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v16.1 (experimental branch) feedback


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Thoughts/suggestions: 

Now that the game has a 3D engine, Zoom would be great.

Rebreather/gas masks if enabled in the armory should be visible on the tactical map

Change background color on bars for soldier portraits on tactical map to increase contrast between TU bar and empty background (when viewing soldiers with mostly used up TUs, the light grey background can make it unclear that the TU bar is empty. This is also an issue for certain types of colorblindness)

UI to better indicate the ability to assign/status of assigned engineering personnel to buildings like generators. Also, it would be nice to have the ability to automatically minimize necessary personnel in order to maximize personnel available to work on engineering construction projects.

Options for local civilian/armed forces interactions or general civilian/local force behaviors: e.g. order civilians to head for the helicopter - lets you establish and maintain 'safe zone' for civilians. Request local forces retreat to helicopter to protect. etc.

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On 1/9/2021 at 11:34 PM, JetTiger said:

Thoughts/suggestions: 

Now that the game has a 3D engine, Zoom would be great.

Rebreather/gas masks if enabled in the armory should be visible on the tactical map

Change background color on bars for soldier portraits on tactical map to increase contrast between TU bar and empty background (when viewing soldiers with mostly used up TUs, the light grey background can make it unclear that the TU bar is empty. This is also an issue for certain types of colorblindness)

UI to better indicate the ability to assign/status of assigned engineering personnel to buildings like generators. Also, it would be nice to have the ability to automatically minimize necessary personnel in order to maximize personnel available to work on engineering construction projects.

Options for local civilian/armed forces interactions or general civilian/local force behaviors: e.g. order civilians to head for the helicopter - lets you establish and maintain 'safe zone' for civilians. Request local forces retreat to helicopter to protect. etc.

Thanks. Yeah, something kind of zoom functionality should be easy enough to implement. The rebreather etc is likely to be included when we revamp the soldier models and put the final assets in place.

The staff assignment stuff does need better UI if we use it, yeah - right now I'd actually forgotten it was enabled, I think I should probably remove it until we actually have proper UI for it.

And yeah, some ability to temporarily control civilians etc might be interesting, I'll speak to the coders about how easy it is. It's a feature that gets requested a lot.

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Hello. I wanted also to provide feedback so instead of creating new thread I'll just leave my opinion here. Same deal v16.1 experimental branch.

 

Super TL;DR: Bad, but here is hope.

The long version:

Last time I've played X2 was I believe 2019 with v4 as last update. I checked occasionally later builds but just one mission and I was done. Now I've played entire January - yes still not much but got my opinion on current state of the game and it's first impression. When the Demo and early Beta versions came out I was playing on i7-4770k 16GB Ram and GTX 1080. Now I'm playing on 3900X 32GB Ram and still GTX 1080 (waiting 4th month for 3080). Maybe my memory isn't right, but back in 2019 I was very impressed by game performance, I was even positively surprised that I had reliable framerate on 4K resolution. Now the game stutters like crazy in 4K, less so in 1440 and there are plenty of instances of stutter in 1080. This is quite visible in geoscape when using the fastest time progression. What happened? It takes almost a minute to load combat mission and return to geoscape (SSD). 

My first ground combat was at night, and it was attrocious. The soldiers are blind as bat and reveal only 2 squares - really? Is this now a flare chucking marathon now? Although strangely those without combat armor could see farther. Additionally stange that they could see aliens in the black void but couldn't attack them because what's in the void it's untouchable. I can't even know where I'm throwing flares. This is

currently a major stepdown from X1.  Below images (on the left I assume it's the correct night visibility, on the right wat?)

image.png.4f179d3c434f672a2906eeb6d6ed49cb.pngimage.png.6bf6625d03f9dcfb160cfc0d9eade12e.png

In the below example I literrally had to be standing 2 tiles away from the enemy in order to spot him

image.png.7199eb9c41875495c95839843cbec5ac.pngimage.png.24ae694564af624a71a93453553f54e1.png

 

 

Back then in 2019 I believe that battlefield was not carbon copy from X1. UFOs I believe was another approach of the modular UFOs project from X1 that was tested (I believe it was called like this), now we have reverted to the original design of the UFOs which raises a question for me: will we be able to breach the UFOs from other sides then the main entrance doors? I think I liked the newer versions of the UFOs which resembled old X-COM UFOs design. 

