Milestone 2: The First Hundred Days

[delor]

  Hi!  I started a Xenonauts 2 campaign when Milestone 2 dropped, and here's some feedback after the first hundred days of the campaign.  Days 101-200 will be a second post.

 

Campaign Structure

The Cleaners

  This is a really simple bullet point.  I like the cleaner missions and the opening campaign structure in general.  The data raid, in particular, is really well done with the heavies arriving right as you might want to get out.  I wish I had hit more of those.

  The worst I'll say of the cleaner missions is that there was this big "cleaner network progress" indicator, but it never felt like I was waging a campaign, making any decisions, or facing any threats.  This was just a steady march of missions I easily cleared until it threw the cleaner HQ at me.  It could be fleshed out; if nothing else, perhaps the quantity and difficulty of missions could be increased to make the player balance mission tempo versus surviving attrition.

  Still, as a simple opening phase to the campaign, I think the cleaners were successful.

 

Difficulty

  I selected Soldier difficultly, having limited Xenonauts experience but extreme amounts of experience with just about every X-Com game and a wide variety of the games they inspired.  Overall, it felt extremely easy- I was losing less than one soldier per tactical mission without any save scumming, and that dropped to zero until the psionic aliens showed up once I realized the majority of my deaths were from my grenadiers who were wearing light armor.  Dropping some ammo to stick them in heavy armor pretty much put a stop to that.  Notes on ground combat to follow.

    In the air there was an incredibly hard swing from “few, easily defeated enemies” to “waaaaaaay too many enemies that you’ll take significant damage fighting.”  I like it, honestly.  It’s a real “oh, crap” moment and it’s good to feel something- especially as I’m starting to find the lack of challenge in ground combat tedious.  (note that I started before 2.15 so I didn’t get the +500k starting income which may be impacting my lack of aircraft to fight back with)  The notion of enemy air craft that have no crew so that we can have more ships in the air without spamming a ground mission every time is a good one.

 

Research
  The research tree feels very strangely paced.  At the start, even without aggressively expanding my science staff, I’m perpetually about to exhaust it.  Late into the 70s of days, I get options.  Approaching day 100, suddenly I’m overwhelmed with options.  This isn't necessarily bad- it does give the different phases of the game a different feel- but it does make the early game research a little dull.  I have two basic ideas to enhance this.

  First, the accuracy module might make sense as a starter research instead of starter gear.  It's useful, so this makes sense mechanically as something a player would want to go for.  It also thematically makes sense because you're dropping from a fairly normal looking helicopter, and a base the game tells you is full of "cold war tech," wielding M16s, so why do we have their weird battlefield scanner/HUD thing?

  Secondly, one space that could be fleshed out slightly to give some early game options is map control.  I’d propose the following suite of changes to give the player the option to throw some starter research at improving base map coverage and potentially open up some extra strategic options early on:
1)    A short-ish research project to make drop tanks give you +30% range instead of +15%.  No need to construct them, it’s just a buff.
2)    Radars initially are a bit weaker, say -15% radius, but a medium duration research project can give them +30% range for a net +10%-ish reach.
3)    A tech that provides +20% aircraft repair and rearm time, to help up for faster operational temp as the alien air menace increases.

  This would let players who either go heavier on science or who sacrifice something else cover more of the map with fewer bases, as well as just adding a few more things to do in the lab at the start.

 

Miscellaneous Thoughts
  Any chance we could dump base adjacency bonuses?  It’s a fiddly extra thing to think about when laying out your base, but it’s also an incredibly simple game so it’s just busywork.  I know the X-Com reboots did it, but I’m not sure it’s adding anything here.  At least in the reboots there were extra considerations to the tile layout thing like how expensive a section was to clear and where the bonus energy tiles were.
 

Ground Combat

Overall Thoughts

  I really like the feel and pacing of the ground combat.  Combat is resolved quickly in a small number of rounds and you’ve got a lot of mobility, but it still feels highly positional.  This positionality primarily exists because unlike in the X-Com reboots the AP system means that there’s a nicely granular tradeoff between how much you move and how much and how accurately you can fire.  Lethality is well tweaked- a full health guy with armor can usually survive a hit or two, but can still be focused down in a round if you position them badly.  Blowing up walls is awesome.

  That said, it does feel like there’s a ton of creeping forward and picking off enemies in onesies and twosies.  I think the enemy could stand to be a lot more aggressive- except for set pieces like the aliens inside a UFO or the final room in the cleaner HQ, enemies should probably start going active and hunting down the player as the fighting starts.  Many of the scenarios also feel like they’d benefit from a few more aliens present.

 

Base Defense

  Base defense is particularly anticlimactic and probably should reworked.  A wave of guys walk into my elevator shaft and get brutally opportunity fire-ed down, then there are groups of 2-3 of them per room in a line of rooms back to the hanger they entered from and with the benefit of my base cameras I march forward and clear them one-by-one.  The enemies should be actively attacking, probably need to be taught how to use stun grenades, and it feels like there need to be some base targets they’re moving towards to destroy to force me to reposition from the airshaft and respond. 

  Perhaps in base invasions, the aliens could target key rooms and destroy them?  For example, they move towards the generators and destroy them, knocking the base offline for a couple of days per generator destroyed?  Or maybe they can just trash rooms in general and instead of rushing the elevator they sweep the base room by room and knock them offline, forcing the player to move out to counterattack?

