Research Tree Structure Discussion

Define "better"

Better for wat? Whom?

If I'm racing to capture live aliens, stun gas would be better than a new rifle.

If aritificial muscle increases the STR of all my troops, it might be more worth it than a new interceptor.

Autposies begin prequisites form something else and yielding items automaticly makes them valubale. That of course doesn't mean that all things are equally valubale and that there won't be optimal research strategies more or less.

There ALWAYS are.

Or do you really think that is any item/tech is deemed the weakest, that it won't be left last to research by most players?

Removing uposises won't remove that.

I think the automatic autopsy makes sense, afterall it would'nt take a team of 5 to 10 scientists 2 days to carry out an autopsy, it could be done in a day by a team of two, also the longer the corpses are left, the quicker they rot, even a feild medic could feasibly carry out a basic autopsy after a mission.

What's better than researching an autopsy, you ask?

Well.. if I want my Alenium missiles - and I do if I want to take on corvettes, or heavy fighters, as they can take a full load of avalanches/sidewinders and still keep going - I have to research the alien power source, then alenium, then alenium missiles. That's a lot of work, so it's "better" that I get that done first as the air war isn't something you can fuck around with. It's also vital that I get lasers and wolf armour PDQ, as Jackal armour merely stops my squaddies from dying the first time they get hit, and the terror missions are exactly that if I'm still using ballistics and they are using heavy plasmas and terrorist alien types (once the reaper starts zombifying civvies properly, they are going to be a NIGHTMARE). Even with the extra damage boost, autopsies are going to be the bottom of the research pile because there is so much necessary work that must be done to even vaguely keep up with the aliens as they escalate the strength of their attacks.

I actually quite like having to manage my own stocks of ammunition but it doesn't make a lot of difference to me.

I just think the assumption that something is wrong if you need to fire a lot of missiles while fending off waves of enemies is a little off.

If the majority of interceptions require missiles, the majority of squadrons will have multiple craft, the majority of enemies will take multiple missiles hits to disable and there are multiple enemy squadrons to a wave then that could well amount to a huge amount of Alenium and construction just to allow you to be able to continue to play the game.

Imagine if you ran out and had to fall back on tier one weapons to try and build your stocks back up, especially when the low tier enemies are removed from the game once they are no longer competitive.

Nothing has changed about the breaking of UFO's so can't really see how that is 'cheapened' at all.

Autopsies are a nice bit of fluff text that doesn't need to be related to anything else.

Stun weapons, toxins, and power armour are already research topics with their own pre requisites so by joining them in with the autopsies you would not really accomplish much in the way of diversification, in fact it would reduce the amount of topics.

Unless you want to tie them in as pre requisites, in which case you can still do that.

Define "better"

Better for wat? Whom?

If I'm racing to capture live aliens, stun gas would be better than a new rifle.

If aritificial muscle increases the STR of all my troops, it might be more worth it than a new interceptor.

Autposies begin prequisites form something else and yielding items automaticly makes them valubale. That of course doesn't mean that all things are equally valubale and that there won't be optimal research strategies more or less.

There ALWAYS are.

Or do you really think that is any item/tech is deemed the weakest, that it won't be left last to research by most players?

Removing uposises won't remove that.

A better interceptor or transport craft is, in all cases, better than a piddly damage boost against something. A weapon that is more powerful is more powerful against everything, which is, again in all cases, better than a slight damage boost against one thing. Better survivability is, once again, better in all cases than a minor damage boost against one thing. Even if the autopsies open up different avenues for research (like Alien Bio), being able to survive longer and make the aliens dead faster will always, for 99.9999999% of players, take precedence over something that amounts to lore and maybe better stun weapons.

I think the automatic autopsy makes sense, afterall it would'nt take a team of 5 to 10 scientists 2 days to carry out an autopsy, it could be done in a day by a team of two, also the longer the corpses are left, the quicker they rot, even a feild medic could feasibly carry out a basic autopsy after a mission.

