Xenonauts - the game that left me wanting

[cgerrr]

@ Fucille

All your arguments can be balanced with numbers. Amount of work which would be needed is a whole other question though.

I’m agree with original poster: game is oversimplified in economy aspect and it’s detrimental for overall gameplay experience for me and the likes at least.

Edited July 1, 2014 by cgerrr

[Grotesque]

Bases already have limited enough space without needing multiple storehouses between the need for multiple workshops, labs, radar arrays, living quarters, several hangars, and usually at least a cryptology center or a garage here and there. The only time you'd have space to spare is when you're building a base just for a radar and planes to serve as an outpost, in which case you'd have so much space you could just use that one outpost as your bank for every other base.

Bases have limited space? In my playthrough, the original base completed the game with 2 squares empty.

3/4 of the gamelength I only used 2 labs and 2 workshops.

Look at the number buildings you can construct and how low it is compared to past games.

No alien contaiment needed. Infinite storehouse cappacity - you only need one.

No need to have space to build a better defense canon because they autoupgrade (in past games, you needed space to build a better version, not just to tear down the old one because you would have no defece during construction)

It seems to compensate for the low facilities number you can construct, devs made the command center and labs/workshops/barraks bigger.

Also, manufacturing cannons, missiles and torpedoes one at a time for planes would lead to making it nearly impossible to keep up with the air game and ground game simultaneously. It's already difficult enough to outfit your team with lasers and wolf before plasma shows up. Trying to manufacture 8 cannons, 16 missiles, and 8 torpedos for a decent sized fleet of condors and foxtrots would be even more ridiculous. You'd get halfway into laser cannons and alenium missiles before plasma blasters and warheads showed up and the game expects you to keep pace.

Your arguments are invalid because everybody knows that for the game to be balanced and be fun, tweaking the economy has reverberations in other areas of the game. Straw man fallacy again.

In order to implement that much micromanagement, manufacturing would have to become a LOT quicker and a LOT less expensive. I'm not necessarily saying micromanagement is bad, but under the current model of the game, you would need 30-45 engineers at each base just to try and keep the air fleet up to date, with additional engineers on top of those to actually build the aircraft themselves and upgrade your ground crew.

In other words, the "current model of the game" (as you say) is balanced/tweaked for a simplified economic system that endorses automatization and cuts layers of complexity instead of adding them (like the game did with areal combat)

Areal combat has also its problems because attacking the ufos with the right planes and armament, they always take 0 damage, hence no need for resources and repairs, hence no need for money/resource sink.

And a way of stopping manufacturing abuse and making a hoard of money, just tie the production of expensive products to finite materials (alenium, alien alloys etc) that you take from ufos, tweak the ufo numbers and their rate of invasion, them make them harder to shoot down and always with a degree of damage inflicted to your planes.

Tanks in the current game cost ZERO to repair.

You can make 10 missions in a row with the same tank. Every time pops up with full health in mission.

A proper designed X-COM game could have so MANY money/resource sinks that even selling lasers in bulk would not be enough to have everything at 100%.

And then the real economic gameplay starts - making real, tough decisions. Making priorities. Boosting production to keep up. Trimming the unnecessary costs. Always fine tuning. Thinking ahead. Making plans to have room for bulding rotation. Adapting to new situations. And then really enjoying a facility that lessens the strain on your brain a little.

Edited July 1, 2014 by Grotesque

[Max_Caine]

Woha woha woha woha.

Woha.

Before anyone starts throwing around the phrase "straw man fallacy", I think people need to be aware of what it means.

The debate up to the point where Grotesque claims a straw man fallacy goes like this (shortened form):

• Fucille comments on how long each manufacturing project takes, how that "fills him with dread".
  
• Grotesque responds by saying you would have several workshops working in parallel filling the storeroom with aircraft weapons, and talks about forward planning, how this is a good thing.
  
• Fucille responds by having to manufacture cannons/missiles/etc. would make it impossible to keep up with air game and ground combat. Gives specific example.
  
• Grotesque responds by claiming the arguments are invalid, specifically "everybody knows that for the game to be balanced and be fun, tweaking the economy has reverberations in other areas of the game". Claims straw man argument

Sorry Grotesque, but Fucille and you were discussing proposition X, and you then switch to a superfical and not explained in the slightest Proposition Y, abandoning the point of the debate you and Fucille were discussng. You make the straw man, and then claim victory. In addition to which, you also use specific weasle words, those being (in bold)

Your arguments are invalid because everybody knows that for the game to be balanced and be fun, tweaking the economy has reverberations in other areas of the game. Straw man fallacy again.

Where's your authority? Who says it? Who is everyone?

Grotesque, please don't make such claims in the future if you're going to do that yourself.

[Fucille]

Thank you for that Max.

