100 hours in. Heres some rundowns!

[LynneJJW]

So, 100 hours in and hitting the wall.

I'll be giving my advise and suggestions about the game so far! Starting off, I loved Xenonauts 1 as it held that simplicity of classic Fallout games with an in depth calculation and effect system to stats. 

 

1. Panic system. It felt a bit difficult to cover other parts of the planet that were having anomalies or abduction reports. not actual missions. And these were adding to the panic level that effects the funding. ... in suggestion,

• the further away these UFO anomalies and sightings are from a City landmark, the lesser the panic. This will better effect late game when theres upwards of 3+ UFO groups on the map at the same time.

2. Cleaners.

• These guys are kinda, unexplained. Itd be best to have them maybe as a 3rd party encounter in one of the other missions, rather than the first mission being that you bust into their Regional HQ to grab some flashdrives.
• They are also very tough, very accurate, and deal lot of damage. they have accelerator rifles. something i dont get till a little later, but they all have them. At the first Clearers mission, i dont have these weapons yet or they are hard to build due to a lack of resources. Even in the easiest mode. In suggestion, itd be best if these guys were better scaled to events.

3. Air combat. I hear is being refined still. 

4. Ground Combat. 

• The penalties for blocked shots is too harsh. with a sniper rifle, shooting over a 3 foot box is -40%. this is when nether I nor the enemy is taking cover behind it. Same with guard rails.
• Point blank is overly harsh. I hear that its being looked into.
• Bring back overwatch point usage. Before in Xeno 1 it made the remaining of your TU yellow indicating that those points are reserved for overwatch.
• The chances of shooting things RIGHT infront of you that you dont want to hit is too high. This is more that theres too many thing blocking shots when they shouldnt be.
• Burst fire is just about useless as the % is not per bullet in the burst but the entire attack. 
• Shields feel to be very underwhelming as I used to basically run shields for cover back in Xeno 1.

5. Prep system/Base/assets.

• I like the prep system carry over from Xeno 1, but I feel that some things are too heavy. Steel Ballistic plates are between 5 and 10lbs irl. 
• As for the Deploy aircraft, id addon that there should be better different tiers of deploy aircraft. You have the ability to deploy as many as the aircraft can load, rather than having that extra space. I suggest the FIRST deployment aircraft to be something like a UH-1. The UH-1D can carry 10 troops and will deploy out the sides. the UH-60 can carry 12. Theres the CH-46, 47, and 53 to pick from when increasing tier, deploy the back and sides. So forth. just a bit of extra depth before hitting the sci-fi stuff

 

This is really all I have in mind and I look forward to what the endgame of the development will bring!

 

========Edit addition

6. General pricing. 

 So, the general pricing of everything seems to be placeholder I'm guessing. a Radar Array being 400,000 the 2nd jet aircraft being 500,000, MARS costs 250,000. Some armors costing upwards of 25,000, as the stun gun costs 20,000, the laser turret defense upgrade costing 250,000. Alot of these things dont feel quite right. Specially not with the funding provided.
 

Edited July 27, 2023 by LynneJJW
New point

[Beltorn]

• Bring back overwatch point usage. Before in Xeno 1 it made the remaining of your TU yellow indicating that those points are reserved for overwatch.

This is actually in the game - right click the desired firing mode and it will show the reserved portion in Orange color on the TU bar and give warning that the TU's are reserved when you try moving past the limit 

• Burst fire is just about useless as the % is not per bullet in the burst but the entire attack. 

 Agreed here. MG is unfortunately a useless weapon right now. Too low base accuracy for shots further reduced by Recoil penalty

• Shields feel to be very underwhelming as I used to basically run shields for cover back in Xeno 1.
  
  Disagree - shields save from at least one shot, thus they are highly useful against extreme damage - they are free HP more or less. Pistols are extremely good once your accuracy and TU go up.
  The damage spread in the game feels too high though, would make sense to reduce a bit

Edited July 25, 2023 by Beltorn

[Raffik]

I agree with most mentioned above, however:

1. agree fully

2. agree - I never tried totake the accelerated weapons from the cleaners during mission - can they be used or are they blocked the same wa as the alien magnetic guns?