I was going to say this near word for word, that even tho its alien a medical autopsy would be 1-2 dr's for a few hours, and with reading the autopsy descriptions that the findings are on par with what you might expect from a basic autopsy. My only slightly immersion breaking gripe would be the mission debrief screen says "SENT TO RESEARCH DIVISION" but you get the research popup the moment you get back to the geoscape, could we delay the research popup at least till the dropship gets back with the bodies and gear? I know Im griping on a few hours of in game time when most people are trying to click the 4x fast play button as soon as they get in anyway. But to make those resources that your ground team is bring back not available till they get there makes more sense.

I was going to say this near word for word, that even tho its alien a medical autopsy would be 1-2 dr's for a few hours, and with reading the autopsy descriptions that the findings are on par with what you might expect from a basic autopsy. My only slightly immersion breaking gripe would be the mission debrief screen says "SENT TO RESEARCH DIVISION" but you get the research popup the moment you get back to the geoscape, could we delay the research popup at least till the dropship gets back with the bodies and gear? I know Im griping on a few hours of in game time when most people are trying to click the 4x fast play button as soon as they get in anyway. But to make those resources that your ground team is bring back not available till they get there makes more sense.

I agree here. Being able to research items your team has just brought in from the feild before the chinook has even returned to base does break some of the quint-essiential immersion. Same with the fact the weapons are sold there and then in the feild by the xenonauts to the black market or local civs I would presume. I'd rather stockpile weapons and sell when needed.

I should ask, how the different weapon tiers will be varied from each other? Different tiers can have some distinguishable features, which will justify the using of lower-tier weapons, making the game even more varied. One of the instruments allowing to do this was autopsies, revealing enemy weaknesses to the special effects and weapon types. Old x-com had the potential to do so, though undeveloped and mostly in the form of immunities to the flame weapons, which was underused anyway.

A little more on this here

Beardage, Orangehat, the assumption that the dropship that carried the squad out carries everything back isn't a good one for several reasons.

1) What happens if the dropship gets shot down (as they can)? Thothkins can attest to the frustration of being stalked by UFOs. If a key piece of technology hard fought for and necessary to progress in research (e.g alien power source) is lost because of random UFO activity (that you may not be able to save-scum away because of how it appears on the geoscape), exactly how would you feel when you have to go out and do it all over again?

2) If we're talking immersion, how credible do you find it that a dropship could carry all the loot back from a downed UFO, given that UFOs start at almost the size of the dropship and only get bigger. I mean, consider the corvette, the first medium-sized ship. Where the hell would all of it go? Why can't it all be packed on larger freight aircraft that we don't see because it isn't necessary to do so?

Beardage, Orangehat, the assumption that the dropship that carried the squad out carries everything back isn't a good one for several reasons.

1) What happens if the dropship gets shot down (as they can)? Thothkins can attest to the frustration of being stalked by UFOs. If a key piece of technology hard fought for and necessary to progress in research (e.g alien power source) is lost because of random UFO activity (that you may not be able to save-scum away because of how it appears on the geoscape), exactly how would you feel when you have to go out and do it all over again?

2) If we're talking immersion, how credible do you find it that a dropship could carry all the loot back from a downed UFO, given that UFOs start at almost the size of the dropship and only get bigger. I mean, consider the corvette, the first medium-sized ship. Where the hell would all of it go? Why can't it all be packed on larger freight aircraft that we don't see because it isn't necessary to do so?

pray tell what transport or teleportation device they have to bring those home, and regardless if its the drop ship or not it should be vulerable and appear on map. what ever brings the goods home is instantanous currently and i feel should be given some "delivery speed" based on distance from base. In '79 there wernt cargo planes going faster than your f-16(17's)

both your points also suggest risk aversion that goes against everything that this game is. why not have to escort your cargo and drop ship back.

Beardage, Orangehat, the assumption that the dropship that carried the squad out carries everything back isn't a good one for several reasons.

