Directions in which I'd like to see the game expand

[Vitruviansquid]

I'm going to make a bit of a list of general ideas I have for what I want the game to include. This post isn't going to discuss too much about the balance implications about these additions because I'll assume that balance could be adjusted later to account for these additions. 

1. Redefine modules

When I first started this game, I thought "ah, modules is going to be the big paradigm shift in X2" and then somewhere along the way, I forgot they existed.

Modules should be a way to define the roles of soldiers, but they currently only make soldiers very slightly better at doing what they already do. If the soldier's primary weapon determines how the soldier deals damage, modules should determine a soldier's support abilities. Modules could be limited to one per soldier (either as a hard limit or as a soft limit where modules are too heavy or take up too much space for most soldiers to practically have two) and have effects that give new ways that a soldier can be useful. Alien corpses and captured aliens are also sort of underutilized in the game, so I thought modules could also be related to those. Here are some ideas I have regarding modules that illustrate the idea of what I mean:

- Detection module - The unit carrying this module can detect enemies that are a small number of spaces away from him or her, regardless of intervening walls and barriers. Detected units This module might be linked to psychic powers and require dead or captured Psyons to build and require Psyon interrogation technology. Units using this module might be useful fighting inside of buildings and can prevent you from walking into a building and getting immediately killed by an alien hanging around a corner near the doorway.

- Stealth module - The unit carrying this module is significantly less likely to trigger enemy overwatch. A unit with this module would be good for moving first, scouting, and breaching dangerous doors. The enemy that this module is related to is Wraiths, so this module might require wraith corpses, captured wraiths, or wraith interrogation to build.

- Targeting module - When the unit carrying this module hits an enemy with a shot, it confers a sizable accuracy bonus to all subsequent shots taken at that unit by anyone until your turn is over. Units carrying this module would be your first attackers with the best hit chances to then help your other units attack. I don't know which alien this module might be associated with.

- Medical module - Medkits no longer exist for everyone. Only soldiers with a medical module can heal now, significantly limiting the accessibility of healing for xenonauts soldiers. This could be a module related to Sebilians or a module that you start the game with.

2. Sectons and Mantids are kind of meh

One of the great things about Xenonauts 2 that it has over Xenonauts 1 is that almost all of the aliens have very interesting differences that imply the player uses different strategies against them. All except Sectons, Mantids, and Cleaners, I'd say, though the Cleaners get a pass on this front.

Sectons have an accuracy bonus for being close to each other, but there is not really a way to forcibly separate Sectons standing close together, so it doesn't really impact the way you'd play. Even worse, in all my 33 hours of playing this game, restarting campaigns a few times to try out different strategies, I have never actually encountered Sectons close together to see their eyes glowing because the aliens tend to be distributed around maps when they spawn. The secton power has never mattered in my 33 hours playing this game.

The Mantid enhanced vision has also not mattered that much in my experience. Maybe it is a playstyle thing, but I do not find myself sneaking up on aliens from outside of their view enough for it to matter that the mantids can see almost all around them. But also, it strikes me that mantid vision does not open up new strategies for players to use against them, it actually shuts down a strategy a player could use. 

Now, I don't know if the "lore" and therefore the special abilities of the aliens are considered to be already locked in and it's too late to change them out, but I would like to see something for both races to spice them up a bit and make them as interesting to battle against as the other races. Perhaps this point might be a bit connected with the next point...

3. More alien "auxiliaries"

In Micropose Xcom, alien species were associated with an auxiliary unit that they sometimes brought to supplement their forces. Sectoids had Cyberdiscs, Floaters had Reapers, Snakemen partnered with the dreaded Chrysalid, and so on. In Xenonauts 2, we somewhat have this concept, too, but the auxiliaries are not tied to race as much. I've seen Wraiths with Servitors a lot and Psyons are arguably the auxiliary of Sectons (or the other way around) but I've seen Reapers with both Wraiths and Mantids. Cyberdrones seem to appear in any kind of terror mission, but only terror missions.

I think it would be good to expand the auxiliaries because they are good at providing a different sort of challenge and it really gives you the feeling that the aliens are a coordinated military force that brings specialized equipment. 

Perhaps Mantids can have an exclusive auxiliary to better define the race, as their compound eyes just aren't doing it. In any case, here are some ideas:

- Attack lizards for Sebilians. Sebilians have a bit of a problem with just getting picked off at range, which does make players feel cool and tactical when they take advantage of it, but also makes Sebilians somewhat unscary. Fast, swarming attack animals for sebilians that move in packs (maybe 2-3 of these will try to move together as they wander the map and attack the same target) might be pretty good for overwhelming players who try to out-snipe the Sebilians, and for chasing players who try to shoot at the Sebilians and then duck behind cover.

- Or alternate to the above, a larger Sebilian subspecies that carries a machine gun. It is still poor at hitting enemies from range, and being large, is also an easier target to hit (like a Cyberdrone), but it has buckets of health and regen and is good at suppressing Xenonaut soldiers.

