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The best things of X1 are abandoned


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3 hours ago, Dagar said:

Though physics to my knowledge has not yet found an answer to the question if time "shorter" than Planck time has discrete intervals or is continuous.

Hey shall we hijack this spiralling thread? It sounds like someone needs to bring up Zeno and his paradoxes! Is time/space continuous or discrete? Well Zeno postulated that either way, you run into logical contradictions. Thus, one must refute assumptions about the very nature of time and space, and reject the notion of plurality. Essentially, this means that motion of distinct bodies doesn't exist in any metaphysical sense and that the structure of reality is just one single firmament in which we all spin around (as opposed to "things" being entities that can exist in isolation).

I must confess, it is a while since I wrote an essay on the subject, but I think that about nails it.

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2 hours ago, Ninothree said:

Hey shall we hijack this spiralling thread? It sounds like someone needs to bring up Zeno and his paradoxes! Is time/space continuous or discrete? Well Zeno postulated that either way, you run into logical contradictions. Thus, one must refute assumptions about the very nature of time and space, and reject the notion of plurality. Essentially, this means that motion of distinct bodies doesn't exist in any metaphysical sense and that the structure of reality is just one single firmament in which we all spin around (as opposed to "things" being entities that can exist in isolation).

I must confess, it is a while since I wrote an essay on the subject, but I think that about nails it. 

That sounds a lot like a discussion I want to have in a thread that was about something else entirely. But maybe we want to continue this train of thought in the off-topic section? If so, just tag me there and we can philosophise about the nature of time, be it amateurishly (at least from my side).

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All the walls of texts, and nothing really changed in the end.

Geoscape is still real-time by any sane, workable definition.

 

Either way, planes work very differently for humans, so even if you made air combat turn-based, it would STILL require a separate set of mechanics anyway. Same holds true for geoscape. The time, scale and requirements of all 3 are completely different.

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@Decius It depends on the triggers. OpenXCOM lets you auto-pause when a UFO lands (not just appears), so I usually run it on 1-day speed (which is so fast you can't realistically pause manually). The difference between turn-based and real-time is mostly immersion and clarity imo. There's a little bit more you can do on the geoscape with airpower in realtime, like interceptors and sandwiching an enemy, as well as sending a plane out purely for radar. But they're not a big deal.

Edited by Bobit
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10 hours ago, TrashMan said:

Most things are "not a big deal", but the devil is in the details.

Heck, those little tiny things you can pul off are the best things about games.

Anyone remember the live c4/grenade hot potato trick you could do in some old games?

"Trick"? Against Chryssalids I would regularly have everyone ready a deadman's grenade! It led to a couple of unfortunate results when it interacted with stun bombs, but it prevented several wipes.

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  • 1 month later...

Yeah, I'd probably prefer some sort of turn based gameplay for air combat over the X1 system but the X1 system wasn't that terrible. The main thing you'd want to avoid (IMO) in  a turn based gamed is any sort of gameplay that relied upon twitch based skill. The two are oil and water. The X1 system was palatable for me because the resolution was slow enough (and had a pause feature) that the twitch factor wasn't that high. Would have preferred a turn based option though.

Perhaps something like turn based with simultaneous execution would work well. You issue a general order/manuver to each of your planes for your turn, the A.I. does the same and the computer executes both sides orders simultaneously and plots the results for the turn. One thing that could also be neat if the game moved to a less arcade style system would be the possibility of actually recruiting pilots and assigning them to your planes (like you assign soldiers to your transports). Better/more experienced pilots could execute their orders more effectively or possibly even open up whole new manuvers that the player had access to order the plane to do when flown by that pilot.  Just a thought.

 

 

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4 hours ago, GrumpyMel said:

Yeah, I'd probably prefer some sort of turn based gameplay for air combat over the X1 system but the X1 system wasn't that terrible. The main thing you'd want to avoid (IMO) in  a turn based gamed is any sort of gameplay that relied upon twitch based skill. The two are oil and water. The X1 system was palatable for me because the resolution was slow enough (and had a pause feature) that the twitch factor wasn't that high. Would have preferred a turn based option though.

Perhaps something like turn based with simultaneous execution would work well. You issue a general order/manuver to each of your planes for your turn, the A.I. does the same and the computer executes both sides orders simultaneously and plots the results for the turn. One thing that could also be neat if the game moved to a less arcade style system would be the possibility of actually recruiting pilots and assigning them to your planes (like you assign soldiers to your transports). Better/more experienced pilots could execute their orders more effectively or possibly even open up whole new manuvers that the player had access to order the plane to do when flown by that pilot.  Just a thought.

 

 

That kinda seems like what they're going for with this system, if I were to guess. This is pure speculation, but the original version, while mechanically sound, and fun as hell, was pretty cheesable once you knew the tricks. Much of this cheese is even fair game in X-Div; things like distracting a squad of fighters and using torpoedoes on their sides, as an example. It's not supposed to work that way, but they can't dodge anywhere except left and right soooo...RIP. Kinda why in the mod they were given move speed, and can potentially survive those kinds of hits, making pulling them off that much more rewarding. Only time will tell, the armor and jet options have me really curious. 

