Xenophobia (wide-ranging discussion and questions on design)

[oRGy]

Hi! I hope this is in the right forum, mods, feel free to move if not.

I have not played any build of Xenonauts yet, because I would prefer to wait for a 1.0 release, and a stable Mac version. However, it looks great so far! Great to see a successful indie title!

I have played, in order, XCOM: TFTD, UFO: EU, XCOM: Apocalypse, UFO: Aftermath, and most recently, the open-source “UFO: Alien Invasion”, in both the 2.3 version, and the most recent alpha build, as of last week. Therefore I feel qualified to pen a few questions to the dev team, if and when they have the time.

First of all, while playing UFO:AI, I noticed that the team have, despite the impressive amount of art assets and interesting ideas, succeeded so far only in creating a totally broken game. This is not intended as a rant on a team which has produced a free game on their own time – more a springboard to explore some central game dynamics and design choices.

Of course, everything here is only my own opinion, which may also be a load of rubbish.

The primary reason that UFO:AI is broken, is due to the ratio of combat missions to geoscape progression. Because the XCOM series is really two totally different games connected only loosely, as with the Total War series, it may be better to call the combat missions “Game 1” and the the geoscape, base management, and research areas “Game 2”. Therefore, in AI, the ratio of “Game 1” is way out of proportion with “Game 2”. This means that you have to play through dozens of missions before you get even the slightest upgrade to your troops. It becomes a totally pointless grind, with no sense of advancement. I think I must have done well over 30 missions, and I was still stuck on researching a stun rod.

In every case, you simply become so bored with it that you quit. The rationale given by the developers, going by their forums, is that so long as some game features remain unimplemented (like psionics), there is no point in trying to balance the game until all elements are in place (?!). This would be the total opposite of my opinion – get the basic balance right first, and then rapidly iterate features…

In the classic games, the Game1:Game2 ratio seemed acceptable, though it is a while since I last played them. I usually play only in Standard difficulty, I feel having different skill levels can be a bit of a cheat.

Therefore, first question – how is the ratio between advancement in Game1 and Game2 conceived?

My preference is for less, but more interesting missions, with a steady progression in Game2 reflected in Game1, so that the gameplay is constantly evolving and does not get boring.

(The German writer, Bertolt Brecht, once said: “A movie may be anything, so long as it is not boring!”. I would say this goes double for games)

The secondary reason is that in UFO:AI, the enemies are also far too weak, so that combat missions present no challenge. Therefore, the missions are both too frequent, and too easy. They are too easy because:

The AI is totally simplistic – aliens, when they see you, simply run towards you firing, maybe lobbing the odd grenade. There is no apparent strategy, even in terms of adopting basic defensive / offensive postures.

Therefore, my second question: how are you planning to develop an effective, and varied, AI?

Secondly, the Aliens themselves are, from the start, woefully under-equipped and under-strength. There are basically two types – worker aliens, and soldier aliens. Worker aliens are less well armed. Thus it happens that in your first 30-50 missions, the majority of the aliens in a crash site may not even be armed with ranged weapons. Your team easily wipes them out with no casualties.

Now, all these variables are easily accessible and can be modded. When I beefed up the starting stats of the aliens, and gave them better default armour/weapons loadouts, the game actually started to become more interesting. It was actually possible to lose one or two men in a mission if you were not careful. However, by this point, I was already bored with the game, due to its lack of destructible scenery and alien variety (there are basically only sectoids or mutons).

In conclusion, I feel it is better to have a game that is challenging from the start, and where the game remains challenging, not by just increasing alien stats, but due to an expansion in the variety of aliens you go up against and the development of alien counter-measures to successful early-game tactics.

For example, in UFO:EU, you started out fighting only against Sectoids, but moved onto diverse enemies like Chryssalids, those dinosaur tank things, and floaters. Thus you moved from simple soldier versus soldier gameplay, to fighting against tanks, fast melee attack units, and flying units. Then you had to deal with effects of psionic warfare… Or in Apocalypse, the big slug alien (forget the name) exploded when shot, and when it died, a swarm of little baby aliens emerged out of its corpse to attack your soldiers. The point is: the player must keep adjusting his strategy depending on the mix of aliens in a mission, which evolves throughout the game.

An example that could be introduced might be stealth aliens in the late game – they are designed to closely resemble (externally) normal humans and blend into crowds. They can only be detected by using a (researchable) scanner, or by shooting them and see if they explode in a cloud of green goo. Their combat idea is to get close to your troops and get sick all over your soldiers face, or fart KO gas, or some such. Therefore the player is given a dilemma – when they see civilians running towards the squad, are they seeking to flee from the aliens, or are they themselves aliens?