The combat still has the same repeated flaws of X1. The combat shield gets destroyed after 1 hit. Why this 50kg piece of metal is less durable than farmers wooden fence that can sustain several high caliber fire and grenades explosion?

Below we have alien hiding behind a fence that is just one big hole. Why it provides any cover at all. 

image.png.e73ce79a99f48f8f76bc683654ba5bfa.png

Why is half cover protecting something that is miles away from it? The soldier would really have to aim at the fence in order to hit it.

image.png.4a361bf695b1a72fd8a1d52d29dc4251.png

Throwing grenades: Why does cover block a throw? Throwing should have not be treated in the same way as shooting.

 

image.thumb.png.bdb046e21f3e9aa656e651c5baaed114.png

Corner shooting: here for some reason it works

image.png.fdf26a9e17795dd19718c64756fd0efe.png

Here it doesn't, but I could fire from a window:

image.png.a572e6917c90bce5fd38620790338ab2.png

MARS unit - I think you took way to literally X-COMs tanks - because it's piece of expensive junk. No aim, no survivability. What is the point of building expensive weapons platform that can just die? Take example from XCOMs SHIVs - they could take punishment.

image.png.c220fdb46a2794fea4cbc979ddf9f80f.png

That was one burst from enemy I assume LMG and the AI is just sniper with this thing. What is the point of something super expensive that you have to be so cautious with it, that you would better not send it. 

Smoke vs visibility vs aim. So my soldier sees enemy unit but for some strange reason he refuses to shoot him, because he can't see the enemy?

image.png.c51e7ad7f66430cafa57047052a998d3.png

 

 

So right now I find the current build not enjoyable - the stuttering, the night vision (i assume it's a bug), some game mechanics. I'm still in hope that it will get better. 

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@ Silencer:

Your Threat is very big. You are a Betatester like we are from beginning on what I read. That´s cool and your Input shows you give though for X2 like we others. But now to your mentiond things. I try to answer as a Beta-Tester-Colleague.

1. Maps: Yes the Loadings are high atm. That belongs to a full overwork for the Maps from V.13 (old Versions) to refited / reworked Maps V.14 (a complete overwork together with an other Development Studio). That has many reasons, but the important ones were not fixable Bugs / Failures and the must have adjustment for everything.

2. Loading Times: The high Loadings belongs on the refited Maps, because they have still some childrens illness which only can so found and fixed. That Problems should have done to Early Access Beginning.

3a. Night Missions: They are a must have and get implemented as a new Feature with the Map-Refit. The first Armors and Suits dosen´t have an Night-Vision advantage about many reasons, esp. for more realistic about Human Eyes without light, like in the orignial X-Com-Series. But therefore you have the MARS / ARES-Vehicle with his big light and the Light Flares. Instead to the Original X-Com-Series in Xenonauts 2 some Aliens have disatvantages at night and some have advantages [Autopsy-Archive]. The Night Missions get like the Maps more balanced and fixed before Early Access.

3b. Night Missions: We Testers discuss to give your Soldiers more advantage in night Missions with more R & D, because all normal Electronics (not that easy one from MARS, X-25 and Transport as well as on your Bases) get disruptet from the Aliens very easy [Storyline-Archive etc.].

4. UFO´s: The new UFO´s were not good and caused more Problems then could be solved, so it was decided to implement fantastic working Content from X1 in new Graphics and Playstile to come back. That you can´t destruct UFO-Walls with C4 etc. belongs on existing Problems we have since Betatesting it. After the Problems there get solved [the C4-Problems on Side-Walls etc. as well as many more we had with the new UFO´s] that Feature will come back.

5a. Combat Shield: The Combat Shield is an Feature which is a must have for your Soldiers, esp. in the beginning. We testet to R & D the Shields first, but then we decided to give Steel-Variants of that at Beginning. The Combat Shield is an Standard-Variant-Equipment from every Special-Combat Unit (Police and Special Units in Cevlar-Variant or such), so your Soldiers get it back again from beginning as a Steel-Variant. And If you use it correctly, the first Variant of that Shield can solve 2 to 3 direct hits.

You are correct, that it can´t be upgraded to a newer Variant atm, because you need special R & D to do it, but the Standard-Steel-Variant it´s a very good Item from beginning.

I use it for my 2 Shield Soldiers and make very good content with it against normal Alien Weapons (accelerated Pistols, accelerated Rifles, light Plasma-Weapons).

