moar ideas for features

[Utirka]

Hello, dear developers, I played xenonauts and came up with ideas, but I do not live on this forum, but quickly overlooked other topics, I'm also bad in English, and probably even 3 dictionaries open in the browser, and a new Google translator will not help me , so sorry for the mistakes, and the repetition of other topics, let's return to the ideas.

By the way, I am writing this text a second time since at the first writing I wrote it directly on the forum and the forum sent me to hell, and this text I decided in revenge to write in my native language and to pass it through google translator, tooth for tooth, although the game you still good.

 

I do not care who copied xenonauts, but from whom xcom. Between xcom and xenonauts I choose xenonauts because there are less graphics, more pleasant texts, and, more importantly, more logic, and so, to the development of logic, many thoughts came to mind, some of which are not closely related, but in them in general, are aimed at, as for me, a logical extension of the mechanic. Well, I'll try to unravel everything without a chaos.

 

1 I propose the income of xenonauts from countries to be calculated by the formula

[panic in the region] * [the regional leader's confidence in you] * [economic prosperity of the region] * [actions of the PR department] - [funds to competitors of xenonauts]

or

([regional leader's confidence in you] - [panic in the region]) [[economic prosperity of the region] * [actions of the PR department] - [funds to competitors of xenonauts]

similarly calculated income from firms

 

2 Panic in the region: increases when the UFO conducts operations, but does not decrease when the UFO is shot down, decreases with time, or under the influence of the public relations department. Have negative effect on economic condition of the region.

 

3 The confidence of the leader of the region towards you, the leader like the VIPs as a whole has a trust scale that is filled from fulfilling their tasks (sell equipment, perform a mission, or vice versa not to fly out on a mission), and for knocking down UFOs over their state. Decrease with time, but it will slow down if you are on good terms with their friends and will decline faster if you are in good relations with their enemies, if you are with a VIP-in a good relationship he or she will give less money as a reward for assignments than usually, but will give you a discount on purchases to his / her organization, will give more assignments and if this is the leader of the state then the funding will increase, the actions of the PR department can improve your relationship with a particular VIP or relations of VIPs among themselves, such as the rule the relations of the VIPs among themselves change once in a certain time in a random direction (with a slightly greater chance of being positive), and also constantly diminish.

 

4 If the mutual trust of VIPs falls below a certain threshold, and they are both governors of states, then they will unleash a war gradually mutually increasing panic in the regions, and also mutually reducing the economic well-being of regions, if one of the parties has nuclear weapons, then another the party suffers a collapse of the economy, and the average increase in panic (there is almost no one to panic). At some point (I just did not figure out how certain) the war is over and the economic welfare of one losing country is partially shifting the other. If one of the VIPs does not have a country in charge, but there is a firm, they simply reduce the economic welfare of each other, perhaps for some interesting algorithm, for example the USSR is not particularly interested in firms, and will not shudder very much from the termination of trade with them.

 

5 Firms (well, or corporations, call it whatever you want) finance xenonauts as well as the states, but by the beginning of the game in much smaller quantities. They also have their own VIP rulers, and just like states that ask xenonauts to share technology, they will also give assignments, but are located in the cities of capitalist countries around the world (well, obviously the vast majority in western Europe and North America).

 

6 The economic condition of the region is simply a variable that once a month grows (well, or fluctuates once a month in any random direction), and it will grow faster if a particular region will be able to access alien technologies, on which the financing of xenonauts depends.

Similarly with firms, but they start with a miserable fortune, but also develop faster under the influence of alien technologies.

 

7 Why can not we make a profit from the sale of artifacts aliens, because we own almost a monopoly on this business, illogical, but the game should not turn into a Build 8 bases filled with workshops and a stamp body armor and foxtrot, until the money is handled 10^30 $  , and I have 2 ideas on how to solve this.

For each sold unit of the product price falls, in addition, the price falls with time, so that you can get the benefit from the first ten bullet-proof vests, as soon as they were opened, or "something" rendered in a separate item, by the way the above described method and "something" it is possible, and even worth, to combine.

 

8 And "something" is a competitor to xenonauts, that is, firms that produce weapons, armor, equipment, maybe xenonauts will even buy weapons and armor from them, under competitors I also see another organization that will compete with xenonauts for funding, and the opportunity to shoot down UFOs, and even prey from UFOs.

