Long Game option?

[cwamartin]

Hi,

I don't know about anyone else but I actually quite enjoy those early game missions where my soldiers are working with just ballistic weapons and dealing with smaller UFOs.  To me the game moves on too quickly past that; given that you can safely skip magnetic weapons and can do alienium research quite early it seems like no time until I am attacking larger UFOs with my troops armed with laser weaponry.

Could there be an option to slow things down for people like me?! Maybe each new UFO type would only appear after two months instead of one? Research projects could also take a little longer. I do actually really enjoy playing this game and am not one of those people who are rushing to get to the endgame and defeat the aliens - I enjoy the campaign as it goes along and would be happier for it to take longer!

Many thanks

[endersblade]

Same.  I've been screaming from the top of my lungs about this ever since they introduced the doom counter (the orbital laser, not the doomsday counter).  I want longer games.  Like, MUCH longer games.  Realistically speaking, it is absolutely STUPID to think you can fight off an entire invasion, especially one that is so entrenched on our planet already, in less than a year in-game.  It should take SEVERAL years to get to the final fight.

On top of that, something I've also been complaining about, it's so annoying that research comes in so quickly.  Warden armor?  What for when I can research Guardian before I even have enough materials to kit out an entire squad in Warden?  Why use Laser weapons when accelerated weapons (which really SHOULD just outright replace base ballistics) can last long enough to move onto Gauss?  Why make...tier 2 interceptors, forget their names...when you get an engineering project that makes Angels move faster, and thus makes them useful much longer and for less than making T2 interceptors? 

It's just silly.  All this stuff to research and implement, but not enough time to do so.  Stretch the game out.  Hell, 3 months of being stuck on the same gear means we have ample time to research, manufacture, and actually ENJOY playing with our upgrades.

[Chris]

That's kinda intentional though. You could research laser weapons right out the gate in the original X-Com and you're not necessarily expected to take both Lasers & Accelerated weapons. It's a tough balancing action because if we give people options to skip tech (like the engine upgrades for interceptors etc) then some people feel like there's too much tech coming all the time, and if we make it a linear progression then other people feel like the tech tree is too boring and there's no choices.

Fundamentally the issue is a campaign is already about 35-ish missions from start to finish. That's a long game in most people's books, and I don't think we can make it any longer without turning off the majority of the playerbase.

Yes, we could make an official "long" version of the game but it'd take a pretty significant time investment from the dev team when we've got other things to be working on, and it's a real pain to maintain two different versions of the game once it's complete (tbh it's already a pain to balance the four difficulty settings). That's why developers usually leave this sort of hardcore mode to modders.

[Skitso]

2 hours ago, Chris said:

That's kinda intentional though. You could research laser weapons right out the gate in the original X-Com and you're not necessarily expected to take both Lasers & Accelerated weapons. It's a tough balancing action because if we give people options to skip tech (like the engine upgrades for interceptors etc) then some people feel like there's too much tech coming all the time, and if we make it a linear progression then other people feel like the tech tree is too boring and there's no choices.

Fundamentally the issue is a campaign is already about 35-ish missions from start to finish. That's a long game in most people's books, and I don't think we can make it any longer without turning off the majority of the playerbase.

Yes, we could make an official "long" version of the game but it'd take a pretty significant time investment from the dev team when we've got other things to be working on, and it's a real pain to maintain two different versions of the game once it's complete (tbh it's already a pain to balance the four difficulty settings). That's why developers usually leave this sort of hardcore mode to modders.

I suppose the "extended" version you mentioned in 15.8 patch notes is still on the list?

"The UFO Delegation system has been disabled until Milestone 6, as I think releasing it without the "Extended Mode" for people who really want to do lots of crash sites would be a mistake."

[cwamartin]

3 hours ago, Chris said:

That's kinda intentional though. You could research laser weapons right out the gate in the original X-Com and you're not necessarily expected to take both Lasers & Accelerated weapons. It's a tough balancing action because if we give people options to skip tech (like the engine upgrades for interceptors etc) then some people feel like there's too much tech coming all the time, and if we make it a linear progression then other people feel like the tech tree is too boring and there's no choices.

Fundamentally the issue is a campaign is already about 35-ish missions from start to finish. That's a long game in most people's books, and I don't think we can make it any longer without turning off the majority of the playerbase.