5b. Heavy Combat-Armor, Warden Combat-Armor: The Heavy Combat-Armor is the Basic Defense Armor from beginning on and you get 5 from them on Start. They are good against Standard-Weapons. The Warden Combat-Armor is the better Version and gives more Protection and can hold about 90 % of the first Shot of an Standard-Alien Weapon. But both can only reduce the first Shot from an accelerated Pistol / accelerated Rifle, then the Soldier is unprotected and have the Disadvantages from the standard Combat Suit.

5c. MARS-Steel-Plating: Here you get the same Problem like with the Shield or the Soldier-Armor. The light Steel-Variant is only good for an long range-distance fighting MARS. The heavy Steel-Armor-Variant is a medium-range / short range fighting MARS-Variant. You can upgrade the Protection very fast after you make an importand R & D from beginning.

All are good secured against Standard-Alien-Weapons (accelerated Variants / light Plasma), but against Alien-Mashine-Guns or heavy Plasma-Weapons they haven´t a chance with your beginning Secure-Things.

Short said it´s like you fight with a modern Medium / Heavy Tank against an same modern fast, mobile and big Gun Tank-Destroyer. The Tank Destroyer with his bigger Gun will win, not the Tank. The same is here. You are underpowered and only with R & D you get improvement.

6. Alien Grenades: They are very hard for your Soldiers, esp. if they haven´t a light or heavy Protection in the Combat Suit. You mentioned the Combat-Shield: It protects shoots not Explosions directly on your Feet. Only the light protectet Undersuits, Heavy Combat-Armor, Warden Armor or Steel-Plating / Alloy Plating will protect or reduce the Detonation.

7. Blocking Shoots / Grenades: That´s reality and if you were in the Military or show Action Movies you know that you have Blockings in your range. And it dosen´t matter how good the Soldier is in Accuracy, the Bullet-Blocking is a main Feature. It can be a Fence where the Bullet can be bypassed and other things which block the Bullet.

The same Feature belongs too for Grenades. As well as from the Strengh a Soldier have to throw the Grenade farer or lesser. Of course the Aliens have more strengh then we, so the Aliens have a better Chance to throw a grenade correctly then an average Soldier you have.

8. Corner Shooting: That´s an Feature too, which belongs as good as possible on reality. The same example with the Military or Action Movies fits here too. Your Pictures answer yourself your Argument. High walls block fully, smaller Walls you can shoot over.

9. Smoke: There I agree with you, we have found the same Issue. What the Problem is, we don´t know, because it dosen´t belong the Soldier wear a Gas Mask or not.

Fazit: Your Closing I as a full Beta-Tester have to refuse. The Game is better as every Version before and is an cool resurrect of the original X-Com with cooler Stuff, Features and much more. Where I give your right is that the Beta-Versions still have Child-Sikness which get solved incl. the everytime new comming up Features until the Final Version is done.

Edited by Alienkiller
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On 1/11/2021 at 7:16 PM, Chris said:

Thanks. Yeah, something kind of zoom functionality should be easy enough to implement. The rebreather etc is likely to be included when we revamp the soldier models and put the final assets in place.

The staff assignment stuff does need better UI if we use it, yeah - right now I'd actually forgotten it was enabled, I think I should probably remove it until we actually have proper UI for it.

And yeah, some ability to temporarily control civilians etc might be interesting, I'll speak to the coders about how easy it is. It's a feature that gets requested a lot.

A zoom would be very, very appreciated. 

This one is a subjective personal preference, I just write it here just in case if you think it's a good idea. I find the portraits on top during GC to be a tad too small, and I tought maybe a 5-10% increase in diagonal size would do it. Reason is I was struggling a bit to see how much TUs I have left, especially when I spend 80-90% of the TU then decide to make a move with my other soldiers and coming back to that one to finish the turn, yet when I'm done calculating and moving the other 11 soldiers I forgot about my plans for that one because I thought I spent all his TUs (couldnt see) and hit end turn. Then "oh no".

About the zone creating and the civilian order giving, it's a good idea and a useful one. It's great to tell civilians to get out of my line of fire. But I'm not sure it would *feel* like it belongs in a Xenonauts game. In Xenonauts and XCOM civilians run around uncontrolled and it adds a bit to the game. Maybe an automatic zone near the cockpit of the chopper that the player doesn't define himself, for unarmed civilians only because that grandpa with the shotgun has to shoot at an alien and die a turn later instead of running for the chopper. I can't say what would be best overall.

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That with the Civilians and the AI-Helper is realistic.

Chris said already: "Xenonauts takes the old X-Com-Row as Model."