 

9 The PR department is something between the laboratory with scientists and workshops with engineers, that is, this building is on the base So, the building on the base after construction, we go to a separate panel (for some reason it seems to me a violet room with a lot of typewriters (at first) and a cute girl at the head of the journalists' graves (seriously, at least one, no harm for game) or with a nice guy (the subject of gays is revealed ^ - ^) on the choice of the player), at which we can praise the victory over UFOs, take away views from the actions of aliens, solicit additional money, contact VIPs, reconcile them, receive additional tasks from them, denigrate competitors, distribute rules and behavior in the case of contact with aliens, for example, tell xenonauts the place where the ship fell, where they last saw an alien, run them to a xenonaut helicopter or hide in a corner in a house on the edge of the map, this will reduce panic among the population and will be useful on the battlefield. The department can also disseminate technology and information about aliens, the first on the economic well-being, the second will lower the panic (warned of armed), take the VIPs permission to put planes in VIPs country that will allow to fly further and return to the airport and then from the airport to the base, and I'm sure that this is not all that can be invented.

 

10 The strangest and not thought-out idea that I have in my head, can someone continue it for me, the possibility of choosing a style of play as a shadow organization, either open or completely open, but that's where my fantasy ended.

How it will look in the gameplay,

we distributed to the people of North Africa the rules of conduct in the case of contact with aliens ... in northern Africa, UFOs were seen, interceptors released, while interceptors flew UFO 3 times fired civilians, panic increased, UFO shot down, relations with the ruler of the region improved, your journalists chant your victory as a result of panic in neighboring regions, people calmed down somewhat, in northern Africa panic also slept but much more increased due to shelling and as a result, panic rose by, well, for example, 7%, and in neighboring regions fell by 5%. Our soldiers flew out, civilians indicated where the UFO fell (and if we had not spread the rules of conduct on contact, they would have wandered around). We collected artifacts, the US government asked them to give them a couple of corpses.We agree, the councils are slightly offended to compensate for this, we went to the PR department, organized a project on technology transfer, it took one scientist from the laboratory to transfer it and transferred here, in 3 days we shared with the USSR a project of bulletproof jackal, they started its production, and its price in the market fell, economic condition of the USSR rises.

 

I hope it was informative

further small ideas and small comments

 

 

Why when we arrive on an open-air mission, everything is covered in a black fog of war, whereas in the helicopter in which we arrive there are windows and a large transparent cabin, oh yes, exactly, none of humanity sees anything further than 20 meters.

And why when we shoot through a lot of obstacles the penalty is charged only for the biggest, and yes I understand that in theory they can overlap one another, but if they do not overlap ... but I've heard somewhere that you are transferring the game to 3D, this problem elegantly solved by building a truncated cone from the gun barrel, and the area of the plane of the cone from the side of the soldier is the more than its accuracy, the angle of the cone also depends on the accuracy and type of weapon, I hope you understood.

 

You can still develop a little system on which if a soldier is killed then he has a 50% chance of survival, but he decreases if to cause additional damage, that's what I have thoughts on this issue, let's say our soldier has 50 XP, he was dealt a xenonaut 60 damage , he fell, he has a 25% chance of surviving, and every chance his chances are reduced by 10%, the aliens have completed the move - 15% are left, xenonauts have completed the move - 5% are left, 0%, he dies, but if he is rendered medical assistance then his chances of survival will cease to decrease. And in addition it is possible that as technology develops, a miracle ointment from burns opens, which even a living soldier added a 50% chance of survival, or in the case of close friendship with the leader of one of the regions, he will begin to supply you with a balm "golden star" (rumors are circulating that sufficient amount, and with the proper skill of the doctor, balm is able to restore lost limbs, but simply in everyday life a thunderstorm of colds, bruises, burns (!), cuts, food poisoning, liver cirrhosis and all other ailments)

 

Another interesting feature was the unification of the dark and bright time of the day (and the weather, and I hope not dynamic), the point is that everything outside is illuminated but, but not in the room. In real life, you need to go very close to the window to see what is inside the room, and if the window is glazed, then almost at all close, as for me a good feature for implementation.

