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Game is nearly unplayable for me


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Hello folks!

First of all, I want to thank you for making this jewel of a game. I'm a tremendous fan of xcom ufo and tftd as well as jagged alliance 2. I sincerely hope this game outdoes those in popularity (and sales!!) and resuscitates the genre.

I'm sorry for this whine, but there are four relatively minor gripes I have with this game which make it nearly impossible for me to enjoy it. I'll keep with the numbered list format of other suggestions on this board:

1) The game has no brightness/contrast option and this is horrible. My monitor isn't very bright so I effectively can't complete night time missions because a good 30% of the flares' radius is pitch black. I frequently get the alien spotted warning, but can't see the vicinity of the alien because it happens to be at the edge of the flare's range. This makes it very difficult to execute any kind of tactics, such as flanking, because I can't tell what the surrounding terrain looks like, whereas my troopers obviously can. This is very frustrating.

Also, I can't tell what I have selected in the intercept menu aircraft selection prompt due to low contrast between the selected unit and the box background.

2) The F17 and MiG32 are mislabeled as such because their frames are obviously those of the F16 and MiG31. Please rename them to "interceptor" and "heavy interceptor" to keep with the theme of the naming and to make this less comical. After all: you don't call the M16 an M17, you call it an assault rifle in the game. I think you could apply this theme to all vehicles, missiles and weapons. This is a very minor suggestion, but it would go far to improve the serious atmosphere of the game.

3) This game suffers a serious lack of a serious plane. You see: the Americans have already invented, built and flown a plane made to dogfight extraterrestrial aliens, with nuclear A2A missiles to boot, in the 60s and yet it isn't included in this game for some mysterious reason. You should consider adding this plane as a research option to supplant the MiG, while making the MiG a plane available by default. This would have the added benefit of making this game harder to lose due to one silly air combat mistake.

Just read this awesome mod thread here.

4) Jagged alliance allowed a merc to safely shoot past squaddies that were within 3? squares of the (friendly) shooter regardless of stance. This was good.

IIRC another thing JaggedAl did right was to allow mercs to get a bonus to their starting TUs in a turn proportionally to the TUs they had left in the previous turn. Ex: Gus would have 10 extra TUs at the start of next round if he takes no action this round. This added even more incentive to have mercs watch a lane of fire for a few turns while others advanced among other cool things. This was very good.

Edited by Why no YF12?
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Welcome to the forums, couple of those points I might be able to address for you.

1, I hadn't really noticed this, might be worth adding it to the suggestions forum in a thread of its own for consideration.

2, The F-17 and Mig-32 are reported in the Xenopedia as modifications of the F-16 and Mig-31 to Xenonaut specifications, hence the adjusted model numbers to differentiate.

3, There are other aircraft available for research later, you might be pleasantly surprised once you develop them so keep going.

4, You can shoot over friendlies that are in the next tile, past that though they are treated as any other object that is in the way.

I am not sure if this is working fully as some have complained that it has caused friendly fire (it may be down to recent changes to accuracy to give short range bonuses).

The AP units carrying over to the next turn was brought up previously but if I remember rightly the decision was that it promoted a defensive game where the devs wanted the aliens to be the defensive side and Xenonauts troops to be on the offensive.

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To be specific the firer has to be standing while the trooper in front of them has to be crouched.

Night missions are being looked at I think. Someone else mentioned that they were really damn dark and Chris said they'll revisit it soon.

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Thanks for your replies guys! I'm glad to hear Chris knows about the brightness/contrast issue.

Gauddlike, about item two:

Neither the US nor the SU change numbering for modified planes as long as the frame is the same. They usually append, and sometimes replace letters. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-16_Fighting_Falcon_variants

I still think the game would benefit from being consistent on the naming front. It shouldn't be an F17, it should be called a one-seat/light/interceptor to keep in line with weapon naming conventions. Sidewinders also.

