Search the Community

THIS WORKS WITH: v20 Stable and v21 Experimental 1 (TEXT EDITED SINCE COMPLETION) “How can I tell what's an officer and what isn't?”, said a_beorning, several months ago. “We need a guide to the classes!”. “What a good idea”, thought I. “Too bad Chris probably doesn't have the time or the money to do that! But wait! Am I not a person with both time and money? To the Batmobile!”. I slunk back to the Batcave and put my master plan into action. Enlisting the able artistic aid of Boy Wonder a333, we have completed a pictorial guide to the various alien classes in the game, for each race. Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the Alien Class Analysis mod! Also known as the classmod, it's a series of Xenopedia articles (art by a333, words by me) which are gradually triggered as the game progresses. Like autopsies, they require no time to research and appear automatically once the specific research requirements for the article have been met. They're designed so you can install them at almost any point in game and they should kick in without having to worry about previous research topics. That's because the particular research prequisite for each article is the corpse of a commonly available alien. Unfortunately, this mod doesn't work with the mod tools in the launcher. If you want to run it, you will have to unzip it and install the files over the existing Xenonauts files. This may cause you problems if you already have mods active, as you will overwrite: strings.xml researches.xml xenopedia.xml So please be careful! If you do have other mods, it would be best if you did a Diff (there are some good diff tools online) and copied over what you need to copy from one file to the other. (Hopefully Giovanni will fix the modding tools!). Here's the classmod itself. It's not very big, so enjoy! v20 stable and v21 Experimental 1 -------------------- Here are all the teaser images displayed throughout the thread for your convience. EDIT: Images have now been spoilered so people who want to enjoy the game without images can do so. EDIT 2: Teasers have been replaced with the new images. Old images available on request. Early-era. Tier-1 weapons/equipment (small UFOs) Mid-era. Tier 2-3 weapons/equipment (medium UFOs) End-era. Tier 3-4 weapons/equipment (large UFOs)

Some strange aliens I made. http://rghost.ru/42260673

Warning: Spoilers may follow. I've just been looking in the files after hearing about these images now going into the game. I have to say I really like them. Some look different than I thought they would, but that's not a bad thing. Caesan: First, I LOVE it. It looks way more menacing than I thought it would. Its uniform is also very fitting for it. It's very tight, shows off some muscle, while also giving the impression of futuristic syfy armor. Other than some minor details, it basicly looks how I pictured it. Harridan: Its bodysuit and armor looks pretty good, but my favorite part is the arms. They look amazing! My only thing might be the size of the helmet, but since I know it's a space engineer and sniper I understand that it would be pretty big due to having to contain all of the electronics. Reaper: I like how it's in the middle of moving and looks as if it's trying to break out of containment. That's a very good look for it. It also looks pretty scary. Sebillian: I think you really managed to capture the look of a frontline, heavy (organic) combat unit with the way it looks like it's wearing metal plate armor and with the thick scales underneath. You can tell it's a lizard, but you can also tell it's from space. The only thing I see that is kindof weird is its head, mainly its size. It just seems a little too big for its body, although that may just be the size of its eyes. With all that being said, I do like it. When I look at the picture too long it starts to creep me out. I wouldn't want to fight them. It also look pretty strong, another reason why I wouldn't want to run into one of them in the middle of combat. Wraith: They look very good. They really give me the impression of a sneaky alien. It looks like it'd be fast and agile and that the inclusion of the ability to teleport just adds an extra level of lethality to an already deadly creature. I like how the armor also looks grafted to its body and the cool design of the main chestplate. The head has to be my favorite part of this alien. It looks as though it's very creaturish, but also semi-sentient. I think the sharp claws were a nice touch. I also think it looks good without the giant thing on the top of its head. To be honest, I somehow managed to miss the top of the head the first time. It took me a second look to notice the bandages on the top of its head. I do think that is a nice touch. I'm also impressed that you could also make me feel (kindof) bad for one of the aliens. I just imagine that some dude in a lab coat just holding a knife and going to town on the sides of its head. All in all, I really like the look of the analysises. I do wish there was one for some of the other aliens like the Andron and the Preator. What do you think? Note: I have not reach this point in this current build so I haven't read any of the discriptions. If anybody wants to share them, feel free. I'd love to read them.

Right now the ufos seems a bit like religious schools. you have girl or boys but not both in aliens ships. I don t think Sibillians eating greys or whatever mix would be problematic lorewise, they are all mind controled. It would add flavor and surprises. Well as long each race got diferent AI maybe.