- Exploding suicide drones. You can make them fly or you can make them skitter along the ground uncannily (the skittering one might be a good auxiliary with Mantids to spice them up). The aliens seem to, as a whole, underutilize explosives. The tricky thing about explosives, I think, is that they don't have a lot of counterplay. If a Psyon can throw a grenade at you and blow up your cover, and then you get Swiss cheesed by her buddies all before you can take another turn, that's not very fun. But if the aliens had suicide drones that you could feasibly shoot to stop, I don't think it'd be so bad.

- Some kind of flying/climbing sniper that needs to set up. An alien with a straight up sniper rifle that behaved like our sniper rifles would be kind of frustrating to play against if your soldiers can just get picked off by aliens you can't even see. However, I imagine it'd be nice to have a type of auxiliary that can move from rooftop to rooftop (and in fact, its AI should prefer high places with good vision), then takes a turn to transform into a sniping mode, letting the player have a turn to see it and react against it (either by hiding or counter-sniping). That might give players some time to have some counterplay.

- The Mentarch is actually a pretty interesting enemy as a unit with few TUs, but powerful armor and a big gun. Since the Mentarch itself must stay inside the spaceship, a new, Mentarch-like unit would also work.

4. The Cleaners should do stuff and be threatening

Here's my experience with the cleaners. You have a mission to go into their base and grab and their intel. You don't have to for awhile, but you could. So you just wait until you feel nice and ready and you have the good guns and the good armor, and then you steamroll it. After that, you're offered two more missions for them. You wait until you feel nice and ready, you go in and steamroll, and repeat. Cleaners are basically a punching bag right now.

Yes, I'm aware that they're supposed to be increasing panic in their regions unless you destroy their cells, but that's too much in the background to matter.

I think the philosophy behind the Cleaners should be that Cleaners do something to give the early game some spice. Then, by the time you've eliminated the Cleaners, the aliens have taken their gloves off and are sending more varied and powerful ships at you. Now, I don't know how it'd go. I think it would be kind of tacky to have the Cleaners give you some kind of random debuff every week or month until they're taken care of, or just every once in awhile, you see some kind of notification that the Cleaners did something bad. On the other hand, it might be too much to say the game should have an entirely new espionage system with characters, buildings, and new mechanics for fighting an intelligence war against the Cleaners. But at the same time, making the Cleaners more involved and creating a new system within the game for dealing with them might be a good way to differentiate X2 from X1 on the campaign map.

But, in general, the cleaners need to do something to not just feel like a punching bag.

Edited August 2, 2023 by Vitruviansquid

[Brigant]

I appreciate your constructive summary. I was about to post something similar. The game has the potential to be great but the early access version is beside from the performance bugs kind of "meh". Cleaners feel like tacked on, but could be a great gameplay mechanic. Also like the idea of yours with modules and roles. Modules seemed like a fresh idea, but the implementation is kind of like you described it.

[Alienkiller]

As an long-time-player (Beta-Tester from the first Hour) we had Tests with similar Parts a long time. Short said: It didn´t matter what we have done, it will kill the Gameplayfun, esp. with the Medkit-Part.

1. What the announced Moduls belongs:

a) Dedection Module: Interessting Idea to make the Shield-Carriers / Shotgunners more interessting as Scouts or similar.

b) Stealth Module: That you don´t need, you get an Stealth Suit later on, but Advancements to that Suit would be nice

b) Targeting Module: That you have at the Beginning; that´s upgradeable and there the Idea from interrogated Aliens are very interresting

c) Medical Module: That you will get later on with R & D; therefore and after that Module comes out Medikits / advanced Medikits are essential if you don´t wanna lose the Game in the first days (Fact: In all of that Games since old X-COM-Series over UFO Aftermath-Series, new X-COM and Phoenix Point which play in the timeline of about 1990 to 2080 you don´t have such an Technology and if you get lucky you will get it from the Aliens later to upgrade your Troops; the same is in Xenonauts 2 in the same Timeline, which correctly let you beginn as underdog and with R & D you will get more advancements)

The other Idea with Researching such Moduls, Upgrading / Modernising existing Moduls with advanced Alien-Tech through Alien-Prisoniers-Interrogations (Engineer, Chief, Soldier etc.) / dead Aliens (like it´s now and get better) we had in mind too, but couldn´t bring it in fully. That System we could bring in belongs in Parts of that.

 

2. Mantids / Sectons and the Strengh of them:

Yeah, it´s not fully ballanced yet, there I have to agree. On that the Devs are working. But we Beta-Testers can confirm the Strengh of that Alien-Abilitys more or less. I had such Situations with the Alien-Bonuses already. And mostly with the weakest Armour / Suit without or very less cover. You only saw the shoot and after 2 Hits you had an dead Soldier. My Suggestion: Don´t underestimate the Sectons / Mantids.

 

3. More Alien Auxiliers:

I know what you mean. It´s not so easy to find an ballance in that. The same Problem still have old X-Com and other newer Competitors of that Gerne. Either that Missions were to hard or completly unplayable with the existing Aliens in Betatests for Xenonauts 2. We tried it in Beta-Tests like you announced with an LMG for the Aliens and similar, but it wasn´t good so far. Evtl. that can be adjusted in the more Development, when everything else is more stable and done.

