The dual wielding

[alienman]

Just curious about the reason for this addition, because to me, it seems a bit odd, both in gameplay and how it looks visually. First of all, it looks janky when it comes to reaction fire. Then, from a gameplay perspective, it feels kinda "cheap". Now there is no real penalty to equip your men with anything heavy. You still got access to short-range weapons, and it minimizes the risk of moving/saving TU. Also, how does the "logistics" (can't come up with a better term) behind it work? Are the units holding the extra pistol, or is it a fast-draw kind of thing?

[Kamehamehayes]

12 minutes ago, alienman said:

Just curious about the reason for this addition, because to me, it seems a bit odd, both in gameplay and how it looks visually. First of all, it looks janky when it comes to reaction fire. Then, from a gameplay perspective, it feels kinda "cheap". Now there is no real penalty to equip your men with anything heavy. You still got access to short-range weapons, and it minimizes the risk of moving/saving TU. Also, how does the "logistics" (can't come up with a better term) behind it work? Are the units holding the extra pistol, or is it a fast-draw kind of thing?

From what I understand, the extra slot is just there to make managing the inventory easier. I think Chris found it a little bit tedious that you have to go into the inventory to switch to a pistol, medkit, or whatever. Having an extra slot makes it easier to switch without checking the inventory. 

There should be an overwatch symbol to the bottom right of each weapon on the ui. You can either leave it alone or have it crossed out to determine which weapon will be used for overwatch. Although, I think the currently active weapon will have priority over the inactive one. 

I don't think its particulaily cheap as it feels like pistols were rebalanced to allow for snipers and heavy weapons to have better shortrange while also nerfing the damage of pistols by a little bit (it feels like pistols are weaker than they were in Xen 1 imo). 

[Komandos]

In reality, there are more "fast cells (slots)".

[Ruggerman]

I think that it would be a good idea, if the amour suites on the inventory scream could be changed as you develop better vest, for combat storage on your troops.

I know that would mean a lot of coding, but it would give the game a new dynamic.

[Alienkiller]

You get an better Suit with R & D later, not when you get the first vests. Doesn’t make Sense with the underdog Human-Tech as well as the the first small Basic-Research of Alien-Tech.

[Komandos]

55 minutes ago, Alienkiller said:

You get an better Suit with R & D later, not when you get the first vests. Doesn’t make Sense with the underdog Human-Tech as well as the the first small Basic-Research of Alien-Tech.

New suits and body armor absolutely do not change the number and location of slots in the inventory.

Soldiers can't even take equipment to the limits of their carrying capacity, because they don't have enough pockets in their equipment.

[Alienkiller]

Yes that´s true. You can make the one or other Choise. Either you make it like in the UFO ET-Series (more Pockets on Shoulders and Pistol or something bigger incl. the Pockets we have already) or you make it like it´s here (Backpack, Belt, Hands).

In UFO ET the Suits aren´t upgradeable, heavy from beginning on and are full Suits (therefore they have 4 Shoulderpockets more and an Pistol / Special-Equipment-Slot). You have to Research better Full-Suits with more Researches of Human and Alien-Things. And they get more weight, not less weight.

Xenonauts 2 instead have an realistic Vest / Suit-Management. They are lighter (beginning with the Cevlar-Vest and Standard-Suit), upgradeable with differnt Additon-Equipment (light Plates, Shooting-Vision or whatever), and you can make differnt equiped Soldiers. Therefore you haven´t the Shoulder-Pockets and an Special-Equipment-Slot (like Pistol).

Both are going in the way of old X-COM-Row [EU, TftD, Apocalypse] in different ways. If the Devs wanna integrate the Shoulder-Slots and the Special-Slot [Pistol / other something Big like in UFO ET] they would have done it already. Therefore the Modular-Parts have to get away and we are in an similar Situation like UFO ET, which the Devs for Xenonauts 2 wanna avoid.

If you mean such an System like in Phoenix Point you get much lesser Equipment Slots then we have already [Belt, Shoulders etc.]. There you have your Backpack and your Hands. From new XCOM with the Equipment-Slots not to mention.

Edited November 2, 2022 by Alienkiller

[Komandos]

If a soldier is able to carry 10 kilograms of extra weight, but still cannot take with him, even one additional grenade weighing 0.5 kilograms, (because there is not enough space in the pockets of a bulletproof vest), then should the player rejoice in a bulletproof vest that does not allow the soldier to maximize his carrying capacity?

[Alienkiller]

Thats the Choise you have.

Either your Soldier die (you can carry more but don´t have Protection) or life (carry lesser, and have a little chance to overlife) against the high-tech-Weapons from the Aliens.

You have that 2 Choises, nothing more. I prefer the overlife and Experiance from my Specialists and a Rank-Payment (which is less costly then everything else) with about 20 Specialists.  

