Best mods / improvements for Xenonauts 1?

[TrashMan]

 

[Keflin]

On 7/18/2019 at 6:13 AM, Chris said:

I guess it's time for me to spend 100 hours on a playthrough of X-Division then

Well just look at it for some ideas, not that we need to reproduce the whole thing. I am certain it will tickle your creative juices.

[Coffee Potato]

I like to alternate between the 3, but just love that XDiv feeling of:

-Land in drop ship, I know for a fact that I have at least 1-2 attacks of safety between everyone and death. 

-Enough TUs to deploy the team where I want them, and know the AI can move just as fast. (Unshackled TUs also get to this a bit)

-Free vehicle slot means you always have armor support, plus it's replaceable. Feels great to have them there without worrying about it being a waste. (Also pretty understandable armor)

-Having a wide arsenal of area denial options. Sure, there's 6 Sebillians, but they ain't sprinting that lake of lava that came out of the incendiary. 

-No instant death...mostly. Knowing that a rocket launcher will likely kill anything, but that small arms generally won't.  Reapers having to take a couple turns to penetrate armor seems less scary, until you see that they can tank the generally more reliable laser class weapons. Face Huggers, Collapsing Buildings and Big Explosions are generally the insta killers. (Aka, if I round that corner, I might take a big hit and need to retreat that unit, but can suppress for the others to charge in, instead of "Round the corner...dead, round the corner....DED, round the corner...one shot wasn't enough.")

-Having the carry capacity for weird builds. I love, for example, having a unit carrying around enough options to deal with different scenarios,  while being able to operate at slightly above cap. 

-Being able to recapture bases. 

-More plane options, and just a generally more varied air game. This was the best air came I've seen in the genre hands down.

-"Shock and Awe" weapons that can actually can roll TU damage (if armor is bypassed) to stun an enemy mid turn,  instead of going for the kill (They used Shotguns and SMGs, I feel this feature is somewhat in X2 with being able to suppress mid turn). The idea of total suppression is really something, too. 

-Evolving weapons. Each weapon type develops new features,  which come in several tiers, allowing for different models of the same thing. It feels organic. 

Ok, I'll stop gushing. I love streaming this though. 

[Arabian Knight]

I will say, having played X-Division and X-Pansion Pack, that I actually preferred the latter. I enjoyed immensely most of the things X-Division did, especially in regards to all of the new equipment and vehicles. The reason that I preferred X-Pansion Pack was something Chris actually has alluded to in other discussions-X Division's construction projects are far too many for me. I actually do like having more projects, but X Division can feel pretty cluttered at times in the workshop (having to capture and dissemble UFOs for specific parts to build fighters is a cool idea, but becomes tedious for low level interceptors like the Foxtrot, for example). It was strange for me to see that I required an Alien datacore or something similar to build a design based on a MiG Foxhound, which is a real world plane, even if it was enhanced. I'm not saying to knock X Division, because I do enjoy it and am playing it currently, but that's the area for me that it falls behind. 

X-Pansion Pack I enjoyed because it was very true to vanilla, but with more goodies. Not nearly as many as X-Division of course, but the main things I enjoyed were the handful of new weapons (like the flamethrower, which I believe was their addition) and the new enemy types. The secondary attack for vehicles was also quite cool. The coolest thing they did, to me, was simply to add more to the base game without changing it too much. More weapons, more aliens, more data entries for those aliens, and more UFOs. X Division does all this and more, of course, but the amount of projects is overwhelming at times for me. I do like its base gameplay better, I will say-even though I enjoyed the higher difficulty with X-Pansion, it sometimes felt illogical how quickly my soldiers could die (reaction fire from a Caesan pistoleer from across the map, missing twice and then killing my shield trooper on the third shot? Not fun).

So yeah. More items, more vehicles, that's basically what I liked.

[Bobit]

@Coffee Potato

I don't prefer random effects that are just straight bonuses. I also strongly dislike Darkest Dungeon because of its no-permadeath main mode and very poor hardcore mode.

[Coffee Potato]

9 hours ago, Bobit said:

@Coffee Potato

I don't prefer random effects that are just straight bonuses. I also strongly dislike Darkest Dungeon because of its no-permadeath main mode and very poor hardcore mode.

No permadeath main mode? Permadeath is like..first on the mechanics list last I played ...? 

[Bobit]

On 9/16/2019 at 8:56 PM, Coffee Potato said:

Permadeath is like..first on the mechanics list last I played ...? 

Darkest Dungeon has character permadeath but you physically cannot lose a campaign. It feels like being sent back to level 3 when you lose on level 5.

[Coffee Potato]

7 hours ago, Bobit said:

Darkest Dungeon has character permadeath but you physically cannot lose a campaign. It feels like being sent back to level 3 when you lose on level 5.

Not entirely true. Nightmare mode had campaign loss.

[Bobit]

On 11/14/2019 at 6:49 AM, Coffee Potato said:

Not entirely true. Nightmare mode had campaign loss.

Yes, but that's why I said "it has a bad hardcore mode". Nightmare mode is a tacked-on fixed instaloss timer. Like XCOM2's arbitrary-cutoff "you lose!" timer which is so much worse than LW2's gradual reinforcement timer, but applied to a 40 hour campaign where it's even less clear how long things will take. It also means various pieces of content like the side bosses are not viable to attempt.

I mean to some degree I think DD just lost me because of extreme lack of content compared to the traditional roguelikes (Brogue, TGGW, Cogmind) I'm used to, and StS where your character has some 30 abilities at a time. And I'm a total sucker for tons of content. But I haven't played it enough to declare it an altogether low-content game. I have played it enough to know that I disagree with that style of permadeath.

Edited December 6, 2019 by Bobit