What the more Auxillerie-Aliens (Robots, Drones etc.) and the Alien-Teamwork belongs, there I can agree. They bring in more fire in the Game and aren´t so easy to beat then. In some Cases like Terror-Maps or Special Maps the Teamwork from all Aliens is good, in normal Maps it need more Adjustment. An similar Discussion we Testers had already with the Devs. The Developers are aware of that an work on it.

The Chryssalids instead is good to be reduced drastically, with to much from them on the Map you had only the complete loosing Option. And we had in Tests with a lot of them in one Map, so it get decided to reduce them, otherwise you would have only an Earth with Chryssalids.

 

4. Cleaners:

Yeah, fully right. That we Beta-Testers have announced too and give that Feedback to the Devs. That the Cleaners are integrated as an big Refit against Xenonauts 1 belongs to us Founders / Beta-Testers to bring in more Content / Features. The first Step is done and we all hope that there comes more like you announced already. The Cleaner-Part is still to less. We will see what comes in more of that in the Early Access State and later on to give them more Potential. The Intro and Tutorial brings them in already and explains them as an big threat to the Alien-Patrouls.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ogilvy the Astronomer]

4 hours ago, Vitruviansquid said:

1. Redefine modules

When I first started this game, I thought "ah, modules is going to be the big paradigm shift in X2" and then somewhere along the way, I forgot they existed.

 

I like your ideas. Regarding modules in particular, I think there's potential in combining your ideas with what @GreyICE has suggested here: 

 

 

[Vitruviansquid]

15 hours ago, Alienkiller said:

Quote

 

As an long-time-player (Beta-Tester from the first Hour) we had Tests with similar Parts a long time. Short said: It didn´t matter what we have done, it will kill the Gameplayfun, esp. with the Medkit-Part.

1. What the announced Moduls belongs:

a) Dedection Module: Interessting Idea to make the Shield-Carriers / Shotgunners more interessting as Scouts or similar.

b) Stealth Module: That you don´t need, you get an Stealth Suit later on, but Advancements to that Suit would be nice

b) Targeting Module: That you have at the Beginning; that´s upgradeable and there the Idea from interrogated Aliens are very interresting

c) Medical Module: That you will get later on with R & D; therefore and after that Module comes out Medikits / advanced Medikits are essential if you don´t wanna lose the Game in the first days (Fact: In all of that Games since old X-COM-Series over UFO Aftermath-Series, new X-COM and Phoenix Point which play in the timeline of about 1990 to 2080 you don´t have such an Technology and if you get lucky you will get it from the Aliens later to upgrade your Troops; the same is in Xenonauts 2 in the same Timeline, which correctly let you beginn as underdog and with R & D you will get more advancements)

The other Idea with Researching such Moduls, Upgrading / Modernising existing Moduls with advanced Alien-Tech through Alien-Prisoniers-Interrogations (Engineer, Chief, Soldier etc.) / dead Aliens (like it´s now and get better) we had in mind too, but couldn´t bring it in fully. That System we could bring in belongs in Parts of that.

 

The stalker suit is not the same as the proposed stealth module because the stealth module adds a counterplay for players against overwatch shots for the purpose of breaching UFOs whereas the stalker suit gives you passive advantage for combat at long range. The proposed targeting module is not the same as the existent targeting module in the game because the proposed targeting module adds an additional interaction for players to decide who to shoot at an alien first (that also has implications in how team members should be armed and positioned) rather than adding a small passive bonus. The proposal for a medical module comes packaged with the idea that medikits used by all soldiers will no longer be a thing and that only soldiers with a medical module will be able to heal, making healing something that requires more intentionality and planning.

I really don't think you have grasped the meaning of this bullet point because the individual modules do not matter, what matters is that the way modules are designed and thought of change from being small passive bonuses to giving soldiers additional support capabilities that require intentionality and planning to put to use.

Quote

 

2. Mantids / Sectons and the Strengh of them:

Yeah, it´s not fully ballanced yet, there I have to agree. On that the Devs are working. But we Beta-Testers can confirm the Strengh of that Alien-Abilitys more or less. I had such Situations with the Alien-Bonuses already. And mostly with the weakest Armour / Suit without or very less cover. You only saw the shoot and after 2 Hits you had an dead Soldier. My Suggestion: Don´t underestimate the Sectons / Mantids.

 

I also do not think you have understood this bullet point. It is not about the power of the Mantids and Sectons, it is about their concept being not very interesting to play against.

Quote

 

3. More Alien Auxiliers:

I know what you mean. It´s not so easy to find an ballance in that. The same Problem still have old X-Com and other newer Competitors of that Gerne. Either that Missions were to hard or completly unplayable with the existing Aliens in Betatests for Xenonauts 2. We tried it in Beta-Tests like you announced with an LMG for the Aliens and similar, but it wasn´t good so far. Evtl. that can be adjusted in the more Development, when everything else is more stable and done.

What the more Auxillerie-Aliens (Robots, Drones etc.) and the Alien-Teamwork belongs, there I can agree. They bring in more fire in the Game and aren´t so easy to beat then. In some Cases like Terror-Maps or Special Maps the Teamwork from all Aliens is good, in normal Maps it need more Adjustment. An similar Discussion we Testers had already with the Devs. The Developers are aware of that an work on it.