 

Misc Thoughts

  It’d also be nice if there were more missions with timers.  These are really important for mission variety.  Post cleaner HQ I don’t have any timed missions from them and I don’t know I’ve gotten any abductions since either, which has made ground battles a lot duller.  Perhaps there's also room for a few more alien mission types.

  Perhaps alien footsoldiers could get grenades, too, to punish players who clump?  (see also "and they need stun grenades for base assault")

 

Air Combat

  As with the cleaner campaign thoughts, I'll be brief here.  It’s… fine.  Honestly, better than I’d expected from some of the things I’ve heard said about it.  It's not great, it's not really what I'm here for, but it's functional.  I don’t have a ton of feedback here- keep polishing it, see where you end up.

 

Equipment Selection

  Here's the big one.  I’m not entirely happy with soldier equipment.  It feels fiddly without being particularly deep.  

Observations
1) We’ve got “loadouts” but they’re not very useful for two reasons.  First, the loadout is tied to a particular gear tech level so you still need to fiddle with which actual bits and bobs a soldier has equipped after you select the loadout to adjust for what higher-tier gear you have in stock.  Secondly, soldiers have varying carrying capacities and the carrying capacity constantly increases over a soldier’s career so I still want to pre-check the loadout before each drop.
2) Within a loadout, I’m not really making that many interesting decisions.  The two main pieces of equipment and a baseline of ammo for them go in.  Most everyone gets the aim boosting module if they’re not weak compared to their gear weight.  Then I just creep in explosives until near capacity and throw on an extra mag to fill up the space.  If someone’s strong and carrying something light, like my assault troopers, an extra module like a gas mask fills in the remainder.
3) Heavy armor feels incredibly necessary, especially with starter armor.  I don’t ever bother with light.
4) Ammo use is generally so low per mission that running out is barely a consideration.  Even reloading rarely is a consideration, although at least the switch to laser rifles lowers mag capacity some.

Loadout Rework Suggestion
    I don’t think carrying capacity or heavy armor are worth the fiddle.  Let’s make loadouts truly useful by just making what a trooper can equip standard:
1)    A primary weapon (infinite ammo, grenade launcher can load smoke or HE freely)
2)    A secondary weapon (pistol/med/stun/melee)
3)    Armor (no heavy armor)
4)    Two grenades
5)    One utility slot for a module.  Suggestions follow.

What Then Strength?
    So, if we don’t have strength or heavy armor, what good is strength?  I’d propose the following:
1)    Make heavy armor a continuous spectrum.  Armor uses its “light” armor value, but every 8 points of strength a trooper has provides +1 armor.
2)    Strength continues to help with recoil, making burst/auto fire more accurate.
3)    Strength continues to help grenade throw range.
4)    For grenade launchers, strength replaces ACC as the accuracy stat.
5)    Strength increases melee (knife/baton) damage.  Additionally, researching energy weapons unlocks very short range energy cutters that has high armor damage to contrast it with the longer ranged but poorly penetrating shotgun.  Say maybe we get a laser cutter and then a plasma cutter, with a fixed max range of 3.  These scale with strength too.

What About Modules?

  Likewise, if we've got that utility slot I suggested, should we reconsider how modules work to make the decision reliably compelling?  My thoughts:
1) Accuracy and automed stay as-is.  Who doesn’t want more accuracy or healing?
2) Detpack and C4 are merged into a single “explosives kit” that can do either and has two uses.
3) Gas mask becomes “riot gear”.  It provides resistance to gas, infestation, reduces incoming melee damage by 35%, and after psi alien interrogation also blocks mesmerize.
4) Maybe add a stimpak that provides +AP, bleed resistance, and psi resistance, for a mobility/defense option?

Misc Equipment Thoughts
    I’m hating on heavy armor for soldiers, but know what I don’t hate?  Heavy armor on MARS.  That’s a really good mobility versus survivability tradeoff.  Keep it!

Bugs
    Misc bugs I’ve observed:
1) Enemy sentry guns in cleaner HQ missions blow up and scatter debris, but then the undamaged sentry gun still remains visible.
2) I infrequently but repeatedly see walls and crates that aren’t there (blocking movement or fire) but that are still visible.  I at least some of this is destroyed obstacles still rendering, but sometimes stuff I didn’t see get shot still appears to be fake.
3) I’ve fired a grenade at some aliens and hit them, suppressing them, only to then have the suppressed aliens get reaction fire and kill my shooter.  Suppression is supposed to stop reaction fire, so I suspect there’s a timing issue here.
4) Rockets don’t destroy those thick thicket bushes?  Bullets probably shouldn't but if we can blast walls it seems like explosives should.
5) The game loves unchecking that "Heavy Armor" checkbox whenever you change armor.  Please don't, if heavy armor must be a thing.

Misc Feedback
1) Swapping research projects shouldn’t reset progress.  If it is going to, though, please stop offering me a chance to swap research projects when I unlock new ones because eventually I’m going to absentmindedly take you up on that offer and lose progress.
2) I know I’m not the first to say it, but auto-sell junk loot.  This is a dumb mechanic.  Alternately, integrate it into the engineering system- instead of building higher tech weapons wholesale, convert alien weapons into human weapons.
3) It feels unfair that auto-doors close at the end of alien turns but not your turn which means that aliens can shoot through open doors for free but humans have to open them to shoot through them.

Edited December 10, 2023 by delor

[delor]

Tiny extra bug I just noticed: Engineering projects that don't produce anything (corpse analysis) are still blocked by having full stores.