Steam Demo Feedback & Performance / Bugs

[mjc4wilton]

Long time enjoyer of Xenonauts 1. Haven't been able to get into the beta group but have been quietly lurking on the forums for a while reading about the progress on Xenonauts 2. Played the new 40-day demo on steam last night and here's some general remarks and feedback.

 

Demo Technicalities

Stability and Performance

Overall ran pretty smoothly. I got one crash while loading a ground combat mission from the geoscape after pressing F15 during the loading screen as it is my push to talk. Additionally, I saw some roughly 500-750ms stutters occasionally while ordered troops were moving during ground combat. After ending my turn, there was a consistent 2-3 second long pause before the hidden movement screen would appear or sighted aliens start doing stuff. 

Bugs

Biggest bug I encountered was that after ending my turn at one point during the Cleaner Intelligence mission, during the aliens turn it appears as though my S key was consistently pressed as the camera would snap to somewhere, then start scrolling down to the bottom of the map and then slide itself over towards a corner. Not exactly sure what caused it. Additionally, I'm not sure if its a bug or a poorly responsive feature, but it appears that xenonaut armor / armor plates did next to nothing as flesh damage would be taken by my troops pretty consistently. This could just be the lack of feedback on the armor working though, which if that is the case it would be nice to see some indication of that like Xenonauts 1 had. 

Overall Design and Mechanics

Ground Combat

Overall its definitely a step up from Xenonauts 1. Being able to rotate the camera is cool however I often found myself playing in the default view out of habit. I think if there was an option for the camera to be perspective rather than orthographic that would be a neat reminder that it is a 3d scene (assuming that this is possible and would not require redoing base systems). The biggest improvement I feel that was made since X1 though was the soldier inventory and management redesign. Being able to quickly heal my soldiers without moving items left and right helps.

Geoscape

Not too many things seem different here from X1, apart from the panic / funding overhaul. Also, the panic meters at the bottom of the screen I think could be improved by labeling that those values represent panic as I was not sure what they represented at first.

Base Design

I really like the improvements made here with the bonuses and room adjacencies. Additionally, I like that the center of the base is the freight lift, but I feel like it should have more bonuses. Specifically, I feel like logically speaking it makes sense for the workshop to get a bonus for being adjacent to either a store room or a lift (I'm not sure which makes more sense). Same with the training facility being adjacent to a barracks.
 

Research & Workshop

It definitely seems a lot more approachable than X1. The passive income also helps as it provides another revenue source to the organization when funds run tight towards the ends of months. The research tree did seem almost the same to X1 though so I think changing some of the progress there would be nice with adding some other subjects or at least changing them a bit to not appear a cut and paste job.

 

Aerial Combat

I was not a fan of aerial combat in X1 and I usually resorted to using autoresolve the majority of the time. The changes that were made to autoresolve in X2 definitely help as at the least I am able to see what the costs would be of autoresolve before committing to it, and am able to engage manually if I want to say disengage and save the repair time on the craft. In combat, the ability to choose the starting formation is nice, but the alien craft continuously auto-targeting the closest target is somewhat interesting and a change of tactics from X1 which is welcome, although it definitely feels a bit cheesy at times when the ship starts oscillating between two of my fighters.

One of the problems I had most with X1 was the lack of time I can keep fighters in the air. Launching a sortie to intercept a craft only to have a small amount of fuel for the engagement was somewhat annoying, and it compounded towards the late game when I am trying to have the aircraft intercept two or more fighters before returning to base. It feels like this problem is still present in X2, although with only playing the first month and a bit it is hard to gauge how the endgame has changed in that regard. One idea I had was to introduce a third central pylon to the starter aircraft alongside external fuel tanks. The fuel tanks would reduce speed while equipped, but could be jettisoned to regain that speed at the cost of a longer service time to re-arm them. It also would open up more opportunities with the pylon loadout depending on playstyle as I could see dual sidewinder racks plus a central gun also being popular, or alternatively having one aircraft in the sortie just carry 12 sidewinders which might be nice when dealing with motherships or other escorted craft towards the late game.

Overall, the air game has definitely received some nice quality of life changes but I think some more work is needed in order to try to make it more enjoyable and less of a chore that just needs to be done. Without knowing what the research tree looks like, I could predict some engine and airframe modifications would be welcome to help reduce fuel consumption and / or increase speed towards the later part of the game.

The only other quality of life change that I would like is the ability to change the orientation of troops in the drop ship. I generally place two infantry at the side doors of the skyhawk to quickly get a visual on the sides and having to rotate them on my first move every single mission is minor but somewhat tedious and would be nice if I could just pre-place them so that I can have their vision upon landing.

 

Demo Limitations

I think this demo works well right now, but closer to a full release I think it should be changed to be more of a day 15 - 60 type of demo to show off more of the invasion itself as currently the demo is almost exclusively pre-invasion which I don't think presents a fair image of the game itself to potential new players. A little bit of pre-manufactured goods and skipping ahead in the research tree by one or two topics would help balance that later start.

[Chris]

On 2/12/2023 at 10:44 PM, mjc4wilton said:

Long time enjoyer of Xenonauts 1. Haven't been able to get into the beta group but have been quietly lurking on the forums for a while reading about the progress on Xenonauts 2. Played the new 40-day demo on steam last night and here's some general remarks and feedback.

 

Demo Technicalities

Stability and Performance

Overall ran pretty smoothly. I got one crash while loading a ground combat mission from the geoscape after pressing F15 during the loading screen as it is my push to talk. Additionally, I saw some roughly 500-750ms stutters occasionally while ordered troops were moving during ground combat. After ending my turn, there was a consistent 2-3 second long pause before the hidden movement screen would appear or sighted aliens start doing stuff. 

