asdfcyber Posted January 2, 2023 Share Posted January 2, 2023 (edited) I've been playing this for over 70h now according to steam with over 30h in my v25.3 campaign, so I think it's time to give some feedback instead of just generating bug reports all the time. I've tried to split it up in categories, and I've numbered the points to make it easier to react to one. It's rather lengthy so I figured it would be better in a separate thread than in the main feedback thread. There seem to be two different fonts used in this post. I'm not sure how that happened, but this editor isn't capable enough to change it so you'll have to live with it I'm afraid. AI The civilian AI is pretty dumb at times, jumping out one window and into another or dropping from a roof only to climb back up. They will run towards aliens and ufo's. I've had to subdue a local after he ran into a ufo with no protection to prevent him from doing anything stupid. They don't care about cover. Alien AI also isn't great: they don't seem particularly attracted to cover either, will turn their back on you, fire at a soldier farther away in cover instead of one in plain view. They will run up to you, unable to do anything else because they're out of TU's. Servitors will not try to stay near others. Reaction fire can be a bit excessive. Maybe remove overwatch from units when they take damage (perhaps above a certain threshold)? And/or limit it to once or twice per unit per turn? In particular, reaction fire at the first turn feels fair but can be a bit annoying when they spawn around the dropship. Pathfinding and targeting through/into the shroud allows you to deduce object and possibly also enemy locations. Pathfinding is occasionally unoptimal, it is somewhat annoying when going to a neighbouring tile first can spare you a ton of TU (this has been reported as a bug). Speaking of pathfinding: being able to walk backwards through a door or sideways out of a corner would be absolutely awesome. Units I was sceptical about the smaller tank, but now I really like it. Feels a bit overpowered at times though. MARS destruction feels a bit too easy / indifferent sometimes, "oh there are a couple of walls along the way, guess I'll drive through them instead of around since it takes the same amount of effort and the coin landed heads". It will cut literal corners. Maybe make it cost +1 or +2 TU for it to crush something? I find it hard to distinguish Psyons and Sectons. Are Sectons always crawling and Psyons always standing? They’re both Caesians to me. Some elites have so much armour that it’s easier to stun them than to kill them, feels a bit weird. The Sebillian melee animation feels very underwhelming (I was expecting claws, but instead it looks like they make a polite bow). Servitors could be a bit more dangerous. Androns appear pretty late, I expected them earlier. Not sure if that's good or bad, the current rate of discovering new species is quite nice. If units are very lightly wounded, the after mission report says they will heal for 0 days. Perhaps also show the hours? It is not clear that the Cyberdrone has extra front armour until you get the autopsy report. I did notice the blue HP's above it, but assumed that was an omnidirectional shield or something. Maps The alien base feels much better than the X1/X:CE bases, because of smaller hallways, non-square rooms and cute little attics. Although the rooms are still clearly on a grid. I like the animations and detail in general On one mission I threw a grenade next to a wall and bricks were blown away from a nearby wall. Not sure if that was a baked animation or a simulation, but it looked great! Maps are very flat. It’s easy for the cameras, but I wouldn’t mind some taller buildings or hills. Although I suppose hills could look a bit strange because a tile has to be either on one floor or another? Cliffs then. Cliffs are nice. Crashed aliens seem to be either dead or at full health, perhaps they can also be generated wounded? Weapons / armour / shooting Instead of not showing anything when damage is all absorbed by armour, it would be very nice if it was shown but in grey/white (as opposed to red). And if a shot connects but has no effect at all, perhaps it could say ‘resist’. Mind War could use one of those explainy popups, I had to read old patch notes to discover what it does. Or perhaps add a tooltip to the icon that appears on the affected soldiers' portrait? Alien plasma weapons seem to cause bleeding fairly often, but shouldn't plasma cauterize wounds instead? 80% chance for shields to intercept projectiles coming from the front feels too low, especially when crouched. And if they do get past, surely they can't deal full damage? Currently, only the highest cover value counts. But I think shooting through 3 windows should be bit harder than shooting through 1. How exactly does armour penetration work? And damage? It doesn't seem to be the same as the weapon properties tell me, for instance I just did 75 damage with a gauss rifle that should only be able to do 60. It might be nice to explain this in-game somewhere, the tutorial perhaps. I found some tooltips. Melee combat is surprisingly effective in the early game. A knife upgrade or more melee weapons might be nice for players that prefer an aggressive playstyle. I love the 'ctrl to compare' for weapons. I like the design of the stun gun more than that of the electroshock guns, the latter's texture is a bit more bland. Stun guns are in the equipment tab, but electroshocks are in weapons. Can stun guns be moved to weapons as well? In the gauss