Yes, we could make an official "long" version of the game but it'd take a pretty significant time investment from the dev team when we've got other things to be working on, and it's a real pain to maintain two different versions of the game once it's complete (tbh it's already a pain to balance the four difficulty settings). That's why developers usually leave this sort of hardcore mode to modders.

I totally get that it is already a huge task keeping up with the different versions of the game!  And, at this late stage maybe it is unrealistic to expect the devs to get into this stuff.  I just wondered if it would be possible to have an option to change a setting somewhere that mean new UFO types come every two months instead of every month; but then, I know nothing about how that dynamic is coded so...!!!

[endersblade]

8 hours ago, Chris said:

That's kinda intentional though. You could research laser weapons right out the gate in the original X-Com and you're not necessarily expected to take both Lasers & Accelerated weapons. It's a tough balancing action because if we give people options to skip tech (like the engine upgrades for interceptors etc) then some people feel like there's too much tech coming all the time, and if we make it a linear progression then other people feel like the tech tree is too boring and there's no choices.

Fundamentally the issue is a campaign is already about 35-ish missions from start to finish. That's a long game in most people's books, and I don't think we can make it any longer without turning off the majority of the playerbase.

Yes, we could make an official "long" version of the game but it'd take a pretty significant time investment from the dev team when we've got other things to be working on, and it's a real pain to maintain two different versions of the game once it's complete (tbh it's already a pain to balance the four difficulty settings). That's why developers usually leave this sort of hardcore mode to modders.

I totally get where you're coming from.  But the problem is, I feel like you're catering to the wrong crowd.  Those of us who are veterans of this genre, (albeit probably the minority, so I understand why you would focus on the majority) understand that these games aren't meant to be short.  But people who either started with Firaxis XCOM/XCOM2/Chimera Squad (gods forbid...) and wanted to test this one out come here not realizing that they aren't the same game.  There's a reason the Long War mods are so popular, and it's because of people like me lol.  This shouldn't be the kind of game you sit down to and complete inside of a couple of hours.  It should be something you come back to several times over the course of several days.  A 'grand' strategy game, if you will.  We are fighting a war of attrition against an alien menace hellbent on taking our planet from us.  This isn't Independence Day where a couple of ships get taken out inside of a week, it's a full on invasion.

I'm not saying this needs to happen now.  I understand and fully support the road map you guys are on, as the content and patches are coming out at a phenomenal rate.  I'm just hoping either you guys DO release that Extended Mode, or a modder makes a Long War mod for this game...

Maybe I'm just expecting too much.  It has just always bugged me that tech can be fully skippable, considering we honestly don't have that many branches to research, and the Firaxis games just feel rushed.  The originals technically did too, but we weren't fighting against a doom counter, and we could play for as long as we wanted.  Xenonauts 1 almost does this, but the number of ships that start showing up after a while just get unmanageable, and ratings start tanking.  While not having an actual Doom Counter, you will lose if you play too long.

[Skitso]

13 hours ago, endersblade said:

I totally get where you're coming from.  But the problem is, I feel like you're catering to the wrong crowd.  Those of us who are veterans of this genre, (albeit probably the minority, so I understand why you would focus on the majority) understand that these games aren't meant to be short.  But people who either started with Firaxis XCOM/XCOM2/Chimera Squad (gods forbid...) and wanted to test this one out come here not realizing that they aren't the same game.  There's a reason the Long War mods are so popular, and it's because of people like me lol.  This shouldn't be the kind of game you sit down to and complete inside of a couple of hours.  It should be something you come back to several times over the course of several days.  A 'grand' strategy game, if you will.  We are fighting a war of attrition against an alien menace hellbent on taking our planet from us.  This isn't Independence Day where a couple of ships get taken out inside of a week, it's a full on invasion.

I'm not saying this needs to happen now.  I understand and fully support the road map you guys are on, as the content and patches are coming out at a phenomenal rate.  I'm just hoping either you guys DO release that Extended Mode, or a modder makes a Long War mod for this game...

