember that in the original game, there were plenty of editors that you could use to edit your squaddie's stats, but from what I've seen so far Xenonauts is much more moddable. Is there any way of changing a soldier's name and such within the game files, or will I have to wait for an editor post-release? P.S. I don't have a lot of modding experience. If you have any advice, please put it in "layman's" terms.
  15. In the most recent experimental build, we got a very controversial new feature (or "feature," depending on your point of view) where fighter craft will be auto-salvaged even upon death. I'm not looking to discuss that particular feature, but one of the reasons cited is that there would become large gaps in the game-states of highly skilled players (who never lost a plane) and unskilled players (who lost many planes). However, there is another way that game-states can become highly differentiated by player skill. Or, more accurately, player patience. Powerleveling. Grinding. "Training" (if you wish to be polite). Or my preferred calisthenics. All names for the same process of intentionally doing certain things in order to ensure max skill gains in each combat to result in having more skilled troops later on. As of right now, here are the things each soldier has to do in each mission to ensure max skill gains: 1.) Spend 600 APs 2.) Move 40 tiles while carrying at least 80% capacity (Note: 160-240 TUs, not counting rotating) 3.) Shoot 8 times at an alien within 1.5x effective weapon range (Note: 160-400 TUs) 4.) Be party to 6 reflex rolls (successful or not doesn't matter) 5.) Panic twice If a soldier were to do all of these, they would gain 2 points in each attribute except resilience -- they'd gain 2.5 points in that. Of course, I've never seen panicking be part of the game yet, except for psionic influence, so panicking twice is essentially off the table. Additionally, I find reflex rolls to be part of the game not worth bothering with (they clash with my central combat philosophy of "don't let the enemy take initiative") so I don't bother with those. Other people do, of course. If we assume a rookie soldier has 60 TUs (either a skilled rookie or someone with a few missions under their belt), they still have to spend 10 turns utilizing all of their TUs each turn in order to cap out on TU gains. Since I want to do well, I'm prone to trying to maximize my skill gains, even if that's not a wise tactical decision. So I might secure an area, ensure good fields of vision, and spend 4-5 turns doing nothing but ordering all of my soldiers to crouch and uncrouch repeatedly by holding 'C'. Do I have fun doing this? No. It's boring. Does it increase the amount of joy I get at the victory? No. It just wastes my time. As a game progresses, the differences between people who powerlevel and people who don't is going to become quite notable. (In fact, my last playthrough had at least 3 occasions where a soldier went down to 1 HP and lived. If I'd not powerleveled those soldiers they would have died!) I find this mechanic to be boring, wasteful, etc. I discussed this somewhat in a different thread that picked up a bit of conversation, titled "Ways to address the soldier skill gap." The general consensus seemed to be "Eh, whatever. Train the noobies up, too." What if we had a Xenonauts where powerleveling wasn't a thing? Where it became difficult to use these little tricks to get more skill points, and (this is important), balance the game around that? So, goals: 1.) Remove the boredom of powerleveling from the "skilled" players' games. 2.) Mitigate the gap in soldier competence between the games of those who powerlevel and those who don't. Assume that casualty rates are identical in both cases. Suggestions: As always in my suggestion sections, I don't necessarily think all of these suggestions are good, and I definitely don't think they all should be included. I'm just coming up with ideas, some are bound to be good, some are bound to be bad. 1.) Rework all skills so they're gained on harder-to-powerlevel things. For example, changing accuracy from "shots taken within range" to "shots hit" or "damage dealt with bullets." 2.) Institute squad-based skill gains. I mentioned this idea much earlier in a thread about how to rework the strength system specifically. The idea is to have a centrally-set "skill points per soldier per mission" value that the game is balanced around you earning. Then, individual soldiers are rated in the mission and gain skill points based on their relative usefulness in the mission. So if the game was based around you getting 4 skill points per soldier per mission, and you had 5 soldiers survive a mission, they'd all be ranked. The best soldier (no matter how good or bad he did in absolute terms) would get 6 skill points in various attributes, the one who came second would get five, etc. etc. down to the very worst soldier who'd get a single skill point. On average, you'd always get 4 points/soldier/mission. 