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On 2/18/2019 at 6:36 PM, Rico2 said:

I have to agree with the air combat system. The old one was in my opinion better. The new version of the combat system is a little bit like in the original x-com, but that doesn't mean it should be the first choice. I would prefere to use the Xenonauts 1 system, because the game felt much deeper.
About the base system: It feels kind of weird to have only one Mainbase fore the hole planet earth. The smaler one only for the aicrafts feel like thats something is missing there. I would prefer to have the choice of building more bases, maybe one or two just for building Aircrafts there or for research/engineering.
With one fixed base it feels kind of unnatural and heavily controlled and not as complex as the old one X1.

Well, you're right that it doesn't feel the same, but on the other hand, the majority of bases we build are just outposts for planes, radars, and troops. I only expanded one, because I needed more place for engineers, as they are lazyasses. Building more bases is fun, but how much of those we build will serve a different function than just outpost. That's the question we need to ask.

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On 7/22/2019 at 4:08 PM, Coffee Potato said:

That kinda seems like what they're going for with this system, if I were to guess. This is pure speculation, but the original version, while mechanically sound, and fun as hell, was pretty cheesable once you knew the tricks. Much of this cheese is even fair game in X-Div; things like distracting a squad of fighters and using torpoedoes on their sides, as an example. It's not supposed to work that way, but they can't dodge anywhere except left and right soooo...RIP. Kinda why in the mod they were given move speed, and can potentially survive those kinds of hits, making pulling them off that much more rewarding. Only time will tell, the armor and jet options have me really curious. 

You could also fire one missile at them to bait the evade, then fire a torpedo after they evaded. You'd take some damage setting up the shot, but it could be done with one aircraft of inferior flight characteristics.

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15 hours ago, Decius said:

You could also fire one missile at them to bait the evade, then fire a torpedo after they evaded. You'd take some damage setting up the shot, but it could be done with one aircraft of inferior flight characteristics.

True, ultimately just cheesing it with spawning the fired missile on top of the UFO turned out to be more reliable in I/I runs IMO. I'd say that it would be unrealistic, but on more than one occasion I've used Large Missiles at point blank in Armored Core tournaments just so folks couldn't evade them. I like to imagine that we just taught the pilots to fly upside down and fire the torpedo to land on top. Would that be harder than just doing it the other way around? Yes. Don't worry about it. 

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  • 3 years later...

I am sure this will likely not be well received, but here goes:

I have been playing Micropose xcom ufo defense for roughly 25 years, I cant remember exactly how old I was when we got our first dell craptop, but it was in the 90's.

I still play it to this day because minus the visuals, crashes, and some of the at the time technological limitations to in interface quality of life improvements ie mouse wheel scrolling in the sell/sack purchase/recruit menu's, the formula for what made the game is still to this day the bar none best overall *"strategy gaming"* experience I have ever found.

I looked off and on for over a decade for mods to increase the visual limitations on the game, and just last year or the year before, I discovered Xenonauts on accident.  I love how close it was to staying true to the base game.  That is why I still play it.  I "think" the Die Hard fans of the source material like myself only looked forward to the firaxcom dumpster fires for the sole purpose of seeing the source material with generational visual improvements.  Unfortunately that is not what we got.

It is my belief that for the fandom, the die hard loyal fandom, maintaining the base formula and just releasing updated visuals ever other graphical generation or so with the option of different camera angle perspectives, ie the traditional top down, or third person or even first person, is all we really dream of.

It would also be nice to have the "option" to play an open ended mode where we can just sit there for hours on end and just go through campaign after campaign of fighting and building with out being ultimately forced toward the eventual end of the game.

Now obviously we have to take reality into account when talking about developing a game or a life cycle of games in that there is financial limitations. Not many people have the funds to completely source their own projects.  People with the money to give for these things only care about ROI, and with the way today's gaming industry is going, if you aren't wrecking the source material and sh*%&*^g on the faces of the consumer, its hard to get the money to continually put out new content/products.

As for those who are adamant about getting a different experience, personally, that is what spinoff games are for.  Just look at the war hammer franchise.  There is literally something for almost everyone minus maybe racing and flying.  They didn't try cramming everything into one game and they are doing great because of it.

At this point I feel like I am just rambling.  I just feel very passionately about this series/source material and would absolutely love to see it continue.  I just don't want to see it turn into an clone of Firaxtrash. 

You know, something that might be insanely cool and a welcome change while staying fairly true to source material is introducing a direct host multiplayer experience where you and a friend or group of friends can share the same Geoscape.  Each having your own base or bases, and engaging around the world or in certain situations like terror and enemy bases, have the option when arriving at the site to "wait for other team".  then you can come in from different sides of the engagement and have some fantastic tactical experiences.

Look, I love the work you guys have done with X1 thus far and I eagerly await the future experiences you bring to the table.  Best wishes.

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