V25 Gameplay / Balance Feedback thread:

[Chris]

I thought I'd create a thread for gameplay feedback on the V25 series of builds. I've made a lot of balance changes as a result of the feedback from V24, which I've listed below. Let us know what you think works, what you think doesn't work, and what you think needs further attention!

Please let us know what difficulty setting you are playing on if you're giving feedback!

Balance Changes - Strategy:

• Difficulty settings now do something, so please let us know what setting you are playing on when you give feedback! These are the first batch of difficulty changes, and more will be added for V26.
  • Starting funds (Recruit: $3m / Soldier: $2.5m / Veteran: $2m / Commander: $2m)
  • Base soldier survival chance (Recruit: 30% / Soldier: 20% / Veteran: 10% / Commander: 0%)
  • Monthly funding from funding regions (Recruit: 1.2x / Soldier: 1.1x / Veteran: 1x / Commander: 1x)
• The sell price reduction system is intended to discourage the player from grinding too many crash sites for cash, which is a boring and repetive playstyle that some players felt obligated to do in Xenonauts 1 (the game is balanced around people fighting two of most types of UFO Crash Site). However if you need to fight extra battles to train soldiers up etc, you still can - you just won't get loads of monetary rewards for doing so.
• The game end timer has been pushed back 45 days, from day 320 to day 365.
• Research and Engineering project times have generally been decreased, and the rewards for recruiting new scientists and engineers are effectively twice what they were before now you start with half as many of each.
• Base:
  • All structures are now faster to build.
  • Your starting base now only starts with one Lab and Workshop, and 5 Scientists, 5 Engineers and 10 Soldiers. Monthly funding reduced to account for lower wage bills.
  • Living Quarters now have a capacity of 12 (+2 Adjacency).
• Invasion:
  • In general the first couple of months have been slowed down a little, and the Destroyer UFO appears a bit earlier.
  • UFOs now last twice as long on the Geoscape, and most have a slightly higher chance of inflicting relations damage per hour. This means UFOs should inflict greater damage unless shot down.
  • The first mission is now against Cleaners, the first UFO wave contains Sectons, and Psyons are introduced in the third mission (an Abduction mission).
  • Airstrike value for bigger UFOs needs to increase with their size. Scouts remain at $100,000 and the values range up to $500,000 for a Battleship.
• Research:
  • Gauss Weapons have been reintroduced into the game
  • Removed Alenium from the Scout UFO
  • Laser upgrade project is now available immediately after researching Laser weapons
• Base defence turrets now each fire a single shot that has a 100% chance of hitting, but has a damage range. They can therefore now be relied upon to defend a base against attack (provided you build enough of them that the minimum damage is enough to shoot down current tier UFOs) 
• Increased basic soldier healing rate from 1.2hp/day to 1.5hp/day, and Medical Room healing rate increased from 1.8 hp/day to 2.5hp/day

Balance Changes - Air Combat:

• Refuel and rearm times on interceptors have been significantly reduced, but UFOs now auto-repair damage while flying around the map (the Scout regenerates 15 HP per hour and larger UFOs regenerate proportionally more). This removes the artificially long rearm / refuel times while hopefully still making it impractical to cheese air combat encounters by repeatedly attacking the same UFO with volleys of torpedoes.
• All aircraft weapons cost $200k to manufacture.
• Torpedoes reduced in range from 8 down to 7. Missiles reduced in range from 6 down to 5.5. Cannons still have range 3.
• Aircraft retreat now takes 5 seconds (previously 3 seconds).
• Aircraft Laser Cannon removed, Aircraft Gauss Cannon added instead. This unlocks off Heavy Gauss weapons and does higher damage than the Laser Cannon did.
• UFO destroyer rear cannon now has 2 Armour Destruction, as previously it didn't actually inflict any damage due to having low damage and 0 armour destruction.

Balance Changes - Tactical:

• Alien abilities
• The starting Skyhawk (Chinook) dropship can now only carry 9 soldiers rather than 10. I tested it at 8 but found 9 felt better (and also means each new dropship offers 1/3 more troops than its predecessor).
• We have merged together the Belt, Backpack and Undersuit slot into a single 5x5 equipment grid called the Tactical Vest. The modules that previously went in the Undersuit slot (e.g. extra armour, items that boost accuracy, etc) are now "proper" items that go in the vest too, and some grenades / ammo are now larger than before. Therefore you can now equip multiple stat-boosting items at once if the soldier is strong enough to carry them, but physical space in the inventory is now also a constraint.
• General:
  • Fixed the AI ignoring Xenonaut soldiers when alien units encounter them while moving.
  • Standard battlefield cover now offers 40% blocking chance rather than 30%.
  • Battlefield terrain now has lower HP so can be more easily destroyed by gunfire.
  • Units are now stunned if the accumulated stun damage exceeds current HP. Units no longer make a death noise if stunned.
  • Explosions no longer demolish an extra square of walls around the edges of their exploision (notably this makes Demolition Grenades less effective)
  • Suppression is now affected by armour again. Whatever the % of damage from the weapon would be stopped by the armour of the target is also used to reduce suppression. In practice this means enemies like Servitors (aka Gun Drones) become less of a problem as you get better armour.
  • TU cost of reloading weapons increased by 50%
  • Reduced suppression on alien weapons from 25 per shot to 15 per shot.
  • Set a 20 degree minimum throw arc which limits the distance you can throw grenades indoors, or inside alien bases etc.
  • Updated alien rifles to cost 51% for an aimed shot (up from 48%), so aliens can't hit you with an aimed shot on the first turn.
  • Further changes to stop missed shots flying upwards.
• Missions:
  • Updated the alien base command room map to be less unfair.
  • Removed 6 extra Sentry Gun turrets that were incorrectly spawning in the Cleaner Base mission due to an error
  • Heavy doors like the blast doors in the Xenonaut / Cleaner base are now crushable, otherwise the MARS cannot navigate them
  • On Abduction missions, each recovered Abduction tube now grants 5 Alloys and 3 Alenium (formerly just 3 Alloys)
• MARS:
  • MARS / ARES now cost $250k to build, and $125k to rebuild (up from $100k/$50k). Construction time increased.
  • You can now shoot over the MARS from adjacent tiles, like any crouched unit.
  • Vehicle Autorifle now has range 20 (up from 12)
  • Increased armour destruction on the MARS rocket launcher from 5 to 10
  • Vehicles now gain their range bonus more gradually over the full range of their weapon (like infantry weapons do), rather than the old system of it only counting within 5 tiles of the target.
• Weapons:
  • Shotguns have been granted a small accuracy bonus
  • Boosted accuracy on LMG fire modes (from 28/30 up to 40), reduced accuracy bonus for not moving from 20 down to 10. Weight reduced from 30 to 24.
  • Stun Baton and Stun Gun now have 999 Armour Penetration. Previously Stun Baton had 9 and Stun Gun had 0 (probably why the Stun Baton was so much more effective than the Stun Gun).
  • Laser weapon fire modes now have the same basic TU cost / accuracy as their ballistic equivalents (they still have more accuracy overall due to their Easy Aiming special rule)
  • Laser weapons have had their damage reduced by about 15%, but the upgraded Laser weapons get +15% damage (so the upgraded versions do the original damage values)
  • Accelerated weapons now grant +4 damage compared to their ballistic predecessors (previously +2 damage). Increased their weight by 25%.
  • Medikits now cost 25TU to use, and Advanced Medikits need 12TU. The upgrade project cost reduced in cost down to $100k (from $250k) and to 12 Sebillian Corpses (from 20)
  • Assault Shield now offers 35 Armour instead of 25 Armour
• Aliens:
  • Cleaner Sentry Gun armour reduced from 25 to 20, fixed a bug preventing it going below 10 Armour
  • Cleaner Sentry Gun accuracy reduced from 60 to 50
  • Cleaner Sentry Gun reflexes reduced from 50 to 35
  • Updated the Sebillians to have 10 more HP
  • Sebillians are now equipped with rifles rather than LMGs, which should make them more of a threat

[Wyldefyre_CP]

Just a couple mentions on the new modules - liking the look, not having as big an issue with them taking up 4 spaces in inventory as I thought I might - kinda think the Tactical Module should weigh a bit less than the Steel Plate one.  Steel plate module is not currently listing its +3 Armor Bonus on the Effects info line.  Tactical Module needs its own definition info, it's currently using the same info as the Steel Plate Module.

[Wyldefyre_CP]

Also, regarding the radar stations, it looks like we're definitely back to needing 3 radars to increase range out to the max again, but the description on the Detection Range part of the Base Info screen refers to the setup as if one radar is still all you need to max out your range.

[Emily_F]

1. Repair times for aircraft is crazy long - like longer than building a new one!

2. The early tactical games seem quite a bit harder than they were in previous games (play on the default setting).  It wouldn't be so bad if there were more troops available for recruitment that were at least worthwhile hiring (even if they were more expensive!!)

[Alienkiller]

@Wyldefyre_CP For the Radar-Stations I liked the Upgrade-Part with more advanced-Tech. That means you don´t need to waste 2 Build-Up-Slots. You will get later an Quantum-Decoder but Radars can be Upgraded to Scanners or similar very Easy with Research. You still have the 1x1 Radar, but can upgrade it 2 times. What the other new Module belongs (the Tactical Module) I haven´t noticed that yet. Will take a look on it.

@Emily_F: Yes, the Repair-Times are still long. There I have an Idea too to reduce it. If you remember the Ant-Base for Xenonauts 2 back (the first testable Betas), then you could use the undeveloped or to much Technicans to help (Radar, Engery etc.). Such an Feature you need again to help in the Hangars, Repairs etc.  What the early tactical Mission belongs it´s fully OK. The Aliens and you have only a little Differnce of 2 or 3. That will be much harder later on, if the Difference is 1 (you as player) and 2 / 3 (the Enemy).

Edited December 12, 2022 by Alienkiller

[Chris]

22 hours ago, Wyldefyre_CP said:

Just a couple mentions on the new modules - liking the look, not having as big an issue with them taking up 4 spaces in inventory as I thought I might - kinda think the Tactical Module should weigh a bit less than the Steel Plate one.  Steel plate module is not currently listing its +3 Armor Bonus on the Effects info line.  Tactical Module needs its own definition info, it's currently using the same info as the Steel Plate Module.

Yeah, the tooltip stuff is a bug that I will fix in the next hotfix, thanks for pointing it out. Regarding weight, I get the logical argument for the plates to weigh more but I think the Tactical Module is already significantly stronger so I'm not sure that'd be a good change.

18 hours ago, Emily_F said:

1. Repair times for aircraft is crazy long - like longer than building a new one!

2. The early tactical games seem quite a bit harder than they were in previous games (play on the default setting).  It wouldn't be so bad if there were more troops available for recruitment that were at least worthwhile hiring (even if they were more expensive!!)

