KickStarter Xenonauts 2 - now available on Early Access

[ERYFKRAD]

Third time the charm, I guess. I went back for another go, and this time stuff just clicked. Could be that they have fixed the worst of the performance issues. It only stutters once in a while now. Even the absurd timed mission was fun. Not sure what changed with the game, or me, but currently, the game is really enjoyable. It feels on par with Xenonauts 1, but it's snappier, and more pretty. And the 3D space works so much better when it comes to elevated positions. It just feels, and looks way better. The new researched stuff got some interesting additions too. It comes with small description tab now that explains the fundamentals about an alien, or weapon. Like, if it has claws, it will say that, and that is has melee capabilities, what it does and so on.

So, I'm back on team Goldhawk. Can't wait for the full release!

Is the home team still restricted to a baton and riot shield for melee weapons.

 

[Joggerino]

Happy to hear the game is on the right track. I really enjoyed xenonauts 1.

 

[Alienman]

Is the home team still restricted to a baton and riot shield for melee weapons.

Now I don't know what the future holds - what late-game holds for secrets. But currently in my game, I have the baton, which you now have build yourself (not provided to you in limitless quantities), and knives (which comes unlimited/starter equipment). I hope there is other melee stuff you can unlock down the line.

 

[Alienman]

I should add that the air-game is much more involved now. First off, the combat is similar to the first game, except that the UFOs seem to have way more ways to deal with you. Larger arcs of fire, some even have turrets in the back. So it is no easy task to bring down UFOs anymore.

Another thing, is that you now have to build a lot more stuff for your planes. Which means, they don't come auto equipped with the latest stuff from research. Everything has to be built, for example new armor, going from regular to alien alloy, you have to build new cannons, new missile launchers, and stuff like that. Which also means, you can combine and equip the planes however you like, much like equipping your men before a mission. Building specialized planes is a thing. Like, I have lightly armored long rang missile planes, and heavily armored close range planes only equipped with cannons. One is for doing damage at long range, then bugging out, while the other take the brunt of damage/focus of the alien craft.

I feel it's a great change to the game.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

All this updating and they still haven't made full use of the 3D environment to fix LOS

That was what killed my enthusiasm for the first game.
Getting shot at in the middle of the roof by an alien on the other side on the map on the ground because the game can't properly calculate height and angles is some bullshit.
FFS, UFO was made in 1994 and they got that right, why is it so hard to do with today's tech?

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I should add that the air-game is much more involved now. First off, the combat is similar to the first game, except that the UFOs seem to have way more ways to deal with you. Larger arcs of fire, some even have turrets in the back. So it is no easy task to bring down UFOs anymore.

Another thing, is that you now have to build a lot more stuff for your planes. Which means, they don't come auto equipped with the latest stuff from research. Everything has to be built, for example new armor, going from regular to alien alloy, you have to build new cannons, new missile launchers, and stuff like that. Which also means, you can combine and equip the planes however you like, much like equipping your men before a mission. Building specialized planes is a thing. Like, I have lightly armored long rang missile planes, and heavily armored close range planes only equipped with cannons. One is for doing damage at long range, then bugging out, while the other take the brunt of damage/focus of the alien craft.

I feel it's a great change to the game.

How fast are these ships? There was a mod for xenonauts 1 that added two new ship types that basically ruined the game, because they were absurdly fast which means you can't get into their one blind spot to safely attack them. The intent was to make the Fury viable, but they did it in the most ham fisted and worse way possible.

Also, is smoke useful now? I didn't like the change to smoke in xenonauts; having a mere accuracy penalty means nothing when the AI has high accuracy stats, longer sight range and will spam autofire.

 

[Alienman]

How fast are these ships? There was a mod for xenonauts 1 that added two new ship types that basically ruined the game, because they were absurdly fast which means you can't get into their one blind spot to safely attack them. The intent was to make the Fury viable, but they did it in the most ham fisted and worse way possible.

Also, is smoke useful now? I didn't like the change to smoke in xenonauts; having a mere accuracy penalty means nothing when the AI has high accuracy stats, longer sight range and will spam autofire.

The UFOs so far are much slower! They don't speed around like they are on crack anymore. At least not so far. I have not come very far, but currently the speed feels a lot more realistic. No lightning speed mall strafing

Smoke is useful. Each plume of smoke reduce the aim by 20%. So aiming through a whole pack of smoke will kill your aim, and I assume it works the same for the aliens. I have used smoke a lot in my current playthrough, and I get the impression that it works.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

They might have changed how alien accuracy or AI worked.
I remember smoke being practically ineffective because you'll still lose a soldier to autofire or long ranged attacks.

I hope they made late game armour better. Plasma battlerifles in the original were ridiculous. They dealt so much damage, even against predator armour, and the AI fielded a lot of them so even if your soldier survived a hit he'll still die that turn.

I remember power armour in UFO being fairly effective against heavy plasma. You'll still need a health kit but the wearer will live.

