Milestone 2 impressions

[Vitruviansquid]

Alright, I just played Milestone 2 for a bit. I haven't gotten extremely far, and am on Veteran difficulty, but I wanted to put down some of my thoughts before I go any further. I haven't read anything on any forum yet, to keep my opinion pure.

First, these are some reactions and simple points:

- I like that the cleaners are now the designated early game enemy. They are sort of average/bad at everything, and that helps players to learn the basic functions and tactics in the game.

- I don't know if the Sebilians and Sectons/Psyons have been made stronger, but they feel good to fight at the time you actually fight them. The first mission where I was sweating was an abduction against Sectons/Psyons, and the Sebilians having a relatively big hp pool for a game that is usually rocket tag is good for putting that fear into the people encountering them for the first time.

- Allowing you to equip Cleaner SMGs feel silly. If the Xenonauts wanted SMGs of their own, surely they'd have an in-house version.

- Starting with Stun Batons makes the technology you research for getting stun guns really unsatisfying, as it just gives you a sidegrade to a basic piece of equipment. Perhaps the techs could be rejiggered so that you start with stun batons and stun guns, but then you have to research the ability to imprison aliens. Without that research, aliens you stun are simply killed and given to you as corpses after the mission. You could also make the starter stun weapons at the beginning of the campaign weaker, and then have a research later to upgrade them into practical weapons against tougher enemies, or even have this research required to allow the stun weapons to deal EMP damage against robotic enemies.

- Having rebreathers unlocked at the beginning of the game is suitably ominous.

- Sidewinder Missiles feel terrible. They barely scratch the paint on the smallest of alien craft and you end up having to engage with the cannon anyway.

- Aircraft equipment should show their weight and hardpoints requirements in the engineering screen.

- Overall, the game feels like it's in a better state than it used to be, mostly because of the insertion of the Cleaners into the early game, making actual aliens feel scarier and more exotic.

- The game still fails to hurt you for losing soldiers. I'd still raise the difficulty of finding and hiring good soldiers, possibly by lowering the number of new recruits you are presented at the hiring screen, so you're less likely to encounter soldiers with godly stats, or raise again the cost of each soldier.

I also want to discuss some more in-depth problems and solutions, or just things that might make the game better, but are outside the current scope of the game.

Armor/Strength/Consumables feel bad.

The toggle to make armor heavy... eh, I'm not into it. It feels too convenient for a game with a significant amount of bean-counting, where being prepared feels good. But I think the problem here should be solved as a part of a bigger system of problems that stems from the fact that strength is not working as it should. The fantasy of the stat strength, at least in the original Xcom and Terror from the Deeps, is that you usually have soldiers who are good at shooting things, or running fast, or having reflexes, or surviving being shot at, but then you also need some soldiers who are the big strong guys because they can carry more gear. Well, if you look at the gear... 1. Heavy weapons are unnecessary or outright suck. You can go a whole game without using a single machine gun or grenade launcher and not feel like you missed out. 2. Heavy armor is such a great benefit, you'd want to have the heavy armor over just about any other thing, so the fantasy that Xenonauts 2 actually puts on strength is that a strong soldier can have more consumables, which is kinda lame.

There are many ways to solve this issue, but here are some ideas of mine:

1. Heavy weapons should be desirable and necessary. Yes, the HEVY launcher blows up cover, puts smoke from afar, and is neat to have, but soldiers can also throw grenades that do both those things, and pretty standard rifles/shotguns also do perfectly fine at killing aliens. Yes, the Machine Guns are good at suppression, but soldiers can also throw stun grenades. You actually have a balance problem not between the heavy weapons and other guns, but between heavy weapons and grenades because it's far better to have your soldiers carry grenades than assign team members to be heavy weapons. The way I see it, grenades should be heavier or require a tech burden (starting out with fragmentation grenades is fine and possibly smoke, but maybe you need to research for flashbangs and demolition charges) or require a cost to build (make people have to pay for and build grenades so you feel that is hurting you for each one you throw). The heavy weapons themselves could also be better. You can let machine guns have an option to take a normal shot or something. I feel like the balance consideration for machine guns has been that they're not very flexible for just shooting and killing aliens, when the balance consideration has already been that the machine gun is very heavy and... hey, rifles kill aliens just fine so once you kill them, you don't need to suppress them.

2. Perhaps what would be needed to make the heavy weapons desirable and necessary is to give the enemies vehicles that are hard to defeat with small arms. The fantasy of a rocket launcher, after all, is having to use it to blow up a tank. Now when I say "tank," I don't necessarily mean a literal tank, but it could be like a big alien, or a big alien machine. I think about the Cleaner base and its turrets, which were pretty hard to crack. The first alien tanks that you meet should show up quite early to teach you to bring heavy weapons in some proportion very early, and perhaps be somewhat like a paper tiger in that they seem strong in a very specialized situation, but it is possibly simple to play around them. What about a "Rover" as a big metal vehicle which is actually a scientific surveying machine rather than a war machine. It is tough and it has a laser cutting tool (like the flying probes) that will deal a lot of damage and probably destroy cover or annihilate soldiers in one shot and is extremely accurate, but it requires a turn to acquire a target before it fires. Thus, a soldier that has been targeted should move behind plenty of cover to absorb the blow before the laser fires on the next turn. The point of this enemy isn't so much to kill players as to teach players that there are certain enemies that you will take forever to kill unless you apply heavy weapons. You could also have a tank that is a big, slow alien with a big gun strapped to it, but no ability to take reflex shots (or perhaps only takes them using a smaller, one-shotting gun). It cannot take reaction shots, so it teaches players to think about where their soldiers end their turns more. By the time the midgame rolls around, you can have legitimate alien tanks that aren't at all paper tigers, as we do now.

3. Kneecap nerf or eliminate the throwable demolition charges. C4, which is much harder to use, is already a way to demolish walls, and so are HEVY rounds. If stripping cover is to be a big part of the gameplay, let it be that most soldiers cannot strip cover conveniently, so you need to have a legitimate vehicle (which I currently don't research or build) to do that or a soldier carrying an otherwise heavy and impractical weapon.

4. Just make more armor types. I was considering how in the patch notes it says that the option to toggle if you want a heavy version of an armor existed because it'd feel bad to research a new armor type and then find that your soldiers aren't strong enough to wear it. Well, why wouldn't the research description just say whether you're researching a heavy or light armor, and then why not just make there be multiple types of armor at every tier so you can choose what type of enhancement for your soldiers you want earlier?