I want to make my game have ALL repears for a mod i'm making. Kinda like an aliens thing, but I just want only Repears to show. All the time. How do I define what enemies get shown, and how many per geoscape mission or whatever. It'd be nice to have them spawn with a few humans civs on the same ship too, but thats what I want. anyone?

I was always keen to see that each of the alien races would have something meaningful to contribute to the R&D of the game. This is partly to eliminate any superfluous research, but also to show that humanity was using the alien biology and culture. Looking at the autopies/ vivisections in assets (and please correct anything that now appears automatically out with researches, so this is a bit off the cuff) there' seem to be a few that don't really add that much. SPOILER SPACE FOR PEOPLE WHO DON'T WANT TO KNOW THE RACE NAMES/ RESEARCH TOPICS Caesian Their autopsy leads into Alien Biology and hence stun weapons. Their vivisection simply gives a bonus against them. So both counter measures.Having the Caesian Psion lead into some human psionics, if only defensive measures. Sebillian As per Caesian, they lead into Stun Weapons, but their vivisection will also provide you with the updated Medikit, so this is a good example of what would be nice to see elsewhere. Andron In 19.4 this doesn't seem to go anywhere? I would have thought it would lead into flexible armours (Wolf) or into Alien Electronics (which I see it did back in v18) Harridan A clear link into the Buzzard suit is there. I'd have thought that this would have been a prerequisite, rather than just an option along with any of the drones. Some sort of sniper rifle accuracy bonus may be a nice addition. Wraith - feeds back into the alien biology you'll probably already have by the time you meet them. I suppose a teleportation unit is out of the question. Ummmmm... some sort of 1 turn camouflage? A stasis grenade that blocks teleportation in it's range? Praetor - Something psionics related, if only defensively would seem to be in order. Reaper - In the spirit of invulnerable aircraft, research here could create greyed out zombie soldiers of your favourite Xenonauts. They would have a HP allocation much like an assault shield. Failing that, some sort of Medikit enhancement. Drones - Drones seem to lead into the buzzard. I'd have thought one at least (Medium or Heavy) into a hovertank. An Xenonaut drone was always on the wish list though. So a few thoughts, although the aliens , for me, should always have the edge.

Heya all, i've been extensively playing beta since the steam pre-launch and i'm enjoying the game so far since i'm a big fan of the original x-com. Unfortunately i think the game it's a little too "dull" and lacks a little imagination. Not on its mechanics wich seems realy good, but in the design. For example the aliens are somewhat boring and don't apeal to a sense of mistery or terror. For example the "sectoids" are a very powerfull and iconic 1st alien that realy reminds people who play the original X-Com of the aliens that we know from RL movies and pictures, so we imidiately "relate" somewhat between the game and RL pictures. That is but a simple thing that draws us into the original X-com from the first mission. Unfortunately on Xenonauts the first races are not as good. Sectoids-look-alike are too similar to humans with a jacket and the lizards are just not very convincing. Also the game could use an intro that explains the iceland incident story. I did read about it but i'm pretty sure most people buying the game won't bother to do it. Also something that explain a little better what is the xenonauts. This is basicaly my main complain about the game, the lack of "character" of the alien races especialy the most iconic ones from the beggining. It doesnt realy make us feel we are fighting a force that is menacing and we can associate with RL fear and curiosity. We are just thrown into a geoscape, build stuff, intercept a craft and then when we see an alien its just "meh... was that an alien?" in X-com i was like "omg thats a grey one, i want to kill him and perform tests in him!", i am not as curious and drawn-in with mystery in xenonauts as i was with x-com EU (and even firaxis xcom wich is a much worse game for me than the original). Ofc i have to leave a few good words because the game realy is cool in many other aspects like the music that brilliantly creates a good vibe for the ground missions. Also the artstyle is realy cool and detailed, love it. I understand that a lot of the menus on the geoscape are still placeholders but they could have a major overhaul since they are mostly text inside rectangles only but i do love the artstyle of the hidden movement screen (for example). Sorry for my bad english.

Yo yo yo yo yo. How even does one pronounce "Caesan"? Is it like "See-zan" or maybe "Kai-zan" or even "Season"? Like, what're we talking about here, Chris?

