Has the community dragged this back to being X1 with a new coat of paint?

[Alienkiller]

3 hours ago, roxxed said:

I dont mind if X2 becomes an "advanced" clone of X1. I mean hey thats why we are here and why we loved the game in the first place. What I dont want to see are simple esthetics that repeat from the first game, like the geoscape looking exactly the same or the science/manufacturing screen having a slight shift in UI and then creating new art for the exact same placing of the back picture. 

Certain types of smart changing(in the right way) can go far on crowdfunded resources so it makes it "feel" different. I certainly hope that what we've seen so far are place holders. Yes aesthetics/eye candy is skin deep but if it doesn't advance enough it makes the game feel the same and hence the bickering and bantering begins in the thread. The ground combat for now has the most strength in change.

Chris if your viewing, please look into adding full right ups again back into the "Xenonauts 2 features" sub thread. Once upon a time there was loads of information that could pump the community on whats to offer. Currently we are getting news as it comes of things that are stripped back(being perfectly normal for game development) but it gives a stagnant feel to the project. There are still underlining features that make X2 better than the first, but they are being overlooked.

Yes, Roxxed I aggree. But what you don´t know is, that some of the Systems we have testet in Beta 1 to Beta 7 or Beta 8 have done a lot of trouble. For example the Base had to be rotated back from the cool looking ATLAS-Base (and I love the new Design and missing it fully) from Kickstarter-Promise were tested from us Betas.

In every small and big Patch the shown Kickstarter-Base (ATLAS-BASE) get upgrades, changes, bugfixes and so on. Nothing helped to solve the Problems. In that case the Community were asked and over 50 % decided to get an Base-Overwork. With that Overwork we get back the stable older Base-System (Base-Building and Base-Management) with new Graphics and the possibility to transfer Personal (like Scientists from the Lab to the Sickbay atm.). The fully possibilitys of that transfers we Beta-Testers could test in the former ATLAS-Base. Following upgrades to the old Base Managenment-System from X1 we could test in the prior ATLAS-BASE:

1. You can transfer your Personal:

- Scientists from Lab to Sickbay and Back. Transfer Scientist to the Sickbay reduces the Healing-Time from Soldiers.

- Technicans from Workshop to Generators as well as Radar and Back. Transfer Technicans to Generators give more Power and to Radar a better Radar-Functionality.

- A training System for your Soldiers.

2. This transfer System we have for the upgraded old Base-Management-System too in Beta 9 and 10. Since Beta 11 you can´t see it. My thinking about that is, that there get more changes for that cool Implementation. Like more Possibilitys for the Technicans and Scientists. And the full missing Training System for Soldiers. Maybe we will get this in Beta 12 or 13 for a full Test.

The Base-Management from the cool ATLAS-Base we saw in the first Betas were not the Problem. There were other Issues like Base-Attacks, Base-Defense Missions and such. Some Base-Management-System-Parts get transferd to the upgraded older and stable Base-Management-System (see Point 1). Maybe [only maybe] we will get such a cool announced Base-System on Kickstarter or an big rework on the now working Base system in an future DLC.

 

The same Problem like the ATLAS-Base was with the Airfight-System, which should a completely new System like the ATLAS-Base. The Idea to make a Mix from the good old X-Com-Airfight-System or something familiar with some new Ideas were not bad. This system get upgraded, changed, bugfixed and so on like the ATLAS-Base. But the Airfight-System was to easy (because the Feeling from good old X-Com don´t came up) and the easy Micromanagement (like fast attack, long range Attack or such) were not there. You couldn´t say from where the Fighter / Fighters should attack, you hadn´t the possibility to attack the UFO-Backside and so on.

In that Case the Devs decided to go Back to the older Airfight-System, without asking the Community. The totaly upgraded older fighter System is a cool feature and you can play it with the Mouse now. Maybe we will get an big overwork in an future DLC too.

 

Last but not least the Geoscape and Base-Management. There we get the biggest rework from Development on, because the Devs have noticed the Problematic in X1 there.

1. Overtaken Things from X1:

- Build secondary Bases over the World. Normaly you don´t need more then 4 if you build them up correctly.

- Scan for UFO´s and Intercept them with your Fighter-Aircrafts.