Air Combat is too deterministic

A lot of people complain that Xcom-likes, such as Xenonauts 2, are too random. But I think us actual Xenonauts 2 enjoyers will say the randomness is part of the charm. That's why it's kinda weird to me that the air combat is so deterministic. Weapons deal exact amounts of damage, the specific tactic you employ will either always defeat the specific enemy or never.

I know that air combat hasn't been balanced yet and is still much rougher than ground combat in terms of the time and thought devs put into it, but when the time comes, I strongly believe air weapons should hit or miss, roll for damage, and that the air game should be made more random. In fact, if you took the air combat or the ground combat in Xenonauts 2, it'd even be preferable that the air combat was MORE random than the ground combat because the game is actually only really won and lost in the air and air combat represents a much bigger amount of player investment in terms of the money/resources you need to research and build aircraft weapons, aircraft, hangers, and such. Because air combat is so deterministic, players find themselves railroaded to feeling forced to have certain technologies at certain points in progression because they will either down the alien aircraft and keep being able  to play, or fail to, and have to roll over and let the aliens do whatever they want. When there is more randomness in air combat, then players will not feel the need to have air combat technologies/weapons while feeling it is possible to skimp out on certain ground combat technologies/weapons.

As new alien ships show you, right now you are likely to say "we can down this just like the previous ship" or "we can't down this, avoid this." But instead, I want players to feel more like "I can down this tough ship, but that may cause my interceptor to need to be repaired for a long time and I'd miss subsequent ships. Do I down this ship and roll the die on it being a good battle for me, or do I skip it and hope a less formidable ship comes by, or I get some other opportunity to make money/get alenium/show funding countries I'm not messing around/disrupt alien activity/etc."

[Komandos]

6 hours ago, Vitruviansquid said:

- The game still fails to hurt you for losing soldiers. I'd still raise the difficulty of finding and hiring good soldiers, possibly by lowering the number of new recruits you are presented at the hiring screen, so you're less likely to encounter soldiers with godly stats, or raise again the cost of each soldier.

There are 8,000,000,000 people living on planet Earth. Some of them will go to protect themselves, their friends, their relatives, the whole of humanity from complete destruction, even if these people will not be paid money. There should be many, many soldiers in the game. The soldiers in the game should be very cheap in content. The only thing that should be expensive: monetary compensation in case of death of soldiers.

[Vitruviansquid]

That would be an incredibly unfun way to "gotcha" the players after a mission.

[Sabretooth]

After a long time, I started Xenonauts 2 again after updating to Milestone 2.
At first I was a bit confused because I couldn't continue the old savegames. Then I started a new game and realised how much had changed.
Basically, I see the changes as positive, apart from a few details:

• It's been written about elsewhere, but having to research and craft "bread and butter" gear for the "Angel" fighter is time and cost intensive. And that for standard equipment. That doesn't fit.
• The mission to evacuate experienced soldiers is a welcome change to the missions. However, when I look at the stats of the three soldiers, I can hardly believe it. All my recruits were better, and I fired two of the three rescued soldiers immediately because their accuracy was below 40. They're not "experienced" soldiers, they're completely useless cannon fodder.
• Having to collect corpses to perform firing tests on them is a bit weird for my taste. These results can also be made available directly after the autopsy. It also acts as an unnecessary financial brake and storage blocker.
• The rank promotions are still too fast. After 5 missions I already have 5 lieutenants and no soldier below the rank of sergeant who has been in action.

[Conductiv]

I disagree with the sentiment on grenades, mainly that the argument you made against them was that heavy weapons should be used so nerf grenades as they can fill heavy weapon jobs.

when it comes to heavy weapons,
the MG is actually in a solid spot as it can deal huge damage with its fire modes, and its not as heavy to carry around as you might think. but its damage..nor its supression is reliable.
the HEVY still has problems, what it sets out to do it can do well provided the operator is accurate, but its not a good general purpose weapon as you get punished with "no loot" when you explode a corpse or enemy. so you are preferably not killing, aiming at the floor away from anything you have already killed and hoping to hit as the weapons accuracy bonus only kicks in on the last 8 or so tiles and otherwise is a 1.05 multiplier of your aim stat, and its supposed to be a longer range launcher...even though its max effective range is only like 15 tiles. as such is behaves like a secondairy weapon on the grenadier, and the high accuracy needed to wield it half decent  is mostly used to make the pistol shine.
C4 cross over between a weapon and a grenade..its heavy and clunky to use, C4 is also overspecialized, as a low TU option for an explosive breech. since UFO doors can be operated for 4 TU, a close range breech is often best performed by opening the door that way...if getting close to the door is the problem...C4 is also not going to cut it...and breeching is pretty much the only thing C4 is good for.

when it comes to air combat, 
please no RNG here. 
sidewinders have a low payload weight and hardpoint slot cost for a long range damage option, as a long range damage option, it tends to work better combined with other long range options.
battle outcomes based on loadouts arn't always guaranteed, but your statement is mostly true with regards to missile builds, cannon oriented fighters tend to have better impact of manual control with dodging and the fact even the lowest tier cannon can take down any UFO in the first 180 days given enough time.

personally I'm on the fence with regards to the new air combat. 
1.it removes the identity of some planes by replacing the dedicated slots with the hardpoint/payload system
2. planes are insanely expensive now , even basic angles come in at 575K 
3. upgraded and tiered up gear is insane in price..every single full tier 2 plane, costs around 1.2million +a fair amount of alloys and alenium, you are covering 6 zones...even if every zone has just 1 fighter dedicated to it..a tier 2 setup would cost 7.4 million, excluding the costs for bases hangars radars and whatever you use to defend and power the bases. and assuming you have a set in stone mind with regard to loadouts as every single T2 weapon or equipment piece costs 100K, so experimenting with different pieces of equipment can be extremely costly
4. feul tank is near useless 15% on the angel is barely noticable, and the phantom that has like 10X the angels reach and 50% more speed its redundant. 

being able to build is fun, and I have no quals with building parts individiually...but I do find the prices to be too high   

[ovoron]

2 hours ago, Conductiv said:

the HEVY still has problems, what it sets out to do it can do well provided the operator is accurate, but its not a good general purpose weapon as you get punished with "no loot" when you explode a corpse or enemy. so you are preferably not killing, aiming at the floor away from anything you have already killed and hoping to hit as the weapons accuracy bonus only kicks in on the last 8 or so tiles and otherwise is a 1.05 multiplier of your aim stat, and its supposed to be a longer range launcher...even though its max effective range is only like 15 tiles. as such is behaves like a secondairy weapon on the grenadier, and the high accuracy needed to wield it half decent  is mostly used to make the pistol shine.