3.) Simply lower skill requirements/institute a flat skill rate. I don't like this idea, but I include it because this idea is ESSENTIALLY the current game state for people who powerlevel. My soldiers get 2 accuracy, 2 TUs, and 2 strength (and possibly a reflex) per mission, and therefore they get 1.5 resilience as well. Unless I mess up. Switching to this system would be only a benefit for powerlevelers, because they get the same game without the wasted time. The only people actually affected then would be those not trying to powerlevel, and their soldiers would be raised to the same standard that some people already reach. Subsection: Stupid things I do to powerlevel I'm going to list here the stupid actions I take to powerlevel my troops. This only includes things I do that are actually stupid, as opposed to tactically beneficial that ALSO happen to powerlevel troops. If you guys have any stories of similar tricks, feel free to suggest them. Accuracy: Have as many troops as possible shoot wildly inaccurate 20 TU shots at an alien in cover. I don't care if I hit. Just shoot more bullets. TUs: As I mentioned above, spending entire turns having my force do nothing but squat-thrusts. Strength: Yeah, I know you guys won't be firing off 200 bullets and throwing 15 grenades in this mission. Take the extra kit anyway. Reflexes: This one isn't mine, it's someone elses, but they were discussing cornering Sebillians (with their short sight range) and having pistol-wielding troops take reaction shots each time they moved from 14-18 tiles away.
  16. I think there is a way to avoid "calisthenics". And they should be avoided. Shooting at walls or doing ridiculous things like "spend 600 AP when loaded to 80%+ weight" should not generate XP/training. No more Bethesda-style Master of Running! I had posted something like that before but it was only a tweak to another system. This here is a complete concept so I put it in a new thread. Any and all XP gains are tied to "hurting an alien". You can't cheese the system and train indefinitely because you run out of aliens. The XP that an alien "contains" is limited and independent from the alien's hit points! This XP pool can be used up before the alien is dead. You can suppress an alien all day long but that's not going to result in training all day long. XP is absolutely limited to the amount of aliens in the area. No alien? Go home. You're done here. More dangerous aliens have a larger XP pool. = another useful balancing tool because you have a way to balance total XP gain! The total amount of "training" that a soldier receives from an action is directly proportional to the percentage of the target's max hit points that the attack subtracts. Hitting an alien tank for 20% of it's damage would be worth 20% of the alien's XP pool. With a very dangerous alien you get more XP for the same action because it has a bigger XP pool. Suppression or stun damage could also generate XP. This XP is all taken from the same pool. If a "heavy" does nothing but suppress lots of aliens without ever damaging one, he has still contributed. He gets XP for that. If you shoot a rocket at a wall, that's the same thing as doing it on a shooting range. No alien hurt. No mission XP. You can also de-couple the XP reward from success at an action. This way a raw recruit shooting at an alien 3 times can get the same result as the veteran hitting the alien 3 times. Instead of the above "XP generation" method, the base chance to hit is calculated. (not dependent on soldier skill!) A low probability shot is worth low XP percentage. The weapon's average damage (minus target's mitigation) multiplies that. The soldier gets rewarded with XP equivalent to the damage that he will probably do. Since these "average XP" can mean that the alien is killed before all it's XP have been "used up", the killing / stunning shot always awards any remaining XP that the alien may have. As described above, lower ranks get an XP bonus so they advance faster. On average you get the exact same result as with 4. The difference is that it is only required to perform the action - not to actually be successful at it. Weapons have an XP modifier. A weapon with a higher modifier "generates" more XP per damage done. With a sniper rifle you are going to cause damage directly. Modifier = 1. With a machine gun you are more likely to lay down suppressive fire, hitting less often. Modifier = 2 If a lucky 21% hit from a MG eats up 42% of the alien's XP pool, the sniper can only "gain" XP equivalent to the remaining 58% XP, even if the alien has 79% of it's hit points left. This models the fact that a 100% suppressed alien is not very dangerous. Your sniper has an easy and safe job - more like on the firing range. This (5.) is just an option. It could be dropped completely if suppression/stun damage also count as XP-worthy events. [*] What kind of stats are being trained depends on the weapon used. Some examples... Grenade XP Modifier = 1 (but can hurt multiple targets...) 