My impression after coming back with steam version

[Mordobb]

I'll be straight forward and by topic.

World map.

Nothing to declare, as expected.

Maybe nuilding bases could be a little less expansive so we could expand to 2 bases witohut much harrasment, it could spped the game a bit as with one base only thing are a bit slow, but i did not pass november timefreme ingame, so i may be wrong.

Aerial battle.

They are fun but too easy, At least as far as corvete with escort goes.

IMHO in mega upper supper dificulty it should be up to 5 ships each side. Beyond that the map would be too clogged, 3 ships is too easy.

*Food for tought scaling diff for aerial battle.

Base management.

The problem here is one and one only: soldier management, too much tabs for nothing.

Its a pain in the ass: 3 tables and a half that could fit in one.

- In the arming TAB:

Since we have an helicopter on the image shrink the soldier image and put a mini transport space management in there. Its a pita to have to go to airplane management and then switch to transport just to be able to place your men.

If not willing to do such at least in the tab put all soldiers portrait and weaponry to fit without having to scroll.

its a pain to have to go left and right just to be sure N2 is a sniper and Number 7 is an Assault To speak the truth Portrait are unecessary, you don t arrange your team by beauty, you arrange them by equipment depending on the sortie you want to do.

- In the arming TAB part2:

Not showing the health status, in %, of the soldier in this tab forces us to go to the recruiting tab, which by the way have such a big uselessly puzzling, redundant to the arming TAB, soldier excel sheet.

This could change with the reimplantation of training (in a more complex way please).

But the only usefull info of this sheet is the % of health the soldier have, so adding soldier % health in the soldier arming tab is a must.

Those 2 little details decrease a lot of the play experience, the way things are set now lack of practicality thus ,ake this part of the game an irritating experience.

The rest is OK to GOOD

Now to the main part. Ground combat.

Overall its ok, fun but it could be made more enjoyable changing propably big detail, and i don t know if its feasable due to AI limitation.

What the game really lack is a proper LOS implementation.

Right now, and this is my personal impression, it feels a bit dumb and is deceiving after you catch how things work.

Right now the LOS concept is way too basic and lack logic refining making the combat a bit too rought.

I don t know if its due to map but:

Soldiers are affected by myopi, they can t see stuff more than 20 meter in front of them.

Armor restrict sight but they also restrict pure front sight ? What the logic in that ? Helmet restrict lateral ad upward sight not front sight, if that is the problem augment lateral turn cost, especially when crouched it should take more time to turn to get in firing position, and firing readinees when looking trought a scope.

But the more pissing feature of the combat due to the actual system consist of 2 parts:

1) the lack of sight even if you are "scoped" myope scope too ?

This could be solved putting time penalty to turning + aiming.

2) The "leaping sight syndrom", the fact that if you (or the aliens) have a men on a far corner and the sniper on the diametral corner with open space you are able to shoot it, but if the soldier not there you not even able to see it.

I know its a double wind feature, but its so illogic it hurts, especially when the ennemy has snipers and one near your transport.

But i also find this feature on our side ridiculous.

Another minor annoyance is how the hell, if coming from the air, don t we know where the ufo is downed, maps aren t big enought to justify this.

then at least, if keeping things as now, implement Multiple UFO spawn location in the map. That would be greatly appreciated because after 3 sessions os a map you know exactly where to go.

A feature that would be nice is to allow shooting "over shoulder", if one soldier is crouched the one standing up on a square right next to it should be able to fire without hitting it.

Its not another annoyance that could turn pretty cool any, militari /police force is trained to so. Then I would say its a totally expected feature in such a game.

Normal pistol are pretty useless, i always wonder why they put them in games, too slow firerate, too low power, and absurdly lacking precision at short range, no shield or whatever to give them a use. Waste of work.

A thing that shocked me and it is probably the result of the short myope soldiers is the fact that lizardmens are stated as poor eyesight, and yet they see far longer than you when you don an armor.