The Chryssalids instead is good to be reduced drastically, with to much from them on the Map you had only the complete loosing Option. And we had in Tests with a lot of them in one Map, so it get decided to reduce them, otherwise you would have only an Earth with Chryssalids.

 

The machine gun auxiliary wasn't fun? Okay, don't use it. Although there is already a unit in the game with a machine gun, and that unit doesn't seem to be busted. The sniper auxiliary wasn't fun? Okay, reduce its lethality until it's not one-shotting as much. Or make it slower. Or give it some other new limitation that players can exploit. This bullet point is just me expressing that the auxiliary-type aliens are fun to encounter and Goldhawk could do more to think of them.

Now, I didn't beta-test, I'm just one of the plebeians who bought the game on early access, so I wasn't there for those discussions, but the more I'm told about what was cut during beta, the more I feel that beta testers are a bit conservative and resistant to change. During the eight years of development for Xenonauts 2, I checked in once in a while and saw a lot of new ideas that the devs came up with, but now that early access is released, it feels way closer to just Xenonauts 1 with some minor adjustments (the biggest success in Xenonauts 2, I'd say, is the design of the Psyon and other aliens that give you real tactical considerations). And honestly I was quite disappointed by the state of X2 the first time I bought it and played it.

I then think about the original Microprose Xcom and what made it so compelling. I can't imagine that, had its beta testers gotten their hands on the game, they would have thought Chryssalids were even possible to ship in the finalized version of the game. Now Chryssalids are a staple and trademark of the genre and every Xcom descendant basically has to have its own version as an homage to the original. 

Quote

 

4. Cleaners:

Yeah, fully right. That we Beta-Testers have announced too and give that Feedback to the Devs. That the Cleaners are integrated as an big Refit against Xenonauts 1 belongs to us Founders / Beta-Testers to bring in more Content / Features. The first Step is done and we all hope that there comes more like you announced already. The Cleaner-Part is still to less. We will see what comes in more of that in the Early Access State and later on to give them more Potential. The Intro and Tutorial brings them in already and explains them as an big threat to the Alien-Patrouls.

 

That's good to see.

Wow, I was not used to the way this forum handles quoting and embedding quotes.

Edited August 2, 2023 by Vitruviansquid

[SoulFilcher]

The idea of a larger Sebillian with a minigun makes sense, I think their lore says they never die of old age, so I'd imagine an "elder" Sebillian kept growing.

Cleaners should perform.... cleaning. There should be mission types they can spawn that you can't prevent by taking down a ship like you do with the aliens, or perhaps sometimes they do give you an opportunity to take down an easy target, their own dropships.

[Chris]

On 8/1/2023 at 11:23 AM, Vitruviansquid said:

I'm going to make a bit of a list of general ideas I have for what I want the game to include. This post isn't going to discuss too much about the balance implications about these additions because I'll assume that balance could be adjusted later to account for these additions. 

1. Redefine modules

When I first started this game, I thought "ah, modules is going to be the big paradigm shift in X2" and then somewhere along the way, I forgot they existed.

Modules should be a way to define the roles of soldiers, but they currently only make soldiers very slightly better at doing what they already do. If the soldier's primary weapon determines how the soldier deals damage, modules should determine a soldier's support abilities. Modules could be limited to one per soldier (either as a hard limit or as a soft limit where modules are too heavy or take up too much space for most soldiers to practically have two) and have effects that give new ways that a soldier can be useful. Alien corpses and captured aliens are also sort of underutilized in the game, so I thought modules could also be related to those. Here are some ideas I have regarding modules that illustrate the idea of what I mean:

- Detection module - The unit carrying this module can detect enemies that are a small number of spaces away from him or her, regardless of intervening walls and barriers. Detected units This module might be linked to psychic powers and require dead or captured Psyons to build and require Psyon interrogation technology. Units using this module might be useful fighting inside of buildings and can prevent you from walking into a building and getting immediately killed by an alien hanging around a corner near the doorway.

- Stealth module - The unit carrying this module is significantly less likely to trigger enemy overwatch. A unit with this module would be good for moving first, scouting, and breaching dangerous doors. The enemy that this module is related to is Wraiths, so this module might require wraith corpses, captured wraiths, or wraith interrogation to build.

- Targeting module - When the unit carrying this module hits an enemy with a shot, it confers a sizable accuracy bonus to all subsequent shots taken at that unit by anyone until your turn is over. Units carrying this module would be your first attackers with the best hit chances to then help your other units attack. I don't know which alien this module might be associated with.

- Medical module - Medkits no longer exist for everyone. Only soldiers with a medical module can heal now, significantly limiting the accessibility of healing for xenonauts soldiers. This could be a module related to Sebilians or a module that you start the game with.

2. Sectons and Mantids are kind of meh

One of the great things about Xenonauts 2 that it has over Xenonauts 1 is that almost all of the aliens have very interesting differences that imply the player uses different strategies against them. All except Sectons, Mantids, and Cleaners, I'd say, though the Cleaners get a pass on this front.

Sectons have an accuracy bonus for being close to each other, but there is not really a way to forcibly separate Sectons standing close together, so it doesn't really impact the way you'd play. Even worse, in all my 33 hours of playing this game, restarting campaigns a few times to try out different strategies, I have never actually encountered Sectons close together to see their eyes glowing because the aliens tend to be distributed around maps when they spawn. The secton power has never mattered in my 33 hours playing this game.