- Send your Troopship / Troopships from the Main Base to UFO-Crashsites and Terror Missions

2. New Things implemented for X2:

- You have special Missions now, which you have to do in Time [atm only as Placeholder] on the Geoscape

- You have now the new things [Orbital Bombardement, Signal Uplinks and 1 thing more] to get more Micromanagement for the Geoscape (atm Test-Phase).

- You get in the Base-Management for Soldiers, Vehicles and Fighters the new Modular-Armor-System. With more of that comming!

- You get in the Base-Management a new Research & Development-System [like Upgrades for existing Weapons and Airforce-Explosives like Rockets]. More is comming there too!

- And much more I have forgotten in that new complete Development for Xenonauts 2. Missing Features will get in the next Betas and if all Main-Things (like the Modular-Systems, Special Missions and new Implementations on Geoscape etc.) workes correct and stable then we will get more Improvements of that in the Early Access-Versions.

 

The Main-Improvement the Game get already is the Ground-Fight with a rotational Camera, a complete overwork of the Aliens, UFO´s, Soldiers, Transportvehicles and all other Subjects on the Maps. Esp. the Modular-System (wich will integrated to the AI-Helpers too), the new Improvments for the Fireworks (C-4) etc. and the new MARS-Support-Vehicle (and better Variants) are very cool.

The Grenade-Launcher is a must have Weapon, which works good if it´s used correctly. And he is like the other Weapon-Tiers upgradeable (see XCom2).  

Edited February 28, 2020 by Alienkiller

[Ichthyic]

On 2/29/2020 at 1:17 AM, Alienkiller said:

Yes, Roxxed I aggree. But what you don´t know is, that some of the Systems we have testet in Beta 1 to Beta 7 or Beta 8 have done a lot of trouble. For example the Base had to be rotated back from the cool looking ATLAS-Base (and I love the new Design and missing it fully) from Kickstarter-Promise were tested from us Betas.

In every small and big Patch the shown Kickstarter-Base (ATLAS-BASE) get upgrades, changes, bugfixes and so on. Nothing helped to solve the Problems. In that case the Community were asked and over 50 % decided to get an Base-Overwork. With that Overwork we get back the stable older Base-System (Base-Building and Base-Management) with new Graphics and the possibility to transfer Personal (like Scientists from the Lab to the Sickbay atm.). The fully possibilitys of that transfers we Beta-Testers could test in the former ATLAS-Base. Following upgrades to the old Base Managenment-System from X1 we could test in the prior ATLAS-BASE:

1. You can transfer your Personal: 

- Scientists from Lab to Sickbay and Back. Transfer Scientist to the Sickbay reduces the Healing-Time from Soldiers.

- Technicans from Workshop to Generators as well as Radar and Back. Transfer Technicans to Generators give more Power and to Radar a better Radar-Functionality.

- A training System for your Soldiers.

2. This transfer System we have for the upgraded old Base-Management-System too in Beta 9 and 10. Since Beta 11 you can´t see it. My thinking about that is, that there get more changes for that cool Implementation. Like more Possibilitys for the Technicans and Scientists. And the full missing Training System for Soldiers. Maybe we will get this in Beta 12 or 13 for a full Test.

The Base-Management from the cool ATLAS-Base we saw in the first Betas were not the Problem. There were other Issues like Base-Attacks, Base-Defense Missions and such. Some Base-Management-System-Parts get transferd to the upgraded older and stable Base-Management-System (see Point 1). Maybe [only maybe] we will get such a cool announced Base-System on Kickstarter or an big rework on the now working Base system in an future DLC.

 

The same Problem like the ATLAS-Base was with the Airfight-System, which should a completely new System like the ATLAS-Base. The Idea to make a Mix from the good old X-Com-Airfight-System or something familiar with some new Ideas were not bad. This system get upgraded, changed, bugfixed and so on like the ATLAS-Base. But the Airfight-System was to easy (because the Feeling from good old X-Com don´t came up) and the easy Micromanagement (like fast attack, long range Attack or such) were not there. You couldn´t say from where the Fighter / Fighters should attack, you hadn´t the possibility to attack the UFO-Backside and so on.

In that Case the Devs decided to go Back to the older Airfight-System, without asking the Community. The totaly upgraded older fighter System is a cool feature and you can play it with the Mouse now. Maybe we will get an big overwork in an future DLC too.