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3) This game suffers a serious lack of a serious plane. You see: the Americans have already invented, built and flown a plane made to dogfight extraterrestrial aliens, with nuclear A2A missiles to boot, in the 60s and yet it isn't included in this game for some mysterious reason. You should consider adding this plane as a research option to supplant the MiG, while making the MiG a plane available by default. This would have the added benefit of making this game harder to lose due to one silly air combat mistake.

Just read this awesome mod thread here.

I believe they based the Foxtrot/Condor on aircraft that were mass produced, not experimental ones that were never really produced in large numbers since we're purchasing/modifying existing planes instead of building them from scratch.

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Neither the US or SU were responsible for the naming of the aircraft, the Xenonauts commander at the time was.

Clearly they went for the simple approach.

The problem with giving the first aircraft a generic name is that it needs to be followed by two or three equally unimaginative names in order to maintain that naming convention.

For the ballistic assault rifle it is followed by a laser assault rifle, a plasma assault rifle and a MAG assault rifle.

Fairly descriptive terms.

Naming the aircraft light, other light, medium and heavy interceptor as your suggestion appears to be is much less descriptive.

They do not have one single factor, for example weight, that differentiates them.

They have multiple differences including speed, manoeuvrability, weapon loadout and so on.

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3) This game suffers a serious lack of a serious plane. You see: the Americans have already invented, built and flown a plane made to dogfight extraterrestrial aliens, You should consider adding this plane as a research option to supplant the MiG, while making the MiG a plane available by default. This would have the added benefit of making this game harder to lose due to one silly air combat mistake.

CoughCoughFURYCoughCough. And between the Fortrot and the fury, we get several other heavy and light fighters.

As for number 4, I really hated that saving TU mechanic, as it really encouraged passivity. Better to wait a full turn before moving, or you won't get your best TU availability. It felt more like they had a TU bar that would only fill up to 75%, and the other 25% next turn, assuming you did nothing.

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You guys are right as always, but I still disagree with the naming of the starting planes. I think they're silly. I think it's the main reason why nobody takes the xenonaut organization seriously.

Alcari, a more sane approach is this: (pseudocode)

if current TU < .25*(max Tu)

TU bonus = current TU

else

TU bonus = .25*max TU

That will allow you to advance at a tactical pace, while keeping a reserve of TUs to get your guys out of serious trouble. It will let you feel like you're not wasting time units at the end of your turn - when you just don't have enough for any meaningful actions. It will smooth out time relativity for soldiers. It will allow a soldier with 63 TUs to have an advantage over one with only 62 because as long as you spend TUs past .25*max every round, no time unit is ever truly wasted.

This approach avoids the complication of forcing a purely defensive play-style, while preventing the frustration of being only a few TUs short of being able to perform a meaningful action and being forced to make your soldiers sit on their thumbs.

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Eh, but frustration is the entire point of the game. Not having enough to do what you want to do, that's perfect. You need to budget your TUs (and everything else, really) well so that you don't end up in a situation like that. If you don't budget them properly, then you simply shouldn't be able to do what you want to do.

I've never thought "Oh, no, I have extra TUs at the end of the turn." It's just a fact of life, not everything's going to work out perfectly. Hey, if I have enough TUs left over, then I might even get off a reaction fire shot. Who knows?

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The original xcom used energy to achieve a similar effect as this TU bonus.

If you run around like a lunatic then you basically have unusable TUs because you're collapsed on the ground wheezing. Stand still for a turn, and you get your breath (and TUs) back.

I'm not sure "bonus" TUs are a good mechanism. Benefits from standing still are already worked into your actions, e.g. If you don't move you can spend those TUs on higher accuracy.

I suppose you could add some additional defensive benefits, e.g. the longer you don't move the harder you are to detect (to a limit); camouflage tends to be much more effective if you're standing still, for example. Of course, if you've already been detected then standing still just makes you easier to hit :).

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Actually having the cover bonus increase if you spend a turn in the cover could be interesting, though it would mostly benefit the aliens.

Also going to have to vote No on the bonus TU's concept. It'd end up giving a bonus to units who get suppressed since they won't move, and if they get suppressed again it wouldn't have as much effect.

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