This could be solved by helmet being optional, but this would surely implicate a minimum of locational damage, which would be aesomely cool (and maybe an excuse to carry pistols) but i don t know if this engine support this.

The last mistake of combat is not having weapon modularity. UFO series implemented it, and returning to this dull state is quite deceiving.

At the timeframe, many scopes, grenade launcher, laser sight, bipod etc.. were already there.

All in all the game is enjoyable, but it has extremely low replayability as it is, and i don t see this changing unless some considerable changes are done.

Right now my "november" game crashed on the "Hidden Movement" screen and sadly, even being a great apreciator of this kind of games, i really don t feel like starting another game right now.

Just because i feel its has not enought surprises, too previsible,too much harassement in some parts to pull me in again.

I will play again in maybe some weaks, but its not a game i see myself playing again once finished, it probably lack somr amplitude.

If i could take TFTD GFX and some improvement in the usability department i would play again., but its too dated, even the STEAM version.

I hope i haven t offended anyone, this is merely my feedback as a customer.

[svidangel]

Heh, agree with most of it, cept for pistols. Pistols are amazing when you play to their strengths. Also 5v5 aerial combat would start to eat up a LOT of your base space with just hangers.

[Tiesemans]

My hero ..

You just dictated almost every single problem/shortcoming/mistake I feel needs to be mentioned.

Bravo !

Hopefully the dev. team will do something with this excellent input post !

[Mordobb]

Heh, agree with most of it, cept for pistols. Pistols are amazing when you play to their strengths. Also 5v5 aerial combat would start to eat up a LOT of your base space with just hangers.

I only play veteran to insane. To say the truth i only play insane or above. But due to the "leaping sight" and soldier Myopi, insane isn t enjoyable.

And in those dificulties pistols are utterly useless, shotgun does the trick far better. And you have absolutely no reason to use pistols.

5V5 would clog the base, absolute truth, thats why i proposed this on insane only, or aerial battle having its own set of dificulty.

I would like to apologise for my mispelling on my first post it was 1AM, game crashed on me, and i thought feedbak should have been done.

The more i think about the game, the more stuff i feel it is lacking. They aren t detrimental stuff, they are incremental details that augment the game enjoyment and would increase fun.

[StellarRat]

I just wanted to let you know that difficulty levels are totally not ready for any type of comparative analysis. They aren't even close to how they are supposed to work. The only level that is truly "under construction" right is NORMAL. When that is "balanced" then the other levels will be implemented. So, making any suggestions about how the other levels should work is probably way too early.

Edited June 13, 2013 by StellarRat

[PerfectDeath]

You can hold another weapon in the off hand while a pistol is equipped allowing for something like a grenade (which will cost only 30 TUs vs 42 TUs) to throw.

It is not great for killing but many love it for grinding reaction shots against selbs. =P

[Mordobb]

You can hold another weapon in the off hand while a pistol is equipped allowing for something like a grenade (which will cost only 30 TUs vs 42 TUs) to throw.

It is not great for killing but many love it for grinding reaction shots against selbs. =P

And yet its less effective than shotgun. Because shotgun can kill on a single shot and take less TU than grenade, and have far more range than pistols. And shotguns does not blow stuff that is valuable money when your very tight on money if UFO doesn t appear that much or you get shot down from the sky.

That is a sad truth.

[Mordobb]

I just wanted to let you know that difficulty levels are totally not ready for any type of comparative analysis. They aren't even close to how they are supposed to work. The only level that is truly "under construction" right is NORMAL. When that is "balanced" then the other levels will be implemented. So, making any suggestions about how the other levels should work is probably way too early.

Thank you for the info i wasn t aware of that.

[svidangel]

Not sure the 5 extra damage for the shotgun for the 20 TU shot cost is really a point in it's favor over the pistol.

