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The forumites on this board are a creative and inventive lot. The suggestions forum alone has 25 pages of suggestions, quite a bit of which loops, but all the same people are always thinking new ways which the game experience for them might be improved. However, many ideas are left at the side of the road, for one reason or another. I think when coming up with ideas, we need to put ourselves in the headspace of the lead developer and come up with some What Would Chris Do? rules to help shape the creative process. Having observed his behaviour on the boards, I have come up with some simple rules. 1) Will it cost money? The more artwork, the more props, the more coding that has to go into a suggestion, the more it will cost, and the less likely it will be put in. 2) Will it be a bugger to balance? A lot of ideas look great on the surface, but if there are ways to exploit the idea that will imbalance the game without a lot of hard work fixing it, then it isn’t so attractive. 3) Was it in the original X-Com? Xenonauts is billed as a “spiritual successor” to X-Com. When the harpies descend on Xenonauts at release, they will pick over every bone and squawk when something that was in X-Com doesn’t appear in Xenonauts. 4) Will it take a long time to implement? This game has been Chris’ life for a long time now. If a suggestion will take forever to implement, then it’d have to be pretty spectacular to do! 5) Will it detract from existing game elements? A good example of this is the idea for long-range SAM batteries. If SAM batteries were implemented, it reduces the need for interceptors, which are an integral part of the game.