The Mantid enhanced vision has also not mattered that much in my experience. Maybe it is a playstyle thing, but I do not find myself sneaking up on aliens from outside of their view enough for it to matter that the mantids can see almost all around them. But also, it strikes me that mantid vision does not open up new strategies for players to use against them, it actually shuts down a strategy a player could use. 

Now, I don't know if the "lore" and therefore the special abilities of the aliens are considered to be already locked in and it's too late to change them out, but I would like to see something for both races to spice them up a bit and make them as interesting to battle against as the other races. Perhaps this point might be a bit connected with the next point...

3. More alien "auxiliaries"

In Micropose Xcom, alien species were associated with an auxiliary unit that they sometimes brought to supplement their forces. Sectoids had Cyberdiscs, Floaters had Reapers, Snakemen partnered with the dreaded Chrysalid, and so on. In Xenonauts 2, we somewhat have this concept, too, but the auxiliaries are not tied to race as much. I've seen Wraiths with Servitors a lot and Psyons are arguably the auxiliary of Sectons (or the other way around) but I've seen Reapers with both Wraiths and Mantids. Cyberdrones seem to appear in any kind of terror mission, but only terror missions.

I think it would be good to expand the auxiliaries because they are good at providing a different sort of challenge and it really gives you the feeling that the aliens are a coordinated military force that brings specialized equipment. 

Perhaps Mantids can have an exclusive auxiliary to better define the race, as their compound eyes just aren't doing it. In any case, here are some ideas:

- Attack lizards for Sebilians. Sebilians have a bit of a problem with just getting picked off at range, which does make players feel cool and tactical when they take advantage of it, but also makes Sebilians somewhat unscary. Fast, swarming attack animals for sebilians that move in packs (maybe 2-3 of these will try to move together as they wander the map and attack the same target) might be pretty good for overwhelming players who try to out-snipe the Sebilians, and for chasing players who try to shoot at the Sebilians and then duck behind cover.

- Or alternate to the above, a larger Sebilian subspecies that carries a machine gun. It is still poor at hitting enemies from range, and being large, is also an easier target to hit (like a Cyberdrone), but it has buckets of health and regen and is good at suppressing Xenonaut soldiers.

- Exploding suicide drones. You can make them fly or you can make them skitter along the ground uncannily (the skittering one might be a good auxiliary with Mantids to spice them up). The aliens seem to, as a whole, underutilize explosives. The tricky thing about explosives, I think, is that they don't have a lot of counterplay. If a Psyon can throw a grenade at you and blow up your cover, and then you get Swiss cheesed by her buddies all before you can take another turn, that's not very fun. But if the aliens had suicide drones that you could feasibly shoot to stop, I don't think it'd be so bad.

- Some kind of flying/climbing sniper that needs to set up. An alien with a straight up sniper rifle that behaved like our sniper rifles would be kind of frustrating to play against if your soldiers can just get picked off by aliens you can't even see. However, I imagine it'd be nice to have a type of auxiliary that can move from rooftop to rooftop (and in fact, its AI should prefer high places with good vision), then takes a turn to transform into a sniping mode, letting the player have a turn to see it and react against it (either by hiding or counter-sniping). That might give players some time to have some counterplay.

- The Mentarch is actually a pretty interesting enemy as a unit with few TUs, but powerful armor and a big gun. Since the Mentarch itself must stay inside the spaceship, a new, Mentarch-like unit would also work.

4. The Cleaners should do stuff and be threatening

Here's my experience with the cleaners. You have a mission to go into their base and grab and their intel. You don't have to for awhile, but you could. So you just wait until you feel nice and ready and you have the good guns and the good armor, and then you steamroll it. After that, you're offered two more missions for them. You wait until you feel nice and ready, you go in and steamroll, and repeat. Cleaners are basically a punching bag right now.

Yes, I'm aware that they're supposed to be increasing panic in their regions unless you destroy their cells, but that's too much in the background to matter.

I think the philosophy behind the Cleaners should be that Cleaners do something to give the early game some spice. Then, by the time you've eliminated the Cleaners, the aliens have taken their gloves off and are sending more varied and powerful ships at you. Now, I don't know how it'd go. I think it would be kind of tacky to have the Cleaners give you some kind of random debuff every week or month until they're taken care of, or just every once in awhile, you see some kind of notification that the Cleaners did something bad. On the other hand, it might be too much to say the game should have an entirely new espionage system with characters, buildings, and new mechanics for fighting an intelligence war against the Cleaners. But at the same time, making the Cleaners more involved and creating a new system within the game for dealing with them might be a good way to differentiate X2 from X1 on the campaign map.

But, in general, the cleaners need to do something to not just feel like a punching bag.

Thanks, there's a lot to chew on here. I have been mulling over alternatives to the modules system, but the real issue there (and to some extent with the module system itself) is that it overlaps with the armour system - like, if you put the Wraith camo effect on a module, I need to remove the Stalker stealth armour from the game. That said, I do like the idea for the detection module you mentioned.