 

Last but not least the Geoscape and Base-Management. There we get the biggest rework from Development on, because the Devs have noticed the Problematic in X1 there.

1. Overtaken Things from X1:

- Build secondary Bases over the World. Normaly you don´t need more then 4 if you build them up correctly.

- Scan for UFO´s and Intercept them with your Fighter-Aircrafts.

- Send your Troopship / Troopships from the Main Base to UFO-Crashsites and Terror Missions

2. New Things implemented for X2:

- You have special Missions now, which you have to do in Time [atm only as Placeholder] on the Geoscape

- You have now the new things [Orbital Bombardement, Signal Uplinks and 1 thing more] to get more Micromanagement for the Geoscape (atm Test-Phase).

- You get in the Base-Management for Soldiers, Vehicles and Fighters the new Modular-Armor-System. With more of that comming!

- You get in the Base-Management a new Research & Development-System [like Upgrades for existing Weapons and Airforce-Explosives like Rockets]. More is comming there too!

- And much more I have forgotten in that new complete Development for Xenonauts 2. Missing Features will get in the next Betas and if all Main-Things (like the Modular-Systems, Special Missions and new Implementations on Geoscape etc.) workes correct and stable then we will get more Improvements of that in the Early Access-Versions.

 

The Main-Improvement the Game get already is the Ground-Fight with a rotational Camera, a complete overwork of the Aliens, UFO´s, Soldiers, Transportvehicles and all other Subjects on the Maps. Esp. the Modular-System (wich will integrated to the AI-Helpers too), the new Improvments for the Fireworks (C-4) etc. and the new MARS-Support-Vehicle (and better Variants) are very cool.

The Grenade-Launcher is a must have Weapon, which works good if it´s used correctly. And he is like the other Weapon-Tiers upgradeable (see XCom2).  

This is all great information.  Is there someplace, ANYPLACE, either in the game or on these forums, where there is easy access to a summary and usage of all the features associated with Xeno 2?  because if there is, I sure as hell can't find it.

I actually bookmarked this post, because it was the only thing that gave me a clue that you could move scientists and engineers around, and I still have no idea how to move them back except to remove ALL scientists or engineers entirely, then add them back, which by default puts them back into research/manufacturing.  So for example... how DOES one go about moving a scientist from the medical bay back to a lab?  PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, I am begging you... put the information in a sticky somewhere as to how these features work!!!

 

[Alienkiller]

That´s all BETA-Status, so we Beta Testers have Access. Until End of Beta Phase no Access for Public.Public Access gives it in the Early Acess Version, but that´s long in the Future.

[Ichthyic]

not the point at all.  if you don't have a place to post how your new features work, nobody will gain interest in this game.

have you NOT SEEN how interest is dying on Steam and Gog?

I actually read the forums, watch the videos and read the comments...

if you ignore everybody but your beta testers, this game will fail.  That i can guarantee, and this is coming from someone who was in game development themselves back in the 90s.  Hell, it's probably already too late.  3 years of private beta?  yeah, that just reeks of failure.   

I spent many hours playing the original, testing betas for it and this, and I'm telling you, this game is about to disappear from people's consciousness.

so little effort could be made just to keep communicating the ideas and features that are being worked on, snipets of this that and the other... keep people interested.

but there simply is none of it.  anywhere.

do you understand this?  If not, just ignore.



 

Edited March 7, 2020 by Ichthyic

[Max_Caine]

Wouldn#'t those things be covered by the Release Announcements, Development Updates and Feature discussions? What is missing from those? I'm genuinely interested to know. 

[Ichthyic]

you really think there's nothing missing?

interesting.

yeah, you guys have totally lost touch.

good luck.  I wash my hands.

 

[Max_Caine]

Ichthyic, you make a vague complaint, then when someone wants to listen to you. you walk away.Why won't you talk about something you felt passionately enough about to make your plea not an hour ago? 

[ooey]

Actually, out of all the companies, Gold hawk (and Chris in particular) are extremely good at listening to us. They have the common touch the big companies don't.

It makes perfect sense really. If he gives the majority of us what we want then he gets paid more for it (not withstanding the fact that he's also a big fan of these types of game too). It's the way every company that sells things to the public should work. Give 'em what they want!  

