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Xenonauts-2 October Update


Chris

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I think it's time for another update on our progress on Xenonauts-2 as I've been alluding to cool new stuff for several weeks now. I'm not going to show off any media yet, but I am going to fill you in on what we've been doing for the past couple of months and what our thinking currently is with Xenonauts-2.

Setting: The key thing to know is this - both the aliens and the Xenonauts are trying to keep their existence secret. The aliens are VERY few in number and don't have the military power to destroy Earth, so are trying to start a nuclear war that will wipe out most of humanity first (using infiltrators and psionic powers to raise global tensions and suppress any evidence of their existence). The Xenonauts are even fewer in number and must keep stay in the shadows otherwise the aliens if the aliens are not to find them and wipe them out. Because the world governments have been partially infiltrated by aliens, the Xenonauts cannot work too closely with them or risk being discovered.

Strategy Mechanics:
Basically we've shifted the strategy layer away from just being a clone of Xenonauts 1 and we've drawn some additional inspiration from Jagged Alliance. Most of this is on the strategic side rather than the tactical combat (so don't expect us to add the prone stance etc in the combat), but it includes things like:

  • The staff available for hire are no longer randomly generated; they're the same each game. There's currently 40 and they are priced differently depending on their skills. We expect the player to have 10-15 staff in total towards the end of the game.
  • There's no distinction between soldiers / scientists / etc. Each person has a competency rating in Combat, Science, Technical and Communication and you can set any to do any role, and use any of them on the battlefield.
  • The base functionality is now generated mostly by assigning staff to buildings - e.g. a lab doesn't produce science until you put someone in it, and it produces more science the better that person's Science rating is.
  • The combat missions are flown (although not always fought) at night, so people can perform a task in-base during the day and then still fight a combat mission at night. However there is a fatigue system that stops you from pushing your staff too hard - they accumulate a lot very quickly if you don't let them sleep.
  • You can't do every combat mission - the number of combat missions you can run is limited by the airworthiness of the dropship. If you want to run more missions you can assign engineers to help repair it faster, but obviously those staff could be doing other things instead.
  • We've borrowed the "covert operations" from the XCOM 2 expansion, which are small non-playable missions with skill requirements that invite you to send one or two people away for X days in order to receive a reward (basically they force you to shuffle your assignments and combat teams regularly instead of always using the same guys in a given role).

In short, we've zoomed the focus in a bit. The base is smaller but more detailed - e.g. the current mechanics tie the rate of staff stress regeneration to how comfortable the base is, so having enough living space and fresh food and a rec room lets them recover from missions faster. I'd like to make the stores management deeper if we can, too. Plenty of scope to do cool stuff here.

To make the alien invasion more strategic, we've made things last longer on the Geoscape. The player is actively choosing from a multitude of missions which ones they think will best advance their strategic position, rather than in Xenonauts 1 when you were reacting to what the aliens did as soon as it happened.

The aliens themselves are now persistent missions on the map; they slowly generate infiltration markers in the region they are in, reducing Xenonaut relations with that region and bringing the world closer to nuclear war. Launching a mission and killing that alien removes the infiltration markers, but it also levels up that race and makes all future missions more difficult against, say, the Sebillians. Kill enough of that race and they drop out of the war entirely.

The other key strategy mechanic is Threat, which is a bit like the wanted level in Grand Theft Auto - it goes up when you attack the aliens, and declines over time. If reaches a certain level, the aliens launch an attack on your base. Not all combat missions generate threat, as not all involve fighting the aliens - there's plenty of missions available where you are stealing resources from local governments etc that you can do instead if your threat is too high. So base attack missions are still in the game, but you have direct control over when they will (or will not) happen.

 

Ground Combat Mechanics: 
As a result of the setting shift, we want an alien to be something that the player should fear on the battlefield (not something a random dude with an M16 can deal with). So instead of a mission containing a dozen aliens, missions will now usually feature a single powerful and tough "boss" alien and a dozen weaker human bodyguards. This is thematically appropriate, but also the majority of the combatants being humans with weaker weapons mean your soldiers should suffer more serious wounds and fewer RNG instakills, which should improve the gameplay.