Ergo, my third question: are you planning to challenging gameplay from the start, and do you intend to have a diverse variety of enemies?

A further worry I would have is that of story and what is called “flavor” text. In the original games, if you notice, there is actually not that much text in the UFOpaedia. This is actually a good thing, why? Again, two reasons:

One: This is quite obvious in UFO:AI. Instead of concise descriptions of what various facilities or items do, one has a couple of hundred words of preamble, followed by military/technical sounding gibberish, followed by a paragraph of actually pertinent information. This simply wastes the time of the player. Because the gameplay in UFO type games is player-directed, it helps when the information is presented in a neutral, unobtrusive way – the player gets on with creating his own narrative, rather than feeling he is “discovering” one already written for him. This becomes especially obvious and irritating in replays.

Two: The more text there is, the greater the chance for bad writing to become more obvious and jarring. In UFO:AI, various “plot” emails or reports on research are in my opinion badly written, because they have a rather melodramatic tone (“This stuff is really scary, commander”), which seems inappropriate for a military bureaucracy. It is hard to write well, so focus on the essential.

Therefore, my next question: How do you solve the contradiction of providing an overarching “narrative” with the essentially player-directed nature of the game?

I notice that there is a desire to stay faithful to the original, PC-based, nature of the original series, which is well and good. One could, however, do with a certain bit of expansion in certain areas – after all the original two games were produced under tight deadlines and with definite hardware limitations.

One aspect that occurred to me while reviewing this was the research aspect of the game. This is an area of the game that is quite simplified and rather generic and that does not totally fit with the theme of the game. Howso? The theme of the Geoscape part of the game is essentially one of developing an economy from one of basic autarkic production to one based on trade and specialization.

You start with a simple base, in which all functions are integrated (detection, interception, training, storage, research, production), but due to space restraints, are only available on a low level. As the game progresses, you develop additional bases that focus on each of those attributes to a high level. For example, in a typical late game you may have 5 or 6 bases – one is your command centre, one is research, one is manufacturing, an additional one or two houses interceptors, and so on. You transfer goods between these bases, and sell things to the outside world for more cash.

Consider, though, the world of science as presented in XCOM. Scientists are seen as disposable and generic, they can work on anything and be reassigned from investigating the DNA of aliens to working on lasers without missing a beat. Unlike your soldiers, there is no taking care of your best scientists, or choosing who to recruit. They are simply a fixed cost every month.

An idea instead would be to divide research into one of three categories: xenobiology, applied materials, and physics. Each scientist available to recruit specializes in one of these fields. Xenobiology covers autopsies, investigation of live specimens, psionics, and other biological stuff. Applied materials covers transformation of theory, or captured items, into usable items and weapons for XCOM. Finally, physics covers investigation of alien craft, materials, and theory. This of course, is only a sketch of the principles, no doubt better / different names could be used.

The point is, a xenobiologist is not going to be working on laser theory – it is not his field, anymore than a carpenter can become a surgeon overnight. Therefore, each alien research item is one specific type of research, that can only be researched in a particular type of laboratory – i.e., biolab, materials lab, and physics lab, by qualified personnel. Furthermore, specific scientists could have previous experience that give a bonus to research – for example, one biologist has experience with certain dna-alteration, a physicist has experience with developing nanolasers, whatever. Different countries would have different strengths in scientists, etc. Since scientists are now valuable, they should also be vulnerable – either through base invasion, abduction, or being recalled to their home country if said country is dissatisfied with your progress.

I would also note that attempting to make the Game2 part more interesting was attempted by the Gollop brothers in Apocalypse – there, every faction in the game had various preferences you had to be aware of – do you use cyborgs, for example – this makes you popular with one group, and earns you the enmity of the other, or which company do you mostly buy armaments from, etc.

The player decides the focus of research and production, and thus creates his own story. One game may focus on overwhelming the aliens with armaments, another player might focus on advanced psionics, etc. It is good to have research trees which are not fully researchable in one game – allowing the player to make meaningful choices, adding to replay value.

So, my other question – are you considering expanding any of the other “subgames” in Geoscape mode, which were left in a rather simplistic form in previous games?

Finally, my other query would be – how does one explain the strategy of the aliens in a believable way? Consider their behavior. They start out with scout missions and small, weaker craft. They aim to research and infiltrate, rather than outright conquer. But where are they operating from, and why this approach?