35% Strength 20% hidden stat for extra throwing range / accuracy 20% HP 25% AP [*] Sniper Rifle XP Modifier = 1 50% Accuracy 20% Reflexes 30% AP [*] Shotgun XP Modifier = 1.5 30% AP 25% Reflexes 25% Accuracy 20% HP [*] Machine Gun XP Modifier = 1.8 40% Strength 20% Accuracy 20% AP 20% Reflexes Every weapon would train all stats to differing degrees. I only listed some key points to illustrate the concept. Stat training is job specific and scales with how much a soldier contributes. Getting shot in the head does not make you tougher! One spin-off of this would be to assign a different training distribution to different fire modes of a weapon. An assault rifle using aimed shots would shift the points a bit from strength towards accuracy. [*] New recruits. The FNG could not contribute a lot - especially in an advanced game with much more dangerous aliens. Since he can't hurt them a lot, he would not gain a lot of XP. Ranks would have XP modifiers. A recruit gains a "training effect bonus" after the XP has been deducted from the alien's XP pool. In the early game this is balanced by "easy aliens" having a small XP pool. Progression is normal. In the later game, a recruit doing some damage to a high-XP target will get a disproportionally large training effect and so be able to somewhat catch up to the rest of the team. [*] Calculation of post-mission stat increases. Every soldier has now received 6 (more in case of hidden stats?) different kinds of "training points", relating to the different character stats. For each stat there are two successive random rolls against this stat's training points to determine how many actual stat points you get out of this. After the first roll, 100 are deducted from this stat's training points. A weapon's "minor stats" have basically no chance to gain 2 points - no matter how much you reload. You can still weigh these rolls with the stat number if you want. That's just math. The rank-based XP bonus / reduction (7.) would already take care of most of that. [*] Promotions Promotions are based entirely on the total stat points of a soldier. Stat increases are contribution-based so promotions are in turn contribution-based. The distribution of initial stat points is random. If you can hire "experienced" recruits later in the game, these will have the rank that corresponds to their stat point total. (basically like it works now) Promotions have a negative effect on "skill training" (no bonus, see 7.)... but a positive effect on morale. The aliens will make sure you're going to fight more dangerous aliens so the malus to skill training will be taken care of. You want promotions for the morale increase. [*] The actual calculations are all simple and occur at exactly one point in the code - when damage of any kind is done. Well, and obviously with the mission debriefing.
  17. There, I typed it. Now I realize the point of this excercise is to haul the spirit of UFO into the new millenium, but if there's one particular piece of the old game that could use redoing it's that. As is, it's rewarding the player for engaging in illogical, monotonous tasks. Examples would having the team members run circles out of sight of the enemy in order to gain AP, or adding additional never-to-be-used grenades to their backpacks in between every other mission to build strength. It's not to the point of gifting handguns to the Aliens and having them train reflexes for you, but only because knocking Aliens unconscious hasn't been implemented yet. This is not good game design, nor does it make sense from a flavor point of view. Worse, it's tedious. It replaces time spent not actually playing the game in any meaningful sense of the word with in-game stat increases. It takes time and focus away from what should be the core of gameplay - tactical combat - and replaces it with what, +2 strength? Please reimagine. Even something simple like random skill advancement would be a gigantic leap upwards from this. Hell, scrap skill advancement outside of Morale/Nerve altogether and it would be a step up. Kinda like they did with the olde Rainbow Six games -you had a rooster of guys/gals with different skillsets, some obviously superior to others and thus had an incentive to keep the better dudes alive (and having to make do with inferior replacements should they become wounded/KIA). EDIT: Basically, talking about this and why it detracts from the game.
  18. Just wondering if it´s possible, at this stage of development, to add things like adrenalin shots, some pills, etc... that would make the character temporarily stronger, focused, fearless, etc... This would come in handy at the beginning of the game, where the characters are weak. Of course they would cause some kind of penalty after the effect wears off.