If you're wondering how the Combat Rating feeds into combat stats, the idea is that it controls the Accuracy and Bravery of the soldier. HP, TU and Reflexes are now set by the armour equipped by the soldier, so lighter armour gives less HP but allows units to move faster and do more. Certain equipment will probably be gated by skills, too - so a first generation laser rifle might require a certain amount of Science to use it, or explosives might need a certain level of Technical, etc. I think that opens up a lot of possibilities in terms of battlefield equipment.

 

Public Builds & Progress:
Expect the public builds to restart in roughly a month, but don't expect the strategy to be included. We've been adding a lot more to the strategy layer than we originally expected (when we were just cloning X1), so whilst many of the features are already in place it's obviously going to take longer and need more testing. We will however be releasing more information, artwork and some UI screenshots in the near future.

The public builds will be focusing on polishing up a single ground combat mission to be used in a Kickstarter. The action will be moving from the wilderness to a military base, with a new (non-box) UFO, better destructibility, and an extra layer of visual polish. I've taken over level design duties now so expect the new map to be more like the ones from Xenonauts 1 (more limited sight lines), and the improved map editor we've spent a long time working on means I can much more easily edit the existing map and generate new ones than before.

In the slightly longer term I'd like to improve the ground combat AI, and also to try and implement a stealth system that is a cross between the one in XCOM2 and JA2. Basically this means the enemies don't turn hostile until they detect your forces, allowing you to scope out the map and the enemies before the fighting starts. We can potentially then add things like suppressed weapons to make the stealth phase more interesting, and hopefully set up the AI to react to detected events to allow diversions and so forth (e.g. if you set off a bomb elsewhere in the base then the aggressive forces will run in that direction, etc). That'll definitely take more than a few weeks though!

Anyway, I'll report back with more concrete plans and show off some artwork in a few weeks, but I hope this post is enough to keep people abreast of our current progress and thinking. TL;DR - things are taking longer because we're adding some cool new stuff!

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Quite a brave and bold move to deviate away from the previous mechanics but most of them sound pretty interesting!

I think two things I am not sold on (based on the premise) is 

a) local government missions - will you have the resources to make these varied enough that they don't become tedious?

b) one alien per mission - the only thing is that fighting humans is boring, that can be done in any dozen other games. Maybe consider human/alien hybrids?  I know XCOM touched on this theme already.  However if they had a few different stages of development you could have some fairly interesting model design and characteristics (i.e. tanks, glass cannons, fear inducing, snipers).  This is especially true if you are going to be up against humans in the government missions.  There would need to be enough to differentiate between a fully human based mission and one with a single alien other than presumably the setting?  Hybrids would still achieve your goal of making the alien fights mean something without making it m16 on m16 as it were.  

 

p.s  It would be awesome to have a colour overlay on the geoscape which shows influence.  One of my favourite moments harking back to the olden days was in the early missions of C&C Red Alert when you had the illusion of choice in selecting missions to stem the tide of the enemy and part of that was the visual map showing red vs blue which ebbed and flowed between missions and the satisfaction of a big blob turning blue after winning a mission.  

 

 

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Yeah, so I think the "fighting the humans all the time" is one of the largest potential problems with the current design. I want to get all the missions set up so I can properly judge the scale of the issue before I think too hard about fixing it, but it's something I'm keeping an eye on.

It might not be as bad as all that, though - if you've played the XCOM 2 expansion, you'll have fought the Chosen (who are unusually tough and dangerous enemies like our aliens will be). What's interesting is that if I think back to the missions where I fought them, I barely remembered the dozen or so standard aliens / ADVENT that I killed on that mission - I only remember the turns I spent fighting that single Chosen, because it was the only enemy that felt genuinely dangerous. So an alien mission consisting mostly of humans might actually not feel that way to the player if the alien is sufficiently fearsome.

