On replayability so far

[Solver]

I've accumulated some thoughts on replayability so far. We all know it was one of the amazing parts of X-COM, so here's a few points on it, and the variety of gameplay.

1. Map variety. In a game like this, I believe the quantity is significant. I'll hopefully be playing this for hundreds of missions, hence the need for map variety. Xenonauts does pretty well in this, except that maps are very unevenly spread, and that more maps are still needed. By an uneven spread I mean, in my current game I've maybe had 1 or 2 Arctic missions, 1 Soviet Town mission and no Mid-East town missions, with loads of the familiar Farm/Industrial.

I do think that ultimately making heavier use of randomization for some maps would improve replayability by a lot, and the support is there due to the submap system. I know it is already supposed to work that way with randomization but it does not always feel like it does. At least the two terror maps that I get most of the time seem to have no random elements, I am well familiar with their buildings by now.

On the upside, the underlying system is very good, and it seems relatively easy to create maps (and there's a healthy mapping community), so I am confident that this point will be very strong.

2. UFO variety. Something I mentioned briefly in another thread yesterday, I find it problematic that there is almost no overlap at any given time in the types of UFOs appearing. If it's Corvettes, then it is Corvettes until landing ships appear, which then cause Corvettes to disappear, and so on. It actually takes a lot of the fun out of air combat because it becomes too repetitive. My current game has Cruisers currently, so I know every contact is a Cruiser, so I also know I don't need any light missiles or such, that I just need to scramble jets with a full torpedo loadout. Every time.

Plus of course it leads to what feels like worse map variety because you get them in clusters. Early on, you'll get the maps that are for small UFOs, then these maps disappear and you get maps of other sizes. There is no mix as the game proceeds.

This is something fairly easy to fix, just by tweaking the timelines and probabilities of the different UFO types. Let me still get the occasional scout when it's cruisers flying around.

3. Aliens. Ideally, I'd like to see one more alien race. There's Caesans that correspond to Sectoids, Sebillians are Snakemen, Androns are Mutons and Preators are Ethereals. Plus some companion races. I do feel that there is one more lacking to hit the sweet spot, preferrably a race with some very scary companion, like Sectopods were. Man I miss those guys. But I realize that adding alien races is an effort due to the graphics.

That said, aliens seem to suffer from a problem slightly similar to my UFO point above, though not as bad. In my current game for instance, Caesans have essentially disappeared quite quickly, almost every missions is Sebs with the occasional Andron mission.

By the way, why are they called Preators and not Praetors? The latter is probably what they are intended to convey.

4. Needs more curveballs. In the long term, I think it'd be best to have occasional unpredictable events, emergent or not. Again, like the original X-COM. In it, sometimes you'd get lucky to capture an alien Navigator very early, giving you early hyperwave decoders. Or sometimes the first terror mission would come up really early requiring you to respond to it with mostly green troops. Some unpredictable elements like that would really improve replayability further. For contrast, that's poorly done in the Firaxis remake, where I know the first terror mission hits around 15th of April, that Mutons appear in the last days of April, and that my encounters before the terror mission will include a shot down small scout and a large one, and one landed scout.

[Sathra]

It should be Praetors. Where does it say Preators?

And there is another alien race. They work with Androns alot.

[Solver]

It does unfortunately say Preators in the files, I'm pretty sure. I do not have the game available now but that is how I remember it.

Harridans are a pretty good race but ultimately IMO not that exciting. The main thing about them is that they use sniper rifles. The cyberdisks, when they appear, are barely noticeable. What I miss is pretty much something like Sectopods, a slow, hard-hitting and near-industructible unit.

[Sathra]

Heavy drones should be that machine. Are they not? Its the third Drone type.

And I meant the other, other race that works with the Androns. The teleporters.

[Solver]

Ahh, hmm, haven't actually met heavy drones. A bit weird.

As for the teleporting Wraith, it's a good idea but I've found them so far to mostly be a nuissance. Good idea but not implemented well. They seem to be poor at choosing when to teleport (sometimes they'll teleport away when they have a good shot on one of my troops), and their erratic behaviour just leads me to spend a bunch of extra turns chasing them down to end the mission. Though they should be one of the more fun enemies if given saner AI.

