Why I'm Quitting This Game

[StellarRat]

Also keep in mind that I play ironman mode only- I do love a challenge and I don't like to reload just to get better results.

Oh! I'd never attempt Ironman at Veteran! That's like difficulty x2! Normal would be hard enough. I'm too klutzy for Ironman. I do have a "system", but every game has an optimum path that you find with experience.

[Betuor]

I highly recommend that if you feel the game being too harsh towards you do try easy. It won't reck you and you'll get introducted to everything but it won't be buttrape difficult. Also, maybe try it without Ironman? You don't have to save scum but you could save before each month or building a new base so if it turns out terrible you won't lose and have to start over. Also, it is good for getting to learn the air combat.

Also, have you ran into any powerful psions yet? Just curious...

[Alandroid]

haven't ran into any psions yet...

[skaianDestiny]

haven't ran into any psions yet...

Oh you're gonna have fun with those...

They were a pretty big topic of debate in the last couple of months.

[Quiller]

Play the game on Easy!?! Might as well tell us to just rip up our Man cards!

I'd agree that the strategic layer is currently a little too unforgiving for my tastes, but walking away from the game for that reason would be like chucking my guitar out because it needed tuning.

As an alternative to going full neckbeard and playing on Easy, I just dived into the settings and gave myself a bit more starting budget, problem solved for me.

Remember kids, it's not cheating, it's embezzeling, which sounds alot cooler.

[Alandroid]

LOL Quiller you summed it up perfect. I refuse to play on easy mode. Oh and I definitely don't plan on walking away. I will beat back these alien scum!!! haha

[FireStorm1010]

I see. I went Firaxis' way: one soldier - one type of weapon. I'm somewhere in the late mid game and still using Jackal armor x.x Hence much headache.

I actually at some early point, when again i managed to surpress my whole squad with my own machine fire , forced myself to stop and rethink my whole approach "This isnt firaxis Xcom, and playing the same might not cut it.Try to think independently, dont follow your pattersn from Xcom EU".

So im trying to to see Xenonauts mechanics independently and adapt to them.

Edited July 3, 2014 by FireStorm1010

[TrashMan]

I understand topic author. Imagine a game of chess. In a normal game, the player sees an enemy pieces and has all the necessary data in order to make the correct decision in time. If a player made ​​a mistake, he sees how and why he got defeated. But Xenonauts is a game with invisible opponent pieces. We see the enemy pieces only when they hit ours or we accidentally hit them. Therefore, we must guess, estimate where the pieces is and follow the tactics, in which each of our figure covered by some other. And opponent is in the same conditions. Can such game be named "strategical"? Of course, no.

Well, that's kinda how war works in RL.

You never have all the information.

Does that make wars non-strategic?

[Kiel]

As for me, I feel like quitting because of insane frame drop I have every now and then. Sometimes I get 2-3 fps out of nowhere. As I type this comment one burning car makes my game go 1 fps. Took aliens 5 minutes to complete their turn. I'm just losing my patience.

It's not like it happens every time, no. Sometimes I get lags and freezes and the other time I'm ok with pretty much the same sprites and assets all over. Go figure.

Oh, and soldier's accuracy. Every time my guys miss point blank 95% shots I wanna flip my table over and go kill someone. They can do it TWICE in a row. It drains my sanity.

Oh and gruelling necessity to sit and wait for aliens to end their turn in case I messed up and want to re-load my save. It takes less time to restart the whole system rather than wait for my turn to come.

Gosh, this lags kill me. >__> Wat do.

1.06

Windows 7 (32)

Athlon x64 dual core 4800+ 2,5Ghz

3 Gb ram

Ati Radeon X1650 Pro

And crashes. Much crashes. So BSOD. Wow.

I was wrong about 5 minutes alien turns. It's been 8 minutes already.

By the way, how can I make screen shots in this game? If I press PrintScreen it ss the desktop O_o I'm getting frame drops when specific props are on the screen. As soon as I (or alien activity) move the camera elsewhere - I'm fine.

Edited July 3, 2014 by Kiel

[TacticalDragon]

@Kiel,

There are multiple solutiona for this, I want that you test all of it:

- Upload the game, video drivers

- Download gamebooster, defrag the gane folder and set the booster to run this game in "booster mode"

- Install Ccleaner and perform complete cleanup of the system, including registry cleanup.

- Go to assets folder, look for a command called "cleanfolder.bat"

- Run the game after all this procedures.

You will see the diference, V1.07HF will run smooth and clean.

[LeonidasRex]

Well, that's kinda how war works in RL.

You never have all the information.

Does that make wars non-strategic?