Similarly, the mission set-up will hopefully be quite different when attacking an alien infiltration cell as when fighting a neutral mission. These designs are still somewhat fluid so I might have changed my mind in a few weeks, but my current idea is that an alien cell is going to be a large military base map with a bunch of human collaborators patrolling it. The interior of one of the outwardly-normal military buildings would be converted into an alien command room, which is where the alien and its bodyguards would hang out (maybe the humans hidden inside that part of the base have more advanced gear or are otherwise more alien). These missions would be a major undertaking where you bring a strong squad, don't have a time limit, and potentially we could do some cool stuff with the stealth mechanics if they prove workable. So these missions would have quite a methodical JA2 feel .. big murderous alien excepted, of course.

I'd like the neutral missions to be faster-paced and on a smaller map, with the main purpose being capturing some kind of resource or a VIP and then getting out of there. Potentially we could make the squad sizes smaller, as you'll need space in the chopper to bring the stuff home. There will probably be a reinforcements timer on the mission, so if you take too long then increasing numbers of hostile local forces will arrive on the scene. So whilst it doesn't hurt the aliens, it's a faster and easier mission that requires fewer staff - perfect if you've got high Threat or a wounded / fatigued team that can't take on an alien mission at that moment.

So I'm hoping that the missions will feel quite different from one another, despite most of the enemies being human ... but we can always add in more aliens if need be.

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How big will the "big" alien be? I know you were hesitant to make 2x2 units due to the movement logic being such a pain. It sounds like capturing aliens alive will play less of an important role; will we be capturing human defectors? Are the local-government raids going to suggest non-lethal gameplay? That could be a fun change of pace. It also sounds like the intercept subgame might be axed. If stealth becomes an important mechanic, I hope it gets fleshed out well. Take a look at the game Invisible Inc., it had a very satisfying stealth mechanic.

I look forward to seeing how this fits together! It sounds really promising.

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On 20.10.2017 at 7:22 PM, Shoes said:

Are the local-government raids going to suggest non-lethal gameplay?

This is kind of the thing I am most intrigued to know more about.

Understandably "Xenonauts" in this game are more of "vigilantes" being a (more real) shadow-organization and such, so doing some small stealthy and non-lethal raids hopefully indeed is a choice.
I mean, it's kind of hard to convince rest of the humanity you're fighting for Earth if you keep killing of the average-joe-guards and such who just only doing their daily-job, right?
(( Or at the very least we aren't playing "The Guards Must Be Crazy"-trope as far as I've understood. ))

Naturally of course, if there is the scoring-system similar to what we had in (Open)Xcom-games which would take into account the civilian-casualties, then obviously finding a way to have the least amount bloodshed would be the best.

On 19.10.2017 at 6:56 PM, Chris said:

The staff available for hire are no longer randomly generated; they're the same each game. There's currently 40 and they are priced differently depending on their skills. We expect the player to have 10-15 staff in total towards the end of the game.

If i've understood correctly, this is taking further steps towards the "Jagged Alliance"-style of recruits.
How is this going to affect the customization of names and so on?
(Especially when taking into account the portrait-generator we were teased with about half-a-year ago:
https://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/index.php?/topic/14432-xenonauts-2-version-060-public-combat-test-released/
https://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/index.php?/topic/14493-xenonauts-2-version-0130-public-combat-test-released/#comment-161957

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Thanks for the feeback, but...

 

Please, please, please and please, dont do this.

I dont want to fight humans with alien super boss. I dont want jagged alliance. I want xcom. 

There are so many incredible things that could be done: melee combat, more countries/regions, specific minor bonus for each regions, soldier traits...

Then i get: "you fight humans".

Man, i think i didnt have a soo great letdown since i first saw the scamper mechanics back when they released X-Com 1.