Except it doesn't do it well. I've played HEVY since v 27.4 and back then HEVY was like 35 dmg and 10 shred, which was very good, perhaps too good.

 

Then it got to 25 dmg, no shred, but at least it had cheap fixed TUs per shot, so you could spam shots and still get the job done even if you've missed.

 

Today's HEVY is the worst of both worlds: While it does shred, the accuracy is still terrible, but you can no longer spam in case you miss once. The shredding is also insufficient, since a Demo charge is much more reliable and is immune to smoke aim penalty.

 

So the problem is twofold:

 

1)Early on you have no accuracy to hit anything reliably, and enemies do not have armor so shredding does nothing. You can't waste TUs willy-nilly, so Demo Charges are vastly superior, not only for their innate accuracy, but also being immune to smoke penalties.

 

2)Later on you have the accuracy, but why would you use a HEVY to shred when you can land a Laser Sniper shot from downtown instead to do the same amount of shred, as well as do a lot more damage a lot more reliably on top of that?

 

Aim bonus would have to be MUCH bigger than 1.05 for the present HEVY to make sense. Either that or it has to ignore smoke penalties.

Edited December 4, 2023 by ovoron

[Chris]

So broadly speaking I'm happy with the balance of all the "main" weapon types, including the LMG. People will frequently say one type of weapon is weak but then I'll hear another player say the same type of weapon is actually really strong, and I think a lot comes down to playstyles. The HEVY is an exception there, although I'm still not entirely sure what changes I want to make to it. But I don't really agree that all heavy weapons are entirely useless.

I'd also rather not nerf the demolition grenades (the eventual goal is to fold the remote detonation mode of the C4 into the demo grenades, then remove the C4 entirely). Being able to destroy the scenery easily opens up so many tactical options that I don't really want gated behind heavy weapon soldiers - it's a fun mechanic that makes the game far more interesting. The answer is probably to make the HEVY stronger rather than taking anything away from demo grenades.

As for the point about high Strength being a boring choice in the game because of the new Heavy Armour checkbox - I'd like to hear other people's opinions on this. I think there's definitely diminishing returns to high Strength, but choosing between heavy armour, an extra magazine, a demo grenade or a stun baton etc is quite a big choice when soldiers don't have huge Strength. Especially when you're using advanced weapons with smaller clips in them. But I'm happy to listen to what the community thinks about it.

For the air combat - there has been a balancing pass done on the air combat now. We are continuing to work on the balance and will revamp the visuals, and maybe add some new equipment too, but you can certainly see the outlines of system by now. So feel free to give feedback on how we should improve it. Although we're already looking into reducing the build times for aircraft equipment.

The damage on air combat weapons is already a random range now (50%-150% per shot, like in ground combat). Hit chances are supported but don't work well mechanically, particularly with missiles and other projectiles that score hits based on physical positioning / evasion, so they're all set to 100%. We did experiment with a system where aircraft took a long time to repair (in fact they still take much longer than in X1) but I don't think even one person said they enjoyed it, and we got loads of complaints about repair times being too long!

One thing we could potentially try here is to break up the UFO "waves" where the UFOs spawn in large groups roughly every couple of weeks, and just have a couple of UFOs spawning every 4-7 days. Then you're much more likely to encounter a situation where your plane is damaged and you can't send it up again. But it does mean you game will be continuously interrupted by UFOs spawning, which really started to annoy me in the late-game in X-Com.

[Grobobobo]

36 minutes ago, Chris said:

I'd also rather not nerf the demolition grenades (the eventual goal is to fold the remote detonation mode of the C4 into the demo grenades, then remove the C4 entirely). Being able to destroy the scenery easily opens up so many tactical options that I don't really want gated behind heavy weapon soldiers - it's a fun mechanic that makes the game far more interesting

I strongly disagree, I think the demo charges are kind of like FIRA-XCOM frag grenades - being able to cheaply destroy practically any kind of cover with 0 setup and from decent range makes the game less interesting, as you almost don't have to interact with cover at all. Seriously, the cover is made out of paper in this game, in xeno1 you needed to get plasma rockets to destroy walls in 1 explosion, it's no longer satisfying anymore.

46 minutes ago, Chris said:

As for the point about high Strength being a boring choice in the game because of the new Heavy Armour checkbox - I'd like to hear other people's opinions on this

I think this is mostly a problem of everyone having too many stats in general.

[ovoron]

2 minutes ago, Grobobobo said:

I strongly disagree, I think the demo charges are kind of like FIRA-XCOM frag grenades - being able to cheaply destroy practically any kind of cover with 0 setup and from decent range makes the game less interesting, as you almost don't have to interact with cover at all. Seriously, the cover is made out of paper in this game, in xeno1 you needed to get plasma rockets to destroy walls in 1 explosion, it's no longer satisfying anymore.

How is that different from TFTD though? Not only did the cover go poof, but also the damage was over the top.

If demo is too good, perhaps it's time for a 3rd grenade type, that's good at shredding, and demo should be -5 armor instead of -10. Lower all grenade weight from 6 to 5 to compensate.

[Chris]

2 hours ago, Grobobobo said:

I strongly disagree, I think the demo charges are kind of like FIRA-XCOM frag grenades - being able to cheaply destroy practically any kind of cover with 0 setup and from decent range makes the game less interesting, as you almost don't have to interact with cover at all. Seriously, the cover is made out of paper in this game, in xeno1 you needed to get plasma rockets to destroy walls in 1 explosion, it's no longer satisfying anymore.

Destroying cover and destroying walls are somewhat different things though. I think it's important to give players tools to remove walls from the very outset because it hugely increases the opportunities for cool plays, but that doesn't necessarily mean I'm against making certain types of cover robust enough that they can't be removed with a single demo grenade.