  19. There as been some complaints about how fast a soldier's skill increase in the projected 50-60 missions/6 months invasion timeline. Chris has said he would think about balancing the strength gains in particular, in future builds. Now for the rest, i'm not at all sure what i propose will be fun, and or feasible given the short game duration, but here goes... food for though BTW I'm pretty cool with the way things are now, but to liven the salad a bit.. let me dive down into that, PREAMBLE: 1) Soldiers start as rookies because even if they are at the top of their games on Earth's batlefields they are new to the threat of the ET threat of invasion with grim consequences to human kind if the war goes pear shaped. So they start out scared if you will, to be simple. Conversely once they get their confidence back, they should be at the top of their game. 2) To play ironman we should have rapidly progressing rookie force to aliment the veteran fighting pools, yet curtail rapid gains when soldiers becomes an elites. GAMEPLAY MECHANICS 1) Soldiers' COURAGE could be a yard stick to measure his potential for skill gains. 1b) Courage is a soldier's resistance against loosing willpower. 1c) The more a soldier's willpower is tested in battle, the faster he gains. Why? just because as a mechanic NO RISK NO GAINS. 1d) If a soldier PANICS he will gain no skill for the remainder of the battle, i.e. Shellshocked. 2) As a soldier completes ground battles, his Courage increase over time. 2b) As a soldier's Courage increase, his post-missions skill gains start to decrease. DEFINITION OF RISK 1) Getting shot at. 2) Getting close to enemies. 3) Anything that lowers the soldier's MORAL, and conversely increases moral like the RANK of your soldiers. CONCLUSION The overall tendency for your forces would be; Rookies because of their low starting COURAGE, will naturally skill up faster Vets because of their high COURAGE, will naturally see a tapering of their skill gains, coinciding with their CAP. All that said I would love to see random GIFTED soldiers that don't taper their progression gains despite having high courage. So the end result should be that the more you put your soldiers in danger, the more they will skill up faster, i.e. NO RISK NO GAINS. Also going out with you same 12 top rank Commanders since idk the whole game will probably be tougher for the final mission, than if you started out with a much larger pool and picked the best 12 from the lot at the end.
  20. So, I have finally bought the game on steam. I couldn't resist. And I must say, so far it's fantastic! Brings back so many memories. Still. I have some questions. 1. I have noticed that all the characters gets a stat increase after each mission. Those who survive at least. But I'm wondering, is it possible to see those stat increases anywere on the geoscape / base menu? 2. You can only have 8 soldiers on the ship. But I'm wondering why? It looks like there is enough room on the ship. I don't have a tank, so I should be able to cram in some more soldiers right? Is this hardcoded in some way? I had some more questions, but I have been drinking.. so I forgot them
  21. Is it based on how many kills they have? Rank? missions they have been on? A combination of all that. I really want to up the time units my warriors have to use and have no idea how to do it
  22. Loving the game so far, definitely glad I bought it, feels like original Xcom in so many ways and loving the new additions in gameplay etc. One quick question though.. what does the Resilience stat do exactly? Does it affect rate of morale loss or something?
  23. I just purchased the game on Steam. I'm sure I will have more improvement advice in the near future. On the post-battle screen: - Instead of it just stating what the soldiers' ranks are I would prefer to see some kind of symbol or upward arrow next to each person's rank that got promoted. - Also, instead of it just stating what their character attributes are I would prefer to see it indicate exactly what increment each attribute went up by. Example: Accuracy 55 (+5)
  24. I've been playing with the latest Xenonauts build a bit and while it's still got a long way to go to be really playable, in most cases I'm pretty confident that missing/bad stuff has already been considered and is in progress. However, I'm not sure whether the way stats are represented now are a placeholder or actually the real intended deal, so here's a thread about it. One of the things X-Com did really well was showing Soldier Stats. The stats viewer, showing one soldier at a time, made really good use of colour and graphical representation over plain text to differentiate the different fields well and look pretty to boot. It's a delicious rainbow of information With stats, for the full picture of a trooper, you're not just looking at a single stat, you're trying to see all of them at once, comparing one to another rapidly (he has good strength, but how is his accuracy, because if he has both I could make him a heavy weapon gunner). Having things represented so clearly and in such a well-defined manner allows quick comprehension of not only single stats, but also of multiple stats as once as we quickly remember which bar means what thanks to colour/average