Ok, its your game, but i am really sad you choose to take this direction. Xenonauts was a success basicly because x-com stopped being x-com. If you go the same way, we just lost a great franchise forever.

 

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14 hours ago, Shoes said:

How big will the "big" alien be? I know you were hesitant to make 2x2 units due to the movement logic being such a pain. It sounds like capturing aliens alive will play less of an important role; will we be capturing human defectors? Are the local-government raids going to suggest non-lethal gameplay? 

So the tiles in X2 are larger than in X1. An individual tile is 1.5x1.5x3m tall now, so you can get a plenty big alien and it'll still be a 1x1 tile enemy. However truthfully we'll probabaly only make the Sebillians abnormally large; it'd be a bit weird if some of the others were too big physically.

Regarding non-lethal gameplay, potentially yes but I'm not completely certain yet because we've not tested it. There's certainly scope for a family of advanced ranged stun weapons that minimise your relations damage when you fight human factions, and it'd also add much needed tech tree variation and weapon rotation to the game. But there's also logical inconsistencies there - a better way to minimise relations damage would be to wear the uniforms of a rival human faction, for example. I imagine a country would be pretty pissed off if you attacked them and stole their stuff, whether or not there were fatalities. But the idea definitely has potential, mostly because stun weapons had such limited use in X1.

@Paveso the unique characters are the ones you can hire at the start of the game; there will be additional ones that can be captured or appear in events etc. Any custom player characters are likely to go in that pool.

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2 hours ago, Elendil said:

I dont want to fight humans with alien super boss. I dont want jagged alliance. I want xcom.

Then i get: "you fight humans".

Ok, its your game, but i am really sad you choose to take this direction. Xenonauts was a success basicly because x-com stopped being x-com. If you go the same way, we just lost a great franchise forever.

 

Hmmm, it's still pretty x-com though. You're still fighting aliens, and attacking UFOs, and building a base and researching stuff you capture from the aliens to get more advanced battlefield gear. The core gameplay loop remains the same even if we're changing quite a lot of the finer details.

Your complaint is basically that you don't like the idea of alien missions having one powerful alien with human bodyguards, rather than all of them being aliens, right? I'm assuming you wouldn't disapprove of additional neutral missions fighting humans being added to Xenonauts 1 to increase the mission variety?

Seems to me that it's quite a small detail to get worked up over, particularly as I've already said we'll boost the number of aliens if it feels too human-dominated on the alien missions. The key point is really that an alien soldier from an intergalactic civilisation shouldn't be on level with a Xenonaut with a Kevlar vest and an assault rifle, like they basically are in X1, so you need additional weaker enemies to make the aliens seem strong.

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Most of the changes sound good to me.  And I noticed dropship instead of teleporter.  Has it been decided whether the globe will be in real time or turn based, free roaming or board game like?

I wonder, with an end-game staff of 10-15, that means some comparatively small squads after rotation and coverts, in addition to a high pressure of keeping soldier alive or find replacement of veteran soldiers.  Will these affect the tactical experience like higher accuracy and/or wider view cone?

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15 hours ago, Chris said:

The key point is really that an alien soldier from an intergalactic civilisation shouldn't be on level with a Xenonaut with a Kevlar vest and an assault rifle, like they basically are in X1, so you need additional weaker enemies to make the aliens seem strong.

XCOM 2 did fine here by introducing the low-level Advent enemies, and having them wear face-covering helmets and have weird voices. The motivation for having Advent was more or less the same as yours, and the audiovisual design made sure it didn't quite feel like just fighting generic humans.

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4 hours ago, Solver said:

XCOM 2 did fine here by introducing the low-level Advent enemies, and having them wear face-covering helmets and have weird voices. The motivation for having Advent was more or less the same as yours, and the audiovisual design made sure it didn't quite feel like just fighting generic humans.

