Feedback on M6

[Blade]

I am following this game for (many) years, and do a playthrough now and then. I finally did a Commander on 6.29.0, and pleased to say that I could complete it without any major bugs or balance problems! I enjoyed it, though I feel that the game is getting more complete every release, but not as much more interesting.

I am trying to be brief, as I could write pages, and in most cases I would be repeating my previous posts.

Small things that may be a bug:

- fusion weapon research is unavailable after alien fusion weapons (cruiser). Ultra-dense alloys (harvester) needed. Not sure if this is intentional.
- Advanced Gauss weapons have much higher sell price than build cost
- UDO missions doesn't select the soldiers selected for the dropship

What I like:

- New music: less repetative, more pleasing
- Reducing dropship capacity - works nicely, a new dropship is now #1 priority instead of last
- Air combat - works out surprisingly well. Lasers have lower DPS than basic canon, but have double the range that makes them useful. Missiles are useful, armor works well, UFOs no longer 1-shot you. 

- Cleaners: I like the concept and the missions, it adds fun detail to early game!

What I don't like, with suggestions:

- Delegation - I hate this change that the game basically takes away opportunities to play... the game. It feels unfair, bounty is pocket change. I suggest adding half the alenium and alloy loot, and 50+ OPs so I can play 1 of 3 scenarios free.
- Vehicles - still useless simply because it competes with soldiers for space. Big waste of time and resources. Simply add 1/2/3 free spots on dropships for vehicles.
- Base defense batteries - broken concept because of implementation. If my base has no soldiers, the UFO will destroy it anyway as even 2 or 3 batteries are too few. If it has garrison, I don't care if it lands, the more they are, the better the loot! These should shoot UFOs at several hundred km range on the strategic map instead, and should be able to weaken or kill most incoming UFOs, and assist interception of other targets too to justify the cost to build.

- Training Center seems overpriced. Could not afford it till late game. Good concept though, so less used soldiers can catch up without actually being on the field.
- Aircraft engine upgrades are overpriced. It is cheaper and better just replace the existing fighters. Love the idea, just make them bargain price.
- Weapons - still boring. Shield VS armor concept never materialized, penetration and destruction doesn't really matter, all weapon sets are the same. Lasers are worse than magnetic weapons.
I would make lasers pulse lasers (have only burst options without recoil, like 3/6/9/12, no penetration, low destruction, low damage per shot), gauss would be single shot only, but increased range, plasma and fusion destroys armor but shorter range. Fusion might be AoE as well. Looking forward to mod support.

- Launchers - still missing the stun/shock option. I would suggest adding at least 1 more tier, with aim support (blaster launcher?).
- Air combat when lost tracking of UFO - head to last known position should target where the interceptor was aiming, not the last known position. We know for sure that it won't be there.

- Aliens. Now I have the feeling that there are 2 types only - ones that shoot you, and the fugly tank that blows you to bloody pulp. I don't dread the greys for their psychic abilities as only pink ones have one. I don't dread the wraiths because they don't teleport, and their cloak is off. All I need to mind that I one-shot them. I would suggest shield on, limited teleport ability, but less tough. I don't get the bugs (the bug launcher could be fun with an explosive popper bug mine though), the lizards are fine, the robots are not much different now from the lizards. Floating drones are good now, real annoying with levitation move and healing ability. Reapers are not very intimidating now, but annoying if they eat the civilians. Make them harder to spot, as they're excellent lurkers?

+1: I would still insist keeping and re-purposing alien weapons instead of making new ones - so the lasers and Gauss would be the only real human-made weapons. Just re-purpose the rest with engineers, no point wasting Mr. Brain's time on something we already have in our hands.

[fusion-waffle]

Great points! As a player new to xenonauts I agree with some of these points  (my background:  I played a bunch of UFO enemy unknown a decade or two ago, I've been playing a lot of xenonauts 2 in the last month (v6.26 - v6.29), currently enjoying playing through my first ironman commander campaign).

- Music -- I particularly enjoyed the atmospheric music during an alien base assault. Extremely ominous, great match for delving into a spooky alien base and wondering where the cyberdrones are lurking. Love it. I was a bit sad that during the 2nd alien base assault of a campaign it played some standard combat music instead of the ominous atmospheric track.

- Air combat -- I enjoy it and never autoresolve the air battles. Agree that there are interesting decisions with tech & loadout choices for interceptors. I like the different behaviour & weapons of the various UFOs in air combat & the different tactics you can use.  That said, I'm not very good at it & get my planes destroyed more often than I'd prefer. I appreciate the design choice that interceptors can be repaired/rush built for cash instead of needing to rebuild them entirely with the full alenium/alloy cost.

- Cleaners -- the cleaner missions are great. It adds contrast to fight humans before fighting aliens, and initially fighting humans with low damage SMGs is a kinder learning curve. I also love the mission design with timed reinforcement waves or abduction countdown adding pressure to move faster and take more risks instead of keeping comfortable with slow and steady overwatch creep.  The various bounties of extra resources (extra OPs for capturing VIP, extra cash for not blowing up the convoy trucks, salvaging and reusing accelerated cleaner rifles) is nice as well.