xenopedia pages, which I assume is actually the accelerated ballistics page that is currently missing, it is mentioned that upgrades are constructed separately from the weapons. I really like that the older types are not immediately obsolete that way. It would be nice if medpacks had ‘ammo’ and if you could stop bleeding for less than 25 TU. In mid-game I still haven’t unlocked some form of stun gas. Is that not in the game? Because it can’t be that high tech, right? Or is it locked behind one of the interrogations I haven’t had time for? I really really want my soldiers to be able to peek around corners (see a bit further if they're right next to it) Can the shooting line also be a nice solid line like grenades have instead of the small squares? It would be nice if the stun electroshock grenade showed the stun damage it does in its tooltip. The numbers in the 'chance to hit' information panel are inconsistent. Sometimes they're percentages, sometimes percentage points, sometimes multipliers. Camera Being able to rotate the camera is nice. Also really nice that the rotation increments can be changed. Can camera rotation and perhaps movement be allowed during the enemy/friendly turn? I like to look around, and sometimes action is blocked by cover. At the end of the turn the camera centers on the selected soldier, but that is not necessarily the most interesting region. I usually already have the camera near the area I want to observe. Aircraft and air combat Aircraft are weak at the start, their research has to be prioritized. Perhaps they can come with missiles and torpedoes unlocked? Rebuilding an aircraft takes two weeks or so, which is much longer than repairing or buying a new one. And after rebuilding it still starts with no health. Autoresolve is very punishing. I'm bad at air combat, but every time I've tried to do it manually I've been able to do much better. Maybe make it more lenient? Or base the autoresolve performance on a couple of manual fights? Is there no aircraft laser cannon? X-55 Phantom refuelling time is very long but they seem to burn about the same amount as X-25 Angels in combat. And with autoresolve Phantoms often go to 0%. The first three interceptors (not sure if there are any more but I'd assume so) all have two weapon hardpoints. Perhaps the Gemini can have an extra hardpoint? It is currently only marginally better than the Phantom. Aircraft positioning at the start of a battle is a bit janky because leftclick is used both for the position and for the direction and it depends on where you click. Air combat performance is sub-60 fps for me even when paused. In air combat, the circle outside of which you can place aircraft has extremely low contrast with the background. Relocating an aircraft does not make the aircraft fly on the geoscape :/ Research The alien electronics research unlocks a lot of things, perhaps they can be spread out over two research topics? There is both a reaper and reaper alpha interrogation research project, I think they should be merged. There is always a backlog. I have only done two of the interrogations for example. I like that you need to choose what is most important, but there's always something more important than the interrogations to me. It feels as if I can't possibly catch up. It would be nice if there were multiple teams of scientists for parallelized research I like that plot-progressing research is clearly marked as such Engineering It would be really nice there were folding menus in the soldier weapons category (for instance 'laser weapons', click it and it folds out revealing all laser weapons). In the aircraft equipment it would also be nice (armour, cannons, missiles, torpedoes) Tooltips won't show when hovering over the available engineering project topics but do in the engineering queue and on the images if they have one (bit unintuitive). Can they please also be added to the project names in the list itself? There are a lot of upgrades, and the upgrades are all expensive. Just like with the research, it feels like I can't do them all. I like that it can generate money when not in use. I could say the same about research but research is time-constrained while engineering is resource-constrained, meaning research can't ever catch a break while engineering is occasionally forced to. Bases How does storage work? Building another storeroom gives more storage capacity, but is capacity actually limited in the first place? It is not clear which items should be kept. For instance, do I need to keep captured units alive for interrogation? Can I safely sell all corpses? Suggestion: add a 'this item might be needed for future projects' icon next to the item in the storeroom. The decreasing sell value for large amounts is interesting, but if you sell a large volume all at once you can sell them all for the max value which is probably not intended. The value also does not appear to recover over time. Do missile batteries deal randomized damage? Because mine did 150 damage every time it's been used, but the base screen says 100-200 damage. There is not really a need for more than two bases. Not sure if that's good or bad. I think it's because the regions are larger compared to X1 so they’re easier to cover. I think more bases (three or even four) would make for more interesting gameplay, but they are far to expensive to be able to do that with the current economy. UI clarification is needed for transfer time. There is also no notification if transferred items have arrived. It would be nice if aircraft could be rearranged in the base, very much a nice to