Yes, planes do take a long time to repair. I think I might try something new in V26 where planes repair quickly, but lose maximum health each time they take damage. So your planes will gradually become less effective as they take more damage, even if they can be repaired up to their new max health fairly quickly. In order to get the aircraft back to its original full HP, you'll need to overhaul it, which will fully take the plane out of operation for a couple of weeks. Overhauling would be a fixed duration no matter how much damage the plane has taken, so the player is encouraged to try and use damaged planes for as long as possible without actually getting them shot down.

Regarding the difficulty, I think there's two main changes. The first is the new alien abilities make the enemies more effective so I'd be interested to hear what people think about them. Do any of them feel too strong? I feel like the Psyon ability might be a bit much.

The second change is to the AI, which previously wasn't able to stop and recompute its action when a moving alien spotted a Xenonaut. But now instead of just running past your soldier and giving the player a free kill, it stops and starts shooting. So I think pretty much all the enemies are more deadly than before. But in this particular case that's a good thing.

Finally, I'm expecting we'll have functionality to change the number of enemies in a mission in the next major build. The missions are currently balanced assuming Veteran difficulty so if you're playing on an easier setting then there's currently a few more aliens than you'll be seeing in future versions of the game, and so the game is a bit harder than it should be on those settings.

[Alienkiller]

Chris that for the Planes is a good Idea. There the Modular-Buildup I already announced in the other V25-Thinking-Threat would make sense for the Airforce-Refit (Buildup, Repair, Modules etc.). In such an Case you can not only Repair / Rebuild as it´s now, you can deciced to Upgrade the Planes up to an Maximum level.

In Case of the X-25 "Angel":

a) You can make the Wings lighter and better Armoured with the Alien-Alloys (they are an Changeable Part)

b) You can Upgrade the Hull to an lighter Version with the Alien-Alloys (the Hull is not Changeable, but Moderniseable)

c) You can Upgrade the Engines to an better Version (they are an Changeable Part with the Fuel-Tanks in the Hull)

d) You can Upgrade the internal Electronic to more advanced Electronic on Alien-Standards [Module-Part like the Support Vehicle evtl.?]

In that Case you can say, instead an complete Repair I make an Step-by-Step-Upgrade.

Similar Refits / Upgrades can be done too for advanced Fighters.

 

Edited December 13, 2022 by Alienkiller

[Komandos]

On 12/5/2022 at 2:51 PM, Chris said:

Living Quarters now have a capacity of 12 (+2 Adjacency).

It means: that the player is now forced to build two residential blocks (on a new military base) in order to have the maximum size of a tactical squad in case of a ground attack by aliens.

This also means that the player is forced to build two residential blocks (at a new military base) in order to completely fill one transport ship with soldiers (at later stages of the game).

 

Based on this, I will propose: The capacity of one living room should not be less than the number of soldiers that the player can send on a combat mission (or to protect his base).

Edited December 13, 2022 by Komandos

[Komandos]

On 12/5/2022 at 2:51 PM, Chris said:

The sell price reduction system is intended to discourage the player from grinding too many crash sites for cash, which is a boring and repetive playstyle that some players felt obligated to do in Xenonauts 1 (the game is balanced around people fighting two of most types of UFO Crash Site). However if you need to fight extra battles to train soldiers up etc, you still can - you just won't get loads of monetary rewards for doing so.

If a player sells alien artifacts, then it would be logical to assume that they (artifacts) are bought for scientific research. If this is true, then the sale of artifacts:

1 - should speed up scientific research.

2 - artifacts (which are not consumable resources for production) lose their value after the end of scientific research.

If alien artifacts are an important strategic resource (for production), then the player is in any case forced to extract this resource in numerous ground battles at the UFO crash sites.

I suggest adding a feature (selection): the player more effectively reduces the panic in the UFO crash area if he allows the local government to destroy the surviving aliens on their own. (Bombing of the UFO crash site).

[Wyldefyre_CP]

The plane ID is interesting, though I'll admit I'm likely to get frustrated with my aircraft providing diminishing returns - however .... if they came back, half shot up, and had to go back into service looking that way ... i.e., you put some cosmetic laser scorch marks, patchwork repair jobs up and down the winds and that looked worse as the plane degraded further, I'd be happy to send my shot to hell units back into the sky in a desperate bid to win one more battle .... having a plane shot down would hopefully lead to a complete overhaul at any rate, but this is stuff that could definitely make it worth the extra hair pulled!

 

As for the special abilities ... I'm having darn Psyons try mesmerizing my soldier even after they are shot dead some times ... particularly when shooting at them with multiple shots like from a machine gun.  I guess the game is trying to clock each and every shot so there is a lot of repetitive mesmerizing messaging going on there.  I don't mind them panicking or berserking my troops but I think it's a little early and powerful in the game yet to be taking troops under control .... local populace, sure, ok ... lol ... 

 

The servitors are a bit much ... I like the idea, just think the amount of healing they do on other aliens and themselves is too high, especially since sometimes I barely wing one with a long shot and then watch the lil' @#$!er heal the thing for more than I damaged it for!  But it's definitely something new and interesting to have to plan around a bit, especially when they lurk out of sight and lend heals ...

 

P.S. Just discovered that the Steel Plate module had changed color from Grey to Purple and now does not provide any Armor Bonus to the troops anymore ... I don't know if this has anything to do with the fact that I just got done having the Engineers do the $500K aircraft plating markup from Ablative to Alloy or not.

Edited December 13, 2022 by Wyldefyre_CP

[Chris]

8 hours ago, Alienkiller said:

Chris that for the Planes is a good Idea. There the Modular-Buildup I already announced in the other V25-Thinking-Threat would make sense for the Airforce-Refit (Buildup, Repair, Modules etc.). In such an Case you can not only Repair / Rebuild as it´s now, you can deciced to Upgrade the Planes up to an Maximum level.