Means: There you have to save the Civilians like in the Original X-Com-Series and in the first refit of the Original-Series UFO ET.

With the difference that you have in Xenonauts / Xenonauts 2 AI-Helpers (Police, armed Civilian, etc.) now, which were in both above announced not the case.

And the announced Pictures from you Soldiers / Vehicle, you have a big one in the downstairs on the Monitor with a very big Movement-Show-Up, which shows you exactly how many TU´s you need and what you have left if you use the Movement / Shooting-Part.

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On 1/12/2021 at 12:33 PM, silencer said:

Hello. I wanted also to provide feedback so instead of creating new thread I'll just leave my opinion here. Same deal v16.1 experimental branch.

Thanks for the feedback, it's always appreciated to have suggestions on how we can improve the game and balancing. That nightvision issue you were experiencing is actually a bug I discovered last night where soldiers were getting a random sight range between 2 tiles and 10 tiles at night, rather than their standard 10-tile vision range. That was patched in the release a few hours ago so night missions work properly again now.

A lot of the other stuff you're referring to is just fine balancing issues - the shield and the tank not having enough HP, etc. I'll have a read through it and maybe make some tweaks but honestly right now we're just concentrating on getting everything in place so the player can play through the campaign without there being major problems, and that's when we'll really start to consider the stats on individual items.

If you have time to play the game again in a few months and provide similar feedback again then that'd be really helpful.

EDIT - oh, yeah, the performance is an issue too. A lot of it is the logging we add for bug tracking purposes so "release" (i.e. non-Experimental) versions of the game load and run quite a bit faster, but we do plan to optimise the game quite a bit before release too.

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Thanks for reply Chris.

I gave it a try with 16.2 and got much farther. Didn't do night missions right now, but have few more tips.

1. Movement tooltip should tell me how many TUs I will use, not how many I will have. I don't want to calculate if I will have enough TUs to move after I shoot. 

2. I sort of think that Shields should not have HP, they should have some sort of mechanism that after each shot it has a % chance of not blocking a shot (providing the shot penetrates the shield). This should only to apply to kinetic type of weapons. Plasma on the other hand should destroy it or make soldier just drop it because it's to hot to hold and possible have increased damage to the % chance of not blocking. Example each kinetic shot increase the chance of not blocking by 1% however if the shot is not blocked the chance does not increase.  Plasma might increase this by maybe by 10% (material dependent).

3. Shields and MARS should be crit resistant. Shield is just shaped piece of alloy - you can't shoot it harder, there are no structural weaknesses, there are no squishy organs. The first kinetic weapons I saw do something like up to 100 damage? (80HP shield) + 10 damage after combat armor. That's rather high where normally I see damage to shield in range of 20-30 HP. 

4. Smoke grenades should not damage, it works like an explosive but don't smoke grenades not explode except release smoke at very high pressure?

5. Suppressed units during player turn should not be able to make reaction shots. Doesn't suppression works that way, that you are sort of limited to shoot back?

6. There needs to be redone troop assignment and dropship deployment - there are way too many clicks that need to be done. Specialy now with the stress mechanics, you will be swapping soldiers like every 2 missions. Also soldiers assigned role in barracks do not equip the class loadout.

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I actually like that it shows how many TUs I have left after a move, I find it more relevant.

I was a little sad that X2 has the same cover system as X1. I was hoping it would trace a line from the barrel to where you want to shoot and the % chance of block would be whatever it happened to be. For example a window blocks 30% of shots whether you're a single space away or 50 spaces away. I have never had combat training, but I am quite sure I can shoot through a big open window 1m away very easily with far less than a 1% chance I will hit the wall which is like 40 degrees to my right. I figured with a move to a 3D engine that would be a given but I guess not. Still, it's loads better than the totally trash cover system of the new xcom which is the exact opposite problem where nothing blocks anything. I had to stop playing new x-com...it's just awful.

So far though there hasn't been the strangeness that was in X1 for shots though which is good. Sometimes in X1 you could get shot by aliens right by you that you couldn't see, and sometimes your shots would get strangely blocked by objects. I haven't played too much X2, but if it really is gone that will be a significant improvement.

edit--------

The thing which stops me from playing around with the game mostly right now is the performance. All of the game crashing/breaking bugs I experienced before have been fixed. And some nice quality of life stuff has even been added which is cool. It's nicer to turn solders around at the edge of the map for example. Good stuff.

Edited by odizzido
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