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A few questions about the replayability of the campaign:

Will all alien tech be "unlocked" in a given campaign if I'm thorough about researching it?

Are the attributes of alien tech fixed? As in, will plasma rifles have the same attributes each time, etc.

I am wondering what the incentive is to replay a campaign once I've beaten it. Obviously I can ramp up the difficulty or turn on iron man mode, but is there any difference in the tech or the order in which I get it in subsequent playthroughs?

If there is randomization/ procedural generation involved, what exactly does it apply to?

(Note: I haven't played the original X-COM to its conclusion and don't know how it compares.)

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No, there's no "New Game+"

Once you begin a new game, you're back to square one. The draw is the random occurrences that happen during each playthrough (such as a near perfect mission, only to have that Chinook get shot down by UFO fighters.)

Plus there's going to be completely randomized maps (have patience! It's pre-Alpha! :D )

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Will all alien tech be "unlocked" in a given campaign if I'm thorough about researching it?

I wasn't referring to a NG+ mode; sorry I wasn't clear enough.

What I meant was: Will the tech be randomized on each playthrough as well? Some 4x games do this; they randomize the tech tree when you start a new campaign so your progression isn't the same. In contrast, RTSes have this standard build order where you move up the tech tree towards exotic units and weaponry, and it's a fixed order so there's no incentive to play through, say, Command & Conquer's singleplayer campaign twice.

An example of this in Xenonauts would be having plasma weapons work differently (different range, weight) each time you begin a new campaign. Maybe switch up the order in which you can research alien technology as well.

I hope it's clearer now.

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I don't think he was asking about anything carrying over from one game to the next new game. He seems to be asking many aspects of the game will be random. If there are some research topics that you wont be able to unlock every playthrough. If weapons willl deal the same ammount of base damage on every playthrough.

AS for the answer: I dont think any of that is in the game. And random damage for weapons would be horrible to balance properly.

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Karthink - the game plays like X-com in that its a set tech progression route. The technology you play with would unlock in the same order, depending on your research choices. It is tier based in that regard.

However, it is a highly modifiable game and already Chris has released Russian art and people are working on all sorts of mods. It would take about 10 minutes to tinker with stats, e.g give your fighters more missiles and less health, or just give them 1000 health and 8 missiles.

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A few questions about the replayability of the campaign:

Will all alien tech be "unlocked" in a given campaign if I'm thorough about researching it?

Are the attributes of alien tech fixed? As in, will plasma rifles have the same attributes each time, etc.

I am wondering what the incentive is to replay a campaign once I've beaten it. Obviously I can ramp up the difficulty or turn on iron man mode, but is there any difference in the tech or the order in which I get it in subsequent playthroughs?

If there is randomization/ procedural generation involved, what exactly does it apply to?

(Note: I haven't played the original X-COM to its conclusion and don't know how it compares.)

If the game is moddable, expect there to be various mods that expand the tech tree and maybe change the balance of play once you have played the game how it is mean't to be played! =)

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OK, thanks guys.

I'm sure I'll get at least half a dozen playthroughs at various difficulties before I feel the need for more randomization.

Just as an FYI a lot of us still play X-Com 18 years after its release, so there is a ton of re-playability within the genre.

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Will all alien tech be "unlocked" in a given campaign if I'm thorough about researching it?

if you are very, very thorough then yes. However, you can stick to the core research needed to complete the game, if you know what it is. The research tree will be the same in each game, but your paths through it may vary, depending on what you want, beyond the spine of the story. In higher difficulty levels, there will be funding constraints that will make getting through everything harder, I guess.

Are the attributes of alien tech fixed? As in, will plasma rifles have the same attributes each time, etc.

I believe that the weapon values may be fixed, but that their effectiveness may vary depending on the difficulty level. That's how it was in the game that this is based on. Might be wrong about that one.

I am wondering what the incentive is to replay a campaign once I've beaten it. Obviously I can ramp up the difficulty or turn on iron man mode, but is there any difference in the tech or the order in which I get it in subsequent playthroughs?

X-Com has lost absolutely none of its magic after all this time. There are so many variations in how you approach each mission. There are so many decisions throughout that no two games are alike, even though they follow a standard tech tree. Your ability to get through the tree varies with difficulty. It's one of the most replayable games I've ever played. By following the same approach, there's little doubt that Xenonauts will offer the same in this regard.

If there is randomization/ procedural generation involved, what exactly does it apply to?

There's randomisation in the maps and a lot is determined by your actions within the game. For example, if you ignore Indochina, it's going to be lost to the aliens and you have some funding issues on your hands.

Note: I haven't played the original X-COM to its conclusion and don't know how it compares.

In the areas you mention, Xenonauts is the same as X-Com. it offers the same replayability as the original.

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Remember that the tech you research may be dependent on things you recover from the ground missions.

You may spend a long time trying to recover an alien reactor on one playthrough (especially if you are grenade happy) but get one first time on the next game.

That might mean you get advanced weapons much sooner.

If it is anything like the original then no two games will be the same.

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Plus there's going to be completely randomized maps (have patience! It's pre-Alpha! :D )

Hm really? I was under the impression that the maps would only be semi-random, with their general plan predefined and only the types of buildings that fill in the slots being randomized. Actually that is my only concern about the game so far - no matter how many semi random maps are added, repetition will set in as soon as a map has to be replayed, unlike if there was even a simple procedural generator in place (especially for tiled maps procedural generation of content is quite easy)

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I think you are seriously underestimating the work involved in generating random maps and buildings that make sense.

Also take another look at the current plan for levels.

Imagine there are 10 farm levels.

Each of the buildings and objects you see on those levels can be randomly selected from a list of submap options.

Once the submaps are built there should be quite a lot of options for each one.

So assuming you end up playing one of those farm levels often enough to start recognising the layout you should still have no idea what kind of object or building you will see next.

First run through you might see a barn on your left and a farmhouse on your right.

Next time a field and a barn, time after it could be two fields and so on.

I would be surprised if there were such a low number of maps, especially if Chris does go ahead and hire someone to design levels and submaps.

I will also be making my own when I have some time and adding those as it is pretty easy to do once you get the hang of it.

I imagine there will be plenty of other people making extras if you do manage to get bored of the existing ones :)

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Actually one of my areas of interst is procedural generation of content (admittedly, I use Python and C rather than C++). Fact of the matter is, tile based levels fit quite naturally with a number of procedural generation approaches. We are not talking about generating a realistic city like in Introversion's Subversion, we are talking about a much simpler type of level. Take for example Atom Zombie Smasher - the levels there are procedurally generated, make sense and you can repurpose them for Xenonauts simply by swapping the buildings with sub maps. The algorithm sounds like it can be easily tweaked to yield the desired general layout of the map, so by changing some parameters you can get a farm-based layot with lots of open spaces.

I'll hold off on claiming what effect the sub maps plastered over a hand-designed level actually is as in the current build there is no variation in the sub maps. If I have to speculate though, I'd say that you greatly overestimate the effectg a sub map will have on keeping a level fresh. From my experience in ground combat right now, the thing that mostly matters is the general layout of the map and that is what I build plans on. Once I know where the UFO will spawn and where the roads and buildings are, there is usually only one optimal approach.

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