have though (purely aesthetic). Perhaps a 'sell all' and 'transfer all' button could be added, like a >> next to the >. Balancing What is the difference between gauss blasters and gauss cannons? Gauss blasters are extremely expensive to build, requiring $700k and 60 alloys to make in total. And the project text mentions the blaster unlocks the cannon? The cannon also has the image of a laser weapon. This was reported as a bug, not sure why it stayed in this list. Aircraft weapons in general are really expensive, and I found I do not have the money to upgrade them properly. Perhaps bring them down to around 175k or 150k? It's also a bit strange how they all cost the same. Vehicle gauss weapons require vehicle laser weapons to be built first, but I'm quite sure that one of the update posts mentioned that upgrades could be skipped? If they are not going to be I think the cost should be reduced. Same for base defense. Jetpacks are really light, as heavy as a single grenade. For comparison, the knife weighs 2 grenades and the stun baton 2.4. Bombers are really fast, an X-22 Angel is only slightly faster so if you are still using one of those you won't be able to catch them. The alien interceptor can't damage phantoms with alloy armour with its cannon. MARS get repaired instantly when returning to base, that doesn’t feel quite right. It also means the most powerful unit is always at your disposal. I think shooting down a UFO needs to return a percentage of the amount of panic it has caused. In the gauss xenopedia text: "accelerated ballistics do not require alien materials to construct" but they do all cost alloys. Is the text wrong? Regarding balancing #2 and engineering and research #3, around the funding report of day 180 it suddenly feels as if there's much less pressure. Not many new projects become available in the month or two before, so it feels as if I'm catching up now. Geoscape Geoscape performance drops a lot at the fastest speed whenever there's anything flying around. Seems like something that can be optimized away, but perhaps disable the fastest speed if not? It is currently a bit boring. There are a lot of different options for solving this such as regional forces, weather… The equirectangular map projection is being used incorrectly. Specifically, the shortest path between two points is in most cases not a straight line, but the aircraft do behave that way. Even worse, the same distance on the map gets you increasingly shorter distances as you go away from the equator, but aircraft either get slower by the same factor or just ignore that too. Flying from Alaska to Norway should not take just as long as going from Indonesia to Venezuela. Radar range should not look circular away from the equator. The game also does not allow you to fly over the poles (all of Antarctica is missing, even). I really hope this will be addressed at some point, because it is my biggest problem with how the game works. Story (spoilers) I am afraid I have to be honest here, I think the original Xenonauts has a better story. Although I’ve only read the first half or so of this one. The cleaner substory (if you can call it that) is alright, but not particularly special. I really don’t like the multiverse explanation and ‘they are what we could have been’ in the alien origins page, can we please just have them come from some faraway planets instead? Overall, the story does not feel too integrated with the rest of the game because it’s kind of hidden away in walls of text. Which I like reading, but still. I don't know how this could be fixed though, if it even needs to be. Technical I’m not a game dev and I’m sure you’ve put a lot of effort into it, but are you sure that dumping C# objects and encoding + compressing them is the best way to save? Will the game load mod binaries in the future? As far as I can tell no such system is in place currently. What is your opinion on decompiling for the purpose of modding with Harmony? Accessibility I've heard that light text on a dark background can be hard to read for people with astigmatism. Are there plans to make a 'light mode' version of the UI? During the enemy turn, sounds can give many clues to what is happening. Will there be subtitles for the hard of hearing? Congratulations, you've reached the end! I realize I might sound quite critical in places, but I absolutely love this game. Thanks, devs! Edit forgot-the-count: I think a changelog is in order. Earlier: Added units #8 Added servitors to AI #2 Added weapons #14 Added AI #7 Added a suggestion to bases #2 Added bases #8 Added weapons #15 2023-01-03, 20:15 (UTC+1): Weapons #6 has been answered Added weapons #16 2023-01-03, 21:00: Added units #9 2023-01-03, 23:15: Added balancing #10 2023-01-04, 16:30: Added remark to AI #2 Added weapons #17 Edited January 7, 2023 by asdfcyber See changelog Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Posted January 5, 2023 Share Posted January 5, 2023 On 1/2/2023 at 11:38 PM, asdfcyber said: I've been playing this for over 70h now according to steam with over 30h in my v25.3 campaign, so I think it's time to give some feedback instead of just generating bug reports all the time. I've tried to split it up in categories, and I've numbered the points to make it easier to react to one. There seem to be two different fonts used in this post. I'm not sure how that happened, but this editor isn't capable enough to change it so you'll have to live with it I'm afraid. AI The civilian AI is pretty dumb at times, jumping out one window and into another or dropping from a roof only to climb back