Xeno squad on ground mission. They see an alien. Caesan, for example. Kill him? Or capture to interrogate? Maybe its officer? Xenopedia said "...they were identifiable by their headgear" Somehow my soldiers know how to distinguish caesan soldier from caesan officer - after mission they report how many soldiers and how many officers they killed. I want this secret knowledge too! And not after battle but in battle, when I must decide an order. How to do? a) IMHO, easier and more like old good first XCom: when I target an alien, game shows not only hit probability, but alien type too. b) harder but more stylish: "Soldier's pocketbook" with pictures of known alien types/ranks. Something like WW2-time pocketbooks with silhouetes of allied and enemy's planes and ships to know whom to shot. Shown only types and ranks you already met in battle. Available in battle, or at least as a sub-section of Xenopedia. с) print this pictures in game manual. Possible, but too old-styled even for XCom remake. Now I just switch to another window and see pictures in assets/units/alien/... , but I don't think its a normal way. And moreover, if I get it right, all those files will be hidden in game release.

Do you guys plan to have silacoids in the game?

I just wanted to ask you forumers what your favorite alien groups are. Mine are as follows: (see if you can guess where they're from) The Regents The Blaa Micronoid Aggregate House of Dar Martians Appoplexian Cybertronian Arachnid Predators The Thing An iith proably unguessable one: ID4 Aliens

Besides the grey men and the lizardfolk, are there any other alien species in this game? I'm not talking about announced specific names, I just wonder if there is a casual mention by the creator of the game talking about, roughly, how many species are in this game. Two? Five? Ten? Unknown?

-I'd have just deleted this thread and its posts but this forum does not allow one to delete threads-

Hi everybody, hi every body do we know if here are going to be 2 species working together on whathaveyou Because all i have seen are cesian craft, and sebilion craft. EDIT: ummm i mean that will there ever be 2 types of aliens on teh same ship?

Hello this is my first post on the site so be gentle, also had a quick look and didn't see any similar recent forums. So in Xcom there was a pretty fair amount of enemy diversity, but overall besides the three basic alien types (melee, ranged and psychic) you rarely needed to switch up tactics to repel a change in opponent. Given the trouble making different species it makes sense to make battling each enemy type feel very different. Here are a few ideas I blearily came up with while my mind wandered, im pretty certain you can all come up with better stuff. The Carrion Reaper: Goes after corpses to inject larvae rather than living things. Gives the ability to stuff corpses into your backpack for relocation more weight and turns something so seemingly simple as a corpse into an enemy asset needed to be captured. When not engaging in legitimized necrophilia it'll attack humans as fast as a regular Reaper/Chrysallid yet perhaps not quite as deadly. Defending corpses would be paramount to avoid being overwhelmed, anybody you don't want endangered could be made to haul bodies from danger zones. Invisible melee enemies: A Xenonaut is able to see it only when it becomes close, lets say 5 squares. This means hording action points for reaction fire and closely guarding eachother's back's is a much safer formation when you know one is lurking about. Combine this with a long ranged troop and the player must make careful decisions about positioning and line of sight. Looking down a street and seeing nothing might be reassuring, or worrying if you suspect these things are about. Crawlers: Climbs up walls, or perhaps its an alien fungal that grows on walls. Either way shoots from above with sticky biological stuff causing a unit to spend more action points when moving for the rest of that battle. Anyway its getting late please post more ideas for enemies! Oh and I also understand its probably too late in the development process to add anything big anyway but nevertheless...

As i remember Mutons, were build or re-engineered for battle, they were bad ass, also remember something to the fact they had armor grafted onto their skin. Ok stay with me, since these are soldiers why not make them a little bit more deadly by allowing them to blend into their surrounding, like giving them a chameleon type feature so that they coudl easily blend into all types of terrains, I know for the at dept this will create an issue, but if not too difficult i think it will ad just a little more tension, sicne they will be harder to spot. another of the $0.02 ( i know, i know i am running low now)