OP here. The relevant question is whether Xenonauts is a good strategy game. Like chess. And good strategy games involve information-action feedback loops. First, you observe the game space. Then you make decisions about how you will influence the game space. Then you observe the effect of your actions, and you gather fresh information to repeat the cycle.

The Xenonauts ground game is a great strategy game. You gather information about where the aliens are, and then you move your soldiers accordingly. You listen to plasma shots and the screams of civilians. You peek around corners. Each ground game presents a new arrangement of aliens on the landscape.

The Xenonauts geoscape is a terrible strategy game. There's no information to analyze, nothing to react to. The map is always the same. The global alien attack is always the same, I assume. And even if the global alien attack varies somewhat from game to game, hidden information and long build times ensure that you can't react meaningfully to what they're doing.

The Xenonauts geoscape is just a ritual. There's one best way to play it, one ideal solution to the puzzle. Once you find that solution, there's no reason to ever vary it.

If I were to play Xenonauts vanilla again, I would first look for step-by-step instructions on exactly what to build and research on which day. Then I could blow through the boring geoscape stuff and get to the interesting ground combat. More likely, I'll wait for a modder to eliminate the geoscape's invisible tightrope and move the ground game to center stage where it belongs.

[odizzido]

I like the geoscape much better than the original x-com. The ufo sightings/activities pop up so you know where they are. You can mouse over countries to see their funding levels and decide between putting a base at a country that is getting hit hard so you don't lose it or putting one closer to your existing one(s) so the bases can support eachother and you can shoot down more UFOs. If you do not have air superiority you will find yourself in a downhill spiral pretty quick I find as you can make a ton of money shooting down UFOs which gives you more money for planes to shoot down more UFOs.

Bring able to catch them is the first step to shooting them down so I build mostly foxtrot at the start of the game. The starting planes are too slow for the majority of UFOs.

[Ishantil]

Overall, I like the Geoscape portion of the game. Most of the things are an improvement over the original X-COM (the air combat is certainly more interesting and varied). The problem that I'm having is that the funding drops off precipitously once the foothold starts. And there is no way to recover from it (and you can't sell laser cannons, ). Doing missions doesn't net you enough money to compensate.

In X-COM, you had to basically lose missions or let UFOs complete their missions. In this game, any UFO that isn't immediately shot down eats away at your funding like crazy. If you don't happen to have radar coverage over that part of the ocean, you're screwed, basically. That's where I'm at now, and I'm having trouble justifying restarting the game.

But I would agree that it's difficult to recover from a mistake without having to completely restart the game. Or having a system where you simply have a save game at the beginning of every month. I don't typically do that.

[FireStorm1010]

OP here. The relevant question is whether Xenonauts is a good strategy game. Like chess. And good strategy games involve information-action feedback loops. First, you observe the game space. Then you make decisions about how you will influence the game space. Then you observe the effect of your actions, and you gather fresh information to repeat the cycle.

The Xenonauts ground game is a great strategy game. You gather information about where the aliens are, and then you move your soldiers accordingly. You listen to plasma shots and the screams of civilians. You peek around corners. Each ground game presents a new arrangement of aliens on the landscape.

The Xenonauts geoscape is a terrible strategy game. There's no information to analyze, nothing to react to. The map is always the same. The global alien attack is always the same, I assume. And even if the global alien attack varies somewhat from game to game, hidden information and long build times ensure that you can't react meaningfully to what they're doing.

The Xenonauts geoscape is just a ritual. There's one best way to play it, one ideal solution to the puzzle. Once you find that solution, there's no reason to ever vary it.

If I were to play Xenonauts vanilla again, I would first look for step-by-step instructions on exactly what to build and research on which day. Then I could blow through the boring geoscape stuff and get to the interesting ground combat. More likely, I'll wait for a modder to eliminate the geoscape's invisible tightrope and move the ground game to center stage where it belongs.

While i personally like the air combat, i can understund some of your points. For some things you just have to learn from game to game (or orginal game memory as in my case) , or you got to stumble in the dark.

Well to me its as it was in the orginal game and all of the games in the serie that i can remember and most poeple , me included , liek it that way. You must know more or less what you will most need next to research it etc. UFO enemy unkown, the Aftermath/afterlight series,Xcom EU , all are same in that respect.If you for example, wont know what you need for power suits o hvy plasma research in original ufo and research other stuff instead , come mutons you are pretty much screwed. I remember i once in my early games tried to storm them with missile launchers, the uber powered weapan against previous enemies, the muton just turned slightly annoyed and blew my guys to hell...

Come to think of it most games operate that way.In stacraft 2 you must know the timing of the game , when to expect a rush , when you can expand, etc. And you can only learn it by replaying a few times.In Sword of the stars you must know also about many things from consecutive replays.

Edited July 4, 2014 by FireStorm1010