3. looking forward to see improvements, but its "usable" even now

4. agree - burst fire sucks, but the MG is still very useful to supress the enemy in order to move the other soldiers forward. Shields also work well in providing cover and protecting from at least one shot, which is the main purpose really in my eyes.

5. Agree on the intitial dropship - could be smaller, however no UH-1 nor CH46/53 fly at the speed as the Skyhawk does (even if the story introduces it as modified). It would make more sense to have a V-22 or the prototype V-44 as the initial dropship and then go with the Dragonfly and so forth.

[LynneJJW]

11 hours ago, Raffik said:

5. Agree on the intitial dropship - could be smaller, however no UH-1 nor CH46/53 fly at the speed as the Skyhawk does (even if the story introduces it as modified). It would make more sense to have a V-22 or the prototype V-44 as the initial dropship and then go with the Dragonfly and so forth.

 

I thought the game took place from the 60s or the 70s. so some things wouldnt work. though, the use of russian aircraft should be able. 

[Shadeth]

22 hours ago, LynneJJW said:

• Point blank is overly harsh. I hear that its being looked into.

Curious what you mean by "overly harsh" for point blank?  I found firing point blank to be not as accurate as I would expect from other games where it was usually a sure hit, and I made a thread about that topic in the general forum.  Had 3 round burst shot miss all 3 shots point blank which leads into...

• Burst fire is just about useless as the % is not per bullet in the burst but the entire attack. 

Is that so?  I didn't know that, but that explains some of the frustrating misses I have experienced!  That doesn't make a lot of sense, it should calculate each shot in the bust I would think.

• Shields feel to be very underwhelming as I used to basically run shields for cover back in Xeno 1.

I haven't played enough to reach the end of current content. Is there any way to upgrade the shields?  If not, maybe a shield upgrade research could solve for this, as it would give them more armor/health later in the game.

• I like the prep system carry over from Xeno 1, but I feel that some things are too heavy. Steel Ballistic plates are between 5 and 10lbs irl.

I agree with that, and 3 armor isn't even that much.  I think those plates could probably be a little lighter?

[bifohe6676]

Quote

Burst fire is just about useless as the % is not per bullet in the burst but the entire attack. 

I don't think this is true, I had many 10-round bursts from my gunners with ~15% hit-chance miss 9 of their bullets but the 1 lucky hit killing a wounded alien.

Also don't forget soldier strength is massively important now for machinegun-carriers, because the recoil is no joke.

Soldiers with both high accuracy and high strength are killing machines when you give them a machinegun, my top MG soldier has 22 kills in 13 missions, on top of the constant supression she provides.

[Raffik]

3 hours ago, LynneJJW said:

 

I thought the game took place from the 60s or the 70s. so some things wouldnt work. though, the use of russian aircraft should be able. 

it is set to 2009 if I am not mistaken so the osprey would work

[Dren608]

The opening cinematic and the previous text intro both state it is 2009, the cold war  is still on... So we are in an alternate time line or parallel universe (your choice on that) so while stuff looks somewhat familiar not all is based on our technology. IF you read te notes on things like the  Interceptors it states that they work because the are old technology, There is a fair amount of "lore" available in your scientist's reports and is available in the Encyclopedia (Xenopedia?) that you can access. IT also stops the clock so no worries about getting ambushed

 

[bifohe6676]

7 minutes ago, Dren608 said:

The opening cinematic and the previous text intro both state it is 2009, the cold war  is still on... So we are in an alternate time line or parallel universe (your choice on that) so while stuff looks somewhat familiar not all is based on our technology. IF you read te notes on things like the  Interceptors it states that they work because the are old technology, There is a fair amount of "lore" available in your scientist's reports and is available in the Encyclopedia (Xenopedia?) that you can access. IT also stops the clock so no worries about getting ambushed

 

This is very true, the game explicilty states that modern jets can't deal with the UFOs because of the EMPs the UFO emit, the only reason the rusty Soviet interceptors work is because they got old-timey vaccum tubes, their text says.