Edited March 7, 2020 by ooey

[Citizen844]

On 10/13/2019 at 5:18 AM, Solver said:

V9 will reintroduce the X1 air combat. 

Is this seriously going to have that?? Buy an aircraft ONCE and then every time it gets shot down you get a free aircraft and a free pilot without cost...

This is exactly why I stopped playing the first X1. It was chutes and ladders meets candy land. Please elaborate on air combat - Maybe I should disappear again until X3 comes along.

 

[ooey]

Well it wasn't really free was it? I suppose it was like loaning an air-frame out and you were insured if it got shot down. The big hit, of course, was the time it took to replace - that was the real killer. The aliens could do all sorts of things whilst it was out of commission. It never really made much sense to say that it hadn't been destroyed though (just like the over-the-top reaction of nuking a terror site if you failed the mission). 

It makes more sense to say that if you lost a Mig 31,  the Russians would supply you a new free one but it took time to up-armour it etc. to Xenonauts standards in the same way that it makes more sense to say the military had to carpet bomb the terror site with B52s. Nuking a terror site? Well, really! Just semantics though (the outcome is the same). 

If you want to negate it being "free" I guess you could always play Iron Man if you don't already.

[ooey]

Actually it would be nice to see a static picture of B52s carpet-bombing a terror site when you fail. It would kind of rub it in that you failed...

I also like the fact that Xenonaut aircraft will always be superior in atmospheric maneuverability to UFOS. Anti-grav withstanding, it's our planet and we know its conditions best! Later ufos could have rapid "point" maneuverability though, which could be negated by lasers (they would easily dodge missiles).

Edited March 12, 2020 by ooey

[Chris]

On 3/8/2020 at 4:28 PM, Citizen844 said:

Is this seriously going to have that?? Buy an aircraft ONCE and then every time it gets shot down you get a free aircraft and a free pilot without cost...

This is exactly why I stopped playing the first X1. It was chutes and ladders meets candy land. Please elaborate on air combat - Maybe I should disappear again until X3 comes along.

Yeah, you probably should disappear. You specifically asked us not to make a sequel last time you were on the forums so frankly it seems a little strange you'd come back at all, and given the original Xenonauts was pretty successful despite your hatred of it you're apparently not the audience we should be trying to please.

[Chris]

On 3/7/2020 at 10:28 AM, Ichthyic said:

not the point at all.  if you don't have a place to post how your new features work, nobody will gain interest in this game.

have you NOT SEEN how interest is dying on Steam and Gog?

I actually read the forums, watch the videos and read the comments...

if you ignore everybody but your beta testers, this game will fail.  That i can guarantee, and this is coming from someone who was in game development themselves back in the 90s.  Hell, it's probably already too late.  3 years of private beta?  yeah, that just reeks of failure.   

I spent many hours playing the original, testing betas for it and this, and I'm telling you, this game is about to disappear from people's consciousness.

so little effort could be made just to keep communicating the ideas and features that are being worked on, snipets of this that and the other... keep people interested.

but there simply is none of it.  anywhere.

do you understand this?  If not, just ignore.
 

You're entitled to your opinion, but the data that I have and you don't (i.e. Steam wishlists) suggests that the game isn't actually about to die despite the lack of promotion the game is getting beyond our forums and our Kickstarter, whatever the Steam forums and videos might tell you.

The focus at the moment is figuring out exactly what the final shape of the game is going to be. We already unveiled one vision for the game during our Kickstarter and had to walk it all back over the past 18 months because it didn't work anywhere near as well as we planned; I'm not going to do that a second time. It's much easier to sell people on a game when there's a clear set of features and a roadmap to release, and to have we need to finish testing our ideas.

Sure, non beta-testers might be annoyed at the lack of communication right now but I'd be very surprised if those people are going to tune out when we start showing off all our new features and artwork just because we've gone a bit quiet since our Kickstarter a little under two years ago. We're a small team and it doesn't make sense for us to waste time on marketing when there's nothing for people to buy; we'll start pushing things on the marketing front once we announce our Early Access launch. Until then our time is best spent on the game itself.

