Random New Guy Thoughts On Xenonauts

[Hovis]

So I've been playing this off and on for a while, but since it came onto Steam and stopped going so badly wrong I've tried to stick out a few games, and here's my thinking on it so far.

1. It's been mentioned before, I expect people will mention it again, the whole interceptor element of the game is superb. However it begs a few questions:

- Could there be more of it?

- Could there be more planes?

I've seen there's a mod for extra planes, but it would be great to add even more. Also it seems like it's quite difficult to get more active aircraft into the game, because of the need for hangars and whatnot. More expendable aircraft and more places to deploy them for less money would be really cool. The satisfaction of putting down an enemy machine with cannons is great, but all too rare because it's too costly to lose a plane. It feels like the early game ought to be more weight of numbers focussed, relying on crumby, ill-suited, yet numerous local aircraft.

2. Numbers of troops. I miss the mob-handed approach of the original X-Com and I think it's a big loss. The thing with Xenonauts is every mission matters, you can't afford to lose a terror mission, they'll nuke the town. Players should have the option to pour manpower into missions for the simple reason that this means you will probably be more successful. The trade off is of course that more troops means more casualties, it means more equipment costs, it means less experience to go around.

Quite simply for me the small team size feels unrealistic, artificial and immersion breaking. It's not the end of the world but it's pretty disappointing. I gather that it increases with later ships, but I think it should be in the game from a lot earlier on. Add more aliens to balance if necessary.

3. I love that the game is mod-friendly. I hope to do some work with it myself in that regard. There's scope for so much to be added from weapons to creatures to maps and so on, can't wait to see what people come up with.

4. The alien spacecraft are devious swine, employing escorts, intercepting my planes, generally going way above and beyond what the first game did. This is not reflected on the ground, where the aliens scatter across the map waiting to be murdered. There's no logical explanation for them splitting up like that, and it strikes me that the missions would be tougher, faster, but more realistic if the aliens clumped up. Especially if there were more of them and the player had a bigger team. So maybe instead of spawning one alien on a given random spawn, spawn a defined team of aliens on that spot, and maybe have different types of team.

5. There should be more rewards for shooting down any UFO that comes in. I'm playing a game where the vast majority of alien ships are corvettes, they float around off the coast, killing ships and making a nuisance of themselves, they don't ever come to land, plus there's a lot of other stuff going on. So I blow them out of the sky, but as a result I suffer. Shooting down an alien craft over the sea should, in my opinion, be a best case scenario in the eyes of the nearest nation. That is what they want, it's what they would be most pleased with. I mean in my capacity as X-Com Top Kahuna, I want to grab that ship, drop it on the land, club the crew and sell their guns. But if I'm a civilian leader, I'm much, much, happier to see those enemy aircraft plummet into the sea out of sight, out of mind. It's bizarre that you can lose the support of a country when you're not letting aliens ever set foot on it.

6. If you guys do an expansion and it would be amazing if you could do Terror From The Deep but not as a sequel, but as a concurrent element to the current game. This isn't the turn of the last century, we have the hardware, and the idea of combining the nautical and aeronautical game elements in one big pile makes me squee. It wouldn't have to have the scale of the original TFTD, but even if you just had the capacity to recover down enemy ships at sea, and for the enemy to set up bases and so on under the sea that'd be enough in the context of the current campaign.

7. I think the money system is odd. The way I see it money should be no object but that doesn't mean you've got the resources of the world at your fingertips. The aliens are out there and every government and corporation is going to be trying to be the hero. How much is money really worth in the face of an existential threat to the species? I think a substitute for money, something maybe just called credits, or something similar, would be better. A name like credits would be a good general representation of how much clout you have to get what you want, be it personnel or equipment.

Also seems odd that soldiers, scientists and workshop staff cost money. Most scientists would be paying X-Com for the opportunity to get their hands on genuine alien technology never before seen by man. And soldiers and techies would probably sign up to help in huge numbers free of charge if you asked nicely. Feels like a trick was missed in that whole part of the game.

All that said though, I think this is a brilliant game and I cannot wait to see how it develops with mods and later versions. I think this is the definitive game of the genre.