To return to the discussion however, I can sum everything up pretty simply, albeit at great length. Limited base space will either be a huge problem if you're the kind of person who plays with a full outfit at every base, or will never become a problem if you're the kind of person who makes just radar+plane bases, because those ones have far more empty space than you'd ever actually use. All the store rooms will go to a designated bank base, all the batteries will just be demolished and replaced since you can defend from a base attack with just planes for a while, an alien interrogation room would sit in your emptiest outpost because research is universal between bases. Attempting to engineer a need for many more buildings in order to make base building more difficult does not add any depth of choice. It only adds needless complexity.

The same thing goes for the air fleet. There is absolutely no way for condors/foxtrots to keep up with even middling UFOs without getting to lasers and alenium, and then you need plasma well before marauders. There is no difficult choice to make here: you absolutely have to get all hands on deck churning out as many aircraft weapons as possible. The only way to get around the impractically huge time and resource sink that would be, is to chop manufacturing times and costs down by a ton. If those are cut down within reason so that you can manage to keep all your airplanes up to date with 30-45 engineers or so, then what was the point of doing it to begin with? You don't get the airplane upgrades until after you've already researched the ground soldier ones, so all that happens is you'll outfit your troops as soon as you can as usual, and then outfit all the planes right after. Changing the research so that both unlock at the same time doesn't create a compelling choice either, because either your planes can manage the current tier of UFO appearing so you can upgrade them second, or they can't manage the current tier of UFO so you have to upgrade them first. Changing the UFOs so that planes can still shoot them down with early game weapons, making later upgrades not absolutely necessary as soon as you can make them, likewise fails to generate any kind of meaningful choice. Once again, the optimal strategy is to ignore plane weaponry until absolutely needed to shoot down UFOs, because there are other, more pressing uses of your money that are immediately beneficial. All aerial weapon manufacturing creates is a progress tax: a certain amount of money and time you have to pay in order to keep up with the game. It's not like ground combat where what gear your soldiers have makes a greater number of them more likely to survive whether the mission is successful or not; the plane either takes down its target, or it doesn't. How much damage it takes or ammo it uses up in the fight is irrelevant since if you're a decent player you should have enough planes to assign one to each UFO. Once again, we are looking at making the game more complex without making it any deeper.

Selling items at a profit was removed precisely because it made other difficult choices obsolete. Specifically, like in the original x-com, mass manufacturing for profit leads to diminishing the importance of national funding. What will actually happen in anyone's game is that they will manufacture all their vital upgrades as soon as possible, figure out a balancing point between their consumption of alloys/alenium and their income, and then build exactly as many workshops as required to process raw materials at the same rate they gain them, with a tiny bit of room to save for more important manufactures. Any fewer and the materials will pile up and wont be used. Any more and a bunch of workshops will run out of materials and be sitting around uselessly without anything to do. Yet again, we arrive at a more complicated game that is no deeper.

Repairing tanks is the same thing. While it might be nice to balance somewhat overpowered vehicles, all that results is adding another expense to your budget sheet and ceasing to use the tank only once it becomes economically unsustainable. Manufacturing ammo is likewise, just another expense you have to account for. You set aside a certain chunk of money for it in your budget plan, and if any is left at the end of the month, throw it into manufacturing. Nothing here adds any kind of cerebral stimulation to the game. Just like the original x-com, the ideal strategy is to look up the ideal economic strategy on the internet, then execute it like a trained monkey.

I can more or less sum everything up with this:

In other words, the "current model of the game" (as you say) is balanced/tweaked for a simplified economic system that endorses automatization and cuts layers of complexity instead of adding them

Complexity is intrinsically a good thing. An increase in complexity does not automatically correspond to an increase in gameplay depth. Complexity for complexity's sake leads only to what is called a "solved game". Someone really smart figures out the optimized way to play it, and everyone else does the same. Adding layers of complexity should not EVER be the goal of a game designer. Adding layers of DEPTH should be. All of these things you miss from x-com did a lot of the former, and absolutely none of the latter, and the developers cut them because they add nothing but spreadsheet work for the player without really engaging them in anything important. This is just one of those cases where streamlining is simply good game design.

If you feel you can't enjoy the game without these elements, mod the ones that can currently be modded, and ask Solver nicely for the few that can't. That way, you can release your mod as "x-com economics" or something for other people who might share the same idea. Petitioning for the actual, fully released game to be completely overhauled to this end is just silly. The developers are exceedingly unlikely to go back and start changing so many things that they are already dead set against.

EDIT: It seems Solver has already added support for manufacturing aircraft weapons in the latest community version.

Edited July 2, 2014 by Fucille

[ViewThePhenom]

/Thread

[StellarRat]

I personally have no desire to all sort of logistical "busy work" while I play. I can get that at work. Also, in "real" wars the commanders have entire staffs of people to handle the work you propose to drop on us. Removing some of that cleans up Xenonauts to allow you to spend more time making decisions about strategy. I don't mind a complex research tree with many branches that have long term effects on the outcome ala Hearts of Iron, but I certainly don't want to have to monitor a spreadsheet to handle estimated ammo consumption, etc... just to keep fighting.