Maybe I'm just expecting too much.  It has just always bugged me that tech can be fully skippable, considering we honestly don't have that many branches to research, and the Firaxis games just feel rushed.  The originals technically did too, but we weren't fighting against a doom counter, and we could play for as long as we wanted.  Xenonauts 1 almost does this, but the number of ships that start showing up after a while just get unmanageable, and ratings start tanking.  While not having an actual Doom Counter, you will lose if you play too long.

Video game franchises can definitely lose their way when developers or publishers shift their focus to appeal to a broader audience or chase trends, often alienating the core fans who originally made those games successful. I can't see GH or Xenonauts going that far - at least not yet. But comments like the one Chris made above do make me question if we are inevitably heading that way...

Many of my favorite franchises have died in this process:

Dead Space, killed by changing it from survival horror to linear, cinematic action to cater casuals

Sim City, killed by over-simplifying mechanics in an attempt to cater casuals

Mass Effect, killed by losing narrative depth and character-driven storytelling to add a bloated open world checklist gameplay to cater casuals

...and the list goes on, but I still have faith in Chris and the team. Fingers crossed.

 

Edited March 19 by Skitso

[endersblade]

8 minutes ago, Skitso said:

Video game franchises can definitely lose their way when developers or publishers shift their focus to appeal to a broader audience or chase trends, often alienating the core fans who originally made those games successful. I can't see GH or Xenonauts going that far - at least not yet. But comments like the one Chris made above do make me question if we are inevitably heading that way...

Many of my favorite franchises have died in this process:

Dead Space, killed by changing it from survival horror to linear action

Sim City, killed by over-simplifying mechanics

Mass Effect, killed by changing a clever RPG witch branching story to an open world, bloated check-list-shooter with nonsense writing

 

The joys of being old as dirt is getting to see all the things you love crumble to dust...nobody makes games with love anymore, it's all about the cash grab.  (I am by NO MEANS pointing that at GHI, btw)

[Chris]

22 hours ago, endersblade said:

I totally get where you're coming from.  But the problem is, I feel like you're catering to the wrong crowd.  Those of us who are veterans of this genre, (albeit probably the minority, so I understand why you would focus on the majority) understand that these games aren't meant to be short.  But people who either started with Firaxis XCOM/XCOM2/Chimera Squad (gods forbid...) and wanted to test this one out come here not realizing that they aren't the same game.  There's a reason the Long War mods are so popular, and it's because of people like me lol.  This shouldn't be the kind of game you sit down to and complete inside of a couple of hours.  It should be something you come back to several times over the course of several days.  A 'grand' strategy game, if you will.  We are fighting a war of attrition against an alien menace hellbent on taking our planet from us.  This isn't Independence Day where a couple of ships get taken out inside of a week, it's a full on invasion.

I'm not saying this needs to happen now.  I understand and fully support the road map you guys are on, as the content and patches are coming out at a phenomenal rate.  I'm just hoping either you guys DO release that Extended Mode, or a modder makes a Long War mod for this game...

Maybe I'm just expecting too much.  It has just always bugged me that tech can be fully skippable, considering we honestly don't have that many branches to research, and the Firaxis games just feel rushed.  The originals technically did too, but we weren't fighting against a doom counter, and we could play for as long as we wanted.  Xenonauts 1 almost does this, but the number of ships that start showing up after a while just get unmanageable, and ratings start tanking.  While not having an actual Doom Counter, you will lose if you play too long.

Yeah, but remember Xenonauts 2 already isn't a game you can complete in a couple of hours. If you're assuming that each mission takes only 15 mins (which is a bit of stretch once you get past the early missions) then that's still 8.75 hours for a campaign spent just on the tactical map. Realistically each campaign is an absolute minimum of 10 hours, and for a lot of people it's in the 15-20 hour region. It's already a long game, even if you win your first campaign - much longer than the first game was.

However once the mod tools are out I can almost guarantee someone will immediately make a longer and expanded version of the campaign and everyone will be happy. The type of people who like Long War are a pretty small subset of the people who buy these types of games, but they're hugely overrepresented in terms of the active community and people who are interested in making mods!

[Skitso]

@Chris, what did you mean with this 

"The UFO Delegation system has been disabled until Milestone 6, as I think releasing it without the "Extended Mode" for people who really want to do lots of crash sites would be a mistake."

in the recent patch notes? Is it something different or has the plans changed?