Edited November 2, 2022 by Alienkiller

[Komandos]

1 hour ago, Alienkiller said:

Thats the Choise you have.

What is the choice here?

Regardless of the armor worn on the soldier, the soldier has 5 pockets (slots) on the belt and 20 pockets (slots) in the backpack.

If the pistol clip weighs 0.2 kg. Then the soldier can't take more than 5kg. Even if he has the strength of Hercules.

 

[Ruggerman]

Ref Komandos: this screen should change as you develop better battle harness, if this could be upgraded as you learn more about the tech from the aliens. The lay out really does need to be improved as you advance in the game, and also the weights of some objects need to be adjusted, so they are more like modern equipment, plus they should be lighter with the new materials.

There should be a holster and a combat knife at each end of the belt, or a place for the stun baton, and the weapon should be able to be slung over the shoulder for easy availability.with a sling.

There seams to be enough room on the screen for this, as it looks, but I know there will be some coding problems, but that is what programmers do!!!

[alienman]

Yeah, not sure why the holster got removed. I liked that in Xenonauts 1. Made sense to carry a pistol in your belt.

[Kamehamehayes]

7 minutes ago, alienman said:

Yeah, not sure why the holster got removed. I liked that in Xenonauts 1. Made sense to carry a pistol in your belt.

It was removed because Chris didn't think it was needed after the secondary slot was added, so you would be holding the pistol in your hand instead of extra slots on your belt. And being able to hold a secondary weapon for free and have another one on your belt sounds a little bit overkill imo. 

I don't think that adding extra battle harnesses is very necessary. It's doubtful that a soldier will make much use of it because of strength problems, and it feels like it it overcomplicating the soldier screen too much. I'd probably fill those extra slots with more grenades anyways, so I definitely would not be using it to bring more pistols, stun buttons, combat knifes, or whatever. 

[Komandos]

6 hours ago, Kamehamehayes said:

It's doubtful that a soldier will make much use of it because of strength problems, and it feels like it it overcomplicating the soldier screen too much.

At the end of the game, soldiers have no problem with personal strength.

At the end of the game, the problem is that the soldiers are not able to use all their strength effectively, as there are not enough pockets for equipment that they could take with them.

Some types of tactics are impossible to apply, since soldiers must wear more of the necessary equipment to use them.

A strong soldier has no advantage over a weak soldier, since the number of items they can take with them is limited not by strength, but by pockets (slots).

This is very noticeable in the final of the game, when the strength of the soldiers reaches the limit values.

[Komandos]

10 hours ago, Ruggerman said:

this screen should change as you develop better battle harness, if this could be upgraded as you learn more about the tech from the aliens. The lay out really does need to be improved as you advance in the game, and also the weights of some objects need to be adjusted, so they are more like modern equipment, plus they should be lighter with the new materials.

Even if: just increase the number of pockets - it will not be bad. In mods like "X-Division" where tactical battles were more difficult, and there were significantly more aliens - additional pockets were needed very much.

If the player himself increased the difficulty of the game (by adding the number of aliens to the game). Additional pockets were needed very much.

[alienman]

7 hours ago, Kamehamehayes said:

It was removed because Chris didn't think it was needed after the secondary slot was added, so you would be holding the pistol in your hand instead of extra slots on your belt. And being able to hold a secondary weapon for free and have another one on your belt sounds a little bit overkill imo. 

I see. Goes back to my original issue with dual wielding.

[alienman]

28 minutes ago, Komandos said:

At the end of the game, soldiers have no problem with personal strength.

At the end of the game, the problem is that the soldiers are not able to use all their strength effectively, as there are not enough pockets for equipment that they could take with them.

Some types of tactics are impossible to apply, since soldiers must wear more of the necessary equipment to use them.

A strong soldier has no advantage over a weak soldier, since the number of items they can take with them is limited not by strength, but by pockets (slots).

This is very noticeable in the final of the game, when the strength of the soldiers reaches the limit values.

Damn that sucks. Not come that far in the game yet, but it does feel a bit more cramped when it comes to space.

[Komandos]

On 11/1/2022 at 5:18 AM, alienman said:

Just curious about the reason for this addition, because to me, it seems a bit odd, both in gameplay and how it looks visually.

Quick slots (pockets) are just a way to visualize the basic tactical functions of soldiers on the main control screen. If there are a lot of tactical functions: (throwing a grenade, first aid kit treatment, hand-to-hand combat, machine gun shooting, dragging objects) then there will be a lot of icons (on the main control screen) to quickly control these functions.

 

For example, all the main functions of a magician are visualized here, with the help of which he interacts with the surrounding world and other characters.

 

I also don't like how the system of "fast functions" is implemented.