 

[Alienman]

They might have changed how alien accuracy or AI worked.
I remember smoke being practically ineffective because you'll still lose a soldier to autofire or long ranged attacks.

I hope they made late game armour better. Plasma battlerifles in the original were ridiculous. They dealt so much damage, even against predator armour, and the AI fielded a lot of them so even if your soldier survived a hit he'll still die that turn.

I remember power armour in UFO being fairly effective against heavy plasma. You'll still need a health kit but the wearer will live.

There seems to be different AI for the aliens. Like the Lizard folk this time around don't use plasma, they use close quarters machinegun like weapons. So, smoke will not help against them too much, since they come really close, either to fill you with holes or claw you to death. Then we have the sniper dudes, which I think smoke works better against. One alien race gets improved aim when they work together, so you don't want them to cluster up.

Armor seems to work better now. It's a bit different. Now you see armor rating when equipping your men, and you can boost the armor by picking the armor boosting thing, but then you might miss out on something else, like improved aim. All up to you, of course. A sniper might not need that armor booster. The armor also get depleted. So each hit you take and survive, lowers the armor value. A thing to keep in mind during missions. It just seems that you can count on it working in times of need, at least to protect you for a couple of hits. All weapons have different penetration values too, something to ponder, depending on who you face.

Just want to add that the new vehicle is freaking awesome. Instead of a big bulky thing, it's a small tracked weapon plattform. You can equip it however you want, and it comes with a couple of different options. Rifles, canons, rockets, even a range finder. You can also decide if you want it to be more armored, or faster, but then with less protection. The vehicle also only take one slot on the dropship.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Oh, I like the change to Sebellians then.
In the first game they would tell you that they have poor eyesight and prefer close quarters, but then the fuckers would snipe you across the map like everyone else. Good to see they fixed that and made them actually act like their own fluff says.

 

[Alienman]

Okay, ran into some issues now that I'm further into the game. But I think it's stuff that probably will be fixed eventually.

Anyway, I find the reaction fire way too powerful, it occurs too often, and the aim is too good. Reaction fire was a big thing in Xenonauts 1 as well, but there was always ways around it - using smoke, stuns, and the shield. However, the design is different in Xenonauts 2. First off, the shield just adds armor, instead of fully blocking the shots. That is how I understand it at least, because every time I used to shield, damage come through and hit the wearer. Which makes the thing useless. Sure, it blocks some damage, but you still take damage, and to me, it would be preferable to be able to use the character more than once during a mission. Stun grenades still work, but the problem comes from how some of the new maps are designed. UFOs and Alien bases have a lot of smaller rooms now. So instead of opening a door to the main cabin, you now have to teleport up to a bridge, and that area is totally exposed having aliens on all sides. You might be able to shoot or stun one alien, but this triggers every other alien to react and blast your man. I don't see any way around this, since you can't throw grenades up through the teleporter like you would do when opening a door. It's a real pain in the ass, and I think it promotes degenerate gameplay, aka save scumming.

Another minor issue is that grenades can be thrown like a baseball in a straight line. It looks both awesome and silly. One problem comes from that the aliens can do it as well, and these dudes are strong. Strength determines how far you can throw. I think you see where I'm going with this. One alien threw a nade right into the face of one of my dudes from at least 30 meters away, from one room to another, in a straight line. It looked hilarious, but gameplay-wise, I do think it's a BS moment. Why have rocket launchers, or anything like that when you can just throw the nades like that?

I left the feedback on the Goldhawk forums as well.

 

[Alienman]

Made a video for Chris to showcase some issues I have with the game. It's three parts of an ongoing playthrough I'm doing. First part is the assault of a Cleaner base. How freaking difficult it is this early in the game, and yeah, well to showcase the reaction fire problem. It's absolutely devastating. The second part is Xenonaut base defense, which currently is way too easy. I was mostly passive during the whole ordeal. The last part is Alien Base assault. It starts out really fun. Deadly corridor fights, but then it turns into frustration when I discovered that all the remaining aliens are hiding, waiting for me with reaction fire at the ready.

Video start: Cleaner base.
24:47: Xenonaut base under attack.
28:14: Alien base assault.
49:55: Hilarious baseball grenade throw.

The salt flows freely in this video, especially at the end. You have been warned!

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I see what you mean about the grenades. They don't seem to arc anymore and are basically another projectile. I noticed that early in the video during the cleaner base attack.
Cleaners are humans, yes?

 

[Alienman]

I see what you mean about the grenades. They don't seem to arc anymore and are basically another projectile. I noticed that early in the video during the cleaner base attack.
Cleaners are humans, yes?

Yes, they are. Kidnapped, then turned into mindless husks.

It's not all grenades, though. Most of the time you got that arc. But when the roof is low, the game seem to allow you to throw it like a baseball with hilarious effects. I can't decide if I like it or not, because it's realistic, right? But then...

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Those turrets are indeed ridiculous. But do they have 360 degree vision arcs? Maybe the idea is that you get behind them?