[StellarRat]

I think having the aliens deploy in houses and in different locations more randomly would definitely make even the same maps more interesting. Right now, I pretty much know where to expect them. Obviously, I wouldn't want them to deploy in stupid indefensible locations, but they certainly aren't taking advantage of all the possible strong points right now. This kind of goes hand in hand with them avoiding second floor rooms.

[Lightzy]

Replayability is about good solid game mechanics which have no design flaws or bugs which affect them.

But replayability is truly MOSTLY ABOUT a game that feels fair. Maybe tough, but fair.

Right now xenonauts is designed to get there, but is not there yet, and so could be made a lot more replayable.

The feeling of progression could be improved. Right now you always advance in tandem with your enemies (or behind them), and so the game never really changes. Same weapons, just higher 'numbers'. the feeling remains the same.

You get 2-shot killed later in the game with wolf armor just the same as you got 1-2 shotted in the beginning with no armor at all.

I'd say you even progress backwards because weapon/armor stats for you become weaker in comparison to the enemies advancement.

Hit chance for your soldiers remain pretty much the same, though hit chances for the aliens become close to 100% (because they always fire bursts of 4 plasma bolts, at a minimum)... doesn't feel fair, and so isn't fun.

[StellarRat]

...The feeling of progression could be improved. Right now you always advance in tandem with your enemies (or behind them), and so the game never really changes. Same weapons, just higher 'numbers'. the feeling remains the same.

You get 2-shot killed later in the game with wolf armor just the same as you got 1-2 shotted in the beginning with no armor at all.

I'd say you even progress backwards because weapon/armor stats for you become weaker in comparison to the enemies advancement.

Hit chance for your soldiers remain pretty much the same, though hit chances for the aliens become close to 100% (because they always fire bursts of 4 plasma bolts, at a minimum)... doesn't feel fair, and so isn't fun...

I'm a little confused by your statement Lightzy. I'm playing at Normal difficulty. I've played about 15 ground missions now and only lost two guys and had maybe two more wounded. The first 10 or so, were with only ballistic weapons and NO armor. Both of those losses were due to accidental mouse clicks. Now I have better armor and better weapons. My guys definitely have the upper hand right now compared to when they started. What level of difficulty have you choosen? Is it possible you're not using cover, overwatch, and bounding movement?

[svidangel]

Hmm, it would be very unlike the old XCOM, but I would enjoy a greater mixing of the races as well.

Perhaps once you get to the larger ships, you could have a mix of Sebillion thugs watching the outside, a couple Caesian technicians keeping the ship running... that sort of thing. Would give you a nice appreciation for how your weapons have improved vs the aliens as you go along, while you are hitting the meaner enemies.

Also would give you more choices in prioritizing targets. Focus on the one baddy in view, or try to take out 3-4 of the Sebs really quickly?

[StellarRat]

Hmm, it would be very unlike the old XCOM, but I would enjoy a greater mixing of the races as well.

Perhaps once you get to the larger ships, you could have a mix of Sebillion thugs watching the outside, a couple Caesian technicians keeping the ship running... that sort of thing. Would give you a nice appreciation for how your weapons have improved vs the aliens as you go along, while you are hitting the meaner enemies.

Also would give you more choices in prioritizing targets. Focus on the one baddy in view, or try to take out 3-4 of the Sebs really quickly?

Sounds like a good idea. Also, more mixed alien weapons would be good too. I don't think there is much variety in those in general. They have nothing like a rocket launcher or grenades as far as I can tell.

[Sathra]

They have grenades, they just don't use them for whatever reason. The plasma cannon is meant to be the alien rocket launcher, but it got nerfed pretty severely.

Part of the lack of variety is that a ton of aliens have only the heavy plasma or plasma cannon as a weapon option. They also don't have sprites for anything else either. So there's alot of aliens that can only burst fire with HP (which is basically a machinegun).

[Cursive]

I'm sure it's already in the game proper and I just haven't found it yet - but quick movement/instant movement in the ground combat phases would hugely help my sense of replayability. Naturally, you could be jolted out of a move when a hostile is sighted or similar events - but I tend to know where I want my soldiers to be and what I want them to do, and I can never tell if swapping to another while one is moving is going to cut them off or cause other problems... Another nice thing to have for replay would be a complete lack of knowledge on the player's part.