The only possible answer that makes sense is this: that they are starting from an industrial base, that while high-tech, is at a small scale. In the original UFO, this meant they had a base on Mars, and had to try and expand their civilization to Earth, without being immediately detected.

An example could be: the Aliens are a few hundred years technology wise ahead of us. They live in a system say 30 light years from us. With advanced space telescopes they spot our star system, and note a habitable “Goldilocks” planet orbiting the sun. They decide to send a sub-FTL mothership to colonise this star system. It takes 50 years to arrive, and when it does, they note immediately that an intelligent civilization exists on Earth. Rather than risk detection – after all, if their mothership gets too close, those Earthlings might be able to blow it up with a nuclear missile - they hide on the dark side of the moon and send a few small scouts to investigate.

When they find out that the natives shoot back, they decide to build up a city base on the moon and start manufacturing bigger ships, more advanced weapons, and breeding more soldiers, while they attempt to infiltrate governments. Of course, this takes time. Their ultimate goal is to become rulers of earth, and integrate Earth biology into their own civilization. They are aggressive because they know us monkeys would never agree to such a thing – we value our identity, they have long since become a “post biological identity” type civilisation.

This of course, is an allegory of the forcible conversion of native peoples in the 16th-19th centuries from property systems based on communal ownership, to that of capitalist private property and wage labor, which was totally alien to the culture of these peoples.

What is NOT plausible is the following: aliens capable of FTL somehow carry out the same strategy. UFO:AI does this and it makes the plot totally implausible. The reality is: if aliens are capable of FTL, they would simply arrive in a massive battleship(s) and dictate terms. There would be no other reason, save for ones that are massively contrived. Above all – they could threaten immediate destruction of the earth, simply by equipping a few hundred nuclear missiles with FTL drives and jumping them all into the upper atmosphere. There can be literally no defense against FTL-drive equipped aliens. Please do not go down this route.

The player needs no “amazing” plot. Just a convincing context.

Sorry for the wall of text!

[Gorlom]

I'm not realy going to respond to the first part since it's about a complettly different game, at least not without you playing Xennonauts first.

An idea instead would be to divide research into one of three categories: xenobiology, applied materials, and physics. Each scientist available to recruit specializes in one of these fields. Xenobiology covers autopsies, investigation of live specimens, psionics, and other biological stuff. Applied materials covers transformation of theory, or captured items, into usable items and weapons for XCOM. Finally, physics covers investigation of alien craft, materials, and theory. This of course, is only a sketch of the principles, no doubt better / different names could be used.

The point is, a xenobiologist is not going to be working on laser theory – it is not his field, anymore than a carpenter can become a surgeon overnight. Therefore, each alien research item is one specific type of research, that can only be researched in a particular type of laboratory – i.e., biolab, materials lab, and physics lab, by qualified personnel. Furthermore, specific scientists could have previous experience that give a bonus to research – for example, one biologist has experience with certain dna-alteration, a physicist has experience with developing nanolasers, whatever. Different countries would have different strengths in scientists, etc. Since scientists are now valuable, they should also be vulnerable – either through base invasion, abduction, or being recalled to their home country if said country is dissatisfied with your progress

An interesting suggestion. But I'm haveing a hard time imagening there would be specialists in these fields. (Not sure if you have noticed but the time Xenonauts takes place in is 1979, don't think nano lasers was on the drawingboard back then... correct me if im wrong). Considereing how new everything is the scientists needs to be interchangeble in the fields possibly with bonus for the "preferred field". They most likely need to be interchangeble from a gameplay point of view as well. Haveing scientists refusing to work just because it isn't their field (when they didnt even have the field untill a few months ago) is probably going to become quite annoying.

The only possible answer that makes sense is this: that they are starting from an industrial base, that while high-tech, is at a small scale. In the original UFO, this meant they had a base on Mars, and had to try and expand their civilization to Earth, without being immediately detected.

There are many answers to why it starts with scouts.

-The fleet could simply not be able to move faster because of limitations, preperations, dependencies or navigational issues. Therefor the scouts arrive first.

-The aliens might move in waves to try to avoid being detected by astronomers and possibly trace their origins.

-Their long distance travel technologies only allow for scouts to begin with before they get it up and going properly. Especially if they need to build recievers on this end for the larger ships.