[ooey]

A good game spreads more by word of mouth really. Not many knew about xen1 when it came out, but it must have done well enough by definition for chris and the team to produce a sequel, otherwise why bother? It's still a great game to play, and always will be, just as the original UFO: Enemy Unknown from Microprose was. Heck, I still even play Rebelstar on a Spectrum Emulator from time-to-time. Or even Lazer Squad. Classics of the past.

One bolt from the blue I remember (because it nearly wrecked the 3rd year of my degree) was the Nintendo 64's Goldeneye, which I always say was better than the film. Compared to 1st person shooters from today it's very choppy, but it was dripping with atmosphere and quality. It just came out of nowhere to be one of the top games on the N64.

Finally, remember that this game is really a labour of love. Chris personally loves this type of game and loved UFO (which is why Xen was produced). It's in his interest to make sure its a great game because he will probably be playing it himself! Programmers of Big companies cannot put this kind of love into the kind of corporate games they make simply because they aren't really 'engaged' as much in what they are producing. The goal for most of them is just a paycheck at the end of the day. 

Turn-based strategy is not really catered for these days in comparison to other types of games, yet there is definitely a market for them - as shown by xen1. This is why xen2 is so important.   

 

Edited March 14, 2020 by ooey

[Emily_F]

17 hours ago, Chris said:

 

 

️

1

1 hour ago, Chris said:

The focus at the moment is figuring out exactly what the final shape of the game is going to be. We already unveiled one vision for the game during our Kickstarter and had to walk it all back over the past 18 months because it didn't work anywhere near as well as we planned; I'm not going to do that a second time. It's much easier to sell people on a game when there's a clear set of features and a roadmap to release, and to have we need to finish testing our ideas.

 

Please, please, please can you listen to us loyal beta testers though? I just feel you ignore our suggestions as to what would make the game better, and help avoid it morphing back into XN-1.1  and/or being too "samey" in the combat missions (when you've played one, you've played them all and there is no room for diverse tactics)

 

[Chris]

10 hours ago, Emily_F said:

Please, please, please can you listen to us loyal beta testers though? I just feel you ignore our suggestions as to what would make the game better, and help avoid it morphing back into XN-1.1  and/or being too "samey" in the combat missions (when you've played one, you've played them all and there is no room for diverse tactics)

 

Sure. I'm sorry to hear you don't feel we listen to your suggestions, as I do try my best to listen to the feedback of beta testers - I know the communication isn't always great here but we do read and appreciate most of the threads and posts on the forums even if I don't always respond to them.

Often it's just down to workload; the ridiculous grenade behaviour currently in the game is a good example where the community has rightly been complaining about an issue for 6+ and I fully agree that it needed to be fixed, but we're only just finding the time to sit down and actually deal with the problem. I know some forum users got frustrated with the lack of response there; unfortunately for us I think the devs not listening to the community and the devs having to priortise more important tasks probably looks the same to a beta tester. I'm very much hoping this is something that will get better as we get closer to release when there simply aren't any more important tasks than making the build our beta testers are playing better balanced and more fun.

Hopefully some of the new mechanics we'll be introducing to finish off the strategy layer and the new art we'll be adding shortly is going to make the game feel a bit more different from X1 too!

[Ogilvy the Astronomer]

On 10/17/2019 at 12:08 PM, Ogilvy the Astronomer said:

I regularly check these forums but rarely post; this thread’s title did make me take notice though, because I’ve been thinking along the same lines for a while. I bought into the earlier bold ideas for X2, and although they may have eventually proven to be unfeasible, I do feel a bit disappointed every time something is “rolled back”.

Still, I’m sure Chris and co. will make something awesome. I suggested some ideas a while back for X1 that didn’t make the cut, but in the spirit of positive contribution, will throw them into the hat again 

My main idea is to have a new mission type where you’re exclusively controlling local forces. The situation could be something like an allied military bunker is under attack by aliens. There’s not enough time for the Xenonauts to get there, but there’s a radio link set up so you (the player) can command the local forces. Imagine controlling a large team troops armed with basic weapons (rifles, shotguns etc.) against a horde of Reapers. It could lead to great Aliens-esque missions. The odds of your team all getting wiped out are high, but in contrast to regular missions, it’s not a game over / rage quit situation if that happens.