[Vitruviansquid]

As always, top respect to Chris for being in the trenches with the community, explaining how the developers view things, taking feedback and also asking the community questions. Also, top respect for people discussing the nitty gritty of the game, giving detailed and reasoned feedback and responses to feedback.

On the topic of strength/Heavy weapons/Grenades:

I have seen people say the machine guns are good. Fair. I definitely think it doesn't fit in my playstyle, but it's a good thing that many playstyles exist. I'm still kinda convinced that the HEVY is bad because it is such an overkill impractical way of fulfilling functions that grenades already easily fulfill, so in balancing it, you're actually adjusting its balance compared to grenades, not its balance compared to guns.

I've attached a picture of one of my more average soldiers. He started at a pretty mediocre 48 strength, he's gotten to 56 strength over a few missions, having risen to lieutenant, I can go into recruitment right now (also attached) and pick up 8 soldiers who *start* with even higher strength. Of those, there are 4 with other stats that are so low, they're disqualified for having some glaring weakness, but I just want to give an idea of how easy it is to have a soldier like Luke Stewart here. And look at all the stuff even this average soldier can carry. He can have the heavy version of Warden armor. He can have a shotgun, a baton, a medikit, one of each of the three grenades that I actually use, and two reloads, which I would have to shoot like the A-team to actually go completely through in a mission. When I move onto Guardian Armor, I will be able to wear the heavy Guardian armor by just giving up one of my shotgun batteries or grenades, which is still an extremely comfortable loadout to me. I don't feel like I had to choose anything. I don't really even know what I could possibly want this soldier to carry more of. On a soldier who has actual high strength, I'm just like, "I guess the tactical module is extremely overweighted for its benefit, but I might as well take one? Or load up with an absurd amount of ammo and grenades that I'll never really have to use?"

Consider the arithmetic at play as well. I can put 9 soldiers in a Skyhawk. Supposing each soldier is very average, like Luke Stewart, that means I can do 9 flashbangs, 9 smokes, destroy cover 9 times in a mission, on average, and everyone still has heavy armor, shotguns or rifles or sniper rifles and ammo to go around. In a typical UFO downing, I'm only fighting about 8-10 aliens, as far as I've seen. Of course, there are also missions with more enemies, like if I wanted to do the Cleaner base, or a terror mission, but then again, I can also easily get soldiers way stronger than Luke Stewart without losing much in the other categories. Isn't it kind of excessive to allow players to have the resources to flash, smoke, strip cover, AND then shoot for every single alien on a typical mission?

And I'd challenge anyone else to give the practical arithmetic a legitimate try. Go into a new month in your current game, open up your recruitment screen of fresh soldiers, and then try out what loadouts some of these guys can carry. Ask yourself what, even, you are missing out on when you have soldiers you are likely to actually recruit, that you would want a particularly strong soldier.

Perhaps I am actually inclined to agree with Grobobobo - soldiers have too much stats and improve too quickly in general.

I also think it is way too easy to recruit supersoldiers because either soldier stats are starting too high (or the way they are rolled is allowing too high of a ceiling) or players are simply offered too many soldiers to recruit from at the start of a month. When you give me 17 soldiers to recruit from at the top of the month, I'm going to pick the three or four who bear a striking resemblance to Harrison Bergeron or Roboute Guilliman, and that's filling like a third to a half of a Skyhawk's worth of soldiers.

But besides there just being too much strength so that each soldier can carry too much stuff, I'd say the more foundational design problem is the basic way that strength is used in the game When you imagine building up your Squad, your Team, your plucky band of brothers and sisters who will stand up against the alien threat go from a ragtag team of privates who will be forged into a coordinated platoon... do you imagine that The Big Guy is there to hold a lot of grenades and spare ammo clips? Is that what's cool about The Big Guy?

On the topic of air combat:

On the topic of Sidewinders, I've shot them at Scouts and Destroyers using an Angel armed with one Autocannon or one Accelerated Cannon and one Sidewinder. I understand that Sidewinders are cheaper to equip than cannons, and it's pretty inconvenient to bring an angel with two cannons because you'd have to give up holding anything else... but the Sidewinders still really feel like throwing a bag of crap at a barn door. Perhaps, since I'm also disappointed by the Laser Lance (it just has to weigh 6 so that an Angel can't carry 2 :x), so maybe the real problem is that the cannons are too strong... but they don't feel too strong when you then balance them against the UFOs they'll be fighting.

As for the randomness in air combat, I gotta admit, I was not aware that it actually did have damage rolls. Good to know. I'll play a bit more and then report back on the feel of it.

This might also be a separate topic, and I don't feel up to making a big post about it at the moment, but customizing your interceptors also feels like there aren't realistically that many choices, and the choices don't realistically represent that much difference in play. It's *really bad* with Angels, and perhaps that's a good thing because it's the early game jet and should not need to be overly complex to work with, but I don't think the Phantoms feel super customizable, either. I might make a big separate post about this later.

On the topic of stuff that don't feel good (like heavy armor togglable):

I did a bit of soul-searching, and I think it might also be worthwhile to consider this as a problem of the game in this Milestone as it is.

It is good, in a complex and sadistic game like Xenonauts 2, to show players increasing complexity and give them increasingly complex problems to solve over time. It's like a way to tell players, "you thought you were good at this game? No, you're actually not, haha." You present a new challenge this way, it's like the players got a new challenge to try to handle. For your veteran early access testers, inhouse developer testers, and such, who have played Xenonauts 1, Microprose Xcoms, FiraXcoms, and such, we are somewhat dulled to sensing this, and we tend to want all the complexity of the game in the beginning, right away, because we've already been jaded not by their early games, but by their endgames. We tend not to mind that there are a lot of things to learn in the early game, but for new players, the gameplay doesn't evolve as it goes on, and they may tend to feel the game is boring in the beginning if there are not so many options.

Consider this progression in Milestone 1: You start with unarmored soldiers who can hold a bunch of stuff. As much stuff as you want, really. You don't really have to decide what consumables or modules to use. Then, as you research armor, it can be extremely heavy, and you start having to ask yourself what tricks you can do without and have to ditch. The light armors, on the other hand, like the Stalker armor, can also add to complexity by being kinda weird and thus forcing you to play different soldiers in different styles. As you research, you also get introduced to stun mechanics later in the game and it gives you another option for approaching aliens with a new risk/reward consideration. And you might want to mix and match armors so you consider which soldiers are your heavy soldiers, which are your light, so that you even start to have deeper consideration about soldier stats when you hire.

