V24 thoughts

[Komandos]

On 10/18/2022 at 3:54 PM, Solver said:

A height ceiling might be in order there - grenades are powerful in any case, and they probably work better if they're limited to paths that are somewhat realistic. Throwing grenades over walls or hedges is good, being able to throw them over wide buildings is too much. It's a grenade, not a mortar. 

These are not grants, they have great power. This firearm has a short firing range.

[Komandos]

On 10/19/2022 at 7:34 AM, Skitso said:

I'd also argue that changing starting dropship's unit capacity from 10 to 8 would lessen the "suppress to win" situations as player wouldn't have superiority regarding unit numbers quite so often.

Reducing the capacity of the launch shuttle from 10 soldiers to 8 also reduces the variety of tactical situations.

With a small number of tactical groups, the player is deprived of the opportunity to act in several squads in several directions.

 

[Komandos]

On 10/18/2022 at 10:34 PM, Chris said:

The fact I've become increasingly unsure if suppression actually adds anything as a mechanic probably colours my opinion here. I think it's good that you can do it via flashbangs, particularly as it'll disable a number of the alien racial abilities we'll be introducing in the next proper build, but I'm not sure if it makes the game more fun if you're able to suppress units with normal gunfire.

1. Suppression is necessary.

2. Friendly fire should have a lower probability of "suppression" (soldiers trust their commander).

3. The probability of suppression depends on the courage and experience of the soldier. On a brave soldier who has participated in many battles, the suppression effect should not work.

4. Suppression should also work as an evasion effect. Namely: a soldier in a "depressed" state has a lower (significantly lower) chance of getting a bullet.

5. The best way to realize the "suppression" effect is as follows: the soldier lies down on the ground. To get up again, he needs extra AP action points. (Add animation of soldiers lying on the ground)

6. When the first bullet from a machine-gun burst flies nearby (very close), the soldier can activate the "suppression" mode, as a result of which all subsequent bullets from the queue (and all enemy bullets on this turn) (turn) have a significantly lower chance of hitting the soldier than if the soldier was in a normal state.

[Emily_F]

9 minutes ago, Komandos said:

1. Suppression is necessary.

2. Friendly fire should have a lower probability of "suppression" (soldiers trust their commander).

3. The probability of suppression depends on the courage and experience of the soldier. On a brave soldier who has participated in many battles, the suppression effect should not work.

4. Suppression should also work as an evasion effect. Namely: a soldier in a "depressed" state has a lower (significantly lower) chance of getting a bullet.

5. The best way to realize the "suppression" effect is as follows: the soldier lies down on the ground. To get up again, he needs extra AP action points. (Add animation of soldiers lying on the ground)

6. When the first bullet from a machine-gun burst flies nearby (very close), the soldier can activate the "suppression" mode, as a result of which all subsequent bullets from the queue (and all enemy bullets on this turn) (turn) have a significantly lower chance of hitting the soldier than if the soldier was in a normal state.

I agree massively with all of these suggestions

[alienman]

I have to admit. I thought this project might disappoint me, but after trying the latest beta stuff, I'm excited for Xenonauts 2 again. I don't have too much feedback to give, sorry. Since I don't want to ruin the experience, however, from what I have tried, it sure feels good. Takes me back to the old Xenonauts 1 days.

I'm just going to make one request. That green outline thing on soldiers when they are behind something, can you make that a toggle thing? Look very distracting to me.

[alienman]

After deciding to play some more (I couldn't help myself), I have to say I don't like the gimmicky missions at all. Saving the tubed civilians, and especially not the collect the usb stick one. Feels way too gamey, and I don't feel the stressed gameplay fits the game. My opinion of course, but highly disliked it. Shelving the game for now.

[Komandos]

3 minutes ago, alienman said:

Feels way too gamey, and I don't feel the stressed gameplay fits the game.

Is the gameplay too time-consuming and such that it quickly tires the player?