Anyway, what I've been considering to try and combine the two systems is for each armour to have several configurations which you can choose one of, and it gives a bonus. Maybe the Exosuit could either give 360 degree vision or have servomotors that grant the user +12 Time Units, for example. But it's not quite as simple as that. There's no combination where things slot together perfectly so it's just a case of finding the solution that works best out of several possible contenders.

Yeah, the Sectons are kinda meh. I might actually change their ability so they gain an accuracy bonus near Psyons but always immediately panic and flee if you kill the Psyon. That would probably trigger fairly often within UFOs.

I'm not sure about the alien auxilliaries - I think it's potentially more interesting to be able to see different combinations of primary / secondary races, rather than always getting the same partners. It's possible we can add more interesting alien abilities to the game too, but right now we don't have sufficiently good AI to handle it. It'd be interesting to have a melee-only large Sebillian that works like the XCOM Berserkers, but right now they'd be pushovers because the AI wouldn't use them properly.

You're right about the Cleaners (as are the many people making the same point elsewhere). We do need to expand their role a bit more in the early game, and I'll be looking into that soon.

[Vitruviansquid]

30 minutes ago, Chris said:

Thanks, there's a lot to chew on here. I have been mulling over alternatives to the modules system, but the real issue there (and to some extent with the module system itself) is that it overlaps with the armour system - like, if you put the Wraith camo effect on a module, I need to remove the Stalker stealth armour from the game. That said, I do like the idea for the detection module you mentioned.

Anyway, what I've been considering to try and combine the two systems is for each armour to have several configurations which you can choose one of, and it gives a bonus. Maybe the Exosuit could either give 360 degree vision or have servomotors that grant the user +12 Time Units, for example. But it's not quite as simple as that. There's no combination where things slot together perfectly so it's just a case of finding the solution that works best out of several possible contenders.

Yeah, the Sectons are kinda meh. I might actually change their ability so they gain an accuracy bonus near Psyons but always immediately panic and flee if you kill the Psyon. That would probably trigger fairly often within UFOs.

I'm not sure about the alien auxilliaries - I think it's potentially more interesting to be able to see different combinations of primary / secondary races, rather than always getting the same partners. It's possible we can add more interesting alien abilities to the game too, but right now we don't have sufficiently good AI to handle it. It'd be interesting to have a melee-only large Sebillian that works like the XCOM Berserkers, but right now they'd be pushovers because the AI wouldn't use them properly.

You're right about the Cleaners (as are the many people making the same point elsewhere). We do need to expand their role a bit more in the early game, and I'll be looking into that soon.

First, thank you for the reply, Chris, and talking to the players in the trenches like this. Massive respect for the frankness with which you are willing to talk to players.

I don't understand this issue that modules overlap with the armor system. Firstly, the original idea for the module that I typed is nothing like the wraith camo effect. I feel like I'm on crazy pills at this point. It says "The unit carrying this module is significantly less likely to trigger enemy overwatch" and is a counterplay against walking through a door (such as one inside a UFO) and being immediately pincushioned by aliens just waiting inside with all their TUs. Does not the Stalker Suit give a completely different effect of shots against you being less accurate for distance?

But, yes, armor, especially the Stalker Suit, with its unique ability, can already sort of provide a secondary support ability. But to that, I'd counter, "do you really want every special ability that a soldier could have to then be tied in to how tough or vulnerable they are to damage?" Should every soldier with that new detection ability have the same armor profile? I think the answer is a clear no - a lot of players would find it interesting to mix and match support abilities with armor profiles. And if you took the armors and tried to add several different configurations to each armor... well, you just re-invented the modules I was proposing! You'll definitely see another post at some point by someone asking, "well, when you have the Guardian Armor A and the Guardian Armor B and they each do something different... can't we just make all the Guardian Armors their own thing, and then make the A ability and the B ability, like their own item? And make them, I don't know, like somehow modular? Maybe like you already did with the Buzzard Jetpacks not being part of a Buzzard Suit?"

It's great that you're looking into Sectons, but I think Mantids being kinda meh is a bigger problem. I know they do walk faster than other aliens, but that doesn't really inform my strategy for dealing with them. Sectons drop at a point where players might just be learning the game and may have difficulty dealing with even an enemy with no schtick, whereas Mantids come later and have tougher acts to follow (Psyons and Sebilians, I must reiterate, are excellent 10/10 enemy designs), so to speak.

On the topic of auxiliaries, whether they are paired with a single parimary race or paired with any race, all the designs have been great so far and I'm sure all future ones will continue to be great. If it'll help, here's another suggestion regarding an auxiliary: Servitors sort of serve two functions right now. They heal the units they follow, which I think is their primary function, but they are also somehow badass machine gunners, which is weird, because the dissection stresses how weak and ineffectual their weapon is supposed to be. I would take the machine gun capability and put it on an entirely new type of auxiliary alien. Then, make Servitors deal low damage, but destroy a lot of armor on their attacks, and make their attacks very accurate. This makes the Servitor a more supportive type of alien which is not without bite.

And finally, on the topic of Cleaners, always great to hear!

[BinarySecond]

On 8/2/2023 at 2:10 AM, SoulFilcher said:

Cleaners should perform.... cleaning. There should be mission types they can spawn that you can't prevent by taking down a ship like you do with the aliens, or perhaps sometimes they do give you an opportunity to take down an easy target, their own dropships.