In Milestone 2, a lot of this sense of progression and increasing complexity has been cut out. You start out with stun baton (the superior method of stunning, in my opinion), so that complexity has been front-loaded rather than letting players feel like it's part of progression. The complexity of choosing heavier and lighter armors to research has been stripped out for a bunch of reasons as we've discussed. It just kinda feels like the armor come in tiers that are straight upgrades now, at least in that early to early-midgame with Defender to Warden to Guardian.

And I think part of my antipathy toward the demolition charges is, as Chris says, the Demolition charge is a very versatile and powerful tool that exists from the beginning of the game. Why should such a versatile and powerful tool exist from the beginning of the game? I think it'd be cooler for you to progress into it. Or maybe progress into some of the other powerful and versatile tools, like flashbangs, smoke, and such. As I said, I haven't played all the way through yet (I'm still only at about day 100, having had work today). Maybe the game really blossoms open in the late game, as it did in Milestone 1, when I last played. But isn't it also bad if a player played for the first 100 days and reports that it feels like the game doesn't really change over those days?

[Grobobobo]

8 hours ago, ovoron said:

How is that different from TFTD though? Not only did the cover go poof, but also the damage was over the top.

I have not played tftd, and I don't really intend to. I fail to see how that game is relevant to my comment, I don't think xeno 2 is particularly inspired by it.

[Skitso]

4 hours ago, Vitruviansquid said:

As always, top respect to Chris for being in the trenches with the community, explaining how the developers view things, taking feedback and also asking the community questions. Also, top respect for people discussing the nitty gritty of the game, giving detailed and reasoned feedback and responses to feedback.

On the topic of strength/Heavy weapons/Grenades:

I have seen people say the machine guns are good. Fair. I definitely think it doesn't fit in my playstyle, but it's a good thing that many playstyles exist. I'm still kinda convinced that the HEVY is bad because it is such an overkill impractical way of fulfilling functions that grenades already easily fulfill, so in balancing it, you're actually adjusting its balance compared to grenades, not its balance compared to guns.

I've attached a picture of one of my more average soldiers. He started at a pretty mediocre 48 strength, he's gotten to 56 strength over a few missions, having risen to lieutenant, I can go into recruitment right now (also attached) and pick up 8 soldiers who *start* with even higher strength. Of those, there are 4 with other stats that are so low, they're disqualified for having some glaring weakness, but I just want to give an idea of how easy it is to have a soldier like Luke Stewart here. And look at all the stuff even this average soldier can carry. He can have the heavy version of Warden armor. He can have a shotgun, a baton, a medikit, one of each of the three grenades that I actually use, and two reloads, which I would have to shoot like the A-team to actually go completely through in a mission. When I move onto Guardian Armor, I will be able to wear the heavy Guardian armor by just giving up one of my shotgun batteries or grenades, which is still an extremely comfortable loadout to me. I don't feel like I had to choose anything. I don't really even know what I could possibly want this soldier to carry more of. On a soldier who has actual high strength, I'm just like, "I guess the tactical module is extremely overweighted for its benefit, but I might as well take one? Or load up with an absurd amount of ammo and grenades that I'll never really have to use?"

Consider the arithmetic at play as well. I can put 9 soldiers in a Skyhawk. Supposing each soldier is very average, like Luke Stewart, that means I can do 9 flashbangs, 9 smokes, destroy cover 9 times in a mission, on average, and everyone still has heavy armor, shotguns or rifles or sniper rifles and ammo to go around. In a typical UFO downing, I'm only fighting about 8-10 aliens, as far as I've seen. Of course, there are also missions with more enemies, like if I wanted to do the Cleaner base, or a terror mission, but then again, I can also easily get soldiers way stronger than Luke Stewart without losing much in the other categories. Isn't it kind of excessive to allow players to have the resources to flash, smoke, strip cover, AND then shoot for every single alien on a typical mission?

And I'd challenge anyone else to give the practical arithmetic a legitimate try. Go into a new month in your current game, open up your recruitment screen of fresh soldiers, and then try out what loadouts some of these guys can carry. Ask yourself what, even, you are missing out on when you have soldiers you are likely to actually recruit, that you would want a particularly strong soldier.

Perhaps I am actually inclined to agree with Grobobobo - soldiers have too much stats and improve too quickly in general.

I also think it is way too easy to recruit supersoldiers because either soldier stats are starting too high (or the way they are rolled is allowing too high of a ceiling) or players are simply offered too many soldiers to recruit from at the start of a month. When you give me 17 soldiers to recruit from at the top of the month, I'm going to pick the three or four who bear a striking resemblance to Harrison Bergeron or Roboute Guilliman, and that's filling like a third to a half of a Skyhawk's worth of soldiers.

But besides there just being too much strength so that each soldier can carry too much stuff, I'd say the more foundational design problem is the basic way that strength is used in the game When you imagine building up your Squad, your Team, your plucky band of brothers and sisters who will stand up against the alien threat go from a ragtag team of privates who will be forged into a coordinated platoon... do you imagine that The Big Guy is there to hold a lot of grenades and spare ammo clips? Is that what's cool about The Big Guy?

On the topic of air combat:

On the topic of Sidewinders, I've shot them at Scouts and Destroyers using an Angel armed with one Autocannon or one Accelerated Cannon and one Sidewinder. I understand that Sidewinders are cheaper to equip than cannons, and it's pretty inconvenient to bring an angel with two cannons because you'd have to give up holding anything else... but the Sidewinders still really feel like throwing a bag of crap at a barn door. Perhaps, since I'm also disappointed by the Laser Lance (it just has to weigh 6 so that an Angel can't carry 2 :x), so maybe the real problem is that the cannons are too strong... but they don't feel too strong when you then balance them against the UFOs they'll be fighting.

As for the randomness in air combat, I gotta admit, I was not aware that it actually did have damage rolls. Good to know. I'll play a bit more and then report back on the feel of it.

This might also be a separate topic, and I don't feel up to making a big post about it at the moment, but customizing your interceptors also feels like there aren't realistically that many choices, and the choices don't realistically represent that much difference in play. It's *really bad* with Angels, and perhaps that's a good thing because it's the early game jet and should not need to be overly complex to work with, but I don't think the Phantoms feel super customizable, either. I might make a big separate post about this later.