up. They will run towards aliens and ufo's. I've had to subdue a local after he ran into a ufo with no protection to prevent him from doing anything stupid. They don't care about cover. Alien AI also isn't great: they don't seem particularly attracted to cover either, will turn their back on you, fire at a soldier farther away in cover instead of one in plain view. They will run up to you, unable to do anything else because they're out of TU's. Servitors will not try to stay near others. Reaction fire can be a bit excessive. Maybe remove overwatch from units when they take damage (perhaps above a certain threshold)? And/or limit it to once or twice per unit per turn? In particular, reaction fire at the first turn feels fair but can be a bit annoying when they spawn around the dropship. Pathfinding and targeting through/into the shroud allows you to deduce object and possibly also enemy locations. Pathfinding is occasionally unoptimal, it is somewhat annoying when going to a neighbouring tile first can spare you a ton of TU (this has been reported as a bug). Speaking of pathfinding: being able to walk backwards through a door or sideways out of a corner would be absolutely awesome. Units I was sceptical about the smaller tank, but now I really like it. Feels a bit overpowered at times though. MARS destruction feels a bit too easy / indifferent sometimes, "oh there are a couple of walls along the way, guess I'll drive through them instead of around since it takes the same amount of effort and the coin landed heads". It will cut literal corners. Maybe make it cost +1 or +2 TU for it to crush something? I find it hard to distinguish Psyons and Sectons. Are Sectons always crawling and Psyons always standing? They’re both Caesians to me. Some elites have so much armour that it’s easier to stun them than to kill them, feels a bit weird. The Sebillian melee animation feels very underwhelming (I was expecting claws, but instead it looks like they make a polite bow). Servitors could be a bit more dangerous. Androns appear pretty late, I expected them earlier. Not sure if that's good or bad, the current rate of discovering new species is quite nice. If units are very lightly wounded, the after mission report says they will heal for 0 days. Perhaps also show the hours? It is not clear that the Cyberdrone has extra front armour until you get the autopsy report. I did notice the blue HP's above it, but assumed that was an omnidirectional shield or something. Maps The alien base feels much better than the X1/X:CE bases, because of smaller hallways, non-square rooms and cute little attics. Although the rooms are still clearly on a grid. I like the animations and detail in general On one mission I threw a grenade next to a wall and bricks were blown away from a nearby wall. Not sure if that was a baked animation or a simulation, but it looked great! Maps are very flat. It’s easy for the cameras, but I wouldn’t mind some taller buildings or hills. Although I suppose hills could look a bit strange because a tile has to be either on one floor or another? Cliffs then. Cliffs are nice. Crashed aliens seem to be either dead or at full health, perhaps they can also be generated wounded? Weapons / armour / shooting Instead of not showing anything when damage is all absorbed by armour, it would be very nice if it was shown but in grey/white (as opposed to red). And if a shot connects but has no effect at all, perhaps it could say ‘resist’. Mind War could use one of those explainy popups, I had to read old patch notes to discover what it does. Or perhaps add a tooltip to the icon that appears on the affected soldiers' portrait? Alien plasma weapons seem to cause bleeding fairly often, but shouldn't plasma cauterize wounds instead? 80% chance for shields to intercept projectiles coming from the front feels too low, especially when crouched. And if they do get past, surely they can't deal full damage? Currently, only the highest cover value counts. But I think shooting through 3 windows should be bit harder than shooting through 1. How exactly does armour penetration work? And damage? It doesn't seem to be the same as the weapon properties tell me, for instance I just did 75 damage with a gauss rifle that should only be able to do 60. It might be nice to explain this in-game somewhere, the tutorial perhaps. I found some tooltips. Melee combat is surprisingly effective in the early game. A knife upgrade or more melee weapons might be nice for players that prefer an aggressive playstyle. I love the 'ctrl to compare' for weapons. I like the design of the stun gun more than that of the electroshock guns, the latter's texture is a bit more bland. Stun guns are in the equipment tab, but electroshocks are in weapons. Can stun guns be moved to weapons as well? In the gauss xenopedia pages, which I assume is actually the accelerated ballistics page that is currently missing, it is mentioned that upgrades are constructed separately from the weapons. I really like that the older types are not immediately obsolete that way. It would be nice if medpacks had ‘ammo’ and if you could stop bleeding for less than 25 TU. In mid-game I still haven’t unlocked some form of stun gas. Is that not in the game? Because it can’t be that high tech, right? Or is it locked behind one of the interrogations I haven’t had time for? I really really want my soldiers to be able to peek around corners (see a bit further if they're right next to it) Can the shooting line also be a nice solid line like grenades have instead of the small squares? It would be nice if the stun