There are a lot of ways in which you could use this kind of a premise. Maybe if your troops hold the base’s hanger for x turns, then your main Xenonaut troops turn up as reinforcements and take the fight to the enemy. Or if the aliens take the radio room then you lose contact and it’s mission over.

Basically, I think this could be a way of mixing up the gameplay as a sequel arguably should, and adding more variety in a way that hopefully isn’t a huge burden from the development side of things (i.e. it would use existing assets such as character models). 

Separate to this, secondary mission objectives that crop up unexpectedly (e.g. rescuing a civilian and carrying them back to the chopper) would add more variety to core missions too. I made a huge list of options in a forum thread what must have been literally years ago, but can’t find it now!

 

On 10/17/2019 at 1:48 PM, Solver said:

It's this one, I think: 

Some great ideas there indeed.

 

I still think it'd be great to have some of these ideas considered!

[ooey]

Yes! I remember in Rebelstar on the ZX Spectrum (showing my age here) that if you were the attackers and you managed to blow up the 3 laser turrets in the base you got reinforcements for doing so (some with Photon weapons!).

It's this kind of diversity that would make xen2 fresh. Diversity in terms of missions, maps etc. For xen1 this tended to be provided by the modding community. If xen2 is structured in such a way that it is easy to bolt on new modules for it then the sky really is the limit for this sort of thing.

Edited March 14, 2020 by ooey

[Chris]

On 3/14/2020 at 9:39 PM, Ogilvy the Astronomer said:

I still think it'd be great to have some of these ideas considered!

Sorry, yeah. I guess I'll finally comment on that thread given you've asked me about four times now!

Yeah, it sort of depends what you want to achieve with those missions; most of them would work rather well in XCOM where it's a sequence of missions that really bear no relation to the actual strategic situation or the in-game world but they don't necessarily logically fit within the structures of Xenonauts 2 so well. In fact, XCOM2 has a much better setup from a lore perspective because the aliens represent an occupying police state so it makes sense that XCOM are rescuing prisoners and all that.

To give an example of what I mean, the ideas "capture alien leader", "assassinate alien leader", "clear command post of all aliens" are basically all descriptions of an alien base assault mission, right? Whether you're choosing to capture or kill the alien leadership is something that is down to the player's strategic situation - something that I'd consider a strength of the game in that you get to choose how to handle a mission rather than having to jump through specific hoops.

If I look at the list from a mechanical point of view, the ideas fundamentally boil down to:

• Defend something ("Defend a landmark" / "Defend supplies")
• Protect VIP ("Escort VIP to exfiltration area" / "Rescue downed pilot" / "Free prisoners" / "Rescue local soldiers under attack by aliens" / "Rescue hostage")
• Destroy / reach something ("Destroy alien transmission beacon" / "Activate missile site via panel in control room" / "Retrieve information local agents have compiled about aliens" / "Destroy alien mind-control device causing humans to fight you")

I guess the tricky thing is to think of ways that many of these things can get into the game. The defence missions seem the easiest candidates; adding some form of non-base defence mission is an idea I've been kicking around for a while and may well make it into X2 before release. As you say, it doesn't really require new mechanics or assets to add them in.

But if you take a mission like "destroy alien transmission beacon", you've got to ask yourself how it would be meaningfully different from any other kind of mission. In practice, isn't it going to involve the player just marching through a map and killing all the aliens like they would a standard terror site? It only really becomes something new and interesting if, for example, the aliens have unlimited reinforcements and the player is actively encouraged to focus on the objectives rather than just wiping out the aliens. But then where do those unlimited alien reinforcements come from, and why don't they appear in other missions, etc? It'd be difficult to explain within the context of the game lore.

So there's potentially a few ideas there but the key thing is to focus on how the missions would play differently, otherwise the different types of mission wouldn't feel much more different in gameplay terms than fighting a Terror Mission on a American Town map is compared to fighting a Terror Mission on a Soviet Town map. It'd just be the same mechanics with a slightly different flavour on top.

[ooey]

I think we can both see what he's getting at Chris. That's a very well thought out (and practical) response though.