I think this is overcomplicating things a bit. There's just not that many variables in the air combat to play with, so having each interceptor having five different areas that all have their own upgrades would end up being a bit pointless, I think. 

7 hours ago, Komandos said:

It means: that the player is now forced to build two residential blocks (on a new military base) in order to have the maximum size of a tactical squad in case of a ground attack by aliens.

This also means that the player is forced to build two residential blocks (at a new military base) in order to completely fill one transport ship with soldiers (at later stages of the game).

Based on this, I will propose: The capacity of one living room should not be less than the number of soldiers that the player can send on a combat mission (or to protect his base).

I don't really see that as too much of a problem. You can build base defence turrets if you don't want to bother with a defensive garrison, and you could just build four Sentry Guns to fill out the squad if you only wanted to build one Living Quarters and hire 12 soldiers.

And if you've got an advanced dropship that can carry 16 soldiers, you'll want more than 16 soldiers there anyway - otherwise you'll have to send your dropship out with empty slots as soon as you get any injured soldiers. So I don't think it's unreasonable to need to build two Living Quarters there.

6 hours ago, Komandos said:

I suggest adding a feature (selection): the player more effectively reduces the panic in the UFO crash area if he allows the local government to destroy the surviving aliens on their own. (Bombing of the UFO crash site).

To me this defeats the point of the system. The idea is that it's not advantageous for the player to keep fighting the same UFO crash sites over and over again. I therefore don't want to add new systems that encourage the players to do that by giving them a research bonus for grinding alien gear to sell, and conversely I also don't want to make it clearly sub-optimal for the player to actually fight UFO Crash Sites which adding a Panic reduction for not doing the mission would mean.

I think the decling sell price should work fine to initially encourage players to fight a particular type of crash site while ensuring there's not many rewards for fighting too many of them. It provides a bit of guidance without being too heavy-handed about forcing the player to do anything.

3 hours ago, Wyldefyre_CP said:

As for the special abilities ... I'm having darn Psyons try mesmerizing my soldier even after they are shot dead some times ... particularly when shooting at them with multiple shots like from a machine gun.  I guess the game is trying to clock each and every shot so there is a lot of repetitive mesmerizing messaging going on there.  I don't mind them panicking or berserking my troops but I think it's a little early and powerful in the game yet to be taking troops under control .... local populace, sure, ok ... lol ... 

The servitors are a bit much ... I like the idea, just think the amount of healing they do on other aliens and themselves is too high, especially since sometimes I barely wing one with a long shot and then watch the lil' @#$!er heal the thing for more than I damaged it for!  But it's definitely something new and interesting to have to plan around a bit, especially when they lurk out of sight and lend heals ...

P.S. Just discovered that the Steel Plate module had changed color from Grey to Purple and now does not provide any Armor Bonus to the troops anymore ... I don't know if this has anything to do with the fact that I just got done having the Engineers do the $500K aircraft plating markup from Ablative to Alloy or not.

Oh, yeah, looks like the tier 2+ armour modules are broken. I'll fix that now and roll it into the hotfix. The Psyon ability is also bugged at the moment where it triggers off every shot in the burst, which is a fix we've already done which will be included in the hotfix. Either tonight or tomorrow, depending on how quickly we can fix our issues with the build server.

Keep an eye on the Servitors then. I think they heal 50 per attack right now, which is maybe a bit too high - maybe I'll quickly turn that down to 30 for the hotfix and see if that feels any better.

[Chris]

1 hour ago, Wyldefyre_CP said:

The servitors are a bit much ... I like the idea, just think the amount of healing they do on other aliens and themselves is too high, especially since sometimes I barely wing one with a long shot and then watch the lil' @#$!er heal the thing for more than I damaged it for!  But it's definitely something new and interesting to have to plan around a bit, especially when they lurk out of sight and lend heals ...

Actually, sounds like this might be a bug. Servitors just heal 50% of the damage taken, so if they're healing for more damage than you actually inflicted then the calculation is going wrong somewhere. Possibly it's not factoring in armour correctly?

If you see that happen again then please grab some saves and report it as a bug.

[Komandos]

3 hours ago, Chris said:

I think the decling sell price should work fine to initially encourage players to fight a particular type of crash site while ensuring there's not many rewards for fighting too many of them. It provides a bit of guidance without being too heavy-handed about forcing the player to do anything.

Then: how should the player achieve a strategic advantage over the aliens if the value of strategic resources is reduced?

I can suggest: adding more unmanned UFOs to the game in order to radically reduce the number of UFO crash sites to which the player is forced to send his soldiers.

[Chris]

7 hours ago, Komandos said:

Then: how should the player achieve a strategic advantage over the aliens if the value of strategic resources is reduced?

I can suggest: adding more unmanned UFOs to the game in order to radically reduce the number of UFO crash sites to which the player is forced to send his soldiers.

They obtain a strategic advantage by using the resources (primarily money) available to them wisely. Most players will not want to grind every crash site, so the game needs to be balanced on that assumption. People that do grind every crash site therefore have a massive advantage because the game expects them to have less money than they do, which makes the strategy layer far too easy.

Ultimately it's not much of a strategy game if the best strategy is just to fight more boring and repetitive missions that most players do not want to do, rather than having to make good strategic decisions about their available resources.

The idea of adding unmanned UFOs is something I've previously explored, but it has the opposite problem - there are situations when people do want to fight an extra crash site mission for reasons other than generating extra money. Like if you want to give another team of soldiers some combat experience, or capture a specific type of alien. Or maybe because you just really like fighting the tactical missions.