electroshock grenade showed the stun damage it does in its tooltip. The numbers in the 'chance to hit' information panel are inconsistent. Sometimes they're percentages, sometimes percentage points, sometimes multipliers. Camera Being able to rotate the camera is nice. Also really nice that the rotation increments can be changed. Can camera rotation and perhaps movement be allowed during the enemy/friendly turn? I like to look around, and sometimes action is blocked by cover. At the end of the turn the camera centers on the selected soldier, but that is not necessarily the most interesting region. I usually already have the camera near the area I want to observe. Aircraft and air combat Aircraft are weak at the start, their research has to be prioritized. Perhaps they can come with missiles and torpedoes unlocked? Rebuilding an aircraft takes two weeks or so, which is much longer than repairing or buying a new one. And after rebuilding it still starts with no health. Autoresolve is very punishing. I'm bad at air combat, but every time I've tried to do it manually I've been able to do much better. Maybe make it more lenient? Or base the autoresolve performance on a couple of manual fights? Is there no aircraft laser cannon? X-55 Phantom refuelling time is very long but they seem to burn about the same amount as X-25 Angels in combat. And with autoresolve Phantoms often go to 0%. The first three interceptors (not sure if there are any more but I'd assume so) all have two weapon hardpoints. Perhaps the Gemini can have an extra hardpoint? It is currently only marginally better than the Phantom. Aircraft positioning at the start of a battle is a bit janky because leftclick is used both for the position and for the direction and it depends on where you click. Air combat performance is sub-60 fps for me even when paused. In air combat, the circle outside of which you can place aircraft has extremely low contrast with the background. Relocating an aircraft does not make the aircraft fly on the geoscape :/ Research The alien electronics research unlocks a lot of things, perhaps they can be spread out over two research topics? There is both a reaper and reaper alpha interrogation research project, I think they should be merged. There is always a backlog. I have only done two of the interrogations for example. I like that you need to choose what is most important, but there's always something more important than the interrogations to me. It feels as if I can't possibly catch up. It would be nice if there were multiple teams of scientists for parallelized research I like that plot-progressing research is clearly marked as such Engineering It would be really nice there were folding menus in the soldier weapons category (for instance 'laser weapons', click it and it folds out revealing all laser weapons). In the aircraft equipment it would also be nice (armour, cannons, missiles, torpedoes) Tooltips won't show when hovering over the available engineering project topics but do in the engineering queue and on the images if they have one (bit unintuitive). Can they please also be added to the project names in the list itself? There are a lot of upgrades, and the upgrades are all expensive. Just like with the research, it feels like I can't do them all. I like that it can generate money when not in use. I could say the same about research but research is time-constrained while engineering is resource-constrained, meaning research can't ever catch a break while engineering is occasionally forced to. Bases How does storage work? Building another storeroom gives more storage capacity, but is capacity actually limited in the first place? It is not clear which items should be kept. For instance, do I need to keep captured units alive for interrogation? Can I safely sell all corpses? Suggestion: add a 'this item might be needed for future projects' icon next to the item in the storeroom. The decreasing sell value for large amounts is interesting, but if you sell a large volume all at once you can sell them all for the max value which is probably not intended. The value also does not appear to recover over time. Do missile batteries deal randomized damage? Because mine did 150 damage every time it's been used, but the base screen says 100-200 damage. There is not really a need for more than two bases. Not sure if that's good or bad. I think it's because the regions are larger compared to X1 so they’re easier to cover. I think more bases (three or even four) would make for more interesting gameplay, but they are far to expensive to be able to do that with the current economy. UI clarification is needed for transfer time. There is also no notification if transferred items have arrived. It would be nice if aircraft could be rearranged in the base, very much a nice to have though (purely aesthetic). Perhaps a 'sell all' and 'transfer all' button could be added, like a >> next to the >. Balancing What is the difference between gauss blasters and gauss cannons? Gauss blasters are extremely expensive to build, requiring $700k and 60 alloys to make in total. And the project text mentions the blaster unlocks the cannon? The cannon also has the image of a laser weapon. This was reported as a bug, not sure why it stayed in this list. Aircraft weapons in general are really expensive, and I found I do not have the money to upgrade them properly. Perhaps bring them down to around 175k or 150k? It's also a bit strange how they all cost the same. Vehicle gauss weapons require vehicle laser weapons to be built first, but I'm quite sure that one of