I personally got a problem with your backstory. with 30 lightyears away and being able to notice out planet orbeting our sun they most definetly will notice the radio (and tv) signals we are spewing out. And would be prepared to invade haveing already noted there is intelligent life on the planet already. Opening with battleships instead of scouts.

Edited February 13, 2012 by Gorlom

[PEJOCAAL]

Very wise, needs to be considered, it is an important contribution to the game

[oRGy]

Hey,

Re scientists:

Yes I know it is set in 1979. Therefore nano-lasers and what not is just an example - I mean that they would have bonuses in general. So you might think - do I recruit this guy now, or this other guy because he might be more useful later on? No doubt any different system could be annoying if not done properly. So instead of the scientists refusing to work (say a biologist on a physics or materials project), you could simply have as with soldiers - they have different skill levels in the subjects. Therefore employing lots of biologists on a physics project will just have a very slow rate of advancement.

Re backstory:

It occurred to me after I posted that of course radio waves and so on would be detected up to 60-70 light years away (theoretically, though they would actually be much fainter than people realise... anyway). In this case, just say "100" years - it really doesn't matter. The point is that the aliens start with a high-technological level of development, but a low level of industrial development. Thus the expansion of their capabilities over the game has a natural and logical explanation, rather than a handwavey one.

My personal reaction to the suggestions re scouts and FTL, is that they all sound rather contrived. Just my opinion. I am basically thinking out loud with this thread so don't take any suggestions too seriously. I will check out the game when it is properly released, in any case.

Edited February 13, 2012 by oRGy

[rynait]

Hello,

read oRGy's long winded narratives..

on the scientist, is logical approach, even today, we have dual "microbiology and physics" scientist, suspect such person would favor one disclipine stronger than other.

An example, We have already have Laser technology since slightly after WWII (study of XASER started with atomic bombs). Just the attempt to minaturization (sp?) has failed repeatedly until about late 80's [voila laser diodes]. I am also aware there was some 'difficulty in' manufacturing reliable "bulky-industrial" lasers in 1970's (some had high failure, terrible efficiency, and had to be repeatedly re-engineered or re-vamped).

So this is more divided into two avenues; physics (which is already advanced by 1979), and engineering-manufacturing (regardless of minaturization; terrible in early 1970, thus probably poor at 1979.)

so from your suggestion, sounds like we are talking following disciplines of sciences;

quantum physics [for energy, fuel, plasma, lasers, nano-technology]

warfare [weaponry, tactics, detectors]

medicine [healing soldiers, soldier advancements, boost-enhancements]

biology-chemistry (including microbiology) [organic analysis, alloys, exotic elements, nano-materials]

material and engineering [manufacturing, fabrication, minuratization, assembly, and lab equipment]

xenosciences [xenobiology, psonics, xenopsychology, xeno autopsy, maybe interrogation]

astrophysics [aircrafts, missles, dogfighting, radar, hyperwave decoder, navigation]

Personally, as I understand this is an indie game, with some contributions from the players-betatesters. So this become dependent on becoming "game x" (oRGy's dividing x-com programming), assuming this could be exploitable either by dev's game design or by modding.

R

[Heinlager]

In every case, you simply become so bored with it that you quit. The rationale given by the developers, going by their forums, is that so long as some game features remain unimplemented (like psionics), there is no point in trying to balance the game until all elements are in place (?!). This would be the total opposite of my opinion – get the basic balance right first, and then rapidly iterate features…

You could do that, however you would have to adjust the balance for each build. However the words "balance" and "adjust" wouldn't really do justice the hours it would take to adjust the balance on a game like xcom. Yes it is something you could iterate with each release but it is a drain on resources. So Ic an understand why they might not despite it's benefits.

In the classic games, the Game1:Game2 ratio seemed acceptable, though it is a while since I last played them. I usually play only in Standard difficulty, I feel having different skill levels can be a bit of a cheat.

Did you finish the original, because I always end up skipping missions halfway through the game. It kind of a common complaint which I thought you were alluring to earlier.

Therefore, first question – how is the ratio between advancement in Game1 and Game2 conceived?

My preference is for less, but more interesting missions, with a steady progression in Game2 reflected in Game1, so that the gameplay is constantly evolving and does not get boring.

I agree, and I'm sure the xenonauts team does as well. The trouble is how to you convert that subjective desire in to the game. Is it and average of 1 mission per researched item? 2? 5? That's where the skill in designing a game comes in I guess.