size/position so we can comprehend multiple things at once. With the above picture, you can look at the trooper's stats and work out what kind of skillset he has in seconds. You'll also notice that at the end of the bar, different shades are implemented to further differentiate parts of the bar, letting you see how much of that trooper's stat was with him at his recruitment and how much of that is his progress throughout missions, which is a touch I love and something very central to the fun in keeping your soldiers alive and seeing them improve. I feel this is something really lacking in the current stats representation in Xenonauts. I understand the decision for a low-key, uniform visual style that depends on official looking font and a very unified colour-scheme, but when it comes to Stats, I really suffer for it. Everything being the same colour and only represented by a number makes it next to impossible to comprehend more than one stat at once, and even that single-element comprehension is harder; its more of a strain to focus your eyes in to seperate the particular stat you want out of the same-coloured muddiness. LOST: MY STATS - $500 REWARD When I look at the picture above, I can't understand the trooper's stats quickly at all. There is no way to see his stats at a glance because everything is represented only in absolute numbers, not graphically. I have to constantly dart my eyes left and right - left to see the stat I want, then right to see the number of that stat. I have to then keep that number firmly in my mind for any kind of comparison: there's no easy way to glance back at that number that I need for the comparison I'm making, because it all blends in again as soon as you stop focusing and it takes you a second or two to narrow in on what you need again. This ends up in a train of thought for me that goes something like "okay, he has 56 strength... accuracyyyy.... uh.. there, 59... where's AP... damnit, I forgot his strength, I need to find that again". Additionally, on a purely visual level, I personally feel its a lot less fun to look at than the multi-coloured prettiness that is the X-Com graph, but that's just my opinion. My eyes hurt There was no multi-soldier stat screen in X-Com so I can't really make a direct comparison here, but I don't really need to; it suffers from the same problems as the single-soldier stat page - everything is the same colour, it's all plain numbers, it feels like I have to play Magic Letter Puzzle to hunt down a single stat let alone compare them to each other in short order. Find Strength, Accuracy, AP, and Bravery, then find each of them again for comparison to each other, and you're not allowed to mark them when you find them either so I hope you like finding them again The multi-soldier one is naturally going to be harder to find things in than the single-soldier view because there's more information, but I still believe the stuff that can be used to fix the single-view will also do wonders for the multi-view. I really like where Xenonauts is going, I just want to make sure that things like this will be up to scratch, so this thread is my bit for making sure that happens. Of course having a poor representation of the stats will not ruin the whole game, but understanding the skills and capabilities of your troops and using that information to equip them as well as possible is a huge part of this kind of game, and increasing the time and effort it takes to do that is going to take a lot of the fun out of that, not to mention making it a big time sink.
  25. Hello everyone, Xenonauts uses a very traditional stat system, where agents take damage and heal up to full health over time, as well as being able to gain stats (bravery, APs, etc.) through battle experience/promotions. I'd like to offer a suggestion on stats that very few games seem to use, which in my eyes, would offer a more realistic and flavorful approach. It would be nice to hear everyone's thoughts! Health: New soldiers start out with higher health, e.g. 80-100 compared to the ~60 that current soldiers start with. However, with each successive injury, the soldier's max health decreases. The uglier the injury, the more max health is deducted. These deductions are permanent. Injuries may be adjusted to have a higher chance of causing bleeding, and consequently must be treated sooner on the battlefield. If a soldier is left to bleed, his overall max health will decrease further than if the injury was immediately treated. This places a higher emphasis on medics and keeping your soldiers safe, especially your more accurate/higher ranking soldiers. This will also encourage more tactical use of snipers, flashbangs, reactionary fire and suppression. Slight health increases may still occur, and your max health can increase past the baseline provided your soldier never gets hurt or suffers rare, minor injuries. However for the most part, soldiers will end up with less and less max health over the course of his/her career. This is more realistic, as "fresh meat" soldiers with little to no combat experience are as healthy as they may ever be, before they lose an arm and a leg in battle. Action Points / Strength: Similar to health, soldiers will start out with more action points