- re: UFO Delegation -- I don't hate it, but it does feel a little artificial that it starts costing OPs to attempt to recover a UFO you could previously do for free. But I get that its maybe intended to push you to focus on taking down the next tier of UFOs instead of farming the easy UFOs for resources and alien junk.  Compared to the default strategic operations of spending 100 OPs to get $500k or a small stock of alienium or alloys, spending 100 or 150 OPs to avoid delegation lets you attempt a UFO recovery that might net you 50/50 alienium & alloys, or 100/100+ for a larger UFO, along with a pile of alien junk that can sell for $100k-$300k. So spending 100 OP to skip a UFO delegation and attempt recovery still seems a better investment of OPs than doing any of the strategic operations -- provided you can win the tactical mission!  The game lets your OPs go negative if you refuse UFO delegation and want to attempt recovery yourself --- does it ever actually block you from attempting a UFO recovery based on your OP balance?

- re: Base defence batteries -- interesting point.  I build a few defence batteries, but I only ever had one fire during my first campaign. When it fired it completely destroyed the UFO, so in my limited experience they are 100% reliable and work too well!  Through four campaigns, I've never experienced an alien assault on my base -- so I'm missing out on what could be a fun and challenging experience ("'retaliation' mission? hell no, that sounds bad. launch the interceptors!").   Perhaps on harder difficulties the aliens could use some mean tactics to give them better odds of getting their assault team past your interceptors into your main base (I was thinking maybe a 1-2-3 punch: they first launch a few bombing missions to bait your interceptors away from your base, then follow it up with a wave of interceptors over your main base trying to chew up your air force, then promptly follow that up with their retaliation UFO).  But, on second thoughts, focusing on adding stuff to the game that only impacts harder difficulties is probably not a great investment, better to add stuff that both new and experienced players can experience across all difficulty levels.  Anyhow, maybe the strategy of shooting down retaliation UFOs is bad and I should instead be following your strategy of letting them through to my main base and enjoying the battles and the loot.

- re: Training centre -- yeah, due to cost I've never built one of these early, but I think it is possible: someone over on the steam discussion board was recommending prioritising building a training centre as the first thing you do! I usually prioritise getting an early second science lab staffed with scientists, but if I deferred that I'd have the $750k needed for an early training centre. So maybe the training centre cost is already balanced, and its a matter of picking your opening strategy. I like how there isn't enough cash to do everything, you have to prioritise, that keeps the decisions interesting. I think the training centre & the regional bonuses for north america & western europe that boost stats of new recruits and training rate are great design decisions, in that they lower the cost of replacing veteran troops as you suffer losses during the mid and late game.  By lowering the cost of replacing veteran troops, it reduces the chance that a player feels they need to save scum or abandon an ironman campaign after a bad mission with severe veteran troop losses.

- re: Aliens:

cyberdrones: I love the design of the cyberdrones in that how they force you to to adapt your play, particularly in the midgame. They're a bit less fun once you have endgame weapons as they're too easy to kill by burning through their frontal armour with fusion rounds so you don't really need to focus on flanking them, tricking them to change their facing, etc. If there's capacity for extra cyberdrone content in scope at some point (DLC?) maybe there could be endgame-tier cyberdrones with an extra nasty trick -- a frontal 180 degree deflector shield that bounces the first few fusion rounds?

floating drones: I only noticed one levitate for the first time on campaign #4! Cool! Maybe they could levitate a little more often?

reapers & mantids with symbiote launcher -- both are usually easy to deal with in isolation, but I did experience one nightmarish terror mission where the reapers went to town on the civilian population and the mantids were bombarding my guys with symbiotes, and my squad got completely overrun by a huge wave of reapers and bugs, far too many to shoot. Most of my guys died and a couple of survivors fled in the dropship. It was great!  But I've only ever experienced this nightmare once in a few campaigns, sadly most of the time reapers get shot without being able to do much.

The sound cues for the different aliens are great as well -- it's nice (& fair) to be able to start stressing about cyberdrones or lurking reapers before you can see them.

The endgame eternal boss seems a bit easy? Mind controlling your troops is a good challenge, particularly if your troops are tangled up in a messy pitched battle against all the bodyguards, but (veteran difficulty) the boss melts if you suppress it and can move 1 of your fusion wielding heavies into point blank range. I found it much more challenging to capture one of the regular eternals alive prior to the endgame.  Tangent: I really love the mission design of the two part endgame set piece mission, how there's an in-mission reason to rush and take some risks during the first mission, but you simultaneously really want to avoid taking too many casualties in that first mission.

Edited January 14 by fusion-waffle
copyedit for clarity

[Blade]

Yes, we have a different perspective, but a common background. I played X1 with and without mods, and some earlier X2 milestones. I remember the same aliens in a different format, with different weapons we could just pick up from the ground and use. And I am mixing this all with my memories of the original UFO game, the X-COM games and Phoenix Point, and several more-or-less successful successors. I even played Laser Squad, the first game of this turn-based genre. I will never forget the robot-dog of the last mission.

