Soldier stats and stuff

[freeaxle]

Not a feature request, but more a wistful look back at the days when X-Com Rookies were... rookies. Some poor bastard black bagged in the street, given a weapon and sent out to fight the alien menace. I miss it. I mean, I quite like the Xenonauts system, in which all the soldiers are roughly equal at the start, but I connected with my soldiers based on my stats. There'd be cannon fodder, who was just useless, and despite me expecting him/her to only survive one mission (hence the place-holder name) would inexplicably rise to become commander. There was Hawkeye, who would run at a sneeze (well, sort of walk and fall down exhausted cause he had no stamina) and could barely lift that cannon he was carrying but could take down an alien behind cover half the map away with a snap shot. And then there was steroid (I came to X-Com after JA2) - the hero of the team. All this based on my soldiers' initial stats. At the moment, the Xenonauts soldiers, based purely on their stats of course, seem a bit homogenous.

So before anyone posts anything about how unrealistic the X-Com thing was, I have no problem with the Xenonauts system. It makes more sense. That said, I always figured that the thing with X-Com wasn't that the soldiers were bad, but that the aliens were so incredibly good that it made your soldiers look bad, literally. IE. the combat was at such a pace that your soldiers were obviously the best of the best for just being able to keep up.

Also, Tasmania seems to have been left off the map. I'm not at all angry: I figure that:

A: Western Australia gave Chris some mining money to do in the game what they'd love to do in real life.

B: Chris hates the Dutch and is trying to remove their influence from the map (Tasmania of course being named after Abel Tasman). It was very English to hate the Dutch at one point (during the 17th century I believe) hence the expressions 'dutch courage', 'double dutch' etc.

C: Tasmania eloped with the Philippines and are now happily married somewhere out of sight in the Arctic Circle. Of course, it couldn't have been an oversight/error of some kind

Finally, this should probably go in the feature suggestions rather than at the end of a rambling post reminiscing about one of X-Com's less plausible features, but given that it is a small UI request that has probably already been made: Please make the writing bigger! I can barely read it (running a 1366/768 monitor). Oh and please make arrow keys scroll through soldiers in the soldier screen.

Edited May 20, 2012 by freeaxle

[XenoMask]

On the missing islands "It's an overzealous Photoshop tool that removed the stupid light blue shallow water from the edge of the landmasses but also took some of the land with it. They'll be in the final version."

Note: I'm not sure Tasmania is an island, but I'll assume it is

[Corporal Hicks]

I also agree that we need variety of soldier stats... I mean, they should be really good at one thing, and bad at others

[Gorzahg]

I'd like to have some corporals who aren't weaklings. And Tasmania is an island.

[Chris]

I've always been scared of Tasmanian Devils since I saw the cartoon, so I nuked the site from orbit.

[Lysear]

Best reply ever ^^

[The New Romance]

After all, it was the only way to be sure.

[kovyakov]

I didn't found a proper location for this and dont want to start a new thread, but what does mean "$305,000 - Pilot portraits & callsigns!" on kickstarte page about the updates?

[XenoMask]

I didn't found a proper location for this and dont want to start a new thread, but what does mean "$305,000 - Pilot portraits & callsigns!" on kickstarte page about the updates?

There is a thread for it so try to search for it again. Its about giving aircraft more personality by giving them pilot portraits.(And callsign is that thing you do when you give soldiers nickname)

[Gorlom]

It's one of the announcement threads in the topmost subforum.

I only looked through the first 3 pages of the thread but this seems to be the most relevant post so far:

http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/1884-Stretch-Goal-Poll-Options?p=21399&viewfull=1#post21399

Edited May 24, 2012 by Gorlom

[freeaxle]

I've always been scared of Tasmanian Devils since I saw the cartoon, so I nuked the site from orbit.

Really? Meanie In all seriousness though, you may not have to worry about Tasmanian Devils for much longer; there's a facial tumour going around the population (has been for quite a while) and the species is in danger of becoming extinct.

[Kimberly]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]1228[/ATTACH]

Really? Meanie In all seriousness though, you may not have to worry about Tasmanian Devils for much longer; there's a facial tumour going around the population (has been for quite a while) and the species is in danger of becoming extinct.

...Are you saying Loony Tunes lied to me? No. I refuse to believe it.