By the way, I would like to see the possibility of expanding the base, let it be with the technologies, let's say the field is 8x8 but by start with unlocked 6x6 or 6x4, the extension will happen only after studying the technology extracted from the alien base, and some

Also, interface for rearming soldiers seemed to me very uncomfortable, but I can not imagine how to change it, maybe it concentrates too much on one particular soldier and because of this it is difficult to understand in what state your team is now. A trifle that is very easy to make, a line on a strip of force that would show the threshold after which the soldier begins to get a fine to TU, a trifle and economize a lot of clicks. Descriptions of subjects are rather strange and sometimes not very informative, the most obvious example is the description of pistols where nuances of grenades are told, and the effect of a smoke grenade I did not see any of the declared ones, although logically the smoke should be a visual obstacle and hide everything behind it, you smoke does not even reduce accuracy, and in places there are no descriptions at all, I hope this will be corrected in the new game , and they will let the community write the translation. usually it's much better, especially if the community is not like me.

 

Thanks to all those who read to the end, I doubt that there are many, waiting for adequate, and not very, critical.

[Chris]

Thanks for the post, it must have been difficult if English isn't your first language

I like some of your ideas:

• The idea that prices for an item decrease when you sell more of them. It has probably been suggested before, but it is a cool way of balancing the money that could be made from manufacturing for profit or farming UFO crash sites for money.
• The interface for equipping your soldiers will be better in Xenonauts 2, it has a top layer that displays your squad and their armours and lets you arrange them in the dropship and then you can click on a soldier to customise the equipment of that soldier.

However I think most of the ideas for the Geoscape are too complicated. The length of the game and the amount of information you would need to display on the Geoscape screen means that I don't think we want to add that much more simulation to the regions themselves.

For the ground combat - the 3D shooting cone was something we tried, but it does not work very well because the hit % you get from each tile is often quite different from what you expect it to be (due to the shapes of the different intervening objects). That means that the player has to check all of the tiles to see which will give them the best shot, which takes a long time. In the current system it is much easier to guess what the hit % will be just by looking.   

[Utirka]

No idea how to start in a second time.

Hello аgain, in view of the fact that I got fully acquainted with the game, ideas have recently appeared, and I, hoping that you will soon forget about my existence, suggest more stuff for consideration. I will refer to my game experience a lot, if I played on the third (penultimate) difficulty and this is certainly a subjective opinion but I doubt that I am the only one, just people like me, mostly, do not go to this forum. Go to business.

1 Autosaves every move in combat, and nothing more to say.

2 How do xenonauts open the UFO doors. Well, it's strange that the aliens quietly sit inside and let us calmly enter, acting by the method: opened the door, fired back without receiving a return fire, closed the door, the end of the turn, repeat until they all aliens die, in unicecases they retreated to the teleporter , or for another door. It may seem that this is a remark to the intellect of the aliens, in part yes, and of course it would be worth correcting, but I do not know how to fix it. BUT I rather want to draw attention to the fact that we can open doors. I mean why the aliens would not block the door and we would have to open it, in order to get inside, most likely with the help of explosives. And so with all the doors, and the aliens would easily use them. With the development of technology, xenonauts would have learned to uncover UFOs in "more elegant" way, by the time teleport appeared, it would be good to learn how to hack them ... or take stairs on mission.

3 Divide the globe into 24 lines, and arrange each one in 1 hour, and possibly a crosshair following the cursor. The fact is, that you can wait for the moment and send the landing helicopter to the mission in exact time to get day mission, just counting ETA, and these 24 lines are needed to calculate there will be day or night when we arrive.

4 And this brings up the idea of limitations for this waiting. The most banal country will gradually reduce support to us, or for example make it so that missions disappear regardless of whether the player flew out or not, but then it is worth viewing time until mission disappears. You can do it even more interestingly, for example, for a downed UFO, another one will arrive, a rescue, but then it needed to think about how to prevent the farm of a rescue UFO’s, for example, by storing fuel to place additional weapons from which it will not be so easy to take down.