As I said previously, this is why I like the sell price system. Once balanced correctly it should prevent the player breaking the game balance by fighting lots of crash site missions, but still allows people the opportunity to fight extra missions if they want to.

[Alienkiller]

Thanks for the explanations Chris.

I like the Sentry-Gun Concept for the Bases. I too build up minimum 2 linked Defenses like in good old X-Com and in the UFO ET-Series, with something special in that from 2nd announced one.

The Sell-System from not useable Things (like Alien-Weapons) here is an good thing. The same System you have in the UFO ET-Series, sadly there without the Buissenes-Thinking (Supply & Demand).  My Idea for that Part is with an Upgrade in that System: We can either sell them to get dismantle them from the World-Industry themselfs to get Ressources for the World-States (like it´s now) or dismantle them themselfs for more Ressources and Upgrades (Magnets, Electronics, Ammo etc.)?

Chris, you announced that the Money-System is primarily. Short said means that for the Gamers: They have 2 Options. The Game is making an Reduction for the Sell-Option, until the Supply & Demand is stable again. In that Time you can dismantle such ressources yourself. Or you can make it both parallely to get more Ressources for yourself and for the Founding Countrys.

What the Interceptors belongs. There I can understand you and the Team. It is an Idea to make the Fighter- / Transport-Equipment-Part more interessting. That the Pilots need to get the rotation-Option from one to an other Fighter / Transport as well as like Soldiers XPs / Medals etc. is a must have.

The Modular-Option is not the only one Thinking-Idea I have for the Fighter-Buildup / Refit. There the UFO-ET-Series bring an very good valuation. In UFO 1 ET Standard / Gold as well as in UFO 2 ET+ the advanced Parts are specials and hard to find which make older Fighters more durable and so on. In Freelancer-Works that advanced Parts (Grayfiends big UNI-Mod) get done buyable.

That buyable Option from the UNI-Mod for the older UFO 1 ET brought me to an very easy to implement Idea for Xeonauts 2. What is if we bring in Steps to modernise our older Interceptors with an Engeneering Project if the Researches are there. Like we can do it with the Defense-Buildungs, Armour-Upgrades for Vehicles and similar.

Means: You have researched the new Interceptor X-55 after you researched Alien-Alloys and the Alien Cristals. The new Interceptor is good, but have the special Weakness. To modernise the older Interceptors without that Weaknes you have the Upgrade-Project "Modernise X-25 Angel Part I" or something similar.

Short explained: You make the X-25 a little bit lighter, manouverable and so on with the Alien-Alloys, but the Engines remain the same until some Problems from the X-55 get solved.

That you can do with more advanced Parts (like Electronics, Radar etc. too) to have an better Scanner / Radar-Range on the Geoscape and so on.

Other Ideas to Upgrade the Game I have announced already in the other Suggestion-Threat. If I find more of that integrateable Ideas in the Hotfix-Versions (have to come to day 250+ and more again first) and from the direct Rivals I play too, then I will present them.

Many of such Ideas the Dev-Team already brought in (Modular-Upgrades for the MARS, Soldier-Equipments etc.). But upgrading the Ammo for ballistic Weapons / Energy-Weapons is nothing new new for that Gerne, which only get in oblivion. That get testet in the UFO ET-Series again, beginning with that what is integrated in UFO 2 ET "Battle for Mercury" already (after about 23 Years of Experimentation in X-COM Apocalypse).

 

Edited December 14, 2022 by Alienkiller

[Komandos]

11 hours ago, Chris said:

They obtain a strategic advantage by using the resources (primarily money) available to them wisely.

If the main condition for a player to win - is to achieve mastery (which is possible only with perfect knowledge of the rules of the game, physics and mechanics of the game, the properties of all game elements), then it will be difficult for beginners to win. At a low level of difficulty, the player (beginner) will have to win not because of skill, but because of the advantage in resources.

 

I will think about this problem.

Edited December 14, 2022 by Komandos

[Alienkiller]

Komandos, the older Gamer-Generation (most the 1st Gamer-Generation), which played good old X-COM and similar Games in the 1990s as well as new XCOM don´t see that as Problem. 

Only activate the Brain, make a long-time Strategy and use the Ressources wisely is the Key. That´s all.

If the young Generation haven´t learnd that yet from other similar Games, they have to learn it in Xenonauts 2 on the hard way (like we incl. me from first Gamer-Generation in good old X-Com). So easy is it.

Now to the Resource-Savings:

1. possible saving: The lesser Soldiers you have, the better it is for your very limited Ressources (Armour-Upgrades, Weapon-Upgrades and so on) incl. the next limited Ressource (Money) for the Specialist-Payments like Pilots, Soldiers, Technicans, Scientists. Esp. the Pilots / Soldiers will take higher Payment later with higher Ranks.

Like in real: No Specialist in Security-Duty (Police, Bodyguard etc.) / Military-Duty (Army, Navy, Airforce) will work for the Payment from an Private as Sergeant, Captain etc.

2. possible saving: Use the mobile Defense-Guns in Main- & Secondary Bases as well as build up linked Defensive-Turrets in all Bases (2 of the Defense-Turrets are Minimum)!

3. possible saving: Build up incl. Main-Base 2 medium Secondary-Bases which get the best Radar- / Scanner-Overage (sadly that isn´t possible atm without waste of square)!

I do the same and come in the UFO ET-Series, XCOM-Sieres as well as Xenonauts 2 with maximum 20 Specialists through the Game. Mostly lesser about using the Support-Troops (Vehicles or Robots).

The Upgrade-Costs from Vehicles / Robots are much lesser then to train an new Soldier form 0 on and esp. the refill from Soldiers after some of them died.