I don't like that the left-hand slot is used for this, as if a soldier is holding two objects at the same time.

 

Ideally: everything that a soldier has "on his belt" and in his hands; everything that can be used on himself or on others should be added to the "quick control functions (slots)". The belt width should be increased.

Using grenades, reloading weapons: already added to the quick control functions. (Back in X1).

Edited November 3, 2022 by Komandos

[Komandos]

1 hour ago, alienman said:

Damn that sucks. Not come that far in the game yet, but it does feel a bit more cramped when it comes to space.

If you create difficulties for the player to make his victory in the game more difficult, then this is not the same as making the game plentiful for tactical situations and more free for creative experimentation.

Each new fight should REALLY look like a new level of difficulty. A small alien ship is a small difficulty of the battle. A large alien ship is a great difficulty of the battle. There were only a few types of alien ships in X1, so there were few levels of combat difficulty.

At the same time, the difference in difficulty level between them was so insignificant that it didn't matter whether the player sent a team of beginners into battle or sent a team of experienced soldiers into battle. Try to do this in an RPG game: so that the hero of the 1st level defeats the hero of the 5th level (maximum). In X1, a player with a Level 1 team could easily defeat the opponent's "level 5" teams (maximum).

[Komandos]

In order for the player to have several tactical commands in Xenonauts, alien attacks must be carried out in waves (as it was implemented).But at the same time, downed alien UFOs should remain available for ground combat - for a very short time. So that one tactical group could not have time to visit all the crash sites. The crash site of small UFOs is a small level of difficulty for inexperienced tactical teams of the player. The crash site of large UFOs is a high level of difficulty for experienced tactical teams of the player.

[Komandos]

Total: the equally limited size of the inventory at the beginning and at the end of the game does not allow you to increase the "level" of the tactical team as the carrying capacity (physical strength) of the soldiers increases, which leads to the fact that the level of complexity of tactical battles (during the game) increases very little. The killing power of the new weapon is compensated by the protective properties of the new armor, so the tactics (as technological progress progresses) almost does not change. The player's team increases by only 2 soldiers, which also does not contribute to changing tactics and the number of aliens on more complex "levels".

As a result: tactical battles are very similar to each other and quickly become boring for the player.

[Kamehamehayes]

10 hours ago, Komandos said:

At the end of the game, soldiers have no problem with personal strength.

At the end of the game, the problem is that the soldiers are not able to use all their strength effectively, as there are not enough pockets for equipment that they could take with them.

Some types of tactics are impossible to apply, since soldiers must wear more of the necessary equipment to use them.

A strong soldier has no advantage over a weak soldier, since the number of items they can take with them is limited not by strength, but by pockets (slots).

This is very noticeable in the final of the game, when the strength of the soldiers reaches the limit values.

I mean, all of that is with endgame levels of strength. It does not represent the loadouts of soldiers the rest of the game. In terms of the rest of the game, soldiers are restricted by their strength stat first and foremost from what I played. 

Even in endgame, my soldiers did not make use of all of the inventory space in Xen1. They either had pedator armor, which either could not use the majority of things I would want to put in there or they would be weighed down by a signularity cannon, or had an extremely high starting strength stat, which is rare across my roster. Even then, I would mostly just be filling their backpacks with tons of grenades, and I would not even use the vast majority of those grenades anyways. 

[Komandos]

12 hours ago, Kamehamehayes said:

Even then, I would mostly just be filling their backpacks with tons of grenades, and I would not even use the vast majority of those grenades anyways. 

I don't use custom armor.

On the contrary, I had to add 11 pockets to my inventory.

The backpack had 5x5=25 pockets. Became 6x6 = 36 pockets.

This is the "X-Division", so the inventory contains additional samples of equipment.

Some of the ammunition on the first turn is dropped by the soldiers to the ground (if they are heavily overloaded), and then, if necessary, they are lifted.

I don't have a save without "X-Division". But in the pure version of Xenonauts, the situation is similar.

 

This inventory size will be insufficient.

The actual maximum carrying capacity of the soldier: three shotguns, one pistol (first aid kit) and five clips for a pistol (or shotgun). The game does not even allow for the option that the player may have to retreat from the battlefield, taking with him the maximum number of artifacts. Or that the player will have a grueling mission to defend or storm the location. (Which requires a large amount of various equipment and ammunition).

 

As an example:

Regular equipment of one soldier in the combat zone.

Edited November 4, 2022 by Komandos

[Komandos]

2 hours ago, Kamehamehayes said:

Even then, I would mostly just be filling their backpacks with tons of grenades, and I would not even use the vast majority of those grenades anyways. 

It all depends on tactics. In a wooded area, a lot of ammunition is used to destroy trees. In slums, a lot of ammunition is spent on destroying walls, fences and trees.