Bugs

Biggest bug I encountered was that after ending my turn at one point during the Cleaner Intelligence mission, during the aliens turn it appears as though my S key was consistently pressed as the camera would snap to somewhere, then start scrolling down to the bottom of the map and then slide itself over towards a corner. Not exactly sure what caused it. Additionally, I'm not sure if its a bug or a poorly responsive feature, but it appears that xenonaut armor / armor plates did next to nothing as flesh damage would be taken by my troops pretty consistently. This could just be the lack of feedback on the armor working though, which if that is the case it would be nice to see some indication of that like Xenonauts 1 had. 

Overall Design and Mechanics

Ground Combat

Overall its definitely a step up from Xenonauts 1. Being able to rotate the camera is cool however I often found myself playing in the default view out of habit. I think if there was an option for the camera to be perspective rather than orthographic that would be a neat reminder that it is a 3d scene (assuming that this is possible and would not require redoing base systems). The biggest improvement I feel that was made since X1 though was the soldier inventory and management redesign. Being able to quickly heal my soldiers without moving items left and right helps.

Geoscape

Not too many things seem different here from X1, apart from the panic / funding overhaul. Also, the panic meters at the bottom of the screen I think could be improved by labeling that those values represent panic as I was not sure what they represented at first.

Base Design

I really like the improvements made here with the bonuses and room adjacencies. Additionally, I like that the center of the base is the freight lift, but I feel like it should have more bonuses. Specifically, I feel like logically speaking it makes sense for the workshop to get a bonus for being adjacent to either a store room or a lift (I'm not sure which makes more sense). Same with the training facility being adjacent to a barracks.
 

Research & Workshop

It definitely seems a lot more approachable than X1. The passive income also helps as it provides another revenue source to the organization when funds run tight towards the ends of months. The research tree did seem almost the same to X1 though so I think changing some of the progress there would be nice with adding some other subjects or at least changing them a bit to not appear a cut and paste job.

 

Aerial Combat

I was not a fan of aerial combat in X1 and I usually resorted to using autoresolve the majority of the time. The changes that were made to autoresolve in X2 definitely help as at the least I am able to see what the costs would be of autoresolve before committing to it, and am able to engage manually if I want to say disengage and save the repair time on the craft. In combat, the ability to choose the starting formation is nice, but the alien craft continuously auto-targeting the closest target is somewhat interesting and a change of tactics from X1 which is welcome, although it definitely feels a bit cheesy at times when the ship starts oscillating between two of my fighters.

One of the problems I had most with X1 was the lack of time I can keep fighters in the air. Launching a sortie to intercept a craft only to have a small amount of fuel for the engagement was somewhat annoying, and it compounded towards the late game when I am trying to have the aircraft intercept two or more fighters before returning to base. It feels like this problem is still present in X2, although with only playing the first month and a bit it is hard to gauge how the endgame has changed in that regard. One idea I had was to introduce a third central pylon to the starter aircraft alongside external fuel tanks. The fuel tanks would reduce speed while equipped, but could be jettisoned to regain that speed at the cost of a longer service time to re-arm them. It also would open up more opportunities with the pylon loadout depending on playstyle as I could see dual sidewinder racks plus a central gun also being popular, or alternatively having one aircraft in the sortie just carry 12 sidewinders which might be nice when dealing with motherships or other escorted craft towards the late game.

Overall, the air game has definitely received some nice quality of life changes but I think some more work is needed in order to try to make it more enjoyable and less of a chore that just needs to be done. Without knowing what the research tree looks like, I could predict some engine and airframe modifications would be welcome to help reduce fuel consumption and / or increase speed towards the later part of the game.

The only other quality of life change that I would like is the ability to change the orientation of troops in the drop ship. I generally place two infantry at the side doors of the skyhawk to quickly get a visual on the sides and having to rotate them on my first move every single mission is minor but somewhat tedious and would be nice if I could just pre-place them so that I can have their vision upon landing.

 

Demo Limitations

I think this demo works well right now, but closer to a full release I think it should be changed to be more of a day 15 - 60 type of demo to show off more of the invasion itself as currently the demo is almost exclusively pre-invasion which I don't think presents a fair image of the game itself to potential new players. A little bit of pre-manufactured goods and skipping ahead in the research tree by one or two topics would help balance that later start.

I've had this thread bookmarked to read as part of my next balance pass, and as it looks like you're still about on the forums I just thought I'd briefly necro the thread and thank you for the detailed feedback.

I was internally debating whether to bother adding support for rotating soldiers in the dropship, but I wasn't sure if anyone would use it before reading your post.

[Twigg]

I second the request to rotate soldiers in the dropship. I'd also love it if you could set them to crouch in the as well. I know it seems small but not only does it help make the world feel more alive but with the amount of times I've been attacked while still in the dropship every TU can make a difference.

[mjc4wilton]

On 5/19/2023 at 8:39 AM, Chris said:

I've had this thread bookmarked to read as part of my next balance pass, and as it looks like you're still about on the forums I just thought I'd briefly necro the thread and thank you for the detailed feedback.

I was internally debating whether to bother adding support for rotating soldiers in the dropship, but I wasn't sure if anyone would use it before reading your post.

I'm glad the feedback helps and I appreciate the acknowledgement. 

In terms of the dropship soldier placement / rotation, I know a lot of players don't use the side doors however I also assume quite a few do as I mainly learned that and many other mechanics from Scott Manley's playthrough of X1 a few years back.