Well, in reality "XCOM" 2 "cop-out" quite a bit: "Advent" actually (supposedly) consists of "modified-Sectoids" or otherwise "not-humans":
http://xcom.wikia.com/wiki/ADVENT

(( Fair to note that I personally haven't played and more than likely won't play (or at least I won't buy ) "XCOM2", so I am just going with the information provided by the others. ))

Basically what I am saying as "cop-out" is more of
"Oh, don't worry; you actually haven't been shooting / killing any real humans in reality";
it's really not a surprise though since "New XCOM-games" have indeed been more of, well, "games" instead of "simulations"...

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Storytelling-wise "Xenonauts 2" is going to quite a challenge to give the "correct"-story to us "nerds": We already know the setting is very "black & white" in sense that the extraterrestrials indeed are here to outright wipe-out the Earthlings and "Xenonauts" are here to prevent this (although in more vigilante ways seemingly, and certainly not as resourceful-rich as say "Men in Black" are (thus justifying the small raids or other methods of obtaining the resources "incognito").


Now even though we're in a very "black & white"-situation in extraterrestrials vs "Xenonauts"-situation, to rest of the world it indeed is very "gray", so after pondering I can indeed see why you "average-joe"-guards could possibly guarding a more or less obvious (in disguise or not) alien; it is the "Cold War"-after all in which any "completely-outsider" friends providing technology or even just some basic intel is / was super valuable.

If "stealth" is indeed going to be a mechanic that gets into a functional form, it could open up into a large amount of map-designs and mission-variations.
Biggest challenge probably would be implementation "Closed-circuit television (CCTV)" and the mechanics in relation to this.

But otherwise I am already imagining various possibilities on the "stealth-mission", like perhaps capturing a VIP-disguised alien for the interrogations with only couple of guards knocked-out.
Depending on the evidences being left behind or better the lack of, this could affect the "DEFCON" or other related ratings of the country.
Maybe perhaps "Xenonauts" could do some of those "covert operations" to hand-out the information gotten via the interrogations or something else relatable to reduce the "panic"-ratings of the government in question.

 

(( Somewhere I wanted to put a reference of "Kado - The Right Answer" here, but now I kind "lost it".
It's a good series, so check it out when you get a chance:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kado:_The_Right_Answer ))

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((( Also yeah, I am aware I am pretty much repeating things that has been already said a very long time;
I still like writing these things again in "updated"-form.
Also for the sake of future reference I also write down the phrase "simultaneous inventions". )))

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So does this mean staff is limited and you can run out if too many get killed? 

As for the fighting humans aspect maybe the aliens could have one artificially created "cannon fodder race" which can never be knocked out of the war and is always found in the bodyguard/goon role along with the turncoat humans. That could also be supplemented with drones or robots to provide a bit of diversity. 

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I really think if there are going to be human enemies fighting Xenonauts, I  would like it to be like this:

Basically the aliens tought it would be a good idea to have the abducted humans serve as a weaker ally, so you will encounter brainwashed humans that wanna basically kill you.

I don't want average joes protecting Aliens, It could be a good idea the mind-controlled humans fighting you, of course, they will have some type of superior technology, not basically pistols and no armor, but if you aren't going to accept my idea, you could still add two modes, 1 with humans and aliens fighting togheter, or basically aliens with aliens.

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Good to see an update, thanks. I'm really curious to see how the base-building mechanics go. I've always felt that these have been lacking that little something special in most of the xcom games - buildings rooms has tended to feel a lot like passing through a sequence of checkpoints rather than making a series of choices to customise a play-through to your own style. Given given that now you aren't meant to do each ground combat mission, I can see many more strategies opening up. Kinda like in the Civ games, that there is more than one path to victory and engaging in the military option consistently isn't the only one.

