V25 (almost) full playthrough.

[Gijs]

Hi, 

I'd like to share my thoughts on Xenonauts2 and maybe give some suggestions. I've been an Xcom fan since the 90's and a big fan of Xenonauts 1.

• I had one major dislike that caused me to immediately stop playing at the end, and this was the 'you have only 30 days left until game over'. I am more of a laid back grinding until I have a perfect team and world coverage kind-of player, so this goes completely against my playstyle. As such, I'd suggest to make this optional when beginning the game, or maybe even a gameplay setting in the options, in case a player changes his/her mind during a playthrough.

 

• I like a lot the fact that idle engineers and scientists generate income. I haven't done the math yet if a 'cash cow' base that you would need to defend would earn more than the expenses for upkeep, but this would be a nice choice of a player to invest in such a base.
• Again, as a slow pace player, the evolution of UFO's and enemies could be a little slower to my taste.
• I'd also suggest some more options for tactical missions for the player to actively reduce the terror meter in a region.
• Fusion grenade thrown by aliens appeared to be a bit overpowered. I had an instance where it would splut 3 soldiers with high level and high tier armor.
• I'd also suggest some more explanation on the training mechanics.

Possible bugs:

• Some armor addons I couldn't research, but I assume this is still in development. 
• The armor that was supposed to give 360 view, didn't give that view
• The big tank armor (the one that can only use heavy weapons) was buggy, in the tactical game, the soldier would glide with his torso over the floor instead of walking sometimes. I'd also like that armor to have a positive effect on the TU's needed to fire the heavy weapon so the soldier wouldbe more of a walking turret. Out of the box: it could also be an idea to make the vehicle (MARS) cannon work with that suit.
•  When having 2 bases and building aircraft weapons or armor in one base, it's duplicated to the other base. 
• When your base is under attack, the aliens are all huddled on one spot. (fun carnage though)

If I think of something else, I'll update this post.

 

Gijs

[Gijs]

PS: I was an early backer and made my own soldier in my liking, but didn't come across it in game yet. How many such soldiers exist, just to get an impression of the odds.

[Chris]

6 hours ago, Gijs said:

PS: I was an early backer and made my own soldier in my liking, but didn't come across it in game yet. How many such soldiers exist, just to get an impression of the odds.

Thanks for the thoughts. There's something like 3000 backer soldiers, so I think the game would need to generate roughly 30,000 soldiers for you to find your soldier by chance. But there's an option in the Settings menu where you can force custom soldiers to spawn in the starting squad, so it's probablt easier just to enter the name of your soldier in there

A few responses:

• Yeah, the game end hard timer is going to become a softer time limit in the next update. The aliens will start bombing cities from orbit, which causes rising Panic in all regions, but you'll have more time to finish the game if your strategic situation is under control.
• Alien grenades do seem a bit overpowered now I look at them; I'll nerf their damage a bit for the next update. I think it's practically impossible to survive a Fusion Grenade at the moment.
• Yeah, I've improved the tooltips on training today so they'll be in the next update.
• Yes, most of those bugs are things we're aware of and will be fixing in the coming weeks. Do you have a save where I can reproduce the duplication of the aircraft weapons? (assuming you're playing in V25.3 here, as I seem to remember that bug maybe getting fixed in earlier versions of V25).

 

[Gijs]

On 1/6/2023 at 12:23 AM, Chris said:

Thanks for the thoughts. There's something like 3000 backer soldiers, so I think the game would need to generate roughly 30,000 soldiers for you to find your soldier by chance. But there's an option in the Settings menu where you can force custom soldiers to spawn in the starting squad, so it's probablt easier just to enter the name of your soldier in there

A few responses:

• Yeah, the game end hard timer is going to become a softer time limit in the next update. The aliens will start bombing cities from orbit, which causes rising Panic in all regions, but you'll have more time to finish the game if your strategic situation is under control.
• Alien grenades do seem a bit overpowered now I look at them; I'll nerf their damage a bit for the next update. I think it's practically impossible to survive a Fusion Grenade at the moment.
• Yeah, I've improved the tooltips on training today so they'll be in the next update.
• Yes, most of those bugs are things we're aware of and will be fixing in the coming weeks. Do you have a save where I can reproduce the duplication of the aircraft weapons? (assuming you're playing in V25.3 here, as I seem to remember that bug maybe getting fixed in earlier versions of V25).

 

I just checked and was running on V24.7B, so if the bugs are fixed after that, it's a moot point already. Nonetheless, I've added a savegame 

 

 

auto_strategy_after_combat-122.json

[Chris]

On 1/22/2023 at 1:34 PM, Gijs said:

I just checked and was running on V24.7B, so if the bugs are fixed after that, it's a moot point already. Nonetheless, I've added a savegame 

 

 

auto_strategy_after_combat-122.json 1.07 MB · 0 downloads

Oh, fair enough. Yeah, it's probably fixed by now then - the first V24 builds started back in October, and the various V25 builds since then contained a lot of fixes / changes.