If the worst Case comes up (Stress Level to high, Specialists to tiered etc.) then the less important Missions will get done from the Gouvernment-Countrys and only the Main-Important Missions get done from your Specialists and Support Vehicles.

Edited December 14, 2022 by Alienkiller

[Komandos]

11 hours ago, Chris said:

Most players will not want to grind every crash site, so the game needs to be balanced on that assumption. People that do grind every crash site therefore have a massive advantage because the game expects them to have less money than they do, which makes the strategy layer far too easy.

There are 6 regions in the game that finance xenonauts (depending on the activity of xenonauts in these regions). The "seventh region" can be conditionally called: the airspace with UFOs appearing in it. (The amount of funding depends on how successfully the player discovers and shoots down UFOs and how successfully he collects artifacts at the crash site). If the player's monthly income (from the sale of alien artifacts) is set equal to the profit from one region (1/7 of the total income), then for simplicity: the economic balance of the game can be calculated as if the player was actually funded by 7 regions (not 6).

So that the economic difference between: a player who visits absolutely all "UFO crash sites" and a player who prefers "bombing" is not significant, I suggest replacing the "bombing of the UFO crash site" function with the "sell the UFO crash site and all the artifacts that are there" function. (Sell to the government or looters)

And the prices for artifacts (UFO crash sites) should be adjusted so that the maximum profit from downed UFOs does not exceed 1/6 of the total budget.

My proposal will allow you to assign a reward to the player for the sale of the "UFO crash site" not in an arbitrary way, but based on the actual availability and real market value of various resources, artifacts at the "UFO crash site".

Edited December 14, 2022 by Komandos

[Chris]

3 minutes ago, Komandos said:

There are 6 regions in the game that finance xenonauts (depending on the activity of xenonauts in these regions). The "seventh region" can be conditionally called: the airspace with UFOs appearing in it. (The amount of funding depends on how successfully the player discovers and shoots down UFOs and how successfully he collects artifacts at the crash site). If the player's monthly income (from the sale of alien artifacts) is set equal to the profit from one region (1/7 of the total income), then for simplicity: the economic balance of the game can be calculated as if the player was actually funded by 7 regions (not 6).

So that the economic difference between: a player who visits absolutely all "UFO crash sites" and a player who prefers "bombing" is not significant, I suggest replacing the "bombing of the UFO crash site" function with the "sell the UFO crash site and all the artifacts that are there" function. (Sell to the government or looters)

And the prices for artifacts (UFO crash sites) should be adjusted so that the maximum profit from downed UFOs does not exceed 1/6 of the total budget.

Yes, but think about what would happen if you do that - assume a player successfully shoots down all the UFOs that spawn that month, which is say 10 UFOs. Under your system the player gets the full monetary reward for all the items in those UFOs. That's probably 100 aliens even in the early stages of the game, and probably 250+ recovered items when you include the corpses, weapons and UFO contents. These would need a total sale value of less than 1/6 of your funding of ~$2.5m, which is just over 400k. It means the average sell price of a piece of alien equipment is less than $2k.

I'm curious what your issue is with the declining sell price mechanic? You've suggested various alternative solutions but it's not clear to me what's wrong with the mechanic we already have?

[Komandos]

1 hour ago, Chris said:

These would need a total sale value of less than 1/6 of your funding of ~$2.5m, which is just over 400k.

400,000 is the maximum financial income that one region can give?

1 hour ago, Chris said:

I'm curious what your issue is with the declining sell price mechanic? You've suggested various alternative solutions but it's not clear to me what's wrong with the mechanic we already have?

The mechanics of price reduction were available in the game "X-COM: 3 Apocalypsys", but the pricing mechanism was not intuitive. (It was impossible to predict price changes).

It can be assumed that 6 regions (or several other organizations) conduct their own scientific research and place an urgent order (request) (quest) on the exchange for the purchase of alien artifacts. When the order (request) (quest) is completed, then this order (request) (quest) is removed from the exchange. In other words: in addition to the market, each region (organization) can give quests for a decent monetary reward. (Similar to how we see it in RPG games).

In general: I agree that with the saturation of the market, the prices of artifacts must decrease significantly. Perhaps prices should go down faster if part of the planet is under alien control. I have not seen how the price reduction is implemented in the game, so I can only fantasize about this topic.

Edited December 14, 2022 by Komandos

[Alienkiller]

Komandos if I read your Idea correctly, you wanna bring in something like in Phoenix Point is implemented with the big seperate Habitats (something similar in XCOM 2) or in Terra Invicta with the differnt Earth-Factions. Sounds interessting and could bring more picancy in the Game.

 

 

 

Edited December 15, 2022 by Alienkiller

[Komandos]

2 hours ago, Alienkiller said:

Komandos if I read your Idea correctly, you wanna bring in something like in Phoenix Point is implemented with the big seperate Habitats (something similar in XCOM 2) or in Terra Invicta with the differnt Earth-Factions.

Xenonauts 2 already has 6 independent "factions" in the game. They are called: regions of the planet. )))

If, in the game, a separate screen appears for each region of the planet, and all statistics, current status, as well as quests (tasks) that the region gives, the result of these quests (tasks) will be displayed on this screen - then it will be more noticeable to the player.

Edited December 15, 2022 by Komandos

[Kamehamehayes]

I'm going to shift a little bit away from the price of good decreasing as you sell them to the topic of alien abilities again. 

I just got into the playtest and played a few hours all the way until I fought Wraiths in a Observer ufo (although I have not completed the clear base). I've currently fought cleaners, psyons, sectons, servitors, and wraiths. I played on Veteran difficulty and have not completed the cleaner base yet and have access to accelerated weapons and warden armor. 