Missions in the dark: very happy about this. The aesthetic is better, the lighting-visibility element is more interesting, especially if you are thinking about stealth :)

I can appreciate a lot of the misgivings mentioned above about fighting human forces. Xcom2 did have a lot of this which ended up reducing the scifi feel of the game. I trust that this can be done better, maybe if the amount of aliens you encounter increases as you progress, or maybe having secret rooms within enemy facilities that look a lot less terrestrial. In any case, the drive to change the players' attitude by having some few much more fearsome enemies is worth it. I guess the challenge is to crank up the difficulty without the boss feeling OP, especially given the tendency of players to load upon soldier death - perhaps that links into the major injury/insta kill aspect.

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Sounds outstanding Chris.  I'm really happy to see you guys are doing something bold and different instead of taking the safe/boring route and sticking closely to the formula from Xeno 1.  I can't wait to get ahold of a playable build with these new features/mechanics in it and see how they all fit together (and then try to find ways to horribly break them).

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I'm glad the overall reception to the idea is reasonably positive. I'm out the country atm so only a quick reply, but to confirm a couple of things:

Yeah, the implication is the human collaborators are not necessarily doing so willingly. It's a bit darker than in XCOM 2 where the human enemies aren't really human at all.

Yes, it would be theoretically possible to run out of soldiers if you're too careless, but I doubt it'll come up. If you're spending all your money on staff and then immediately getting them killed I doubt you'll get far enough into the campaign to exhaust the roster.

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Lots of interesting, positive mechanic changes in there.

In particular I like the world becoming far more integral to the game, the creeping infiltration and the involvement of varied neutral missions.

Some random thoughts...

While having an alien boss can be used in all sorts of varied mission types and be fine, it would be nice to keep the option for multiple aliens for key missions/ random missions to keep the player on their toes and for increased difficulty levels. Having an injured squad limping to what you think is victory only to then spot another alien would add tension. It doesn't have to be hordes of them.

Also keeping players on their toes would be to have some random factors in Threat. It would mean that you were never *exactly* sure when the aliens would launch an attack against you. You'd know it was close/ likely but they're ..well ... alien and a bit unpredictable. Various events could alter that Threat factor just a little, pulling it back or pushing it over that edge into an assault.

Combining soldiers and staff looks really promising, resulting in a really specialised unit. In addition to the military aspects of it, it reminds me of all those pulp heroes who were as good at research as they were with a gun. Will the limit be affected if loads of people would like to name a staff member through a Kickstarter option? Players will regret putting Prof Quatermass out on a combat mission, just because they needed the warm bodies, only to see him shot though :)

I used to avoid night missions like the plague! I really should have got some practice in :)

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I also would complain about the idea of soldiers needing more Science to handle higher tiers, infact, seeing the sprites of the laser weapons, they seem pretty easy to use, I don't understand why it should come as an idea.

Also a suggestion would be having different tiers of ballistics weapons, passing from m16s to SCARs, and also having different weapons based upon the country you choose, like AK47s for Soviet Union, M4s and M16s for USA, and so on...

The idea of scientists COMBAT stats would work if... you actually saw them during Base defends, seeing them handle various weapons based on their combat skill, would actually be pretty neat... If this idea was to be put in the game, I suggest you could equip them with various tiers of weapons... making it a little more strategic than the Base defense in Xenonauts 1, where you and the crew members were put in a bunker, and it was for the soldiers to guard them and save them, It would actually be neat having every crew member in the base, and making them die would suffer a loss in your crew. You didn't have much time to prepare when they attacked your base, did you?

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On 10/21/2017 at 5:14 AM, Chris said:

Hmmm, it's still pretty x-com though. You're still fighting aliens, and attacking UFOs, and building a base and researching stuff you capture from the aliens to get more advanced battlefield gear. The core gameplay loop remains the same even if we're changing quite a lot of the finer details.

Your complaint is basically that you don't like the idea of alien missions having one powerful alien with human bodyguards, rather than all of them being aliens, right? I'm assuming you wouldn't disapprove of additional neutral missions fighting humans being added to Xenonauts 1 to increase the mission variety?