I mean to say, why not occasionally have landingships (without troop capacity for an assault/some other sort of reason for not attacking) roaming around early game? The terror and confusion caused to the player would be fantastic - and given if I know the lore right, the landingships would disappear soon enough anyhow. Similarly, occasionally getting light scouts in the late game would be a breath of fresh air instead of knowing that each ship is going to be relatively similar in size.

Maybe have the alien 'plan of attack' differ from game to game. I.E sometimes they'll focus on one particular region, othertimes they'll spread out, still other times they'll focus on harassing the Xenonauts and keeping them distracted... Little things like that.

[lemm]

There is a sizable community map pack already, and I think there will be lots of mods, maybe even a couple of total conversion mods.

Most of the "replayability" will come from the community.

[Lightzy]

Stellarat, then you haven't gotten to the point yet where each and every enemy is a crack shot with 4 plasma shots per turn and can see you from a distance.

Believe me, it doesn't matter how you move then, because you don't know where the next 4shot burst is coming from, and many cases 2 or even 3 of the shots hit

this is on normal/ironman (I find it pointless to play anything but ironman and game balance should be around ironman I believe)

ps. also makes the game rather impossible once you lose some of your colonels/commanders

Replayable = tough but fair.

It isn't 'fair' when every mission you walk around blind, sniped by 4-shot bursts with heavy plasmas from random directions (everywhere on the map if you're spotted and don't kill the alien that very same turn). It doesn't make you happy to do a mission. No real tactics involved but blind luck.

Edited June 4, 2013 by Lightzy

[Gauddlike]

There definitely needs to be an overlap on the craft that are active at any one time.

I agree that mixing up the crews of the ships a little would also add something.

Sometimes that Ceasan crew may be transporting a squad of Sebillian marines or a group of Androns between missions.

Dividing the UFO race designation between ship crew and mission personnel/passengers should do the trick.

[Sathra]

Damn, was going to comment then remembered I haven't played vanilla for a few days.

Part of the difficulty might be due to a huge number of aliens armed with what are basically machineguns, the accuracy calculations being a bit odd, and most aliens having sight range equal to unarmoured humans.

[Steelpoint]

For reference the three main species in the game are the Ceasan's, Sebillian's and Andron's. All the other alien races are attached to these three species including the Praetors. Each three main species has a few select sub species that are sometimes attached to them, however you should never see any of the three main species together.

As Gauddlike says, there should be more overlapping Alien species on ships. I think this could be coordinated by the Alien UFO mission type, for example a Landing Ship on a Terror Misson that is shot down could have mostly Andron's with some Ceasan's alongside them, mostly non-combatants since they would mostly be the technicians.

[Sathra]

Totally going to do this for the next version of the mod. Should make combat more interesting. Or horrible, since you'd get the sight range of Caesans alongside Sebillian heavy infantry.

[Gauddlike]

Setting the ship to generate it's crew separately from the mission staff would do that.

For example the wave generates a terror mission which is to be undertaken by a landing ship.

The landing ship generates its crew, which turn out to be Ceasan.

The terror mission part then generates the race that will be terrorising.

In this case it will be Andron.

If the ship gets to it's destination then you will be facing an Andron terror mission as normal.

If you were to shoot it down en route then you would be facing the survivors of that terror squad, plus the survivors of the crew.

[Sathra]

Oh, I was just going to put 0-3 or something of another race for a bunch of mission types. And assured numbers for others.

[Gauddlike]

I was thinking more about the reasons behind having mixed race missions rather than just the numbers themselves.

Then I kind of went off on a tangent on how to keep terror missions for dedicated terror squads while still keeping some variation when shooting craft down.

Don't know if that would need coding or if you can set the terror mission ship and the ground combat separately, never looked.

[Steelpoint]

The crew compliment is set based on the mission it is undertaking, for example a Landing Ship that is shot down will have a different crew compliment than the same ship participating in a Terror Mission.

So I would assume that setting different values would not be hard.

[Gauddlike]

Thought it was but couldn't remember, haven't adjusted any of the mission files since they first got added.

[Lightzy]

Personally I prefer up to 2 different races in each mission.

More than that and I'd be feeling like its some kind of carnival

[StellarRat]

Personally I prefer up to 2 different races in each mission.

More than that and I'd be feeling like its some kind of carnival

Agree. Although, I think I've seen three different races on Terror Missions. But, those are kind of a carnival...