Sectons: I really like their alien ability. Each secton individually is pretty weak, but as a group they are super deadly. It feels fair as you can either kill a secton or suppress them. Although, I did see a really weird ai quirk where sectons sometimes prefer to shoot someone from all the way across the map than shot someone 10 tiles away from them. I don't have a good save for that one unfortunately, and I deleted a lot of saves as load times were increasing rapidly and stuttering and freezing became more often because of the uncapped amount of autosaves. I'm kicking myself now for doing that. 

Psyons: I think their ability is a little excessive. Shooting and missing takes that soldier's turn away completely, which is especially annoying when they miss an overwatch shot and cannot do anything the next turn. I think removing half of the soldier's remain tus with mesmerize is more than enough to get the player to think more strategically and make them go out of their way to guarantee hits. Getting rid of 100% of a soldier's tus is unnecessary and overkill imo. 

Servitors: From what I can tell, their ability is not bugged and they heal the intended 50% hp. I don't have much to say about them other than that. 

Wraiths: These guys are extremely strong imo. Their cloaking field makes them insanely hard to hit and they regenerate their cloak after each turn. They also come with both plasma rifles and plasma grenades, so they are extremely deadly as well. They are also really tanky for some reason, they have over 100 hp which I find a little ridiculous since they are already so hard to hit and that is a lot more hp than the many psyons faced previously. I got destroyed by these guys in my encounter, only surviving with 4/9 of my squad left. I think they need to be toned down a little imo. Perhaps their hp need to go down or their shield has a cooldown before regenerating again? I do have a save from this mission though, if that is any help to this discussion. 

Other smaller notes: 

-The MARS cannon is really strong. It hits one-shot thresholds on a lot of earlygame enemies and my MARS is consistently more accurate than my snipers are with a cannon + rangefinder (after moving). I didn't test how strong it is compared to the rocket launcher, but it is the mvp of every mission I've done by far. 

-The cost of missiles and torpedoes for air combat is too demanding imo. I'm not encouraged to experiment with my air combat weapons because the initial cost of $200,000 for each of them produced is too much to justify when I have to do things like build soldier equipment, build a second base, hire more engineers/scientists, build more planes for said second base, etc. If it were $200,000 for an unlimited supply than I think it would be worth it, but $200,000 each is a big ask imo, no matter how strong torpedoes supposedly are. 

-For the first couple months, I only faced psyons/sectons with the cleaner intelligence hub mission in-between. I was hoping to have a bit more variety of alien species in the first couple months of the game. 

-I don't really have any particularly big issues with the new economic system, but this may encourage players to hoard, which is a massive pitfall if they continue to hoard their items even when they need to cash at that point. Maybe there can be random events were the price of certain items increases for some time, encouraging the player to sell some of their valuable artifacts instead of hoarding. 

[Komandos]

17 hours ago, Alienkiller said:

Now to the Resource-Savings:

Of course: the strategy of the game can be based on the principle: the absence of many resources and the saving of these resources. And in order to win: the player needs to study and master all the ways to save resources and choose the path of the most efficient way to save resources. However, a novice player will need to replay the game several times before the player discovers, remembers and learns how to use resource savings as efficiently as possible.

I believe that it is not necessary to create a deficit for absolutely all resources in the game. I think it will be enough if we create a shortage of only strategically important resources in the game. The remaining resources in the game may be in sufficient quantity (for example, now we do not see a shortage of firearms and ammunition for these weapons in the game).

In addition to the saving strategy, the game can be built on a development strategy. This is when the player has to choose the fastest way to develop. But so far, the process of scientific research is not much like a separate mini-game. I would be very happy if the research process starts to resemble the stages of this game:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulls_and_Cows

After the start of scientific research (or some time after the start of scientific research), the player is offered to play a mini-game (otherwise, research will be conducted in auto mode).

Approximate rules of such a mini-game: in order to make a scientific discovery (any or only very important), it is necessary to conduct four out of ten possible experiments in the correct order (sequence). Each experiment is indicated by a number from 0 to 9. The player sets the order of experiments using a set of numbers. For example: 7209

Scientists, after conducting a study, show the player the result (for example): 1 the experiment was conducted in the correct order. 1 the experiment was conducted in the wrong order. Based on this information, the player will have to guess the correct order of experiments.

The detailed rules are here. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulls_and_Cows

 

You can try to use this mini-game for final research (research in the very end of the game). If the player refuses to play this mini-game, then the player's participation will be replaced by a random search of all possible options and the research process will be longer.

This is not difficult to do for several very important studies.

 

In addition to the resource saving strategy, you can use strategic tactics in the game. This is when the conditions on the global screen change very often (for example, the weather), and the player (depending on these conditions) will have to choose one of the available ways to respond. Each way of responding in different situations will have different effectiveness.

Edited December 15, 2022 by Komandos

[happystrawberry1]

Thank you so much for the key Chris! Here are my first impression after 30 days in game time on my most successful campaign. Failed 4 previous campaigns. All Veteran Difficulty.

 

The best changes that were made after coming from a playthrough of XCOM UFO Defense , OpenXcom, and Xenonauts 1.

• Sound Track is absolutely amazing. Aleksi Aubry-Carlson did a wonderful job.
• Sound effects by David Kizale is great!
• The camera angles! I love it.
• The 2D and 3D artists knocked it out of the park. Almost everything looks great!
  • Bring back the old engineer from Xenonauts 1, I loved that guy haha.
• The simplified inventory change took a bit to get used to but I personally loved it. My grandpa laugh at how huge the inventory space was for a "Belt".
• The little chonk tank is the cutest thing in the world.
• The moving/firing preview!
• Training building!
• Soldier metals!
• Core gameplay is familiar to older fans.

