My thoughts of the milestone 4

[Skitso]

I've now started a new playthrough of the MS4 with default veteran difficulty. I'll add my thoughts here little by little as I proceed.

[Skitso]

SOUNDS

As there's been some work on sounds, I gave some extra focus listening things:

The alert sound effect (huge, long air horn that would be home at WW2 air strike) that plays when the cleaners attack Atlas base while in the tutorial, seem out of place (this is an old sound effect but still). Maybe change that to something more suitable in indoors and something more unique too.

Placing the base sound effect (loud, obnoxious metallic drilling/grinding sound) is awful. Why would I hear such sound when I'm in the command room looking at a huge world map screen. All the other sound effects in geoscape are nice and relaxed, abstract blibs and blobs. Why's that sound so different? Same effect is used when building rooms and that grinds my gears time after time. Bad choice of SFX here - maybe change it to match other soundscape. This is priority IMO.

Melee miss sound is too loud. 

MARS movement sound is too loud and bassy. Make it 50% more silent and add a nice metallic rattle of the tracks on top of it.

The classic dialog open SFX that we've had since Xenonauts 1 is too long, bassy and loud. Maybe your new sound guy could rethink that a bit.

Other than these few exceptions, the new UI sounds are an improvement over the old ones, but some of them are still too loud and I'd prefer them a bit more "thinner" and "dry".
 

Edited June 2, 2024 by Skitso

[Skitso]

Random things in the order of occurence:
 

• Geoscape dialogs in the tutorial are revealed slowly one letter at a time, but others are revealed one speech bubble at a time. (which is faster and better)
• Unnecessary and sporadic civilian movement makes turns often take way more time than it needs to. Make civilians move to a safe spot and stay mostly still to make the game flow better.
• Oh man I love the new intel gather map. Really good. Please make more.
• Regarding the intel gather map, all the tall palm trees are blocking the view quite a lot and makes me rotate camera constantly. Hopefully you'll manage to implement the mouse hover transparency/roof toggle we talked about earlier, Chris.
• Showing where the reinforcements arrive should be a toggle and difficulty dependant. I don't want any unrealistic super human aids in my realistic mil-sim game.
• Units auto-plot their movement through fire.
• Have I just dreamed about it, or did some change log mention that we got some visible check in the top bar for every unit safely inside the evacuation zone?

Edited June 1, 2024 by Skitso

[Skitso]

About UFO movement patterns:

I just realized I don't like how UFO fly patterns look so artificial and robotic. UFOs fly straight lines and make sharp turns. It would be lovely to see more "organic" movement, smooth curves, maybe patrolling one area, slowing their speed around where the anomalies arrive, circle around cities, stuff like that to make it feel like they are really planning and doing stuff and not just be artificial skeet practice.

Edited June 1, 2024 by Skitso

[Skitso]

About morale:

I feel morale is too binary at the moment where everything is fine until it's not. Units mostly stay at a 100 throughout the mission. Only personal near fatal wounds seem to really make a dent in the morale. Maybe morale heals too fast? Maybe units should suffer morale damage when friendly unit has a morale break effect. Could cause "fun" chain reaction moments. Maybe less severe morale break effects could happen even with 50-90 morale like decreased accuracy or TU's? Never found I needed the "focus mind".

[Skitso]

Random things in order of occurrence:

• Game still gives alloys pretty generously at the beginning of the game. I've downed 2 probes and 2 scouts and were able to fit full squad of warden and accelerated weapons at day 48 with alloys to spare.
• Is there a reason why I can't build a radar if I don't have enough power for it? Or is there a way to build "off-line" buildings?
• Geoscape progression feels quite linear at least for the first few months. There's always just one mission available at a time. Could be an interesting change of pace if the game forced me to think which mission to take?
• Unit starting stats and stat gain feel very good! Also like that the training facility price makes me think it twice.
• Air combat difficulty feels a lots better and doesn't need so much micro management than before. A clear improvement for me at least.
• Small thing, but man it feels good to equip a weapon now with the new SFX. *tcha-tchack* Satisfyiiiing!

Edited June 2, 2024 by Skitso

[Skitso]

About Cleaner story:

Now that we have the "new" intro video, the game kinda lacks any introduction to Cleaners like we had before early access. I still remember the old intro text we had before the early access and it built a proper, omnious tone for the game and gave just enough information to the player. It went like this: 

"It is 2009.
Berlin wall still stands. The cold war has grown ever colder. 
A clandestine organization called the Xenonauts secretly gathers intelligence on a shadowy threat looming over humanity.
 

Sightings of unidentified flying objects and unknown beings have grown steadily more common.
A strong correlation emerges between these reported sightings and rising international tensions, but those reporting or investigating alien activity frequently dissappear without a trace. Mysterious figures known only as the "Cleaners" are believed responsible.
 

Mere weeks remain to prepare for the coming invasion.
Our species stands little chance of survival should the Xenonaut fail to unite humanity."