1) What happens if the dropship gets shot down (as they can)? Thothkins can attest to the frustration of being stalked by UFOs. If a key piece of technology hard fought for and necessary to progress in research (e.g alien power source) is lost because of random UFO activity (that you may not be able to save-scum away because of how it appears on the geoscape), exactly how would you feel when you have to go out and do it all over again?

2) If we're talking immersion, how credible do you find it that a dropship could carry all the loot back from a downed UFO, given that UFOs start at almost the size of the dropship and only get bigger. I mean, consider the corvette, the first medium-sized ship. Where the hell would all of it go? Why can't it all be packed on larger freight aircraft that we don't see because it isn't necessary to do so?

Good point it does make sense thinking about the fact of larger UFO's using freight's makes it logical. However if the dropship gets shot down then it would be a matter of war, makes sense that the alien fleet would try to hit the xenonauts logistics. It would be a pain in the arse but a risk you take without escorting the chinook.

I agree that there should be a delay before the items arrive.

After all, no matter how they are transported, it cannot be instantanious.

I also think you should instantly get items from an UFO. After all, soemone has to figure out how to break it apart safely first and then carefully and slowly do it. Honestly, I'd prefer if breaking down UFO's were workshop project and you only get materials once it's done. Gives workshops something to do for the whoel game and especially early on.

Someone also has to prepare your meals and clean the base toilets but it doesn't mean it would be fun to have to manage it

Someone also has to prepare your meals and clean the base toilets but it doesn't mean it would be fun to have to manage it

I'm a Dwarf fortress fan an i beg to differ!

Though of course there is a level of abstraction which should be observed.

Plus, it's not that things should not always be explained if they are feeling good in-game. Finish mission — get reward. Otherwise you'll gonna need a whole bunch of UI notifications about where is your scrap, why you still don't have your scrap, how long it takes for your scrap to arrive, no, you can't research faster scrap delivery, etc.

For conveniences sake, I'd say just let all the gear arrive with the Chinook. Maybe they've got bags of holding strapped to the underbelly or something, I dunno, and I don't really care tbh. As far as gameplay, that's the best blend of realism (not getting there immediately) and convenience/minimal disruption to gameplay (not sending a flight of cargo planes to pick it all up).

So, you get all loot after the chopper gets back to base.

If the chopper gets shot down, however, then that wouldn't work.

I suggest that if the chopper's shot down but carrying salvage (which it usually is), have the goods (or some of them, to simulate damage) arrive twelve hours (or whatever) after the chinook crashed, to show that a team was dispatched and picked up any salvageable parts. Alloys would be totally intact and all there (they're very durable), alenium would all explode or something, losing everything. Maybe 50% of the alien corpses, both xenonaut and alien weaponry, armor, etc, would be salvaged, and the rest destroyed. You know, whatever seems right.

So, 12 hours (or whatever) after the transport's shot down, a popup shows up saying something like, "A team was dispatched to the chinook, and any usable debris left over from the crash was salvaged and brought back to base. We salvaged <list salvage here>, all else was destroyed in the crash." (In case anyone was wondering, it'd be the base that the chinook was based in, even if there's a nearer base. Makes it simpler. Unless you can make it go to the nearest base easily (code wise), then that'd make more sense.)

It may seem complicated, but it offers a rather simple explanation as to why you still get stuff (and you should still get stuff after all that work you've put into a mission) when your charlie gets shot down.

(Maybe I should put this into the suggestions place. Is it a good one, fellas?)

Also, Chris, I was just saying that humanity could synthesize alenium, with enough power and a good enough particle accelerator, not that we should add that as something we need to do ourselves in game.

We could however, have the research screen for alenium say something like, "Higher grade stuff we can't reproduce, but the lower grade stuff that we find tons of in crash sites we can use for missiles, and if we run out we can synthesize it, so we won't have to use the better stuff on warheads and the like; only for ships and other shiny things of that sort."

That'd give an explanation as to why we have limitless alenium for warheads but not for fancy new flying machines or whatever.

Yeah some level of depth and complexity is always good.