[endersblade]

In the third month after the full invasion starts, I had my second terror mission.  Wraiths, Androns, and Cyberdrones.  By this point I had Accelerated weapons and barely researched Lasers.  Three months.  That's ridiculous. By three months, Sebellians should be the strongest aliens we should encounter.  This is what I'm talking about.  We barely have time to actually enjoy the newly researched gear before you have to scramble for even newer gear to handle basically end-game threats.

First ~5 months of the game, fighting Cleaners and introducing Sectons - Terror missions with Sectons and Cleaners would be an interesting idea to give us more to do with them

First ~3 months after Invasion starts, Mantids/Sectons/Psyons

~3 - ~6 months, the above + Sebellians

~6 - ~9 months, elites of these aliens show up

~9- ~12 months, Androns and Probes

~12 - ~15 months, Wraiths and Cyberdrones, and Andron elites show up, now starting to use mixed crews

~15 and beyond - Eternals and everything in between, more numbers, more ships, etc

Terror missions - any of the aliens available per the above, plus Reapers, later months, the Elite Reapers (whatever they're called in this game)

This would give us a comfortable 2 YEARS to fight, research, gear up, gain experience, expand our bases, and feel like we're fighting a proper war.  Now, again, I have NOT completed the game yet.  I have absolutely no idea what the end-game is like, or how long a full campaign takes.  But from what I HAVE experienced, it feels very forcefully rushed.  I'll keep playing and see how things go. But I feel that giving us about 3 months with each alien type is enough for us to adapt to fighting them, both in research/gear and tactics.

Edited March 19 by endersblade

[Tchey]

Hi,

I understand the idea of a rush to beat the aliens, so it's a constant run forward to get techs etc.

And at the same time, i'd also much prefer to have time to actually play with my new toys. Current play on beta, i go straight to Laser as the Extended or Magnetic (damn can't remember the name...) weapons would be obsolete before i even equip my team. And also, have several valid choices, rather than tech1<tech2<tech3...

So i guess i'm part of the semi active "Long War (i don't like Firaxis xcom games) / OXCE-Files / XCE-Division" crowd.

[ooey]

I like long games too! The original XCOM: EU got it right. 35 missions to completion is far too short. 100 is much better. I don't want this game to be short (we have waited long enough for it!).

[laagamer]

On 3/19/2025 at 12:01 PM, Chris said:

Yeah, but remember Xenonauts 2 already isn't a game you can complete in a couple of hours. If you're assuming that each mission takes only 15 mins (which is a bit of stretch once you get past the early missions) then that's still 8.75 hours for a campaign spent just on the tactical map. Realistically each campaign is an absolute minimum of 10 hours, and for a lot of people it's in the 15-20 hour region. It's already a long game, even if you win your first campaign - much longer than the first game was.

However once the mod tools are out I can almost guarantee someone will immediately make a longer and expanded version of the campaign and everyone will be happy. The type of people who like Long War are a pretty small subset of the people who buy these types of games, but they're hugely overrepresented in terms of the active community and people who are interested in making mods!

Very interesting! 

[Alienkiller]

Comrades, yeah the Problem with an to short game the Testers have been announced already. But we all can understand the Devs too, that they wanna make an much cooler Game then the Predecessor with Story-Vids, Story-Parts etc. for the Mainstream and Predecessor-Gamers, which isn´t to long and isn´t to short.

Let´s see what the Milestone 6 will bring in and what the Modders can do (with all integrated translations). I like longer Games too like UFO 2 ET with 2,5 to 3 Years of Gameplay or the old X-Com-Row / UFO 1 ET with about 2 Years of Gameplay.

The important Thing is, that all Missing Parts and Parts with Reworks / Refits etc. which are missing in Milestone 5 get done first. There are to many Stopgaps left. But what get done in Milestone 4 / 5 is an big important Step forward to the first Milestones (1 to 3).  

[skaianDestiny]

I'd honestly say the current progression is a good balance for people newer to the genre or this game. A super long game is something best left to the modders and people who like this game enough they want 30 more hours per playthrough. I myself have some ideas on how to extend and increase the difficulty.

[ooey]

30 hours just isn't enough for a tactical strategy game. Sorry.

Edited May 9 by ooey