This was a great, filmic way to start the game. I really liked how it set the tone in the same way as many epic movies like Blade Runner or Gladiator - or games like Mass Effect. The bolded part also gives the player just enough info to understand what the cleaners are, which is later built upon with the xenopedia articles. That is currently lacking IMO.

Edited June 1, 2024 by Skitso

[Skitso]

Exploit:

There needs to be a system that manages Cleaner reinforcemets' spawn points more intelligently, as right now, it's pretty easy to exploit: just leave 2 shotgunners camping next to the spawn point and profit.

Edited June 1, 2024 by Skitso

[Skitso]

QoL:

It'd be nice to have a small exclamation mark or similar notifying top bar, manufacture menus and their submenus that I have new engineering options. Below is a quick mockup of what I had in mind. (Enlarge to see bettter)

I've noticed I often miss something I'd wanted to build for a long time just because I didn't notice it's become available.

Edited June 2, 2024 by Skitso

[Skitso]

Progression:

Cleaner HQ reveal was really quick on this playthrough and early game seemed quite a bit easier than before. Not necessarily a bad thing. Maybe this was because I had intel gather and Cleaner VIP assassination and both went really well for me and I was able to gather a lot of extra intel.

As cleaner missions are now rather easy source of income, there needs to be a better motivation to destroy the HQ quickly, rather than to just keep the base alive and continue farming Cleaner missions.

• Maybe after the HQ is revealed, regular Cleaner missions should be changed to a set of more difficult and aggressive missions. These could just be endless, tough-as-nails elimination missions, that could recycle other cleaner maps so no extra work needed. This would also prevent boring Cleaner mission repetition: no one wants to escort VIP a third time - trust me. 

Edited June 2, 2024 by Skitso

[Skitso]

Random things in order of occurrence:

• Is there a way to check the passive alien damage buffs I've unlocked?
• Accelerated weapons article is not found in the Xenopedia
• At day 79, I've made maybe 13 warden armours, 10 accelerated weapons, upgraded accelerated aircraft weapons and alenium generator. And I still have almost 70 alloys left. It's WAY too much. Early UFO's should reward considerably less alloys.
• I've not seen a single sebillian up until day 100
• Took the Cleaner HQ with full warden/accelerated team accompanies with a MARS and it felt a tad underwhelming. The new map was a welcomed surprise, but it felt like there was too few enemies to make it feel like an epic battle against tough enemy main base. End room was fine, maybe 1 more enemy there, but rest of the facility needed maybe 3 or 4 more.

Edited June 2, 2024 by Skitso

[Chris]

Thanks for the detailed feedback, as ever. It's a useful read 

[Chris]

On 6/2/2024 at 11:18 AM, Skitso said:

Random things in order of occurrence:

• Is there a way to check the passive alien damage buffs I've unlocked?
• Accelerated weapons article is not found in the Xenopedia
• At day 79, I've made maybe 13 warden armours, 10 accelerated weapons, upgraded accelerated aircraft weapons and alenium generator. And I still have almost 70 alloys left. It's WAY too much. Early UFO's should reward considerably less alloys.
• I've not seen a single sebillian up until day 100
• Took the Cleaner HQ with full warden/accelerated team accompanies with a MARS and it felt a tad underwhelming. The new map was a welcomed surprise, but it felt like there was too few enemies to make it feel like an epic battle against tough enemy main base. End room was fine, maybe 1 more enemy there, but rest of the facility needed maybe 3 or 4 more.

Having tested this on my own Veteran playthrough, I actually think you'll be fairly short of Alloys if you start the game by building a second Laboratory and go up to 12 scientists at the start of month 2. You'll probably have unlocked Lasers before Destroyers start appearing, and as soon as you shoot down a Destroyer and research UFO Hull Plating you unlock a LOT of projects that require Alloys.

[Nils]

I don't know if anyone has already mentioned this but on a ground mission when a civilian is killed, the game tells us every turn, that this civilian is bleeding out.

Maybe you can switch of this message.

 

[Chris]

11 hours ago, Nils said:

I don't know if anyone has already mentioned this but on a ground mission when a civilian is killed, the game tells us every turn, that this civilian is bleeding out.

Maybe you can switch of this message.

 

Thanks. That should now be fixed in the patch I released a few hours ago.

[Skitso]

On 6/4/2024 at 12:05 AM, Chris said:

Having tested this on my own Veteran playthrough, I actually think you'll be fairly short of Alloys if you start the game by building a second Laboratory and go up to 12 scientists at the start of month 2. You'll probably have unlocked Lasers before Destroyers start appearing, and as soon as you shoot down a Destroyer and research UFO Hull Plating you unlock a LOT of projects that require Alloys.

Yeah, the issue I have is that by the time I unlock the first two advanced manufactures (warden and accelerated), I've already collected so much alloy, that I don't need to take the amount I have in any consideration, and can just build pretty much all I need or want to.

