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KickStarter Xenonauts 2 - now available on Early Access

geno

Savant
Joined
Aug 21, 2018
Messages
718
Location
Spain
After just over two weeks and almost 2000 votes, our X2 base mechanics poll has closed and the results are overwhelmingly in favour of the classic base mechanics. We are therefore starting work on these new base mechanics immediately in the hope of switching them over before our Early Access launch.

66960ae25cd06af77b8a532a85f48a4d_original.PNG

The results of our base mechanics poll!
The results of the poll can be seen above and were broadly in line with what we were expecting, with a majority of people voting for the classic mechanics and almost as many voting that the developers should make the decision. As our position was that reverting to the classic mechanics would be a good thing, almost 90% of the votes were therefore in favour of changing the base mechanics.

If you're interested in the specifics, you can read the details of what we'll be implementing here.

Unfortunately this does still leave 10% of the community who are not getting their desired outcome, so I offer my apologies to them. Although I firmly believe we're making the correct decision here I understand that doesn't make it any easier for people who wanted to see something different.

The other news to announce is that we've released Closed Beta Build V6, but this build is only available if you opt-in to our new Experimental branch on Steam or GOG. All of our updates will now first be released on the Experimental branch, and once we've ironed out most of the major bugs in the build we'll push it out to the "normal" branch that everyone on Steam and GOG is using by default.

This new setup takes the pressure off the development team a little, as if someone finds a critical bug in an Experimental build that makes it unplayable they can just switch back to the normal branches and play an older but more stable version of the game while we prepare a patch.

Our objective for V6 was to implement a lot of new features rather than polish what we already had, so there's a LOT of new stuff in there (updates to the air combat, alien psionics, strategic upkeep costs and a funding screen, new art and alien variants, etc) but they're not particularly well tested right now - so your feedback and bug reports are always welcome!
Multiple bases are coming back.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
Yes, but freighters are also used when you transfer citizens between planets, so e.g. reckless long-range migration can accidentally result in a terrible famine somewhere.
That often happened to me when a blockade led me to think I had many more free freighters than I actually did. :|
 

geno

Savant
Joined
Aug 21, 2018
Messages
718
Location
Spain
Closed beta 7 is up
oy443nE.jpg

Key Features:

  • New Dropship Layout: we're testing a new layout for the starting dropship that carries 10 soldiers, has side walls and a tail ramp. The art is currently placeholder but if community feedback is good then we'll get a proper model and 2D artwork done.
  • "Classic" Base Mechanics: we've now reverted the base mechanics back to the classic X1 sytem where you can build multiple bases and their radar ranges are driven by the radar structures at that base. The art is placeholder (it is literally just the X1 art right now) but please test out the functionality!
  • Updated Aircraft Mechanics: aircraft are now stationed at Hangars built in the new base system, and we've had to add some new UI to allow you to buy new aircraft in an empty Hangar (on the Aircraft screen). Dropships also now fly around the map again rather than teleporting to mission sites, but at present the game still only supports a single dropship.
  • Improved Shot Path Sensitivity: The shot paths in the game now subdivide tiles into 9 smaller cells so it can trace a more accurate path for the shot. This is basically the X1 system now but with some further upgrades that fix some of the X1 problems related to corners and walls incorrectly getting in the way of shots.
  • X1 Camera / Fog of War / Shroud: We're now using a true orthographic camera and have switched the fog of war / shroud back to being purely tile-based rather than having a fadeout gradient around the edge, which looks uglier but is necessary to support night missions. Please report any problems you see with the vision!
    • This also fixes the issue where you can see the far side of a wall (e.g. a building interior) once you see the exterior side of the wall.
  • Autosaves: The game now autosaves far more regularly, including at the end of every turn of combat and before each mission. Please attach saves to bug reports where possible!
  • Tooltips: We've added the first set of tooltips to the game that explain the functionality of the various buttons on the screen, and give stats / details on the various items in the game. We only finished this system yesterday so only a few of them are set up so far, but the remainder will follow in upcoming builds. One nice feature is that these tooltips are linked to the actual weapon values, so they'll always be up-to-date no matter what balance changes I (or modders!) make.
  • Iron Man / Save Upgrades: we've implemented Iron Man mode, and also set the game up to autosave MUCH more frequently than before. These changes require you to name each new campaign (so the autosaves don't overwrite each other) so we've added a new UI panel when you start a new campaign; this will be rolled into the difficulty settings panel when that is implemented in the next major build but for now it has its own pop-up!
 

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
19,882
Side view Xcom 2 style actually makes more sense because even today's military likes to put important military bases into mountains to protect them from air strikes. They should have kept that but just added ability to make more than one.
 
Joined
May 19, 2018
Messages
415
Side view Xcom 2 style actually makes more sense because even today's military likes to put important military bases into mountains to protect them from air strikes. They should have kept that but just added ability to make more than one.