5 At the crash site after a successful battle there will be a choice, to sell the captured UFO to locals, having received more money than in case of an air strike, or to send a defenseless research expedition (scientists,engineers,soldiers) that will need to be guarded by interceptors, it is possible to transport an anti aircraft weapon, or even more to transport, the UFO entirely to the base (I'm not sure about this option), and if they succeed, they will sort out what's left of the UFO by the cogs, getting more money, resources directly to our pocket, and new researches, maybe research at some point will need specific resources. In case of failure and expedition destruction player will lose expedition team and money.

6 Each new generation of weapons is only stronger than the previous one, it is not interesting, and I immediately propose a solution

classical weapons: cheaper use in TU, or increased accuracy, due to a good acquaintance with it

lasers: increased accuracy of firing bursts due to lack of recoil, or simply increased accuracy

plasma: slightly increased damage, and increased chance of igniting any explosive barrels

gauss: increased suppression or destruction of buildings

7 It is necessary to think up something with teleports, if player stand on it from other side that the teleporter stops to work and it is used by extraterrestrials, and the player too, and it is will be to make something with it.

8 Warning if the granate missed, and where it fell, because there were incidents when the grenade missed, it was not clear where it fell and it my soldier have to run faaaar away.

9 Some actions did not occur at the beginning or end of the turn, but in the middle, for example: the alien threw a grenade, but it will not explode when the xenonauts turn starts, but when their team spend for example 50 TU, or a percentage of the total TU, thus giving a chance to run away from grenades (or throw it back), of course, the same will apply to xenonauts grenades. And I guess it will be really interesting novation.

10 Ways to counter the control of the mind, for example taking xenonauts in the grip, in the case of mind control, or lite electric shock, not dropping to the floor, so that the control of the mind is countered not only by throwing the weapon on ground at the end of the each turn.

11 More detailed reports on UFO’s. From which side to go, possibly places in which you can pierce with explosives on a ground mission and through them break into a UFO.

12 Different endings, I will tell my game, I realized one day that I completely dominate the sky and the dreadnought from the ending may simply not reach the lower or even upper layers of the atmosphere before my last tier interceptors meet it. By the way, somewhere up to this point there is a question why not try to win back the orbit. Well, if we can sit on our planet infinitely, at least in the foreseeable future, receive all new UFOs, sorting them out into materials and live easy life, the materials themselves fly to us, sit and process them into anything, I'm sure if I did not miss a single ground mission, then by the end of the game would be enough for a megalopolis, of alien materials, with alien technology. So this is what I'm doing, to limit the game on time, to make additional endings, for example if to capture or kill enough praetors, then aliens will sit down at the negotiating table, or if long enough to dominate the air, then there will be an ending when humanity lived an eternal war with aliens, or combine them (we fought long enough, by 2100 we captured to the devil of praetors and if you want them to return home leave us alone, something from this series). That is, so that there was an ending that was not achieved by domination on land (the joke is I am not able to complete last mission, I guess that's the reason for this paragraph).

13 somewhere to the middle of the game I'm bothered by ground battles. I stupidly fly for the first time to a new UFO and immediately after that I choose, and so until the Elenium ended, but by that time I was completely dominated in the air, and the bases were filled with the penultimate interceptors and the last ones were already going, and now two separate ones thoughts. Acceleration of animations in ground combat, right up to their shutdown, is perhaps another way to speed up the fighting. And a two-way market, that is, when we choose an air strike on a fallen UFO, a small, random, part of the resources gets to the market, and we can buy them there. Concerning this there is an idea that the more resources they are cheaper, it is possible that even the final products produced by the player should become cheaper due to this.

14 training for soldiers, but each characteristic is increased separately, it may require money, maybe a special building, maybe up to some value, because the recruits are too weak, but fly on each mission... and on each of them dies one or two recruits... just because I'm trying save an extra move or two (paragraph 13)...

15 customizable new game to disable everything and get xenonauts 1 in 3D, well, or by including and there will be a new game. Probably half, if not all, of the mechanics I proposed could be shoved with a clear conscience, and an unlimited vision, and the range of weapons to increase, and generally, bold experiments in the genre, without fear of ruining the game ... ok,but with the fear of wasting time.

 

Thanks for attention, sorry for disturbing, for me game exhausted itself, and now will wait for a new part of the game. Have a nice day.