[Emily_F]

3 minutes ago, alienman said:

After deciding to play some more (I couldn't help myself), I have to say I don't like the gimmicky missions at all. Saving the tubed civilians, and especially not the collect the usb stick one. Feels way too gamey, and I don't feel the stressed gameplay fits the game. My opinion of course, but highly disliked it. Shelving the game for now.

I think most people like them, to be honest. Stops the game getting too repetitive. 

[Kamehamehayes]

6 minutes ago, alienman said:

After deciding to play some more (I couldn't help myself), I have to say I don't like the gimmicky missions at all. Saving the tubed civilians, and especially not the collect the usb stick one. Feels way too gamey, and I don't feel the stressed gameplay fits the game. My opinion of course, but highly disliked it. Shelving the game for now.

Yeah, it seems like the more "gimmicky missions" are getting pretty popular as of late. They address one of Xen 1's biggest issue, lack of mission variety and no pressure to complete missions faster/more efficiently. I suspect my opinion is not going to be particularly popular, but I really like it when the game encourages the player to play fast and more efficiently and use every resource to achieve as much in any given turn as possible. I think the main goal of a strategy game is to allow the player to use all of its mechanics and resources available to the player to allow for said faster and more efficient play. This doesn't necessarily mean that a mission must have infinitely respawning reinforcements or a turn timer in order to achieve this, but a tactics game should try to encourage this kind of play every once in awhile imo. 

Why doesn't the stressed feeling fit the game? Did you expect the game to be of little stress like Xen 1? Do the game mechanics clash and tried to force a playstyle that the mechanics did not facilitate (much like what happened to Xcom 2 imo)? Did the constant stress tire you out and you wanted to put the game down after awhile and break immersion? 

I feel like these questions are important to address as the answers to these questions could cause backlash to these kinds of missions in the future. Like how a lot of people just won't like the change and prefer a more standard slow Xen 1 campaign, or how having too many gimmicky missions in a row can tire out a player and force them to put the game down temporarily, or if the mission objectives clash with the game mechanics and cause another Xcom 2 disaster. 

I think this needs to be discussed as I know a significant number of people are worried about these missions for one reason or another and that needs to be addressed at some point imo. 

[Komandos]

19 minutes ago, Kamehamehayes said:

I suspect my opinion is not going to be particularly popular, but I really like it when the game encourages the player to play fast and more efficiently and use every resource to achieve as much in any given turn as possible. I think the main goal of a strategy game is to allow the player to use all of its mechanics and resources available to the player to allow for said faster and more efficient play. This doesn't necessarily mean that a mission must have infinitely respawning reinforcements or a turn timer in order to achieve this, but a tactics game should try to encourage this kind of play every once in awhile imo. 

To make a tactical battle more dynamic and full of different events during one turn (turn), it is not necessary to add a time timer that makes you wait less for favorable conditions and act more.

It is enough to increase the radius of the "event overview" (vision) so that more game events fall into the player's field of view. If (for example) if you make the visibility zone (radius) equal to one tile, then this will greatly slow down the dynamics of the game. If you make a zone (radius) of visibility for the entire map, then this will make the search for the enemy as fast as possible.

The radius of visibility (review) that is now in the game is small.

 

[Komandos]

38 minutes ago, Kamehamehayes said:

Did the constant stress tire you out and you wanted to put the game down after awhile and break immersion?

Heavy combat missions should alternate with light ones so as not to tire the player.

[Emily_F]

16 minutes ago, Komandos said:

Heavy combat missions should alternate with light ones so as not to tire the player.

I agree with this.  I liked the fact that X-Com Apocalypse (easily my favourite of the series) had different types of missions that you sent different types & mixes of troops to.  