On the topic of stuff that don't feel good (like heavy armor togglable):

I did a bit of soul-searching, and I think it might also be worthwhile to consider this as a problem of the game in this Milestone as it is.

It is good, in a complex and sadistic game like Xenonauts 2, to show players increasing complexity and give them increasingly complex problems to solve over time. It's like a way to tell players, "you thought you were good at this game? No, you're actually not, haha." You present a new challenge this way, it's like the players got a new challenge to try to handle. For your veteran early access testers, inhouse developer testers, and such, who have played Xenonauts 1, Microprose Xcoms, FiraXcoms, and such, we are somewhat dulled to sensing this, and we tend to want all the complexity of the game in the beginning, right away, because we've already been jaded not by their early games, but by their endgames. We tend not to mind that there are a lot of things to learn in the early game, but for new players, the gameplay doesn't evolve as it goes on, and they may tend to feel the game is boring in the beginning if there are not so many options.

Consider this progression in Milestone 1: You start with unarmored soldiers who can hold a bunch of stuff. As much stuff as you want, really. You don't really have to decide what consumables or modules to use. Then, as you research armor, it can be extremely heavy, and you start having to ask yourself what tricks you can do without and have to ditch. The light armors, on the other hand, like the Stalker armor, can also add to complexity by being kinda weird and thus forcing you to play different soldiers in different styles. As you research, you also get introduced to stun mechanics later in the game and it gives you another option for approaching aliens with a new risk/reward consideration. And you might want to mix and match armors so you consider which soldiers are your heavy soldiers, which are your light, so that you even start to have deeper consideration about soldier stats when you hire.

In Milestone 2, a lot of this sense of progression and increasing complexity has been cut out. You start out with stun baton (the superior method of stunning, in my opinion), so that complexity has been front-loaded rather than letting players feel like it's part of progression. The complexity of choosing heavier and lighter armors to research has been stripped out for a bunch of reasons as we've discussed. It just kinda feels like the armor come in tiers that are straight upgrades now, at least in that early to early-midgame with Defender to Warden to Guardian.

And I think part of my antipathy toward the demolition charges is, as Chris says, the Demolition charge is a very versatile and powerful tool that exists from the beginning of the game. Why should such a versatile and powerful tool exist from the beginning of the game? I think it'd be cooler for you to progress into it. Or maybe progress into some of the other powerful and versatile tools, like flashbangs, smoke, and such. As I said, I haven't played all the way through yet (I'm still only at about day 100, having had work today). Maybe the game really blossoms open in the late game, as it did in Milestone 1, when I last played. But isn't it also bad if a player played for the first 100 days and reports that it feels like the game doesn't really change over those days?

Amazing comment. I agree 100%. Especially the progression part is so true! 

Kinda related: The new, more organic way of spawning different Cleaner missions is of course a clear improvement over the more linear Milestone 1 system. The old, more curated system did provide a nicer feel of progression though. I loved the way I needed to raid the Cleaner base for intel and then take care of the VIP. It just felt better and made maybe more sense. On the current system I might not even get the intel gather mission at all. And it's my favorite mission type so far, so thats a bummer.

While the game should absolutely retain the organic and semi-randomized nature, it does need s bit of structure to feel better. What I propose is that the intel gather should be removed from the random mission pool and always be the first cleaner mission after ATLAS base. It should also be persistent (non-missable). We'd still have Cleaner VIP elimination, convoy, soldier rescue and VIP rescue missions for random spawns. If you need more mission types, having a behind-the-enemy-lines agent mission with only one or two units could be tense and a nice change of pace.

[Grobobobo]

8 hours ago, Chris said:

Destroying cover and destroying walls are somewhat different things though

Is it? aliens can totally use walls as cover. Reliable wall destruction is good, but not if it's this effortless. C4 at least required some setup.

[Komandos]

14 hours ago, Vitruviansquid said:

Consider the arithmetic at play as well. I can put 9 soldiers in a Skyhawk. Supposing each soldier is very average, like Luke Stewart, that means I can do 9 flashbangs, 9 smokes, destroy cover 9 times in a mission, on average, and everyone still has heavy armor, shotguns or rifles or sniper rifles and ammo to go around. In a typical UFO downing, I'm only fighting about 8-10 aliens, as far as I've seen.

1. A large amount of equipment for soldiers (equipment with a reserve) is justified in games in which the player cannot predict how the battle will develop. In one battle, the player may need a large number of smoke grenades. In another battle, the player may need a large number of machine gun belts with cartridges. Also: the player may want to save himself from having to equip soldiers before each new battle. It is much easier to equip soldiers as if they are going to participate in the most difficult battle imaginable, and not bother changing soldiers' equipment too often.

 

2. The amount of starting equipment in the game is unlimited, which means that nothing prevents the player from equipping his soldiers with the same amount of equipment as in the real world.

Edited December 5, 2023 by Komandos

[Conductiv]

14 hours ago, Grobobobo said:

Is it? aliens can totally use walls as cover. Reliable wall destruction is good, but not if it's this effortless. C4 at least required some setup.

yes, walls or UFO doors are pretty much the only thing C4 would be good to destroy with, cover...most certainly not, this is also one of the reasons why C4 isn't all that useful. hell who prepares to destroy cover by first running up to it, then placing the charge, create distance and then blow it up..hoping that in that time, the enemy didn't move or simply kill the soldier. on top of that...if you are running up to it anyway...just shoot over it. 

for dealing with enemies in cover, grenades are a much better option. I would also find it somewhat ironic if a demolition charge would be useless at destroying battlefield terrain, it would be like a smoke grenade that doesn't create smoke. its armor damage increases its flexibility..but really the destruction of terrain is practically in the name.
the ideal grenade for enemies in cover should be the fragmentation grenade, but the game punishes you for killing enemies with explosive damage by destruction of loot and as such attacking your economy. so you end up with either destroying the cover or applying a non-lethal grenade...the demo destroys cover, the smoke can be used to gas the enemy if need be, even though its not really intended for that purpose. or the flashbang for its suppressed approach followed by a rush. personally I don't find smoke spam or flashbang shotgun lobotomies more skillful then using the demo charge.