[GizmoGomez]

1: I agree with that, to an extent. It would have to be done correctly, but cheap disposable Condors and to a lesser extent, Foxtrots would be very interesting, I like the idea. They would then be replaced by not disposable but highly capable Corsairs and later aircraft.

2: I especially like this one. Devs, more guys, please. I know the AI isn't complete, but when the aliens are killing us too effectively, don't nerf them. Just give us more guys. We can take the casualties and the tears that follow. (Sniff... Poor Hideo...)

3: is one awesome part of the game, and hopefully it'll get even better.

4: the AI isn't complete yet, and will improve. I'm excited to see what kinds of cheap, underhand tricks the enemy AI can pull on me. Screaming death threats at the enemy is a sign of a well made AI.

5: Agreed, shooting down aliens that produce no crash site (ie over the sea) should increase relations of all nations within a certain radius by a significant amount, more than from shooting down a UFO over land should give you. Or, perhaps individually, each nation is increased by less on their own, but more all together. At any rate, water crashes have absolutely 0 danger to the nations, unlike a crash site, so they should be more happy about water than land.

6: This has been suggested, actually, and I think it'd be cool if done right. However, I think that Chris shot it down, or at least said that they wouldn't be making a Xenonauts sequel any time soon.

7: This has been suggested as well, and I support it. I mean, my base is in Turkmenistan, why am I only seeing USD as the main currency? Credits, or some similar neutral form of currency, would be a better solution. It would also fix the issues with people complaining: "well, in real life a plane costs $X, and a tank $Y, so fix it."

Perhaps it should be explained that the scientists, technicians, and soldiers belong to other countries, organizations, etc, so we need to pay their former employer to let them go? Even then, though, that's a weak argument.

I dunno, it helps with game balance. That's all the explanation that we need, really. haha

[Hovis]

I can imagine the personnel have an attached fee for the admin of recruitment, maybe like there's only a pool of top, vetted and entirely reliable people and you have to call in favours and prove your value before getting given more of those people. But I'm sure there could be ways to approach it.

[Spookyashell]

7: Is the Xenonauts organisation a United Nation sanctioned organisation created by the Nations of earth to combat the threat? My impression was it was more like a private company offering it's services. If the latter I don't think the nations would throw vast amounts of resources your way as they would likely think they could do a much better job themself.

But as you prove your worth they give you more.

8: I think it scaled too fast in difficulty. By start of October they send squadrons I can't take out with 2 F-17's + a Mig 32. Maybe I had less resources than I could have had due to shooting down some ufo's over sea in september as well as some I shot down over land left no crashsite.

Start of October I had only done 4 groundmissions, and in my first encounter with a alien fleet I lost both condors and almost lost my MiG aswell with not enough money to replace both Codors. Felt like game over to me

But I will start over and see if I'm better prepaired for October in my next game.

BTW: Love the game so far, think it will be awesome when it goes gold.

[Hovis]

Yeah the enemy fighter groups are a swine.

What I would think about doing, if I was the big development bloke, is make hangars cheaper. I mean it's basically a big empty space right? With hangars reduced in cost to say, 50k, you could get a lot more of them and meet the threat of enemy fighter groups with greater numbers of your own jets.

It very rapidly reaches a point where the Condor is unable to solo threats (even with upgraded missiles) and if you send multiple Condors, they will take losses. Needs to be some sort of middle ground I think.

[GizmoGomez]

Huh, that's actually a really nice idea. I support making hangers cheaper.

[ThunderGr]

Many good points. I especially like 6. Combining with TFTD elements would be awesome!

4 is work in progress, as it has been stated many times. I think we are all waiting for the AI and placement of Aliens on the ground to become more deadly and give us reasons to grieve .

The scientists, soldiers etc are already working for someone else. You have to compensate their employers. In addition, the people leave their families behind for, who knows how long. You have to give more incentive than just the good of humanity and some cool toys. Their families cannot eat that . The xenonauts project has been abandoned and forgotten for many years now, according to the history background. Your funding is increased as the nations develop confidence in you but, as you probably have noticed, all relations start at "bad". Everyone distrusts you, since the cold war is at its prime and you stick your nose in everybody's affairs and equipment and technology. So, everyone suspects you are spying for the other.