I think it would have been good to have explored the "Agents" thing that was in an earlier version of X2 - agent missions could have been more sneaky-beaky gameplay like in Phantom Doctrine where stealth was more important than firepower.  Maybe missions like the USB intel recovery mission would have been an ideal candidate for this and would break up the game a bit and make the player think a bit more.  I think @alienman raised a point on not liking these particular missions and, on reflection, I do see what he is saying.  Perhaps even having mini "intel bases" specially built for agents and their missions around the globe would be cool.  

[Solver]

I really enjoy the different mission types and hope that the game will also implement capture missions that were talked about at one point.

The game is better off without a mission timer, most of the time. But having a few missions that are different is great for variety and I see even more opportunities here. Abduction missions are timed but with a good implementation that lets you decide how you play - saving 5 civilians is fairly easy and can be done with cautious play, saving everyone gets you extra rewards but requires more aggressive play. The Cleaner intelligence mission is very fun, the map layout is great as well - you do a multi-directional assault on a building and then you're in a rush to fall back to the dropship.

Ideally, I'd like to see something else like capture missions (stun a Cleaner agent) or rescue missions (save an unarmed/lightly armed scientist/pilot/witness that you control as an extra squad member on the mission). Terror missions could be further differentiated from crash sites by, for example, giving some aliens weapons that cause a lot of terrain damage so terror maps end up having more alien-caused environment destruction.

 

I made it, for the first time, into later parts of the campaign, and there's of course pacing issues to be resolved, which I'm confident just needs more eyes. Despite devoting a lot of my economy to the air force, I can barely keep up and am shooting down one plane per wave. Getting more planes is very expensive, counting hangar + airplane construction + two torpedoes (the only weapon worth having). They also take forever to refuel and to repair, which I know is an intentional decision to prevent the same plane from doing too much in a wave, but I'd nonetheless argue refueling is a bit too slow and repair is considerably too slow, a damaged plane won't be nearly repaired by the time of the next wave. Anyway, none of this is a big deal, the campaign pacing will definitely improve through playing it, now that you can reach later stages with no major issues.

 

There's one feature in the game now that's definitely going to be controversial, and that's destruction of secondary bases. Your second base will at some point likely be attacked by a UFO, so if you don't shoot it down, the base is gone. I'm sure that for many players that will be an instant ragequit moment - losing a base is a massive loss of investment that may be impossible to come back from and that's definitely the kind of thing players quit over. Personally I am fine with the mechanic... but I play X2 as an xcom game, which to me means mistakes are heavily punished. But to most players, I think it wouldn't even really be obvious that the second base can be attacked, and it's less obvious what to do about it.

You need troops at your second base to defend it. Since those troops are going to be inexperienced and poorly equipped, you also need defensive batteries at the base to make sure any attacking UFO is heavily damaged. The design aspect that doesn't quite strike me right is that you must have troops even though you're trying to avoid using them. You want the UFO shot down by air planes or, failing that, defense batteries. But you must also have troops simply because the risk is otherwise too great, without troops you risk instantly losing the base. Not sure what the solution is here - it might work better if a certain amount of batteries (3?) was enough to guarantee a shootdown, which means taking randomness out of defensive battery fire, but that also needs to be somehow conveyed to the player, which does not seem easy.

That definitely needs some thought though, perhaps not the most common scenario but a very important one in terms of how players will react.

[Emily_F]

3 minutes ago, Solver said:

Ideally, I'd like to see something else like capture missions (stun a Cleaner agent) or rescue missions (save an unarmed/lightly armed scientist/pilot/witness that you control as an extra squad member on the mission). Terror missions could be further differentiated from crash sites by, for example, giving some aliens weapons that cause a lot of terrain damage so terror maps end up having more alien-caused environment destruction.

I like these ideas.