Rockets and mortars would also have been good, the problem with the 2 launchers in the game (MARS and HEVY) is that they use the accuracy stat making the mars unreliable and forcing a very accurate trooper on the HEVY... and the HEVY has a few more problems on top of that. the game doesn't have a proper grenade launcher or mortar. 

if you feel cover is too fragile because lasers can simply burn it down, well that is more a problem with lasers. as similar damage ballistic weapons cannot cause anywhere near as much collateral damage on cover items as lasers can

C4 would be a much..much better tool if explosive breeching was something you did more often, right now UFO's are breeched through the door you can simply open for 4 TU..seems the advanced aliens don't know the concept of a lock, same for bases. there is no real option to create a new door, nor are we dealing with a locked door. being able to explode a entrypoint for 15 TU rather then having to use a grenade, cannon or rocket for 50%+ TU of the trooper is an advantage...however, as you already have to get close to the door to place the C4...just opening it at the start of the next turn is cheaper. C4's idea is solid and I'd love to use it...but every time I do I just get so disappointed by it 

[Grobobobo]

12 hours ago, Conductiv said:

is that they use the accuracy stat making the mars unreliable and forcing a very accurate trooper on the HEVY... and the HEVY has a few more problems on top of that

HEVY is still very good in the vacuum, and overall better than X1 rocket launcher was, the problem is that it's overshadowed by something that is completely broken. It's fine if you can't just stick it on one of your shmucks. Heavy weapons should take effort to use.
 

12 hours ago, Conductiv said:

if you feel cover is too fragile because lasers can simply burn it down, well that is more a problem with lasers. as similar damage ballistic weapons cannot cause anywhere near as much collateral damage on cover items as lasers can

Lasers are a problem too, but only a part of it. I would risk the statement that the thermal damage is silly, but It could also be that the cover HP in general is too low.

12 hours ago, Conductiv said:

if a demolition charge would be useless at destroying battlefield terrain

There is a big wiggle room between effortlessly and reliably destroying battlefield terrain and being useless at it. though I'll admit that I'm not a fan of the item conceptually, I think cover destruction should be delegated to HEVY and wall destruction to C4. Demo charge currently makes both obsolete. Even MARS being able to destroy walls just by running over them is super, super strong.

 

Edited December 6, 2023 by Grobobobo

[Skitso]

MARS should use 95% of it's TU's to bust through a wall. It's way OP atm.

[Conductiv]

4 hours ago, Grobobobo said:

HEVY is still very good in the vacuum, and overall better than X1 rocket launcher was, the problem is that it's overshadowed by something that is completely broken. It's fine if you can't just stick it on one of your shmucks. Heavy weapons should take effort to use.

while I generally defend the HEVY as a tool, it has a very high reliability problem as its the only weapon that doesn't apply its close range accuracy bonus all over its range, completely relying on the troopers base accuracy. and with a multiplier of 1.05...you need a trooper that is sniper material to fire it reliably at range. its range is also quite short and its a direct fire weapon, so it can't remove cover from any safe position.

all explosive weapons suffer from the loot destruction problem, and HEVY is a primary weapon. I have no problem with a heavy weapon taking effort to use, but there must be a suitable reward at the end of that effort, and at the moment I don't see that, there are only a few rare instances where the HEVY would be better then a different strategy or cover destroyer. 

 

Quote

There is a big wiggle room between effortlessly and reliably destroying battlefield terrain and being useless at it. though I'll admit that I'm not a fan of the item conceptually, I think cover destruction should be delegated to HEVY and wall destruction to C4. Demo charge currently makes both obsolete. Even MARS being able to destroy walls just by running over them is super, super strong.

I don't see the wiggle room really..its not like anyone would find it useful if it took 2 demo charges to blow up a basic fence or wall.. but that aside I too would love to see both HEVY and C4 shine...I just think they fail at their job rather then being overshadowed by the demo, the HEVY is a long range rocket to destroy cover and walls... if fails the long range job right out of the gate and then also asks top dollar stats to use on top of the most valuable inventory slot and a large chunk of weightcapacity. C4 well you read the breaching comment...its just not a tool used for cover removal or quickly doing much of anything...its a setup tool for a situation that hardly if ever occurs.

MARS wallbreaking is powerful, but I can't say that I'm wowed that much by the 250K investment being able to cruise through walls (at least not @Skitso 95% TU level wowed)

[Vitruviansquid]

So I got the chance to play a bit further, and I got a few more thoughts. I also deleted my old file on Veteran and started the new game on Commander difficulty.

- There's a weird and awkward gap between when you feel like you can walk all over the Cleaners and when you can actually defeat the Cleaner Base so as to rid yourself of them once and for all. This means that, in the interim, between when Cleaners feel unthreatening and when you can take on the Cleaner Base, the Cleaner missions are just a pain in the neck, but you feel like you have to do them to prevent panic from going up. These are just some ideas to get rid of this awkward interim time:

1. Perhaps it'd be a good idea to allow the Cleaners on Cleaner Missions to progress past the stage of having a bulletproof vest and an accelerated rifle. Let the hazmat suit Cleaners, or new types of Cleaners with more advanced tech, show up on Cleaner missions so that the Cleaner missions level up alongside the player for a bit longer.

2. You could reduce the difficulty of the Cleaner base. The turrets and the final room are brutal. I don't know if this is the best way to approach the problem, because I think the Cleaner Base mission does have to have some teeth to be a climactic showdown between you and a major threat in the plotline.

3. Maybe Cleaner missions could just stop appearing when you reveal the Cleaner Base, and you get a story textbox saying that you've investigated the Cleaners to the extent that you found out they're switching their tactics. Instead of having Cleaner missions any more, the Cleaners are doing something from their base to passively raise panic in regions. In any case, there are no more generic Cleaner missions so they don't bug you any more, However, you are still being motivated to actually go and do the Cleaner Base mission because it's passively losing you the game as time goes on. But you do have some control over how the showdown happens - you can go earlier and risk dying to the Cleaners' more advanced units, or you can go later and risk countries having a higher panic level.

4. Or, the same as in option 3, but there's a technological bottleneck that you need to take out the Cleaner Base to get a thing to research in order to break through.