and strength than usual, however injuries will deduct points, simulating limb injuries. You can't exactly run as fast as you used to after taking a plasma shot to the knee, nor can you lift as much weight as before. Of course, this may not sound fun, as soldiers are inevitably going to get hurt in this game, and strength is needed to make effective use of heavier weaponry. So, I propose a new mechanic to offset this: Physical Therapy. We can send new recruits to training, preventing us from using the soldier for 10 days, however they come back a better soldier. Similarly, we can send injured soldiers to PT, which would increase the rate at which they recover, as well as giving them a better chance of recovering more of their lost max health/strength/action points. However, we lose control of the soldier (like training) for a certain number of days, depending on the severity of the injury. Wounded soldiers, however, are nursed back to an "injured" state, after which they can either be used in battle again, or sent to PT. A wounded soldier implies a severe injury, while an injured soldier implies a minor injury. Therefore, wounded soldiers suffer more unrecoverable stat decreases. Tactically, you wouldn't want soldiers falling below half health, as that would trigger a wounded state. Perhaps medkits can be used to nurse a soldier back up to 50%+ health, preventing a wounded state on mission end (and therefore less stat decreases). However, I can see this sort of being a problem when fighting the last alien. A soldier fires at an alien, triggers reactionary fire and suffers a critical injury. Meanwhile, another soldier delivers the killing blow and the mission ends, whereas if there were another alien alive, the critically wounded soldier would have had a chance for medical attention from another soldier. This can be refined. Perhaps the lowest point of health suffered in battle is used to determine the significance of stat decreases, while using medkits in the field determines how fast a soldier is nursed back to 100% health. Soldiers that are tended to immediately will spend less time in the medical bay. Soldiers that are still bleeding or have unrecovered health when the battle ends are nursed on the ride back. It would be as if they were tended to immediately. This would favor the players who spend all their APs on killing (what they think is) the last alien instead of medkitting. Bravery: Bravery's a strange stat. Some soldiers may grow scared over the course of many battles, as they rack up injuries and see their fellow comrades die. Their PTSD may cause them to panic the moment gunfire starts erupting. Others may become more brave, from becoming numb/unafraid of death, seeking revenge, and/or accepting the fact that sacrifice is sometimes necessary to win this war. Personally, I would like to see bravery increase with every successive battle that the soldier completes unscathed or with only minor injuries. Bravery would also have a chance of decreasing when the soldier gets critically injured or a fellow soldier dies within sight. The lower the soldier's rank, the higher the chance/decrease. IMO, it's realistic for soldiers with little combat experience to have a lower starting bravery than soldiers with previous combat experience. Additionally, the enemies we are fighting are never-before-seen aliens with super advanced technology. Even the most battle hardened Vietnam veterans would be a little overwhelmed at the sight, at least at first. So, baseline bravery remains unchanged for the most part. However... Some soldiers are truly braver than others, while others are only brave because their friends are still alive. This can be done through a hidden, "True Bravery" stat. A soldier with high "True Bravery" would have a lower chance of losing bravery stats. He/she may even GAIN them when seeing fellow soldiers die (as they set out for revenge). The bravery stat that we see will be the "Current Bravery" of the soldier. We do not know how truly brave the soldier is until he is battle tested. "True Bravery" can also increase as the soldier is promoted, with the thought process: "There are soldiers depending on me. I must be fearless." To compensate however, soldiers gain bravery at a much faster rate (especially so if they complete missions unscathed), as they get used to fighting these new adversaries. Also, while a soldier can bravery points from being in unfortunate situations and/or having a low "True Bravery" stat, their bravery can be nursed back up if you keep them away from from seeing friendly deaths and out of harm's way. In this way, bravery is sort of an extension of Morale. Keep a soldier's morale high, and his/her bravery will increase quite quickly. Put a soldier in unfortunate situations and his/her bravery takes a dive. Perhaps only a temporary dive if you are a careful/caring commander. I haven't read up on how rank affects combat morale yet, but promotions seem to be handed out like candy in the current versions of the game. It would be nice to have promotions occur less often or be capped (such as having only 1 Commander, 2 Captains, 3 Lieutenants, etc. per base or # of soldiers), but be more meaningful. Perhaps they more significantly increase the bravery (and