Quote

I made it, for the first time, into later parts of the campaign, and there's of course pacing issues to be resolved, which I'm confident just needs more eyes. Despite devoting a lot of my economy to the air force, I can barely keep up and am shooting down one plane per wave. Getting more planes is very expensive, counting hangar + airplane construction + two torpedoes (the only weapon worth having). They also take forever to refuel and to repair, which I know is an intentional decision to prevent the same plane from doing too much in a wave, but I'd nonetheless argue refuelling is a bit too slow and repair is considerably too slow, a damaged plane won't be nearly repaired by the time of the next wave. Anyway, none of this is a big deal, the campaign pacing will definitely improve through playing it, now that you can reach later stages with no major issues.

 

The refuelling and rearming times are a big bugbear for me!  As are the repair times - it at least seems to take longer than building the planes in the first place!

[alienman]

2 hours ago, Kamehamehayes said:

Why doesn't the stressed feeling fit the game? Did you expect the game to be of little stress like Xen 1? Do the game mechanics clash and tried to force a playstyle that the mechanics did not facilitate (much like what happened to Xcom 2 imo)? Did the constant stress tire you out and you wanted to put the game down after awhile and break immersion? 

Forcing a playstyle, yes, and that I'm not sure that well in Xenonauts. I mean, like in nuXcom, you don't get any special skills or stuff like that, to make your unit run faster, gain immunity and stuff like that. But most of all, I find it immersion shattering. I always liked how the OG X-com, and Xenonauts mostly felt like a sandbox experience, without anything gamey like this to make the gameplay more involved. Like how stuff happens dynamically. Need a commander for research? Well, there is your objective. I know Xenonauts 2 still work like this, since you need to capture dudes, but I just prefer the open ended sandbox approach to it without gimmicks.

I don't got anything against having different objectives, though, but so far they just seem to be an addition to variation in the gameplay, without much thought behind it. Random tubes that beam away civvies, randomly placed over an area. Okay, then.

Would be cooler if say, you had civilians being attacked, holed up in some building, providing some light defense. And your mission is to rescue them, but it's not a mission failure if they die, since your primary objective is as always to kill the aliens, but it's a huge bonus if you do. Or why not make it random and dynamic, without telling the player. Maybe you get a text based radio call when on the tactical map "Thank God you are here, we need help at that and that location". Instead of "you need to save 5 guys locked in tubes, all the way over in Japan" while your base is in Italy.

[Chris]

8 hours ago, alienman said:

After deciding to play some more (I couldn't help myself), I have to say I don't like the gimmicky missions at all. Saving the tubed civilians, and especially not the collect the usb stick one. Feels way too gamey, and I don't feel the stressed gameplay fits the game. My opinion of course, but highly disliked it. Shelving the game for now.

While I think overall many more players will enjoy those types of mission because of the variety they bring (and because they're never hard time limits like in XCOM2), I guess I can understand why some people might not like them.

One of the things we'll be doing in Early Access is adding in campaign options so you can change the game's difficulty in a more granular way, and I don't really have a problem with allowing people to significantly extend the timers on the timed missions if they want. I doubt it's more than a few hours of coder time to add it in. Obviously it would make the game much easier but if people want to do that then that's their choice.

Anyway it's nice to hear you're excited about the project again.

[Chris]

So just as a quick update on this - we've done some new design work on the weapon / fire mode UI in the tactical combat, so I think the updated (stripeless) designs will be easier to understand and possibly even look a bit better. If all goes well you should be able to see this in V25.

In general I'll be revisiting this thread as I do a balance pass as we work on V25, and try and make some improvements based on the things discussed here.

[Solver]

Since this thread ended up having many V24 balance issues, adding another minor one - the airstrike bonus for crashed UFOs doesn't seem to progress, it's always 100k. Which is a good amount of money early on but of course isn't at all worth it later on.

UX issue related to money, in X2 much of your money comes from selling stuff captured in missions. In X1, everything was auto-sold so your stores only had items your soldiers could use, in X2 your stores have alien corpses, weapons, etc. This is a potentially dangerous change for new players if they don't realize they can sell stuff. Without changing the gameplay mechanics, this is perhaps best addressed by a popup that comes up when your alien item store reaches a certain monetary value.

