question and suggestion

[gshuford]

If I'm not mistaken, this game is nearing its launch which makes my first suggestion more a question of "Why wasn't this?"

Prone: I searched but didn't see any threads on this. IIRC, you could go prone in xcom - pretty much exactly how you WANT to be in a combat situation. I don't see the need to explain the purposes here since everyone is probably more than familiar with the tactical advantages of being prone. I also understand that it would require sprite-creating which is apparently a pain, as I gather from other posts.

So, rather than a suggestion, I'm assuming this was a considered game mechanic, but not implemented. Just curious about the reasoning why. I always felt like being able to go prone was an intrinsic game mechanic for this sort of game.

My suggestion (and possibly question) is about the starter gear. I like purchasing even the most mundane of equipment - after all, rocket launchers aren't free, not even for our government, so I don't see why it shouldn't come out of your pocket. I can see that this may just be an ease of testing feature right now. So, will you have infinite starting gear on launch? If so, I suggest not having infinite starting gear on launch.

[EchoFourDelta]

You could only crouch and stand in the original X-COM games; Apocalypse introduced the prone position. And yeah, the biggest obstacle is the massive workload involved in the sprite creation. After that, you'd have to work on the balance from the aim and cover bonuses/penalties from taking the extra position.

[thothkins]

The infinite starter gear does appear to be odd, when you're used to buying everything. I certainly thought so. It's something I got used to fairly quickly, and now I wonder why I had to bother about buying every last bullet.

I do have issues about freebies later in the game, but as far as ballistic weapons, you could look at it as:-

The Xenonauts being drawn from the army (I guess they don;t get on so well with the air force)

Some starting generosity from the finding nations, that you just don't see on the balance sheet.

A rather adept Quartermaster.

[EchoFourDelta]

That said... the weapons you see in-game? They're cheap as hell. Like, hundreds of dollars per on military budget sheets. M16 rifles run less than 600 dollars, even today (obviously if a citizen wants to purchase an M16 lookalike rifle of moderate quality, they're going to shell out much more, as they're expensive on the private market). The pistol we see in-game runs a little more than 250 US dollars on the balance sheets. The precision rifle we see in-game ran about the same cost as the M16, the shotgun ran about half that. The most expensive item on the list is the assault weapon: the "rocket launcher." Running at a little over 10,000 USD, it's the most big-ticket item on the list.

Hand grenades? 5-10 dollars.

The reason the guys went with making the stuff free is because even if you were building up a truly large infantry force? The actual cost is fairly negligible if you're dealing in hundreds of thousands and millions.