The only thing to be cautious about is adding over complication and feature creep.

Currently you assume that the parts are instantly transported from the crash site but that isn't how I see it.

The number of parts available are added to your stores list but they may not yet be physically present.

When you start to construct something that requires your shiny new UFO power source it doesn't matter if it is present at the start of the job or still en route from the crash site, or even still inside the craft.

Research can be begun in the field or by examining samples, photographs or whatever.

It isn't a big enough issue for me to be worried about adding new mechanics to get around it.

Might be worth creating a new suggestion thread though, if you put together a fully formed suggestion it might be enough to persuade people.

This thread is about the research tree, not craft recovery and manufacturing.

I'm not sure I want to move away from the instantaneous arrival time of items, because at the moment the items aren't linked to anything on the Geoscape. This is easier for two major reasons:

1) Stability - less can go wrong in the code that way, so less bugs or potential exploits.

2) Intuition - it is a simple, easy to understand system. The worst-case scenario with it is that people think "hang on, that got there fast!", which isn't that bad a problem. But if you delay the arrival by a set number of hours or link it to the dropship, a lot of people may be confused as to why they can't research what they've just captured immediately. Also, as has been pointed out by others, do we then have to have pop-ups telling you when stuff gets back home and you can research it?

So I don't think the current system is any worse than the alternatives, and has the advantage of being simpler too.

Someone also has to prepare your meals and clean the base toilets but it doesn't mean it would be fun to have to manage it

You dissapoint me Gauddlike... I expect some more though on this matter from you.

First and foremost, an alien military craft is NOT something you just cut to pieces. You have no idea of the material properties or various devices or safeties or security measures.

For all you know that strange object you are cutting apart may be the alien equalent of a nuke. That container may house extreemly flammable, toxic gas and cutting it with a blowtorch might not be a good idea. Given what happened at the Iceland Incident, I kidna doubt they would immediately send it to the cutters.

So you need to do some research and preparation before you do it, and then you want skilled engineers and a controlled enviroment (workshop).

The idea makes sense, it's natural and gives workshops more work to do AND gives the player another interesting choice - do you prioritize materials or new item production?

I fail to see the downside.

Because later in the game workshop time is at a premium. Even with 30 engineers (2 workshops) making high end laser weapons (let alone plasma) can take multiple days. If it wasn't for the cash and alloy limitations I would have no workshop downtime.

Someone also has to prepare your meals and clean the base toilets but it doesn't mean it would be fun to have to manage it

I dunno sim city's poo simulator is very fun, xenonauts base plumbing v1.0 could be a fun mini game with this champion of games!

TrashMan surely that is what the research project for the item is all about?

As you research the item you work out how to remove it safely, how it works, and hopefully how to duplicate it.

That would be one reason why the item is unavailable to you before research is complete.

Your assumption is that taking the parts from the craft is difficult, time consuming, and dangerous.

My assumption is that alien craft internals are modular and, once your scientists thoroughly research an item, removing it is a case of unbolting and unplugging it.

That would be why the initial research is time consuming but once the manual has been written any local recovery operative can remove whatever you need.

Anything remaining that is too dangerous to deal with is left for specialists to clean up.

Trash Man - you've mentioned the UFO AI system for cutting up UFOs before and, while it sounds interesting, I think it's a bit too much of a departure from classic X-Com.

I also intentionally simplified the early parts of the research tree (merged the Alenium and UFO Power Source projects, for example) to reduce the number of purely lore projects that you need to research before you actually get some goodies. There's already a lag and I don't particularly want to make it worse.

The early game has a lot more to do with your workshops now the Hunter, Hunter Missiles, Jackal and Foxtrot are all manufactured items.

Because later in the game workshop time is at a premium. Even with 30 engineers (2 workshops) making high end laser weapons (let alone plasma) can take multiple days. If it wasn't for the cash and alloy limitations I would have no workshop downtime.

I know this sounds crazy, but hear me out.... BALANCE!!!!!!