[Solver]

On 10/18/2022 at 11:34 PM, Solver said:

Tangentially related to suppression, can we have the return of the X1 feature where aliens started with half their TUs on the first turn of a combat mission? In X2 especially, aliens are often within sight of the dropship and it is IMO annoying to shoot at them and be immediately hit with reaction fire. Later on reaction fire is perfectly fine but feels more frustrating than challenging on the first turn of some missions.

Just wanted to reiterate this suggestion.

It makes sense that leaving the dropship is dangerous in itself, but the way things work now is a bit weird. You should kill any aliens that start right in front of the dropship but other than that, the optimal play on the first turn is just to skip the turn entirely and let aliens move. Then on the second turn, you can leave much more safely, while on the first turn any action has a higher risk of being met with reaction fire from aliens that are off to the sides.

[Akrakorn1]

54 minutes ago, Solver said:

Just wanted to reiterate this suggestion.

It makes sense that leaving the dropship is dangerous in itself, but the way things work now is a bit weird. You should kill any aliens that start right in front of the dropship but other than that, the optimal play on the first turn is just to skip the turn entirely and let aliens move. Then on the second turn, you can leave much more safely, while on the first turn any action has a higher risk of being met with reaction fire from aliens that are off to the sides.

If I see enemies outside (and sometimes even if I don't) I pop smoke grenades, which renders any reaction fire they may have useless and allows me to supress them in return via flashbangs, after which I follow up with shotguns or simply set up a kill for next turn depending on how far the enemies are. This strategy depends a bit on the dropship you are using; the chinook is perfect for this, since one smoke is wide enough to cover the entrance. I put heavies on the side entrances to suppress/kill any alien exposed or use even more smoke grenades if things look too grim.

In general, I've seen that the combination of smoke grenades + destruction of any obstacles in your way is extremely effective in non-base maps.

[Solver]

A few almost-final balance thoughts since I'm in the final stages of a campaign.

The Advanced Medkit project pretty much sucks. Costs 250k and 20 Sebillian Corpses, which sell for 100k. For a total of 350k, you get a medkit that costs 10 TU instead of 20 TU to use and that's it. Way too weak. Medkits are important but I've rarely been unable to spend the 20 TU and for such an investment, I expected something better. Let them heal more so the soldier gets closer to their max HP?

About pacing. This is me in the late game with 26 scientists, so I've built a few extra labs.

Note that just these research items - there's more I haven't unlocked and a couple smaller ones down the list - would take 63 days. I'm pretty sure I'm about to hit the time limit without even researching everything.

The recharging lasers upgrade is confusing. It automatically upgrades your weapons to advanced laser weapons that self-recharge, but the old ones are still in the manufacture list, so you can build a Laser Rifle or an Advanced Laser Rifle, which leads to the impression you must upgrade manually. The older lasers should probably disappear entirely.

[Emily_F]

39 minutes ago, Solver said:

A few almost-final balance thoughts since I'm in the final stages of a campaign.

The Advanced Medkit project pretty much sucks. Costs 250k and 20 Sebillian Corpses, which sell for 100k. For a total of 350k, you get a medkit that costs 10 TU instead of 20 TU to use and that's it. Way too weak. Medkits are important but I've rarely been unable to spend the 20 TU and for such an investment, I expected something better. Let them heal more so the soldier gets closer to their max HP?

About pacing. This is me in the late game with 26 scientists, so I've built a few extra labs.

Note that just these research items - there's more I haven't unlocked and a couple smaller ones down the list - would take 63 days. I'm pretty sure I'm about to hit the time limit without even researching everything.

The recharging lasers upgrade is confusing. It automatically upgrades your weapons to advanced laser weapons that self-recharge, but the old ones are still in the manufacture list, so you can build a Laser Rifle or an Advanced Laser Rifle, which leads to the impression you must upgrade manually. The older lasers should probably disappear entirely.