Thinking about the training center, we don't know how does it work. I assumed it works like the more experienced soldiers are training the less experienced, so soldiers with lower stats benefit from it. If it just gives a flat training increase to every soldier instead, then it is a valid strategy to start with it, so you have better soldiers from the start. I usually start with a hospital, knowing that my guys will get shot up anyway, no matter how well I play (or how much I save scum). A hospital increases the availability of my experienced soldiers, which helps avoiding being overwhelmed. In older UFO games you had to expand research immediately - here it doesn't seem to be true any more. Research speed is not so crucial as more advanced artifacts are tied to more advanced UFOs, and these are strictly scheduled. I ended up with 3 labs and 3 workshops, 4 looks like an overkill, you might get away having 2 only. Defense structures are a waste because they're tied to retaliation UFO missions. As all my bases are air bases first, there is always a good compliment of fighters which must be enough to defend the base. If I get unaware and can't get back to defend, I reload. If I can't shoot the attacking force, then I take off 2 or 3 times, bring torpedoes and missiles and attrite the enemy while they are getting close. If this is my main base, then I might want to let them land and shoot them up. No point having a defense structure just for this one rare case. Resources are limited, spend them only on what you will use, preferably for a long time.

I also liked that I can hear the enemy - even exploited this with reapers. As far as I know the AI doesn't use this, is not actively looking for me even if some of them already had an encounter. Oh, Jagged Alliance 2! Hearing was a part of enemy senses, and they acted accordingly. Night missions made sense - you could get into point blank range to individual enemies and kill them silently, and move on! But if you made any loud noise, enemies were converging to it - which you could also exploit by throwing grenades the other direction. It was a so excellent game in 1999, don't get it how could they fuck up JA3 in 2023 where none of this fun is present. Unfortunately in X2 darkness is only a disadvantage for us puny humans, so I avoided dark scenarios. Sorry for the rant.  

So you can hunt them down in small groups given that none of them see you at the end of your turn. The AI is not bad, but individual units seem to take action independently, not the same as you act. The only difference may be missions with Eternals - there I have seen (or rather heard) aliens shooting the wall where my soldiers were standing without seeing them. Luckily that wall was indestructible.  This was the point when I thought that I could kill all of them and capture the Eternal leader if I spend a couple of more hours, but why bother. I realized that when he dies, I win, so just moved 3 soldiers in range and shot him before he could use any of his powers. Turned out he is not impervious to plasma at short range.

By the way, the extra APs the last armor gives doesn't count towards the 100% the attack costs are calculated from. Using these APs you can shoot a sniper rifle twice, or do 3 aimed shotgun attacks. I am not sure if this is intended, but was certainly welcome.

[fusion-waffle]

10 hours ago, Blade said:

Thinking about the training center, we don't know how does it work. I assumed it works like the more experienced soldiers are training the less experienced, so soldiers with lower stats benefit from it.

[...]In older UFO games you had to expand research immediately - here it doesn't seem to be true any more. Research speed is not so crucial as more advanced artifacts are tied to more advanced UFOs, and these are strictly scheduled. 

[...]Unfortunately in X2 darkness is only a disadvantage for us puny humans, so I avoided dark scenarios.

Re: the training center, I found the in-game tooltips explaining the training rate & progression point mechanics quite clear, once I figured out to hover my mouse over them in the base screen. In terms of how it actually works within the game's universe, the art has a shooting range, weights, maybe some treadmills, so I guess the soldiers keep busy.  But there is also a training rate bonus when you interrogate captured aliens. What I am sure happens is that after their interviews, the captured aliens are recruited to help staff the training centre and become combat drill instructors or guest lecturers on alien military tactics and strategy.

Thanks for your comment about expanding research immediately being necessary in some of the older UFO games --- I'm probably reusing that strategy based on memory of those games without exploring what other opening strategies are viable in X2. It is the mark of a good game if X2 supports multiple viable openings in terms of what to build first (hospital first, training center first, expanded research first) with different tradeoffs.

Re: avoiding combat missions in the dark, agree -- I also avoid those, probably based on old traumatic memories of playing UFO enemy unknown for the first time and having all my rookies walking into a cornfield in the dark and getting picked off by shots coming out of the darkness.  But out of laziness/misadventure I did accidentally launch an X2 ground combat mission in the dark yesterday, my first X2 fight in the dark after a few campaigns, and I found it very atmospheric -- it helped that I was playing late at night.  It'd be cool if X2 had some risk/reward mechanic that offers some benefit of attempting missions in the dark, as the darkness is atmospheric and adds more variety to the gameplay. X2 already has a risk/reward mechanic for UFOs that have landed instead of being shot down containing more live aliens but extra loot to recover -- which makes complete sense. Currently it seems like darkness should always be avoided if playing X2 "optimally", but it'd be interesting if that wasn't the case. E.g. Darkest Dungeon has extra loot bonuses (and extra crit chance bonuses for both sides) when fighting in the dark, which was a cool game mechanic, even if it doesn't make much sense.