the update posts mentioned that upgrades could be skipped? If they are not going to be I think the cost should be reduced. Same for base defense. Jetpacks are really light, as heavy as a single grenade. For comparison, the knife weighs 2 grenades and the stun baton 2.4. Bombers are really fast, an X-22 Angel is only slightly faster so if you are still using one of those you won't be able to catch them. The alien interceptor can't damage phantoms with alloy armour with its cannon. MARS get repaired instantly when returning to base, that doesn’t feel quite right. It also means the most powerful unit is always at your disposal. I think shooting down a UFO needs to return a percentage of the amount of panic it has caused. In the gauss xenopedia text: "accelerated ballistics do not require alien materials to construct" but they do all cost alloys. Is the text wrong? Regarding balancing #2 and engineering and research #3, around the funding report of day 180 it suddenly feels as if there's much less pressure. Not many new projects become available in the month or two before, so it feels as if I'm catching up now. Geoscape Geoscape performance drops a lot at the fastest speed whenever there's anything flying around. Seems like something that can be optimized away, but perhaps disable the fastest speed if not? It is currently a bit boring. There are a lot of different options for solving this such as regional forces, weather… The equirectangular map projection is being used incorrectly. Specifically, the shortest path between two points is in most cases not a straight line, but the aircraft do behave that way. Even worse, the same distance on the map gets you increasingly shorter distances as you go away from the equator, but aircraft either get slower by the same factor or just ignore that too. Flying from Alaska to Norway should not take just as long as going from Indonesia to Venezuela. Radar range should not look circular away from the equator. The game also does not allow you to fly over the poles (all of Antarctica is missing, even). I really hope this will be addressed at some point, because it is my biggest problem with how the game works. Story (spoilers) I am afraid I have to be honest here, I think the original Xenonauts has a better story. Although I’ve only read the first half or so of this one. The cleaner substory (if you can call it that) is alright, but not particularly special. I really don’t like the multiverse explanation and ‘they are what we could have been’ in the alien origins page, can we please just have them come from some faraway planets instead? Overall, the story does not feel too integrated with the rest of the game because it’s kind of hidden away in walls of text. Which I like reading, but still. I don't know how this could be fixed though, if it even needs to be. Technical I’m not a game dev and I’m sure you’ve put a lot of effort into it, but are you sure that dumping C# objects and encoding + compressing them is the best way to save? Will the game load mod binaries in the future? As far as I can tell no such system is in place currently. What is your opinion on decompiling for the purpose of modding with Harmony? Accessibility I've heard that light text on a dark background can be hard to read for people with astigmatism. Are there plans to make a 'light mode' version of the UI? During the enemy turn, sounds can give many clues to what is happening. Will there be subtitles for the hard of hearing? Congratulations, you've reached the end! I realize I might sound quite critical in places, but I absolutely love this game. Thanks, devs! Edit forgot-the-count: I think a changelog is in order. Earlier: Added units #8 Added servitors to AI #2 Added weapons #14 Added AI #7 Added a suggestion to bases #2 Added bases #8 Added weapons #15 2023-01-03, 20:15 (UTC+1): Weapons #6 has been answered Added weapons #16 2023-01-03, 21:00: Added units #9 2023-01-03, 23:15: Added balancing #10 2023-01-04, 16:30: Added remark to AI #2 Added weapons #17 Thanks for your thoughts (and the many bug reports). I'm glad to hear you've enjoyed your time with the game overall, and there's nothing wrong with writing out long lists of the things you dislike because ultimately that's what we need to continue improving the game. There's no way I can respond to everything here, although I have read it all. Here's a few comments: Yeah, the AI is still kinda dumb in various situations. That's something we'll be setting aside some time to improve once we hit Early Access. Yeah, Sectons are the small ones and Psyons are the large ones. We do need to get a proper Sebillian melee animation done, yeah. I'll note it down. Yup, lots of people have commented on flat maps. I'll be looking into verticality more in Early Access - I didn't realise people wanted it that much. Where does the 80% blocking chance on shields thing come from? Shields don't work like that any more (it's 100% for the frontal 180-degree arc) but have I missed a tooltip somewhere that still has the old numbers on it? Quite a few people have mentioned it. I'll turn down Penetration on the Stun Baton / Stun Gun to 25 from 999 then. That should still make them relatively strong in the early game. Stun Gas isn't currently in the game, no. The grenades are all set up and functional but I removed them because I felt they were a bit cheap. Do you like to use them, then? I'll fix the Electroshock grenade tooltip. The Hit Chance panel numbers have different values because they're calculated differently. Sometimes they're flat percentage increases, sometimes they're