Totally agree about the advanced medikits; I was just about to make a bug report because I thought they'd forgotten to change the numbers though I didn't realise it only costs 10TP now. I also agree with the need to fix research time (mostly by fixing the lab/scientist mechanic) or prolonging the end date.

[Ruggerman]

If that much time and effort is put in to a device, then there should be a comparable return, in that it works faster and heals quicker!!

[Solver]

My ambition to play a campaign all the way through the end has probably been thwarted by the aliens deploying savegame-corrupting technology, but I do have a few more comments on gameplay.

The late game needs an upgrade to medical centers that increases healing speed further. As your soldiers level up, they get more HP so there's a scaling effect to their wounds and, correspondingly, recovery times. Late-game soldiers routinely require over a month to recover after a hit, which is a bit too long.

Air combat balance is essentially broken. The only right choice is to equip all planes with the best torpedoes you can build. They have a long range and hit hard, so the strategy is to hit UFOs with torpedoes and take them down in one go, while staying out of their weapons range. With the long rearm/refuel times, you may not have the time for a second sortie so that makes torpedoes even more important. A couple cannons are useful to keep around in case of Fighters but even that's optional. And they cost too much anyway, a Laser Cannon for a plane is 250k. 

The MARS laser cannon (or whatever it's called) was a letdown. I've come to really like the MARS after recent bug fixes, it's a nice mobile unit that I can use to scout ahead, draw reaction fire and do some damage. The rocket launcher is nice, I can blow an entire area up to remove cover and expose enemies while damaging them (the rocket is super-powerful in base defence missions, I fire a 3-rocket salvo at a cluster of 5-6 sebillians in a hangar and it was glorious). But the laser upgrade was, contrary to expectation, not explosive. It just fires a single high-damage bolt, much like a sniper rifle, leaving the MARS without its terrain-destroying ability. It felt like a downgrade.

Speaking of destruction, is the building collapse mechanism not implemented yet? I've shot a couple buildings up very badly but they did not collapse.

The morale system is currently irrelevant. I think I had one instance of a wounder soldier panicking and skipping the next turn. There's never any need to look at morale bars and I mostly forget the system exists. I'm not really sure what its goal is anyway, morale provides a good way for things to spiral out of control if you take too many casualties, but is that the only purpose of the system?

Related to morale (probably) is Mind War. I have no idea what it does once again. On some later missions vs psionic aliens, the only effect I noticed was having endless messages every turn, "X is under mind war" or "X resisted mind war". In some ancient build a couple years ago Mind War had a tooltip, now it doesn't, and I failed to notice any effect whatsoever. Not sure if it's bugged, not implemented or not balanced.

Very strangely, Mantids and Reapers were absent from my game except for a base attack at one point where a Reaper paid me a visit with a few Mantids. Other than that, I saw neither Reapers nor Mantids in any crash sites, landing sites or terror missions. Could be a coincidence but I played enough missions that it seems statistically unlikely.

There's a silly exploit with base defences and power. You don't need enough generators to power your defence batteries, you can just power something else down and power the batteries once you see a UFO heading for the base.

[Komandos]

22 hours ago, Solver said:

I'm not really sure what its goal is anyway, morale provides a good way for things to spiral out of control if you take too many casualties, but is that the only purpose of the system?

Ideally: low morale is what makes soldiers run from the battlefield, hide for cover and forces them to abandon the UFO assault (terminate the mission). Unfortunately: this is poorly implemented in the game. A panicked soldier runs anywhere but to the place of his salvation.

I believe that a panicked soldier should run to the evacuation site and leave the battlefield on his own. (To desert). This does not happen in the game. In addition, a panicked soldier should receive a bonus to the range of movement. Namely: a panicked soldier has more AP than in a normal state. (Stress). Also, a soldier who has experienced panic due to stress can no longer participate in the next battle (rest is required).