- I know I said this once about Mantids before, but the problem's gotten worse since then. Mantids just aren't scary. They're not scary in the narrative of the game; I just defeated monstrous Sebilians with brute strength and alien regeneration and I just defeated Psyons/Sectons with what are essentially magic powers, I'm not going to be scared of some anxious bug guys. They're also not scary in the mechanics of the game: they're as good at shooting as Psyons, their special reaction shots don't come into play that often, and being small is their only strength. The lacklusterness of the Mantids has only gotten more pronounced now that Psyons and Sebilians have become scarier in the flow of the game. Since rebreathers are a thing in the game now, why not have something like Mantids leaking a cloud of poisonous gas when they die? The gas is very dangerous to soldiers without rebreathers, and gives Mantids an advantage in close-quarters combat to supplement their basic decency at long-range combat. That'd make the bugs a bit scarier.

- Yeah. I never had to think about what armor I put a soldier in. By now, I have Guardian armor, and it's kind of a no-brainer to put all the soldiers in Guardian armor when you can afford it.

- The option between upgrading for advanced medkit and automed module is an interesting one. I don't think you'd ever want to have both, unless you were rich enough to just throw your money around everywhere. The advanced medikit is heavier and can be used on yourself and others while the automed module is lighter, but can only be used on the soldier carrying it. I'd like to see more of this interaction in the game, where you are implicitly being asked to choose two options that are somewhat redundant with each other. I wouldn't even mind if you're shown that picking the one option locks you out of the other, like if you upgraded for automed module, you can't then upgrade your medikits and vice versa.

- It wasn't until fairly late in the game that I had the thought, "oh yeah. These Xcom-like games are supposed to have all sorts of neat gadgets and stuff that aren't just upgrading your gun to deal more damage or upgrading your armor to live against more damage." I really think more technologies and engineering projects that one might consider optional should be moved to earlier in the game, or more of these things should be devised to go in the early game, to make the early game a bit more engaging. Give new players a taste of neat stuff in the game without asking them to play for so long.

Edited December 7, 2023 by Vitruviansquid

[Grobobobo]

19 hours ago, Conductiv said:

all explosive weapons suffer from the loot destruction problem, and HEVY is a primary weapon

Heavy specifically does not. The damage is too low to risk killing anything, so you're just gonna destroy the armor/cover and then unload on the poor alien with other units. I've yet to lose loot by using HEVY, the MARS cannon did it more often due to the overkill damage.

19 hours ago, Conductiv said:

I don't see the wiggle room really..its not like anyone would find it useful if it took 2 demo charges to blow up a basic fence or wall

There's a plenty. For example you can decrease its accuracy, lower its range, or increase the throw TU cost. Although I'd still prefer removal tbh.

19 hours ago, Conductiv said:

I just think they fail at their job rather then being overshadowed by the demo

They really do not. HEVY would 100% be worth using without demo charges, c4 still wouldn't but that's less because of the item and more because walls are made of paper.

19 hours ago, Conductiv said:

MARS wallbreaking is powerful, but I can't say that I'm wowed that much by the 250K investment being able to cruise through walls (at least not @Skitso 95% TU level wowed)

I don't know what difficulty do you have to play on or what playstyle do you have to have to not be wood by MARS. that thing is easily worth 3 soldiers in tactical, and the fact that you can have 2 of them with T2 dropship is insane. 250K is almost nothing compared to what it offers.

[ovoron]

12 minutes ago, Grobobobo said:

I don't know what difficulty do you have to play on or what playstyle do you have to have to not be wood by MARS. that thing is easily worth 3 soldiers in tactical, and the fact that you can have 2 of them with T2 dropship is insane. 250K is almost nothing compared to what it offers.

At the start? Sure. But it really falls off hard after Cleaner HQ. In fact, I'd argue that might be the time to trade all of its HP for 2 Cleaner Leaders as captives for sale.

 

While rockets and wallbreaking retain usefulness, its accuracy and TU are no longer impressive compared to well-trained soldiers.

[Skitso]

7 hours ago, Vitruviansquid said:

- I know I said this once about Mantids before, but the problem's gotten worse since then. Mantids just aren't scary. They're not scary in the narrative of the game; I just defeated monstrous Sebilians with brute strength and alien regeneration and I just defeated Psyons/Sectons with what are essentially magic powers, I'm not going to be scared of some anxious bug guys. They're also not scary in the mechanics of the game: they're as good at shooting as Psyons, their special reaction shots don't come into play that often, and being small is their only strength. The lacklusterness of the Mantids has only gotten more pronounced now that Psyons and Sebilians have become scarier in the flow of the game. Since rebreathers are a thing in the game now, why not have something like Mantids leaking a cloud of poisonous gas when they die? The gas is very dangerous to soldiers without rebreathers, and gives Mantids an advantage in close-quarters combat to supplement their basic decency at long-range combat. That'd make the bugs a bit scarier.

I've been thinking the same thing. Mantids just don't feel like a proper threat and a solution I came up with is to have a lot more of them. It would tie nicely to their insect-like demeanor and would offer a different kind of challenge. It'd also look really intimidating to walkmaround a corner and see like 7 mantids compared to, say, 2 sebillians 

Edited December 7, 2023 by Skitso

[Vitruviansquid]

8 minutes ago, Skitso said:

I've been thinking the same thing. Mantids just don't feel like a proper threat and a solution I came up with is to have a lot more of them. It would tie nicely to their insect-like demeanor and would offer a different kind of challenge. It'd also look really intimidating to walkmaround a corber and see like 7 mantids compared to, say, 2 sebillians 

Raising the number of Mantids could do the tricks. I dunno about a ratio of 2:7 normal aliens to Mantids. Maybe 2:3 was what I had in mind.

But yeah, they need something more. They could do anything with the Mantids, so long as Mantids are made more formidable. I thought about proposing they get more armor, 5 more accuracy, a new and different gun, a different auxiliary alien type, whatever. They just need something. Anything.

[Skitso]

33 minutes ago, Vitruviansquid said:

Raising the number of Mantids could do the tricks. I dunno about a ratio of 2:7 normal aliens to Mantids. Maybe 2:3 was what I had in mind.

But yeah, they need something more. They could do anything with the Mantids, so long as Mantids are made more formidable. I thought about proposing they get more armor, 5 more accuracy, a new and different gun, a different auxiliary alien type, whatever. They just need something. Anything.

Yeah, I really thought about upping their numbers significantly.  Just decrease it's specs (accuracy, health etc) as much as needed to allow s lot more units. That'll make them feel really different compared to other races.

Edited December 7, 2023 by Skitso