[Xenomorph]

Also seems odd that soldiers, scientists and workshop staff cost money. Most scientists would be paying X-Com for the opportunity to get their hands on genuine alien technology never before seen by man. And soldiers and techies would probably sign up to help in huge numbers free of charge if you asked nicely. Feels like a trick was missed in that whole part of the game.

Absolutely right, i thought the same exactly. That's why i changed my game a bit to reflect this; recruiting costs nothing, but they do deserve a good paycheck. When the war is over, they will have enough for a good vacation with plenty of sun and no alien guts.

It just feels right, and the impact on the game is negligible.

I also lowered the astronomic upkeep costs on many things, the citizens of earth realized how priceless the Xenonauts efforts are in saving the planet from impending doom, and volunteered by the thousands. They want to help save the only home they have, it's heroic.

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I'm quite certain that ANY x-com nostalgic would love if someone would merge both EU94 and TFTD, and finally make it all global.

With the awesome modding capability of Xenonauts, i wont be surprised if someone does this. Adding some more aliens, planes, guns, maps, and cook it all together should be cake for so may fan teams out there with tons of time to spare.

Like Jagged Alliance 2, that game had many complete face-overs and its still being modded to death, Xeno might just have similar legacy, and we'll be playing it 20 years from now, who knows

[svidangel]

Sounds like the problem will always be the sprites. One of the reasons many things aren't going to be changed now, like alien appearances and such. TFTD would be a Looooot of sprites. Maybe they can start a separate kickstarter for a TFTD artist.

[Hovis]

Sounds like the problem will always be the sprites. One of the reasons many things aren't going to be changed now, like alien appearances and such. TFTD would be a Looooot of sprites. Maybe they can start a separate kickstarter for a TFTD artist.

See what I would do with it is make it a very minimal TFTD campaign. So what you'd be doing is recovering wrecks under the sea and dealing with the odd undersea base. Just extending the scope of the main campaign to cover the whole of the planet.

[svidangel]

That would be even worse from a development standpoint, I imagine haha.

[GutBucket]

Don't want to open new thread, so let's try it here. I've noticed you progress a lot slower tech-wise in this game than in original X-Com. In the old X-Com I would build laser weapons very soon and replace them even faster with plasma weapons. I used normal weapons only on first few missions. It this game it seems a lot harder because you don't have that much money. Is this done on purpose because game is set in cold war, not some future or? Also, I haven't played the game yet, but I watch 2 LPs.

Edit: I know game isn't finished yet and you can't plan that much in the future etc; just wonder what can we excpect once the game is complete. Compared to the UFO: D

Edited June 20, 2013 by GutBucket

[Harmor]

What you're talking about is the geoscope balancing, which isn't exactly very fleshed out at the moment. They'll get there eventually though

[Hovis]

I like the necessity of using ballistics for a long time, but it does undermine some of the fear factor from the original game. In the original game if you had to go into a fight using rifles you were in trouble. In Xenonauts (and the other new XCOM as well) the difference between lasers and ballistics isn't so high, and the ballistics are a lot better, comparatively.

In the old game, first priority, get rifles for the troops that could do the job. In this game, and XCOM, the lasers are an option. Especially in Xenonauts, where they are extremely expensive and, given the way the aliens operate, not entirely necessary. In Xenonauts you can typically concentrate fire on the aliens one at a time, drop the weight of the group on each one. So you can get away with using rifles because, even if you don't kill, you suppress.

What I would probably do is make the ballistic weapons largely unfit for purpose from the start, so that the first priority is getting weapons that can drop an alien reliably. Then I'd make lasers very good against the low end stuff, with later game aliens having their own anti-laser armour which would force the introduction of something new.

[svidangel]

I'm got laser weapons both times around the beginning of the second month, don't think one to two months is an exceedingly long time for a tech that isn't researched right off the bat. IMO the original game made ballistics obsolete too fast by starting with laser weapons researchable.

[Sathra]

I think I have to increase research times in my mod. Current game, I'll have tier 4 weapons before Cruisers.

[TrashMan]

No to huge teams. It's just a chose and turns more into a RTS than a team-based gmae when you have 20 guys to lead around.