modifiers, etc. There's a couple of bugs atm but once those are fixed the numbers should calculate correctly. The air combat autoresolve doesn't take into account the ability to change the starting positions of interceptors, which is why it's currently so bad. I think we'll be taking another look at that (and the air combat in general) in Early Access. I guess with the research / engineering it's tricky, because I don't necessarily want the player to be able to research and build everything, because then there's not that much choice. I think I'd have to check how many scientists etc you're building before I make any changes, too. But you may well be right. It seems like you're saying that it feels like the research and engineering is mostly frontloaded into the first ~120 days of the campaign, and then it's a bit sparse after that? Yes, I know the map projection is wrong. There's not really anything we can do about it though; the choice is either a proper 3D globe or a flat 2D map and we went for the latter (which does have some advantages but I might choose differently if I were to start over). Trying to model 3D space on a 2D map is asking for trouble though, imo. I think you'd get the worst of both worlds if you did that. It wouldn't be obvious to a large section of the playerbase why the flight paths behaved as they did or why the radar circles ended up looking super weird whenever you got near a pole. I'm not a programmer myself but I'm confident the coders know what they're doing regarding saving. It's been heavily optimised recently so I'm sure they had reasons to set it up that way. Modding is something we'll be looking at in Early Access. It's awkward compared to X1 thanks to us using Unity, but not impossible. I'm not familiar with Harmony so I can't comment on it, unfortunately. @Solver might have some opinions here? It's unlikely we'll be doing any UI palette swapping in the future, no, as there's just so much UI in the game. Maybe subtitles could be added in but it just depends what tasks we end up having to prioritise in Early Access. There's lots of stuff we'd like to do and only so many hours in the day. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
asdfcyber Posted January 6, 2023 Author Share Posted January 6, 2023 (edited) Thanks for your reaction @Chris! > Yeah, the AI is still kinda dumb in various situations. That's something we'll be setting aside some time to improve once we hit Early Access. Great, I think that will improve the ground combat a lot. > Where does the 80% blocking chance on shields thing come from? I read that somewhere, but I can't remember if that's in the game or old changelogs - I'll see if I can find it. Shields must just protect less than I thought then. > Stun Gas isn't currently in the game, no. The grenades are all set up and functional but I removed them because I felt they were a bit cheap. Do you like to use them, then? I used them a lot in X1/X:CE because it was easy to smoke a room and wait, instead of repeatedly shocking them. I don't really mind if they're not going to be used because it did make capture a bit easy, but there are still a few references to (stun) gas and gas protection in the game. > It seems like you're saying that it feels like the research and engineering is mostly frontloaded into the first ~120 days of the campaign, and then it's a bit sparse after that? Yes, but like you said that could also be because of how many scientists I have. Immediately at the start I built an extra lab, and a month of two/three later I built another one in a second base. It could also be because getting to the end of the game naturally means there are less things to research. > Trying to model 3D space on a 2D map is asking for trouble though, imo. I think you'd get the worst of both worlds if you did that. It wouldn't be obvious to a large section of the playerbase why the flight paths behaved as they did or why the radar circles ended up looking super weird whenever you got near a pole. Perhaps. I'll probably try modding it in at some point (and possibly give up halfway through) > Modding is something we'll be looking at in Early Access. It's awkward compared to X1 thanks to us using Unity, but not impossible. Nice. I've never tried modding X1, but Unity games are generally quite moddable - as long as the game loads binaries and executes a method anything's possible. > Thanks for your thoughts (and the many bug reports) Thanks for fixing the many bugs :) Edited January 6, 2023 by asdfcyber forgot a stun gas comment Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Posted January 6, 2023 Share Posted January 6, 2023 2 hours ago, asdfcyber said: Thanks for your reaction @Chris! > Yeah, the AI is still kinda dumb in various situations. That's something we'll be setting aside some time to improve once we hit Early Access. Great, I think that will improve the ground combat a lot. > Where does the 80% blocking chance on shields thing come from? I read that somewhere, but I can't remember if that's in the game or old changelogs - I'll see if I can find it. Shields must just protect less than I thought then. > Stun Gas isn't currently in the game, no. The grenades are all set up and functional but I removed them because I felt they were a bit cheap. Do you like to use them, then? I used them a lot in X1/X:CE because it was easy to smoke a room and wait, instead of repeatedly shocking them. I don't really mind if they're not going to be used because it did make capture a bit easy, but there are still a few references to (stun) gas and gas protection in