Yes, I know it's a far fetched concpet. I mean the game is ONLY in Beta and obviously the values are fixed and unchangable!

It's not like construction times and costs can be changed.

And Lord help us if we can't build everything we want.... I kinda thought that was the point.

Choices. You have to make priorities.

What do you need more? More meterials? Elenium? Anti-matter? A new laser rifle? A new armor?

TrashMan surely that is what the research project for the item is all about?

As you research the item you work out how to remove it safely, how it works, and hopefully how to duplicate it.

That would be one reason why the item is unavailable to you before research is complete.

Your assumption is that taking the parts from the craft is difficult, time consuming, and dangerous.

My assumption is that alien craft internals are modular and, once your scientists thoroughly research an item, removing it is a case of unbolting and unplugging it.

That would be why the initial research is time consuming but once the manual has been written any local recovery operative can remove whatever you need.

Anything remaining that is too dangerous to deal with is left for specialists to clean up.

My assumption is a correct one. Because it's an alien craft, not a car someone jacked. It doesn't come with instruction and labeled components. You have literally NO idea what you are dealing with.

It is plain common sense that you don't just cut it up with a blowtorch the second the crash site is secured. You transport it carefully to a safe location, you study what you can without cuting/removing anything - and then and ONLY then do you attempt dissasembly.

Did you even read what I wrote before about unknown material properties, booby traps, safety procedures, gases and nukes?

You get all the materials and compnents instatnly as it is. No research. No analysis. No anything. It's kinda dissapointing.

Trash Man - you've mentioned the UFO AI system for cutting up UFOs before and, while it sounds interesting, I think it's a bit too much of a departure from classic X-Com.

You speak as if the classic X-Com is a flawless game where nothing can be improved upon.

I fail to see the downside.

The system is intuitive and provides more choices for the player. What is the downside other than "you don't get materials instantly".

Also, Jackals, being completley human-made and rather simple should be available for purchase or simpler and faster to make IMHO.

I do find it silly that the soldiers start with no armor. And no, the starting thing isn't an armor.

...

Come to think of it, didn't you turn the Hunter and Jackal into researchable items because there wasn't anything for the workshop to do early game?... which is kinda what UFO dissasembly does? Give the workshop something to do for the whole game?

Nah, we made them researchable primarily because then people get a research pop-up on it, allowing us to give them a bit of guidance on what it does and how to use it.

It's most important for the Foxtrot but it's just helpful in general.

EDIT: Also, why would humans have armour that works against alien weapons until they've researched the alien weapons? Ballistic armour isn't much use against plasma weapons, so you've got to find a material that will protect you first.

Your UFO disassembly system is also hassle. Some people would rather be playing the ground combat or learning about the aliens rather than messing about with disassembling a UFO in the workshop. I certainly would. You may not, of course, but to me it just seems a bit needless and I think other people would feel the same way.

If I'm not sure something will definitely be an improvement over the way the old game did it, I'm not going to put it in the game. Particularly as the workshops are already busy early-game due to the aforementioned researchable early game items.

Point taken (with the item transport.) I honestly had never taken the time to notice what it actually did, so obviously at least some people won't care. What about my second idea, adding the little bit about picking up lesser alenium for warheads (not my idea originally) and using that to be able to synthesize it endlessly to give a little explanation for the limitless warheads (like, what if years go by without you doing a ground mission [sarcasm] (likely, I know) [/sarcasm] and the player wonders why you haven't run out of the little fragments for his missiles.)

It's not really needed, but it would show that humanity was capable of replicating the alien's technology at least to some degree, instead of being the ultimate mooch the universe has ever seen. You could even put in something about how it'll take fifty plus years to get the infrastructure in place, but we could even begin synthesizing pure alenium some day, now that we know what to aim for. It'd (imo) give the player a sense of accomplishment, learning that due to his/her efforts, humanity can create it's own alenium fuel and someday in the future travel the stars. Do what you want, but I think the extra few sentences would be worth it.