[KevinHann]

I personally have no desire to all sort of logistical "busy work" while I play. I can get that at work. Also, in "real" wars the commanders have entire staffs of people to handle the work you propose to drop on us. Removing some of that cleans up Xenonauts to allow you to spend more time making decisions about strategy. I don't mind a complex research tree with many branches that have long term effects on the outcome ala Hearts of Iron, but I certainly don't want to have to monitor a spreadsheet to handle estimated ammo consumption, etc... just to keep fighting.

That's because you lack depth

[StellarRat]

That's because you lack depth

Yeah, I'm a shallow little rat.

[SyDaemon]

That's because you lack depth

May I ask what depth does the manual management of the logistics add to the gameplay, in your opinion?

[KevinHann]

May I ask what depth does the manual management of the logistics add to the gameplay, in your opinion?

Erm, the humorous type?

[Fucille]

May I ask what depth does the manual management of the logistics add to the gameplay, in your opinion?

I believe he's being facetious.

[Max_Caine]

Aright guys, c'mon now, reasoned debate please.

[cgerrr]

Many arguments in this thread are simply false (like necessity of spread sheets to play original x-com or about any proposed economical changes which supposedly bring ONLY needless complexity without adding any depth). But I have no desire to open that can of worms especially when both sides of the argument are equally guilty.

But maybe we can be, you know, civilized and tolerant and have healthier discussion without throwing “straw men” and accusations at each other.

[SyDaemon]

Erm, the humorous type?

Ah, my bad. Sorry about that.

[TrashMan]

Fallacies. So many fallacies.

On both sides. So many (wrong) assumptions.

Like that you NEED to outfit your entire fleet with laser weapons OR ELSE. No you don't. Basic weapons can go a long way.

why do people keep using Reduction Ad Absurdum (i.e. - think of the worst possible scenario/way to implement something, then use it as an argument against it's implementation.)

[TrashMan]

May I ask what depth does the manual management of the logistics add to the gameplay, in your opinion?

Greenhorns talk about Tactics

Veterans talk about Strategy.

Real masters talk about Logistics.

[Rutger]

This topic is a can of worms indeed, since two different views are presented. Anyway, I do really enjoy Xenonauts in the current form and it's much better then any other game released after OG. Great thanks to Goldhawk Interactive for that. Yet, there are things done more interesting in Geoscape to make it more memorable and engaging.

Let's look at Missile Battery. Currently after doing the right research it gets straight away upgraded, in a split of second. What could make it more interesting instead, is need for doing an upgrade of turrets that would take certain time, making them unusable. After research each battery could have upgrade option. Player can decide, if he risks upgrading all at the same time and by that making base vulnerable or upgrade one after another, thus taking longer time to get the upgrades.

Other building that could bring some decision making is Medical Center. Player could decide which wounded soldiers go there to speed up recovery but under condition of not being able to send chosen soldiers to missions, until they recover completely.

I think those two examples are hardly unnecessary micromanagement.

[StellarRat]

Greenhorns talk about Tactics

Veterans talk about Strategy.

Real masters talk about Logistics.

True enough, but we're not playing a UPS vs. aliens game.

[bhazo]

True enough, but we're not playing a UPS vs. aliens game.

This package is taking too long to show up! I SHALL INVADE AND DESTROY THE EARTH!

[LostAlone]

I think those two examples are hardly unnecessary micromanagement.

But everyone has their own tolerance for what is and isn't unnecessary, and for the most part it's the hardcore players who want more and the newer players who want less. When you are already good at the core game then the idea of more stuff to manage is cool, because it's new and interesting stuff to do. But if you're a newer player who's already struggling to make progress (and so actually have fun with the game) then every extra thing you have to manage is just another thing that you can forget and thus get a game over from.

Yes, managing stuff is part of the game's charm. But it's also a way to kick people when they are down. The game is pretty punishing, assuming you play on the right difficulty for your skill level, and being punished for not remembering to do stuff that isn't much of a meaningful choice anyway is just... It sucks.

I'm all for choice, but what would be much better would be to have these mechanics set to automatic by default, and the player can ignore them if they want to, but advanced players can meddle with them if they want for additional risk/reward.

It's already a pretty hard game, replete with 'idiot traps' - Situations that you could never have seen coming, but once you know they are there are actually not that hard to deal with. More of that, more stuff that will trick you once and tank a game but for experienced players adds nothing really meaningful to the game beyond an extra button to push, is bad for the game.

[Anaguma]

I think we just need more games in this genre, or mods for existing games. You have the very little micromanagement in the new X-Com a little bit more in Xenonauts but not as much as in the Original x-com. Maybe we can get another game in the same format [not necessarily the same setting or story] that has more micromanagement. Honestly I think there's a lack of TBS in general, hopefully with the new x-com doing well and Xenonauts... Doing well? we can see a small revival of the genre.