the game. > It seems like you're saying that it feels like the research and engineering is mostly frontloaded into the first ~120 days of the campaign, and then it's a bit sparse after that? Yes, but like you said that could also be because of how many scientists I have. Immediately at the start I built an extra lab, and a month of two/three later I built another one in a second base. It could also be because getting to the end of the game naturally means there are less things to research. > Trying to model 3D space on a 2D map is asking for trouble though, imo. I think you'd get the worst of both worlds if you did that. It wouldn't be obvious to a large section of the playerbase why the flight paths behaved as they did or why the radar circles ended up looking super weird whenever you got near a pole. Perhaps. I'll probably try modding it in at some point (and possibly give up halfway through) > Modding is something we'll be looking at in Early Access. It's awkward compared to X1 thanks to us using Unity, but not impossible. Nice. I've never tried modding X1, but Unity games are generally quite moddable - as long as the game loads binaries and executes a method anything's possible. > Thanks for your thoughts (and the many bug reports) Thanks for fixing the many bugs :) The thing about shields is they give extra armour, not an extra pool of HP. This is what confuses people - they don't stop incoming damage, they just reduce it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
asdfcyber Posted January 6, 2023 Author Share Posted January 6, 2023 23 hours ago, Chris said: Where does the 80% blocking chance on shields thing come from? There's a tooltip on the assault shield, perhaps also on the non-upgraded variant. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
asdfcyber Posted January 6, 2023 Author Share Posted January 6, 2023 (edited) Alright I got to the endgame mission. Can't progress sadly, because there's an Andron one level up and I get the cameralevel-ctd if I shoot or kill it in any way. I guess I'll have to wait for when that's fixed, so you won't be seeing any bugreports from me for a while. Some more feedback (unorganised this time): The eternal interrogation page pops up immediately after the autopsy, without having to research it first. Also, given there is only one in the alien base where I first found it, how can you do an autopsy first and then interrogate? I propose that autopsies are only conducted when a corpse has been brought home or after the interrogation has completed. The endgame unlocked quite early, before I even had seen a battleship (although that did eventually pop up). Perhaps the endgame research project should require some component from that ship before unlocking? I like the cruiser and battleship layout. The harvester layout is a bit weird though, where the first thing you run into is an operating room and with the teleporters a bit weirdly off to a side - does not make too much sense from a logistics point of view imho. I never got to see the upper floor(s?) of the harvester, because there were no aliens there on the two or so harvester missions I had (one of which was landed instead of crashed). It will be possible to breach a ufo from the side later, right? There is not really a way to reduce panic in the mid/late-game, is there? I had North America go to 70-80 panic at the end even though I had my second base there and semi-regularly shot stuff down. The fusion torpedoes do not seem like an upgrade over the plasma torpedoes: you'd go from 80dmg/30pen/-22des to 60/20/-30 which seems worse to me. The fusion blasters absolutely shred anything they encounter. I skipped the X-3 dropship and went straight for the X-4, which I only used for the last two missions. I had no difficulty completing missions with only nine units, but the AI upgrade will likely change that. After rereading it all, the story is not that bad. Still don't like the multiverse though. There is one instance of swearing near the end of the interview page that I'd like to see removed. By day 284 all research was completed, after which I launched the endgame. I had two instances of aliens with capes appearing outside the ufo, and two of mentarchs outside. Shouldn't they always spawn inside for lore reasons? I never did get the air combat ctd. Do you want the rest of my campaign saves anyway? You already have most of it :) Edited January 6, 2023 by asdfcyber Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jet Jaguar Posted January 7, 2023 Share Posted January 7, 2023 Oh one small thing I would like to see added is an option for borderless full screen if possible. As someone that has two monitors, it would be very helpful! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaptBeefheart Posted January 7, 2023 Share Posted January 7, 2023 Good comments that I agree with in general. To me, the air game is much more important in this iteration. On my second playthrough of v25.3 I focused more on air techs and builds and I seem to be keeping panic somewhat in control (at the default difficulty). A few points on the air game: 1. Yes, manual control, even though I pretty much don't know what I'm doing, is better than autoresolve. 2. Air weapon upgrades are expensive. Maybe make them cheaper, at least the less capable ones. 3. I researched lasers as far as possible (I think), but couldn't get an aircraft laser cannon option. 4. Aircraft repair takes a while. Maybe the engineers at the base can assist? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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