Have a suggestion for one of the mid-late game alien races. It doesn't matter too much aesthetically which race but I think it might an interesting mechanic to the game to differentiate this race over the others... Mechanics One of the Alien races has a plague or airborne disease. You don't know about this until your first encounter with the race. Perhaps this could be managed one of two ways, 1. Any soldier within 2-3 tiles of this alien, either alive or dead has a high chance of contracting an illness. This would mean that soldiers storming the alien ship will almost certainly contract it - while others may not. OR 2. Any soldier taking part in this mission without vaccination contracts the illness. Effects and Consequence Effects of the illness are not immediate and only discovered upon return to base. Infected soldiers are automatically sent to the medical bay to recover for some period of time. There is a reasonable chance that without a vaccine each soldier will die within 1-2 weeks (or some other game-balanced time). However, your scientist immediately come up with a program that can be researched to stabilise infected soldiers, which removes their chance of dying. This should be possible using only the initial research lab space (to avoid the unlikely chance of people auto-losing these soldiers because they don't have enough research capability). Future soldiers that take part in missions against these aliens and become infected only spend a few days (or some random amount of time) in the med-bay under quarantine and recovery. This means you are not under any danger, but you do have to consider that soldiers on missions against this race will likely be out for some time upon completion forcing you to rethink what balance of force you take on the mission. Counter After your first experience of this illness, you can complete a new research option for a vaccination. This will initially be a race against the clock as you may have one or more (potentially experienced) soldiers infected with a very high chance of dying. This might cause an interesting conundrum for players - do you switch all your scientists onto a vaccination or do you let your soldiers die and focus on researching the next super weapon. Obviously the idea needs some work but I thought it might add a little interesting variety as-well as a lore friendly "oh sh*t" moment in the middle of the game once you realise half your top soldiers are about to die unless you immediately switch your research priorities.

We know there are about 9-10 different alien types in the game, that each alien has their own discrete strengths and weaknesses (the Sebillian hardiness, the Andron ability to break through walls) and we know that each alien type has (depending on alien) 1-5 classes. This makes for variety within each alien type. However, will we see alien types mixing, perhaps in the mid-to-late game? I mean, this already happens in the terror mission with the terror drone, but will we see aliens mixing later on in the game?

Thank you for making, what looks like from the screenshots I've seen, a great strategy game in spirit of "X-Com: UFO Defense". Is there any current plan to include an alien race that behaves and perhaps looks similar to the Chryssalid or Tentaculat races in the X-Com series? They really brought a sense of terror to the "UFO Defense" and "Terror from the Deep". I just played a game of "UFO Defense" the other day where I got cocky and lost 6 soldiers to Chryssalids!

So I've heard that three alien species are in demo, sebilians, greys(forgot in game name) and androns. But I've played demo several times and I've never encountered them, even before time demo ends. Are they actually in game, if they are, does anyone have pics or autopsy text for them? Unless those small flying drone things are actually androns I have assumed that they are just drones since you can't capture them because they explode and because they are called "light drones" in one patch at temporary name. That and "Andron" sounds like android.

I noticed in some XML files that there are a bunch of other races, and would like to (modifying xml files) make a ground combat using them and posting videos on youtube. Is that posssible ATM (9.5.1)? Any problem ? (i guess only the Ceasarian and drone are working races)..

Hi, i am using the forums quite passively, i do remember chris saying that the basic alien will have about seven variations so they can scale as the game goes on. So i kind of wonder will they be substantially different(like having visually different armor) or will they be pallet swapped because pink deflect bullets better because of SCIENCE! I couldn't find anything on this by using the search function. So does anyone know? Just curious.

I am not sure how you are going to make the game AI to advance to harder ufos/aliens as the game goes on, but please, please try to make it smooth like it was in the original x-com. Some years ago I remeber playing a game an x-com remake (I forget the name) and there harder aliens were spawned after a certain research point. As I remember tier 2 or 3 aliens got on board as soon as laser rifle was researched and the game became insanely hard if you did not know it would happen and be prepeared. This also led to abuse of the engine since player could leave a certain action/research aside until (s)he felt ready for the next "tier" of aliens. It would be more realistic if harder/top level aliens would occasionally show up in the early stages of the game and even possibly force the player to evacuate all troops so not to get totally over-run. One memory from x-com was a night fight in the jungle againts a shot down terror ship full of ethereals and 2 sectopods. I had barely laser rifles and personal armour for my soldiers and those aliens gave me a run for my money...One of the rare occasions that I did actually evacuate and let that site disappear from the map. (I was never one to abuse save/load if things went south) Also weak aliens should sometimes show up at the later part of the game when you can sometimes just wipe the floor with them with all the high end weapons. I hope that made any sence...I am looking forward on this project!

Wouldn't it be cool if the developers showed us some concept art of an unnamed alien race and allowed us to submit names for that race? I think it would be pretty damn cool!

I have gone through the forums and seen lots of posts, many of you always seem to have some "insider" information about whats been decided to be in the final version. I was just wondering if there was a list somewhere, with the Items In, Items out, Items Planned, Items wanted. I only ask because I dont want to make 200 posts about I want this feature but its not in the current build, or is that going to be included. I have only been here coming up on a month now and have not been here to see and hear all that happened before that, no matter how much I scour these forums. lol. Thanks all.