[Xeroxth]

13 hours ago, Chris said:

mission like "destroy alien transmission beacon", you've got to ask yourself how it would be meaningfully different from any other kind of mission. In practice, isn't it going to involve the player just marching through a map and killing all the aliens like they would a standard terror site? It only really becomes something new and interesting if, for example, the aliens have unlimited reinforcements and the player is actively encouraged to focus on the objectives rather than just wiping out the aliens. But then where do those unlimited alien reinforcements come from, and why don't they appear in other missions, etc? It'd be difficult to explain within the context of the game lore.

Maybe the beacon allows for the aliens to deny air strikes of their terror sites and shoot down aircrafts that go through the area meaning you can't just ignore these beacons. While on the battlefield it give them the ability to use air strikes and support power on your soldiers like dropping reapers in the midst of your formation, shooting lasers that strike your soldiers if they're not under cover,...

13 hours ago, Chris said:

So there's potentially a few ideas there but the key thing is to focus on how the missions would play differently, otherwise the different types of mission wouldn't feel much more different in gameplay terms than fighting a Terror Mission on a American Town map is compared to fighting a Terror Mission on a Soviet Town map. It'd just be the same mechanics with a slightly different flavour on top.

On the mission side, I feel there are still a lot of improvements to be made even with the normal missions like you said. Especially I feel that the alien base assault missions can feel a little lacking compare to even the original x-com where the bases are multi-leveled with your soldiers have to fight from the ground level to the core. This not only can be implemented in the new game but expanded with multiple type of bases like floating sea bases, bases that are built in caverns like the illustrations or bases with huge surface defenses that needs to be shot down before landing.

[ooey]

It's interesting. One thing I felt I had to do on every single mission in Xen1 was to always sweep the area, eliminating every single Alien. It wasn't a prerequisite to do so, but it felt that if I didn't kill every single Alien that it would come back to haunt you. 

I don't know how many of us felt like this, but it may be something to work on with regard to the missions. 

[Citizen844]

MOD EDIT: Yeah, no, this isn't happening. Citizen844, you're now on notice. Write one more post like the one you had to anyone on this forum and you cease to exist on this forum. You have been warned. 

[Chris]

9 hours ago, Citizen844 said:

*snip*

I never got to see your post due to the good work of our resident moderator, but I understand that it wasn't very polite. If that happens again I'll just ban your account and delete all your posts.

To be clear, during the development of Xenonauts 1 you demanded in the name of realism that we made a game where transport aircraft did not have global range (and thus for much of the game players were entirely unable to respond to terror sites or other ground missions that did not occur near your initial base) and where interceptor aircraft were both very expensive and were not replaced if shot down (which meant losing a single advanced interceptor could end an entire campaign). Basically, you wanted me to utterly destroy the game balance in the name of realism.

When you didn't get what you wanted you spent several months complaining bitterly on our forums and personally insulting me about it, wrote an extremely negative steam review for the game on release where you deliberately lied about what features were / were not in the game to try and destroy our launch sales, came back on our forums again to tell me not to make a sequel and insult me some more ... and then you turn up and once again start complaining about the exact same thing and then throw a massive tantrum when I don't take you seriously?

To be completely honest I sort of understand why the first Xenonauts annoyed you so much (even if the scale of your reaction was ridiculous), because you bought the game expecting one thing and it turned out to be something else. I don't regret my choices, but I do empathise with your situation and if I were to do things again I'd probably have offered you a refund on the game once you decided you didn't want it any more.

That said, it's probably best for both of us if you don't make the same mistake a second time. This clearly isn't a game you're ever going to enjoy, and me listening to the views of someone who wants the game to be something it was never intended to be doesn't make any sense either, so I don't see how either of us gain anything from you posting here.

[ooey]

Insulting the devs gets nobody anywhere I'm afraid. We are all lucky that Chris decided to start Goldhawk up. I bet it was a big risk for him at the time, and I hope it has paid off handsomely for him (it seems like he made enough right choices, since there's a sequel now, doesn't it)?

Here's an idea. Instead of trying to destroy his work, why don't you learn to code and put your ideas for a sequel to UFO:Enemy Unknown into something tangible? Who knows, it might gain a cult following like Xenonauts, and we would all love to see a healthy rivalry when it comes to turn-based games. 

Chris - stiff British upper lip, keep calm and carry on! 

Edited March 18, 2020 by ooey