Pistol 20 damage, 10 TU shot 16M

Shotgun 25 damage, 20 TU shot. 24M

Shotgun might have a niche in the 16-24M range... I guess. Will have trouble convincing people to use it though I suspect. Specially with twice the shots meaning even more accuracy skillups for your troops

But anyway, could easily make it to Feb with minimal losses using about 50% of my troops with pistols. You also shouldn't have to worry about grenades destroying equipment. At least not yet, it could change.

[Gauddlike]

Just a couple of things you may have missed when writing up your experiences.

You mention that pistols don't have a shield which is not always going to be the case.

A combat shield is a planned feature and was present in previous builds, it has only been removed from the stable steam version as it was causing a crash.

It has returned in the experimental build and the crash bug appears to have been fixed.

It is already possible to fire over the head of a soldier who is kneeling in an adjacent tile when you are standing.

If that has not been working for you then it may need reporting as a bug.

Multiple spawn/UFO points are possible but Chris has chosen not to use them.

He prefers to create maps that have a defined start and end point so that cover and terrain can be placed to give a flow to the map rather than risk randomised maps being less optimal.

Also remember that there are a lot less maps available at the moment than are planned for the release version.

Repeating the same map enough times to learn the layout should be less common once the number of maps is increased.

[Mordobb]

Not sure the 5 extra damage for the shotgun for the 20 TU shot cost is really a point in it's favor over the pistol.

Pistol 20 damage, 10 TU shot 16M

Shotgun 25 damage, 20 TU shot. 24M

Shotgun might have a niche in the 16-24M range... I guess. Will have trouble convincing people to use it though I suspect. Specially with twice the shots meaning even more accuracy skillups for your troops

But anyway, could easily make it to Feb with minimal losses using about 50% of my troops with pistols. You also shouldn't have to worry about grenades destroying equipment. At least not yet, it could change.

Last time i trowed a grenade in a UFO it blasted it all to bits, but it may have changed.

When you are on higher dificulty the pistol is just soaked

which doesn t happen as much with shotguns, without counting the precision factor. It seems weaponry has its own precision factor as game of old. This concept always puzzled me.

On the dificulty i play at least, a Sibillian is probably dead with 2shotguns shots and a grey one certainly is.

Good luck with pistol, sometime i ve put 4 bullets in a grey and he was still kicking, missed 2 shots point blank aiming, as for Sibbilian they just ignore it.

The day sibbilian AI decide to go Conan its gonna be an hecatombe on the pistol side.

Anyway it was o long time maybe i ll give it a go just for fun.

[Mordobb]

Just a couple of things you may have missed when writing up your experiences.

You mention that pistols don't have a shield which is not always going to be the case.

A combat shield is a planned feature and was present in previous builds, it has only been removed from the stable steam version as it was causing a crash.

It has returned in the experimental build and the crash bug appears to have been fixed.

It is already possible to fire over the head of a soldier who is kneeling in an adjacent tile when you are standing.

If that has not been working for you then it may need reporting as a bug.

Multiple spawn/UFO points are possible but Chris has chosen not to use them.

He prefers to create maps that have a defined start and end point so that cover and terrain can be placed to give a flow to the map rather than risk randomised maps being less optimal.

Also remember that there are a lot less maps available at the moment than are planned for the release version.

Repeating the same map enough times to learn the layout should be less common once the number of maps is increased.

Cool i thought the shield was an awesome idea!!!!

The lack of intra map diversity is far worse than having poor map.

Poor map is a question of taste, and will be random.

Boredoom trought reharshall of always the same thing is an universal detrimental factor which greatly erode enjoyment and utterly kill replayability.

A lot of map trought games like xenonauts would have to be by the hundreds, we run hundred of mission per game, assuming you go to the end. And to memorize a map you only have to memorize 2 or 3 details, like a stone placement, a hole in a fence and pronto you know on which map you are. Unless you introduce variants maps are easely remembered. At the end of the day variants are the same as shuffling landing zone and ufo crashing spot.

It preserve ressources and make the game more varied on a easyer way.

[svidangel]

Cool i thought the shield was an awesome idea!!!!

The lack of intra map diversity is far worse than having poor map.