Seems to me that it's quite a small detail to get worked up over, particularly as I've already said we'll boost the number of aliens if it feels too human-dominated on the alien missions. The key point is really that an alien soldier from an intergalactic civilisation shouldn't be on level with a Xenonaut with a Kevlar vest and an assault rifle, like they basically are in X1, so you need additional weaker enemies to make the aliens seem strong.

Yep, i hated all advent stuff from Enemy Within. The plot was horrible, non-sensical, no x-com feel at all. I liked the idea of having bio-engineered supersoldier, but the execution was pathetic with canister "droping from the skies" intact with timers(?!), man what a mess.

I would prefer to transform X-Com into Space Marines than to play against "advent-like" humans. At least you didnt came up with the idea of gimmick scamper, that would be even thought and i would leave xenonauts for good.

Well, by the answer i get that this already under production and will not be dropped no matter what people say(or what i say, for the matter), so, good luck with the project. I will chase other more "x-com" titles.

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Hi Chris

Im pretty sure you know that I dont share lot of points of view with Xenonauts 1 approach but with Xenonauts 2 you have the chance to make it right... is not about the scope of the mechanic. The real success of original XCOM is based on the inmersion of fear...

The plot sounds weak, the layer of strategy uninteresting and the worst part is not original at all.

Im really sorry to be direct but I was unable to found other way to point it.

Good luck Chris

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14 hours ago, Fabevil said:

I also would complain about the idea of soldiers needing more Science to handle higher tiers, infact, seeing the sprites of the laser weapons, they seem pretty easy to use, I don't understand why it should come as an idea.

Also a suggestion would be having different tiers of ballistics weapons, passing from m16s to SCARs, and also having different weapons based upon the country you choose, like AK47s for Soviet Union, M4s and M16s for USA, and so on...

The idea of scientists COMBAT stats would work if... you actually saw them during Base defends, seeing them handle various weapons based on their combat skill, would actually be pretty neat... If this idea was to be put in the game, I suggest you could equip them with various tiers of weapons... making it a little more strategic than the Base defense in Xenonauts 1, where you and the crew members were put in a bunker, and it was for the soldiers to guard them and save them, It would actually be neat having every crew member in the base, and making them die would suffer a loss in your crew. You didn't have much time to prepare when they attacked your base, did you?

Yup, you hit on three different discussion points here. The first about the advanced weapons requiring Science - I think it's a cool idea, because you can then add further research that lowers or removes the science requirement (as well as research that improves other aspects of the weapons). So the first generation of laser guns require a certain amount of knowledge to use, but after a bit more development anyone can use them like in X1. You roll out the new tech to your team in stages as it develops rather than as soon as you finish the first laser gun research.

Yeah, I'd like to have at least two tiers of starting ballistic weapons. Your base is an old abandoned nuclear missile silo so the starting weapons will be old M16s etc from an old gun locker, and you can buy more modern guns as an upgrade if you want. Different guns by country might be a little much in terms of art assets tho.

Yes, all your personnel will be used in a base defence including your "scientists" etc. But the idea is that you'll be encouraged to use them on other missions anyway, either because a scientist is specifically required for some reason or because you just don't have enough funds to maintain a full team of "soldiers" as well as your "scientists" and "engineers", particularly if some are away on missions. So you'll hopefully be mixing and matching your team a lot more than before.

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34 minutes ago, TacticalDragon said:

Im pretty sure you know that I dont share lot of points of view with Xenonauts 1 approach but with Xenonauts 2 you have the chance to make it right... is not about the scope of the mechanic. The real success of original XCOM is based on the inmersion of fear...

The plot sounds weak, the layer of strategy uninteresting and the worst part is not original at all.

Im really sorry to be direct but I was unable to found other way to point it.

It's cool if you don't like the sound of the idea, but I hope you enjoyed X1 enough that you'll at least try X2 once we put out the new builds and give us some feedback on what specifically you don't like?

Its hard to get a feel for how tense a game is just through text imo.

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