For example I thought Apoc had a very decent mission load, where the Aliens would attack once a week and you'd have more or less missions depending on how much you would have to clean up. Each week the Aliens brought in bigger and stronger ships. It didn't get boring and the progression was great, but the if you missed certain easier ships they never came back (or not till much later) and you missed out on essential research!

The secondary reason is that in UFO:AI, the enemies are also far too weak, so that combat missions present no challenge. Therefore, the missions are both too frequent, and too easy. They are too easy because:

The AI is totally simplistic – aliens, when they see you, simply run towards you firing, maybe lobbing the odd grenade. There is no apparent strategy, even in terms of adopting basic defensive / offensive postures.

Therefore, my second question: how are you planning to develop an effective, and varied, AI?

I think there was a news post on this. It showed an influence map for taking cover. Also the races themselves will act differently. Varied and effective are often at odds in AI having different creatures do different thing is an elegant solution imo.

Ergo, my third question: are you planning to challenging gameplay from the start, and do you intend to have a diverse variety of enemies?

I hope its a challenge. It's not Xcom unless you take constant casualties

Therefore, my next question: How do you solve the contradiction of providing an overarching “narrative” with the essentially player-directed nature of the game?

I see no problem with the way xcom games always have, by linking it to the tech tree and certain missions. It's one of the great design decisions that made the first game so successful.

Consider, though, the world of science as presented in XCOM. Scientists are seen as disposable and generic, they can work on anything and be reassigned from investigating the DNA of aliens to working on lasers without missing a beat. Unlike your soldiers, there is no taking care of your best scientists, or choosing who to recruit. They are simply a fixed cost every month.

[stuff about realism in research]

Look you can't model real life. You would have thousands of scientists from hundreds of fields working on the things in Xcom if it was real. Yes you could try going 1/2 way and have a few branches (like in apoc) but is that something worth spending player time micromanaging? Really its a farce that the commander of the tactical missions would have anything to do with logistics and base management (or would even meet one of the scientists let alone recruit them), however it's a computer game and we get to play around with all the fun parts.

So, my other question – are you considering expanding any of the other “subgames” in Geoscape mode, which were left in a rather simplistic form in previous games?

Even if they have some great concepts (which Im sure they do) deciding what's even worth being there is hard. You have to balance the usefulness of such interactions without making them essential. Look at the civilisation series part of why it doesn't take 10 hours each turn is because every time they add something for the player to do they take something else away.

Finally, my other query would be – how does one explain the strategy of the aliens in a believable way? Consider their behavior. They start out with scout missions and small, weaker craft. They aim to research and infiltrate, rather than outright conquer. But where are they operating from, and why this approach?....

...What is NOT plausible is the following: aliens capable of FTL somehow carry out the same strategy. UFO:AI does this and it makes the plot totally implausible. The reality is: if aliens are capable of FTL, they would simply arrive in a massive battleship(s) and dictate terms. There would be no other reason, save for ones that are massively contrived. Above all – they could threaten immediate destruction of the earth, simply by equipping a few hundred nuclear missiles with FTL drives and jumping them all into the upper atmosphere. There can be literally no defense against FTL-drive equipped aliens. Please do not go down this route.

The player needs no “amazing” plot. Just a convincing context.

FTL doesn't mean instant transmission. Well it can, but it's all theoretical so you can just make up what you want it to be. Even if the have the capability to get here maybe there are other circumstances. They are in caught up in a civil war with one faction looking for a planet to escape to and they can't spare too many ships. Or a crippling resource shortage has them scouring the galaxy and they can not afford to risk moving all their ships until the are sure of the reward. Maybe their FTL drives just take months to move their biggest ships, it's not real so whatever.

I would argue; the less context, the less explanation the better. They are "Alien" everything they do is beyond our understanding. We are insects to them, barely worth the effort. Everything answered should raise more questions.

[Gorlom]

Re: raidio signals and distances.

Thinking about it the signals would have to have had reached them 50 years ago (before they set out) and sent out 30 years earlier so thats 80 years. commercially radio recivers (or maybe just television recievers) wasnt available untill 1920. It technically would be slightly plausable.

But since they are moveing at sublight speed I don't really see any reason as to why they wouldn't pick it up in flight. They are focused on the planet so if it suddenly starts sending off radio signals they must surely pick it up on any system they have monitoring the planet. They can't learn everything about a planet 30 lightyears awaay and if the planet suddenly dissapears because of some freaking spaceweather or wandering celesital body crashing into it or whatever you'd probably want to be able to abort the mission before arriving and finding smoldering remains.