Poor map is a question of taste, and will be random.

Boredoom trought reharshall of always the same thing is an universal detrimental factor which greatly erode enjoyment and utterly kill replayability.

+1 to this, if not the spelling.

[Gauddlike]

Well the game is initially being balanced at around 50 ground missions per play through.

There are also planned to be a lot more maps than that at release so the issue should be smaller.

I agree that more maps, as well as more random ones, is good for the game though.

Also the possible randomisation is not limited to spawn and UFO locations.

It is actually possible for each submap (so each field, building, or equivalent sized area) to have multiple versions which only have to correspond in coverage area.

For example you could have a farm building beside the Chinook on one play through but the next time on the same map that space could be occupied by an empty field, an impassible river, or a maze of trees, or even just a building with a slightly different layout.

Fences can be placed so that holes are possible in any position along their length and even the stones in the fields can be randomised so that they will be a different cover item or even not present at all.

The ability to design the maps with an increased level of randomisation is there and will likely be used quite extensively by community map makers.

To make the current maps more random you can move a few files around so that submap folders have more than one submap in them.

The game will pick one at random when loading the level up.

Just make sure that the sizes match so only 20x20 submaps are shared and only props are shared with other props for example.

[Mordobb]

Well the game is initially being balanced at around 50 ground missions per play through.

There are also planned to be a lot more maps than that at release so the issue should be smaller.

I agree that more maps, as well as more random ones, is good for the game though.

Also the possible randomisation is not limited to spawn and UFO locations.

It is actually possible for each submap (so each field, building, or equivalent sized area) to have multiple versions which only have to correspond in coverage area.

For example you could have a farm building beside the Chinook on one play through but the next time on the same map that space could be occupied by an empty field, an impassible river, or a maze of trees, or even just a building with a slightly different layout.

Fences can be placed so that holes are possible in any position along their length and even the stones in the fields can be randomised so that they will be a different cover item or even not present at all.

The ability to design the maps with an increased level of randomisation is there and will likely be used quite extensively by community map makers.

To make the current maps more random you can move a few files around so that submap folders have more than one submap in them.

The game will pick one at random when loading the level up.

Just make sure that the sizes match so only 20x20 submaps are shared and only props are shared with other props for example.

Very god news Gauddlike.

The only thing that worry me is the fact you mentioned around 50 ground fight, assuming my interpretation is correct.

That seems a bit short to me.

If you plan na X com like game i suppose there s only 1 final end.

Also unlike UFO:Afterlight there s no factions, so there s no :

"And now if i try to play witohut allying faction X" to grab you back.

[ThunderGr]

Very god news Gauddlike.

The only thing that worry me is the fact you mentioned around 50 ground fight, assuming my interpretation is correct.

That seems a bit short to me.

If you plan na X com like game i suppose there s only 1 final end.

Also unlike UFO:Afterlight there s no factions, so there s no :

"And now if i try to play witohut allying faction X" to grab you back.

Agree 100%

[horrid]

Have to agree with Mordobb and ThunderGr concerning Gauddlike's post. I haven't installed the steam experimental build yet the last playthrough I had (late September) I had more than ten missions. Considering the proposed mission ceiling and attrition I'm experienced (couple casualties but steadily mounting injuries) I have some concerns about pacing.

I really appreciated ThunderGr's mention of Afterlight. The choice of the Cold War is such a wonderful place for factions (NATO, Bloc. Com). There is so much potential there. Shame to see it sit like cardboard on the sidelines.

[thothkins]

The main focus of the game is really to get a X-Com like battlescape, with a few enhancements such as combat shields. The game beyond that is to add flavour and some depth to that. That's not at all to say that they don;t mean anything. The air interception is really, really good. But that, and the Cold War setting are backdrops to the battlescape.

I'd have loved to have seen more on the Cold War too. It's a compliment to Xenonauts that the amount they have used, makes people want more. Here's a link to an older thread on the Cold War going into some details on what that could look like. Comments always welcome.