thus accuracy) of soldiers around them. Morale would take a significant hit if a high ranking officer is killed. I've never been in a war myself, so I would like to hear others' thoughts on this. Accuracy: While having soldiers with low starting accuracy and having them increase with experience is the traditional way to go in many games, I propose a different approach. Aliens are invading Earth, thus the soldiers we employ should be the best of the best. A soldier's base accuracy would be a lot higher implying that the soldiers we are recruiting are some of the best sharpshooters that Earth has to offer. Accuracy would signify how well a soldier can hit still targets in a controlled environment. Accuracy gains would be minimal and small to signify weapon familiarity, instead of actual accuracy increases. Perhaps accuracy could be linked to specific weapon types, such as Sniper Rifle or Shotgun. Many real soldiers probably have a certain weapon type that they prefer. You can add a small boost in accuracy if the soldier is using his/her preferred weapon type. Enough with the rambling: the new catch is that bravery plays a much bigger role in determining a soldier's chance to hit. A soldier with low bravery would spray and pray more than a battle hardened soldier would, thus having a lower accuracy rating. A braver soldier would get more use out of his/her accuracy rating, as he takes more time to line up the shot as opposed to worrying about staying in cover. With this change, you'd favor hiring soldiers with high accuracy ratings (if you didn't already), and hope that their bravery increases to the point of being an effective soldier that patiently lines up their sights. Bravery can be seen like a "confidence" stat. Gameplay-wise, new recruits would still have lower chance to hit in the beginning. Bravery increases are not guaranteed, so some soldiers may never reach their potential, moreso if they keep getting hurt. However, keep your high-accuracy soldiers unscathed and they will do great things for you. That does not mean low-accuracy soldiers are useless. They can be used on the front lines, equipped with heavy armor, or given machine guns to lay down suppression fire. Moreover, there could be an accuracy floor (e.g. 60), because we simply do not even consider soldiers who cannot consistently hit a still target 15-yards away. Alternatively, you can have newly recruited low-accuracy soldiers increase their accuracy quite a bit with weapon familiarity training. Reflexes: Reflexes seems like a stat that could increase with every injury, at least for balance's sake. Then, at least your low-max-health soldiers could have a higher chance of defending themselves from death. It's also a bit realistic that a soldier who's constantly getting hurt will grow paranoid over time, developing faster reflexes. Of course, reflexes can still be gained normally through combat experience, injury or not. Baseline reflexes remain unchanged. Another twist that can possibly be added is to have bravery affect your reflexes as well. A low-bravery soldier may at times be a bit trigger happy and kill a civilian, as he misidentifies the target in the heat of battle. Difficulty Curve I read from the difficulty curve thread that Chris wants to increase the baseline stats of recruits over the course of the game. If soldiers start out with higher baseline stats than usual, consider reducing the recruiting costs of soldiers over the course of the game. Then you'd have more and more soldiers (with high baseline stats) as you suffer losses. The cheaper recruiting costs signifies the increasing alien threat, as more and more soldiers are willing to put their lives on the line for the survival of mankind. Summary: - Strength, health and APs start high but decrease as soldiers sustain injuries. - Reflexes start at baseline but increase at faster rates. - Accuracy doesn't improve too much. Instead, bravery becomes the pivotal factor in determining chance to hit. A brave soldier with low accuracy still wouldn't hit things very well, nor would a scared soldier with high accuracy. - Bravery fluctuates much more easily, significantly increasing or decreasing during times of high/low morale. Lots of wounded and deaths will drop overall bravery, while unscathed soldiers will increase overall bravery. - Wounded/injured soldiers can do Physical Therapy to recover some of their lost stats. - High-ranking officers play a much bigger role, due to Bravery being a key stat. Other suggestions: - Would be nice to see technologies related to these changes, such as improved medical bays (early game), stem cell research and/or synthetic body parts (late game) - It would be nice to see a "preferred weapon type" for soldiers, such as Rifle / Sniper Rifle / Shotgun / etc. which give bonus accuracy when using the preferred weapon. This is to help offset the minimal accuracy gains over the course of the soldier's career. - For balance, you can implement stat floors, where no more deductions can occur. I hope to hear what you guys have to say. Even if all this isn't fully implemented in vanilla, it might give modders some ideas. It's quite a wall of text, so thanks to anyone for taking the time!
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