I like this sort of thing, like they should be some kind of evil Men In Black. An enforced night time raid by the cleaners might be nice. I don't know if everyone else avoids night missions like the plague but I do.

[doubleskulls]

I'd love to have more missions where we are fighting cleaners, raiding shipments, ambushing them or even defensive ones, e.g. VIP escort or defending a convoy. 

[SoulFilcher]

An idea from X-Com: Terror from The Deep is Ship missions. We already fight the Cleaners in dockyards so it is safe to assume they move equipment and personnel around using ships. So maybe Xenonauts' intel finds a particular ship is moving Cleaner equipment around and it is your job to take them down. It could be a fairly large ship carrying containers, lots of small rooms to check, civilians to save. For anyone who actually played Terror from The Deep you know that was a gigantic nightmare of a mission.

[Skitso]

3 minutes ago, SoulFilcher said:

An idea from X-Com: Terror from The Deep is Ship missions. We already fight the Cleaners in dockyards so it is safe to assume they move equipment and personnel around using ships. So maybe Xenonauts' intel finds a particular ship is moving Cleaner equipment around and it is your job to take them down. It could be a fairly large ship carrying containers, lots of small rooms to check, civilians to save. For anyone who actually played Terror from The Deep you know that was a gigantic nightmare of a mission.

Adding a completely new ship biome / tileset would be a huge undertaking which is not happening, I'm pretty sure.

[Sunnybuns]

7 minutes ago, Skitso said:

Adding a completely new ship biome / tileset would be a huge undertaking which is not happening, I'm pretty sure.

That would be something I love to do when the modding tools come out. Making stuff like that is a side hobby of mine in open x-com, so I am excited to see what devious maps I can create, if that is possible.

[Vitruviansquid]

I'm seeing a lot of really good ideas about Cleaners, so I'm gonna make a big Cleaner expansion proposal inspired by those ideas.

The big Cleaner Expansion.

Cleaners make strategic progress just like you do. They start out like humans armed with ballistic weapons and bad armor, but as they advance, they receive stronger weapons and armor in greater proportion. This reflects their alien masters transporting greater and greater quantities of heavier duty equipment to reflect the necessity of fighting a more and more advanced Xenonauts, or simply as the aliens' plan is advanced.

Cleaner progression is a hidden value that goes from 0-100. It starts from 0 and goes up over time, as well as in a burst when Cleaners complete a Transportation mission (by Xenonauts failing to stop it or ignoring it on the world map), which is described further on below.

Cleaners also appear on the world map in cells (which are like bases on the world map). Some cells are generated at the beginning of the game, and others are generated with the passage of time in various regions of the world. The cells do a few things:

1. They passively carry out panic-increasing actions in a radius around them. These actions appear as blips on the world map that you see with the passage of time (as, I believe, they already do in the game).

2. They passively carry out actions that advance Cleaner strategic progress, making the Cleaner faction stronger as time goes on.

3. They generate missions that do not require you to down a UFO, but the missions do not last a very long time (like abduction and current terror missions, they should give players a sort of "we go now or we pass it up" feeling). Completing these missions are the main way you combat the Cleaners.

So what kinds of missions do Cleaner cells generate?

1. Transportation- Cleaners move a cache of alien technology from one place to another. You can go in, kill the cleaners, and intercept their technology, retarding the cleaners' strategic progress. As you attack the Cleaner convoy, the Cleaners will sound an alarm and receive reinforcements periodically - Xenonauts grab or can destroy by exploding/shooting, as many caches of loot as they can before leaving the map, as you cannot complete the mission by killing all Cleaners. Cleaner progression increases for each cache not destroyed. The caches in this mission type are not scattered around a map, but rather concentrated in batches in the center of the map. 

2. Scouting - Cleaners scout a location and marks it as a site for an alien terror attack by placing a beacon that tells the alien terror ship where to go. Xenonauts have to go in, locate the beacon, and destroy it despite constant Cleaner reinforcements. When the beacon is destroyed, the Cleaners give up reinforcing the site and you can wipe out remaining cleaners on the map for loot. Or, you can destroy the beacon and return to the dropship for victory.

3. Espionage - Cleaners attempt to steal data from a government agency that is funding you. They will then take that data and subvert the agency (with hacking, assassination, "replacement" of agency members, and other nefarious means) to cut your funding for the month if they are allowed to do this. The map spawns in an office building with a number of cleaners that is revealed to you. You have a limited amount of time to kill as many Cleaners as you can. For each Cleaner you killed, you have stopped a quantity of their data transfer and the funding penalty you take is reduced. Ignoring this mission reduces your funding as if all the Cleaners in the mission got away.

On top of what was described above, completing each Cleaner mission also makes you closer to discovering the Cleaner base where you can go destroy the cell in that region for a reprieve on Cleaner missions there.

Destroying Cleaner cells also gives you progress on finding the Cleaner headquarters, which is a mission like the currently existing Cleaner Headquarters mission. Because Cleaners are now tied to alien Terror attacks, destroying the Cleaner headquarters is no longer considered to end the Cleaner threat - the Cleaners have had a significant security breach, but they have already built facilities all over the world from which to contact and be directed by their alien masters. Cleaner cells will keep being generated until the end of the game.