Heh feel like im babbeling

Those Ideas were just off the top of my head. And doesnt the thrid option provide you with the low level industrial developement you were talking about? If they need to build facilities to be able to slow down and "catch" each size of the alien vessels through that would explain why they can't progress too fast.

Building a base somewhere within our solarsystem provides the problem that where are they getting the raw material to build both the base and the ships? Prospecting mining and refining the raw materials to use in shipbuilding should take a really long time. Long enough that scouts are useless to send out and they should just opt for building battleships to begin with. And that's just for the materials that can even be found within our solar system. What about the foreign elements that they bring with them. How do they get those with a 50 year travel time? If you say they dip into the suply they had with them for colonization doesn't that somewhat defeat the point? If they eradicate us to colonize but don't have enough left to colonize when they are done?

And what about the Alien type progression? if all of them arrive at the same time how do you explain that you only meet 1 or 2 kinds at first and then more and more over time? Especially the weaker kinds first? With an FTL system that can be explained away by internal politics or whatever you can think of .

PS. I'm thinking way too much about this AFAIK Chris is probably already done with the story. And since he really wants to beat the Firaxis game to the market he's unlikely to change it. DS.

[Chris]

Bleh, long posts. Lots of them. Here's my quick answers - if I missed any questions, it's because they were obscured by the enormous wall of text!

1) Story - basically, there's an alien fleet in orbit but the aliens are adapting their ships to atmospheric flight. It's quicker for the smaller ones. There's more to it than that but that's the basic logic behind the invasion escalation speed.

2) Yes, the starting missions are intended to be dangerous. In terms of the split between ground combat and the Geoscape, we don't have any hard and fast rules on that and we'll have to fine tune it in beta. But your concerns have been noted.

3) AI - we're getting a specialist AI programmer to do it. Plus each of the alien races has a unique ability or set of characteristics to keep things interesting.

4) Resarch and subgames - no, they're not being expanded. We're actually trying to make the game more accessible rather than adding more complication so having diferent types of scientist to me wouldn't add anything in gameplay terms, it'd just make things more daunting.

[Gorlom]

1) Story - basically, there's an alien fleet in orbit but the aliens are adapting their ships to atmospheric flight. It's quicker for the smaller ones. There's more to it than that but that's the basic logic behind the invasion escalation speed.

HAH! I knew it would be a good one =) (No, but I was hopeing ^^. and seems more then satisfying)

[Montie]

3) AI - we're getting a specialist AI programmer to do it. Plus each of the alien races has a unique ability or set of characteristics to keep things interesting.

4) Resarch and subgames - no, they're not being expanded. We're actually trying to make the game more accessible rather than adding more complication so having diferent types of scientist to me wouldn't add anything in gameplay terms, it'd just make things more daunting.

Well that's two major concerns down and I've only just arrived. Let's just say I've been grossly unimpressed with a related recent project by another development crew and leave it at that before I go full bore rant. The remaining concerns were either addressed on the site proper or I suspect I'll find the answers browsing around.

[Gauddlike]

That's the down side to game AI.

It is either good and barely gets noticed it or it is bad and breaks the game.

[Patupi]

Hmm, I guess I understand on the research front. My thoughts would be for a somewhat simplified version. IE scientists all have skills in whatever topic breakdown you want. They can all do all the science, but some are better at some topics than others. But, the simplified 'Generic Scientist' works for me too. As Chris said, making the science part of the game more accessible is important. Often you want to zip into the screen, start the research, and zip out. Yes it might be nice to have to balance things, gauge who to put on each topic, but in XCom Apoc you get an even simpler version of that with the skill levels. Frankly I ended up just not hiring anyone below 90 skill level. Often it boils down to that.

Rynait

An example, We have already have Laser technology since slightly after WWII (study of XASER started with atomic bombs). Just the attempt to minaturization (sp?) has failed repeatedly until about late 80's [voila laser diodes]. I am also aware there was some 'difficulty in' manufacturing reliable "bulky-industrial" lasers in 1970's (some had high failure, terrible efficiency, and had to be repeatedly re-engineered or re-vamped).

Wait, from what I know of laser history the metastable principle was developed in the early sixties wasn't it? The bomb pumped 'xasers' aren't true lasers at all. They just use semi-spherical bubbles in aluminum (or other materials that have a different refractive index for X-rays) to bend a fraction of the xrays from an atomic blast in a given direction before the plasma shockwave destroys the redirection rods. They are more akin to nineteenth century lensing given a twentieth century 'snaz' than the actual lasers of the late twentieth.