Like...who? Legit curious because excavating for military use is hella expensive.
 

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
19,882
Side view Xcom 2 style actually makes more sense because even today's military likes to put important military bases into mountains to protect them from air strikes. They should have kept that but just added ability to make more than one.

Like...who? Legit curious because excavating for military use is hella expensive.
Nazi for one had them. Also USA has them. Where I live there were air bases built into mountains. I am sure Russia has them as well.
 

SenisterDenister

Educated
Joined
Oct 30, 2016
Messages
54
Location
dac.cx
I see it’s in early access on Steam...but no way to buy into it? Sucks.
Right now it's still only closed beta to kickstarter supporters. Give it some time.

That said, to be quite honest I liked their old model. While it's great that the developers are listening to community feedback I think they should still make the game they want to make first and foremost. The prospect of having one central base and then airbases and smaller outposts around the globe made sense since this game is supposed to be more covert than the last. It seems like this was supposed to be less of an all out war and more of one combating a secret invasion, as the aliens are also trying to trigger a nuclear war between NATO and Warsaw Pact countries if they can't defeat you militarily.

Ultimately it's up to the developers themselves to put what they want in their game, I won't judge. I'm just glad to play it.
 

lightbane

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
10,156
The prospect of having one central base and then airbases and smaller outposts around the globe made sense since this game is supposed to be more covert than the last. It seems like this was supposed to be less of an all out war and more of one combating a secret invasion, as the aliens are also trying to trigger a nuclear war between NATO and Warsaw Pact countries if they can't defeat you militarily.

Perhaps mods will fix this?
 

Saduj

Arcane
Joined
Aug 26, 2012
Messages
2,547
If the aliens are trying to start a nuclear war, why don’t they just annihilate humanity from space and be done with it?

I would have moved the sequel out into space under the premise that the aliens, after their defeat in the original, now view humanity as a threat to be eliminated. And the Xenonaut’s job is to intercept and stop them before they can move their weapons platforms in place to bombard Earth from space. Bases are now space stations out beyond Pluto. Tactical combat takes place aboard disabled enemy mother ships, which need to be explored and salvaged so Earth can figure out how exactly these aliens are reaching us from light years away. Nonsensical funding mechanic (rich governments love funneling money to weapons manufacturers) is replaced by the player trying not to be fired as the head of the organization by keeping various factions happy based on who is being recruited, who is building weapons, who is getting credit for successes, etc.
 

Endemic

Arcane
Joined
Jul 16, 2012
Messages
4,321
If the aliens are trying to start a nuclear war, why don’t they just annihilate humanity from space and be done with it?

I would have moved the sequel out into space under the premise that the aliens, after their defeat in the original, now view humanity as a threat to be eliminated. And the Xenonaut’s job is to intercept and stop them before they can move their weapons platforms in place to bombard Earth from space.

x-com-interceptorlejsp.jpg


?
 

lightbane

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
10,156
If this is a sequel of the first game, why wouldn't humanity instantly band together once the realization that aliens are at it again, just like they did before? In fact, you should be able to start with a quite high tech level if stuff from the first war survived.
 

miles teg

Scholar
Joined
Jan 18, 2015
Messages
130
I'm still playing and enjoying the first one, but I haven't followed the development of this second part? What are the major differences?
 

SenisterDenister

Educated
Joined
Oct 30, 2016
Messages
54
Location
dac.cx
The world map and management and all of that is still the same, but most of the differences are becoming apparent in the combat. The air combat is similar to the original X-COM, you don't have direct control over your fighters like you did in the original Xenonauts, which is a strange design decision taking agency away from the player but that's their call as the developers, but in combat there's some quality of life things, being fully 3D cover and all of that is more apparent, and things are more destructible. There's also different ways to get up Z-planes, like climbing vines to get up a hill and ladders to get on top of a roof. The osprey you transported in also held less men, and had open sides they could jump out of like a huey or black hawk, but they went back to the original design like in Xenonauts 1. It seems like after hearing some player feedback from the alpha so far they've more or less gone back and are remaking the game on a 3D engine with some more quality of life features, which all in all isn't bad but it doesn't quite feel like a sequel, more of just refining what they've done already. But we'll see where it goes from here. Listening to community feedback is certainly a good thing and it shows they care about their game.
 

Jimmious

Arcane
Patron
Joined
May 18, 2015
Messages
5,132
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Basically they are remaking Xenonauts with new graphics. I feel like they "pussied out" of any changes so that they don't lose any "clients".
 

Jimmious

Arcane
Patron
Joined
May 18, 2015
Messages
5,132
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Basically they are remaking Xenonauts with new graphics. I feel like they "pussied out" of any changes so that they don't lose any "clients".

more like they wisely dropped a bunch of changes that were retarded
Maybe, I don't know, but if the whole point is just to reskin etc, they might as well call it "Xenonauts:EE".
I just would expect something more from a sequel
 

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