The good stuff.

• Aliens hit hard and I love it. Back into the meat grinder we go! Night missions are a nightmare and its the best. I'm also happy you kept the infinite flares.
• Assigning a pilot's face to your planes was a great change! I loved the XCOM UFO Defense interceptor cutscene, so having a face to your pilots when they pull off a successful attack is great. The exact opposite happens to when you fail an attack and lose your expensive fighters.
• Whoever decided to add in the adjacency bonus in base building was a good call. I do miss the modded option of having your first base built out before being starting out, but it was doable.
• The Cleaners fights are some of my favorites to slug it out in. The map where most of the fighting takes place in an office building is awesome! I do hope to see some more maps where it goes vertical. 
• Losing your fighters and chonks leads to automatically rebuilding them. I love the option to spend cash to instantly replace them. It strikes a good balance in my opinion.
• I like the modules! I hope it gets expanded upon. Such as a bipod for snipers or LMGs. Speed loaders for reduced TU costs. Headlights for the night missions. Deployable cover.
• The demo charges return from XCOM UFO and I love it! I wished we could have the option to prime it.
• I love the encyclopedia 
• No godawful voice acting like Phoenix Point.
• Mantids!

Neutral

• No armory system like XCOM UFO. What you bring on your troopers is what you get.
  • This leads to me making ammo luggers and grenade luggers. They only carry the ammo and grenades.
• New approaches to air combat! I like that you can organize how you can approach your attack.
  • I went back to auto resolving, but my grandpa loves doing the manual fight. We both like that after auto-resolving, you can choose to do it manually! Great design decision.
• No priming and throwing grenades or ammunition packs to your fellow troopers.
  • You can throw a demolition charge at an alien that really deserves it, so it balances it out.
• So far, no mixed alien types aside from Secton and what I think are Sebellians or Bigger Sectons. I haven't managed to kill one yet to find out what they are.
• Reaction fires everywhere!
  • No complaints, it feels fair since I bring LMGs to suppress stuff.
• Smoke grenades work both ways.

The bad.

• I had a hard time understanding what the yellow and green bar on cover stands for.
  • I couldn't explain what it does when my grandpa gave the game a shot. In Xenonauts 1 I beat the game with close range and never bothered to use it. I hope to see a tutorial when players new to this type of game comes in. The GOG Demo would be a fantastic tutorial, just add in the snipets of what things do.
• Please explain the yellow numbers in the tutorial and that being in the smoke causes stun damage. My first mission lead to a squad wipe since I had no idea or any indication I was getting stunned.
• Where did free aiming go? I absolutely missed it and it would have save 2 of my campaigns best soldiers before things turned sour.
  • It lead to me forgoing the grenade launcher completely and just having a high strength trooper with an inventory full of grenades. I miss having the blind fire option to at least suppress an enemy. The choice to remove free aiming leads to a higher casualty rate that I am not a fan of.
• The knife weighing 15? 
• I really miss assigning a specific amount of researchers to work on multiple assignments, even if the tradeoff is slower. 
• Soldiers that get snipe from the furthest range while the camera does not move , do not get any damage. I had a Private survive 3 shots, there was a blood pool on him, but he received no damage. I saw the shots hit him from the edge of the screen.
• I have no incentive to save civilians or local forces in most mission types. I would have love to see them evacuate to the chopper. The UI is there in Alien Abduction. Then you can combine the mission tool "Recover 10 data pads from the cleaners" mission type when they do get to the evac point. The only thing I can really do is stun them to stop them from running to their deaths.
  • This leads to me just holding a point and have the aliens come to me. Not that I mind, but this does get stale over time. I would like to see more mission types like the Alien Abduction but without the timer. XCOM 2 introduces the Raid type mission that I fell in love with since it changes up the gameplay.
• When on the Geoscape and on 4x Speed, I get a notification that a UFO has landed. I know in previous playthroughs that I do not get to organize the layout of soldiers on the Skyhawk before launching.
  • I rejected so I can organize, but after rejecting the Geoscape kept moving by 4x speed, losing me 2 days on the mission timer and forcing me on a night mission with 1 day left on the timer. I would like the speed to go back to 1x speed if possible when I reject.

Minor stuff I would like to see

• Is it possible to add an idle pilot figure in the chopper during ground combat? Since we got a face to our pilots, would love to see them on standby when I abort a mission or go on a successful evac.
• Crash details around down UFOs. 
• I have yet to encounter a nightmare enemy like the reaper or chryssalid
  • I want more of these things or another melee type enemy.
• Give the enemy grenades or a rocket launcher?
  • One of my favorite moments in UFO Defense was a Muton commander destroying half my squad with a blaster launcher.
• Enemy snipers?
  • I feel like the ground combat is strictly limited to the ground floor most of the time. I love to see enemies using the ceilings too!
• Vertical maps? The rotating camera would really show it's shine here, plus I love close quarters combat.
• More icons or the ability to add in our own icons for custom loadouts.
• Ambush mechanic or ambush tile sets on maps?
  • The idea came from when aliens in the UFO won't go out or start combat until you open the door. I feel like this would discourage the camping strategy of being near your chopper if you combine this with an offensive mission type. I think it would really make the bigger UFOs all the more scary. 
  • This leads to you considering your inventory. Bring a trooper with C4 to create a different path!

Overall, I love it. The only thing that really gripes me is the lack of free aiming.

Edited December 15, 2022 by happystrawberry1