[Xeroxth]

On 8/1/2023 at 5:23 PM, Vitruviansquid said:

But, in general, the cleaners need to do something to not just feel like a punching bag.

Very much agree with this. Cleaners in the lore were capable of actually changing history and major politics entirely (they assassinated Gorbachev and kept the cold war going into the 21th century). This is why I think cleaners should be given advanced alien plasma weapons from the start with all of them being cybernetically enhanced making them way more threatening.

Maybe having missions of evacuating VIPs or killing cleaners backed leaders should be a thing. Maybe mission where you have to protect Nuclear silos from being attacked by cleaners. One part I would like to see is expanding on how grotesque the cleaners are underneath their human exterior with grafted alien organs and cybernetic limbs.

[cman1983]

Sebillians should be able to swim aswell as I take the are based on lizards and crocs so could have eg crocodile versions on Leads that are like attack dogs 

[Shadeth]

On 8/3/2023 at 4:36 PM, SoulFilcher said:

An idea from X-Com: Terror from The Deep is Ship missions. We already fight the Cleaners in dockyards so it is safe to assume they move equipment and personnel around using ships. So maybe Xenonauts' intel finds a particular ship is moving Cleaner equipment around and it is your job to take them down. It could be a fairly large ship carrying containers, lots of small rooms to check, civilians to save. For anyone who actually played Terror from The Deep you know that was a gigantic nightmare of a mission.

I am down with ship missions, as long as it isn't a 2-part mission!  Those missions were brutal in TFTD, going into the second half with whatever ammo you had left, and some soldiers already AFU, and clearing the ship holds all the hallways and rooms and engine rooms, ugh.  Those missions were honestly a little too hard and long.

[Dren608]

On 8/4/2023 at 4:52 PM, Xeroxth said:

Very much agree with this. Cleaners in the lore were capable of actually changing history and major politics entirely (they assassinated Gorbachev and kept the cold war going into the 21th century). This is why I think cleaners should be given advanced alien plasma weapons from the start with all of them being cybernetically enhanced making them way more threatening.

Maybe having missions of evacuating VIPs or killing cleaners backed leaders should be a thing. Maybe mission where you have to protect Nuclear silos from being attacked by cleaners. One part I would like to see is expanding on how grotesque the cleaners are underneath their human exterior with grafted alien organs and cybernetic limbs.

The lore I remember when this started in kick starter was the cleaners used "conventional" weaponry to allow their actions to be "blamed" on other human factions and thus continue the cold war and regional rivalries so we wouldn't notice what was really going on. Maybe I'm "miss-remembering"?

[Xeroxth]

6 hours ago, Dren608 said:

The lore I remember when this started in kick starter was the cleaners used "conventional" weaponry to allow their actions to be "blamed" on other human factions and thus continue the cold war and regional rivalries so we wouldn't notice what was really going on. Maybe I'm "miss-remembering"?

But by the time you actually caught a cleaner and disect them you immediately realize that they are everything but normal with cybernetic implants and some with parts of their brains remove to be controlled directly or communicate with the psyonic aliens better.

[Dren608]

On 8/8/2023 at 3:19 AM, Xeroxth said:

But by the time you actually caught a cleaner and disect them you immediately realize that they are everything but normal with cybernetic implants and some with parts of their brains remove to be controlled directly or communicate with the psyonic aliens better.

That doesn't change the reason they use "conventional" type weapons, they are trying to keep the tensions up between the factions of earth. Seeing damage and dead people from Weaponry not available to their  "normal" military will have people looking in the "Wrong Places". So cleaners don't get Plasma weaponry from the get go because of that story element.

[Vitruviansquid]

On 8/4/2023 at 2:52 PM, Xeroxth said:

Very much agree with this. Cleaners in the lore were capable of actually changing history and major politics entirely (they assassinated Gorbachev and kept the cold war going into the 21th century). This is why I think cleaners should be given advanced alien plasma weapons from the start with all of them being cybernetically enhanced making them way more threatening.

Maybe having missions of evacuating VIPs or killing cleaners backed leaders should be a thing. Maybe mission where you have to protect Nuclear silos from being attacked by cleaners. One part I would like to see is expanding on how grotesque the cleaners are underneath their human exterior with grafted alien organs and cybernetic limbs.

I didn't really mean that cleaners should be particularly heavily equipped, especially at the start of the game, but rather that they should have mechanics associated with them that feel proactive, like they are actors who have agency on the world map instead of sitting there and waiting for you to do their special missions.

[Xeroxth]

On 8/10/2023 at 1:08 PM, Vitruviansquid said:

I didn't really mean that cleaners should be particularly heavily equipped, especially at the start of the game, but rather that they should have mechanics associated with them that feel proactive, like they are actors who have agency on the world map instead of sitting there and waiting for you to do their special missions.

Oh yeah having cleaners actually taking over countries that are destabilized to set up footholds for the aliens in africa, latin america and asia would make a lot of sense. Wouldn't surprised me in the slightest that cleaners would take over widely condemned countries like apartheid africa since they actually had nukes.