This is the first time player needs to use alien materials and it's an important moment where the game should teach about manufacture costs and also establish how expensive and important alien materials are in winning the war. So limiting alloys until a little further would improve the gameplay by forcing the player to make more choises that matter, make the alloys feel more special and rare lore wise, while also teaching the player better about alien material usage.

If the destroyers bring the project numbers up, let's push alloys from there on forward. Let the player starve for alloys until then.

 

 

Edited June 6, 2024 by Skitso

[Chris]

41 minutes ago, Skitso said:

Yeah, the issue I have is that by the time I unlock the first two advanced manufactures (warden and accelerated), I've already collected so much alloy, that I don't need to take the amount I have in any consideration, and can just build pretty much all I need or want to.

This is the first time player needs to use alien materials and it's an important moment where the game should teach about manufacture costs and also establish how expensive and important alien materials are in winning the war. So limiting alloys until a little further would improve the gameplay by forcing the player to make more choises that matter, make the alloys feel more special and rare lore wise, while also teaching the player better about alien material usage.

If the destroyers bring the project numbers up, let's push alloys from there on forward. Let the player starve for alloys until then

Yes, but the issue then is that it becomes completely pointless to build additional Labs early in the game because it'll never be possible to build the stuff you can research, so that can't be the solution we go with.

[Skitso]

14 minutes ago, Chris said:

Yes, but the issue then is that it becomes completely pointless to build additional Labs early in the game because it'll never be possible to build the stuff you can research, so that can't be the solution we go with.

Hmmm, yeah. I guess you are right. I'm looking at the issue with a too narrow field of vision it seems.

[Chris]

17 hours ago, Skitso said:

Hmmm, yeah. I guess you are right. I'm looking at the issue with a too narrow field of vision it seems.

The other question is how many crash sites you run - do you run all of them?

[Skitso]

37 minutes ago, Chris said:

The other question is how many crash sites you run - do you run all of them?

Can't remember exact numbers, but I'm planning to start a new playthrough this weekend. I'll get back to you on this.

But usually I try to take all crash sites I can for the highest UFO tier available at any given time.

Edited June 7, 2024 by Skitso

[Skitso]

Random things in order of occurence:

• alenium/alloy economy seems fine (or even a bit tight) entering month 4, so the issue I talked about earlier is just for the warden/accelerated.
• Day 160 and still not a single combat mission against sebillian and I've also only had one (1!) mission against mantids. After raiding the cleaner HQ, it's been really monotonous to fight wraiths after wraiths after wraiths.
  • There really needs to be a system that provides and ensures more enemy variation!
• Wraiths seem a bit annoying to fight. They are super accurate, high damage, difficult to hit and quite tough to kill. Might be a good idea to give them at least some weakness.
• First Terror mission against wraiths and androns was a complete blood bath. Went with a warden/accelerated team and after three full wipes I decided to just abandon the mission. I might have been a little below the tech curve, but the difficulty spike felt completely unfair.
• Andron movement looks a bit janky: it's walking animation doesn't quite match it's movement speed so it looks like it's sliding a bit. Either speed up the animation a notch or make them move a bit slower. I might even prefer the latter to emphasize it's robotic nature.
• Cabbage fields still tank my performance. My FPS are usually around 120-140 but having cabbage on screen and my FPS drops to 30.

Edited June 9, 2024 by Skitso

[Skitso]

Sounds:

Sounds have quite a lot of volume balance issues. I covered some of them in earlier post above, but here's some more:

Sounds that are too loud:

• andron walk
• almost all aliens taking damage
• almost all aliens dying
• classic levitation movement sound (wuabwuabwuab)

Sounds that are too soft:

• weapon firing
• explosions

[Skitso]

Sounds:

• It'd be nice to have a small sound when loading is completed.
• New construction sounds are nice
• Not fan of the new aircraft launch sound in geoscape (at least Skyhawk should have a helicopter sound)

[Skitso]

Random things in order of occurence:

• I'd like to have a VIP escort style camera scroll at the start of the soldier rescue mission too, to show where the three guys are.
• Had 7 cleaners surrounding the three soldiers I was rescuing at the beginning of the mission. Everyone made it out, but I think you might wanna restrict such spawns a bit maybe?
• Intel gather was very easy on veteran (-1 turn reinforcement timer). I was able to get all 17 sticks and evacuate one turn after first reinforcements arrived. I think one reason might be the new map - it's so compact.
• Even with the recent nerfs, shotguns still feel slightly OP compared to rifles. 
• Ahh, cabbage fields run smooth now. 
• Interrogation has been changed to observation. I like this!
• I'd like the bravery stat to matter more. Low bravery units should panic more often. 
• I like the spawn area improvements on ambush missions, but they still need something IMO. Maybe enemies and trucks should not be visible while in the planning phase? 
• I'd like to have a notification whenever the current main objective is completed/changed.

Edited June 14, 2024 by Skitso

[Skitso]

Nitpick:

The "X has fallen unconscious" popup is displayed on top of the MISSON COMPLETED text if it's the last enemy of the mission. Not a big deal, but it bugs my OCD every time.