 

[Alienman]

Those turrets are indeed ridiculous. But do they have 360 degree vision arcs? Maybe the idea is that you get behind them?

I think they have, but not sure. I tried to sneak around, but yeah, didn't end well. They got turrets all over.

 

[Alienman]

For the sentry turrets, you're probably under-equipped for this mission but the turrets are pretty ridiculous. I've discovered the main problem is actually that there's an error in the data file that was incorrectly exporting twice as many turrets as there should be in mission, which means in the next update there will only be 6 turrets to deal with rather than 12. But I'll also make these balancing changes:

• Increase the armour destruction on the MARS rockets from 5 to 10
• Sentry Gun armour reduced from 25 to 20, fixed a bug preventing it going below 10 Armour
• Sentry Gun accuracy reduced from 60 to 50
• Sentry Gun reflexes reduced from 50 to 35

Cool, Chris responded. Seems the silliness of the turrets will get nerfed a little.

Now to convince him of the reaction fire of all aliens

 

[Alienman]

Posted this on the Xenonauts 2 forum. It's my final feedback thing since my playthrough ended. These are my feelings towards the game. The game got some stuff that I hope gets improved, but overall, I had a fun time. Now we wait, I guess.

I'm 100% sure I'm going to miss stuff, but let's start with the good stuff:

• New 3D engine (just wish the terrain wasn't that flat)
• New animations
• Awesome new music
• The combat in general is enjoyable. Much like Xenonauts 1
• I like that UFOs are slower on the geoscape. Feels more realistic
• I like that the planes now track UFOs correctly
• I love that you have to equip planes now which makes them more individualized
• More to build with the engineers, which leads to more customization overall
• Combine different armor parts
• Armor will protect your men
• The new vehicle (MARS) is cool. And I like it's cheaper to repair when destroyed, instead of having to build a new one
• The economics of the game are much more brutal. I love it
• It seems you have to sell stuff to survive. This I like
• The aliens look cool, I like the brutes
• Reaper zombifying looks way cooler
• UI improvements when recruiting, now you see their face even
• The grenade arc looks better, and it looks like you are throwing something in a 3D world
• Xenopedia UI, like the extra info tabs you get in the top right corner when looking at a subject
• The alien base looks cool. I like the small flanking corridors
• General writing (Xenopedia stuff)

Now to some negative stuff:

• Reaction fire galore, which slows down the game. Will expand on this below
• Alien base central command (second floor). It's way too open, and suicidal (frustrating) to attack
• Baseball grenade (throwing grenades in a straight line)
• No increased accuracy when crouching (In general, removing complexity is bad)
• Can't close base (alien) doors. I understand why this was changed from a gameplay/balance viewpoint, but it makes little sense otherwise. The door only got an open button?
• While the game is 3D, shooting seems to be "hitscan". The animation for the bullet feels fake, it's just there for effect. I have seen bullets pass through objects, units, and other things, that should have blocked the shot if it was a true 3D-rendered object in the world. Think Silent Storm game
• No date (months, years) on the geoscape. Feels very nondescript just having day XXX
• The setting. I like it, but I prefer the cool 80s NATO vs. Russia in Xenonauts 1
• Why do we have pilots, when the pilot gets deleted with the plane if you decommission it? It seems like a pointless addition if that is that they are going to be
• Less detail in the environments, especially when looking at the human base tiles

Beyond what is said here, and what has been said in this thread earlier, my main issue with the game is that it seems the best way to play is to play defensively/passively on the battlefield. And that seems to apply to the aliens as well. With that I mean - hunker down and wait for the aliens to come, and unleash hell on them with reaction fire. The aliens use these exact tactics as well, except for the suicidal half-blind Sebellians.

One of the cool aspects of OG X-com, Terror from the Deep, Apocalypse, and Xenonauts is that there is a lot more movement involved, especially in TFTD. You move around on the map in these games, which leads to cool stuff, like actually having to explore which gets you to see different kinds of buildings/terrain. And it forces you out of your comfort zone. Phoenix Point and Battle Brothers (even if it works differently) have the same problem as Xenonauts 2. Phoenix Point has very small maps, and often more than half the map is already revealed when you load in. Often you spot enemies at the first turn too. There is no exploration, no tension, you go from geoscape to action immediately - and the best decision is just to hunker down and wait for the aliens.

Now Battle Brothers are designed around this concept, but on some missions, you have to move around, and I always found these parts very enjoyable. Walking through a forest, looking for bandits, or some other horrible beast. After a while, the passive nature of Battle Brothers gets to me. It feels more like chess at times than an immersive game set in a harsh medieval fantasy world.

Anyway, I find exploration and the tension that comes with that is currently missing in Xenonauts 2 (not entirely), much thanks to the incredibly punishing reaction fire (and small maps). This works both ways - the best option is to let the aliens make the mistake of moving, instead of you.

That is all. I'm looking forward to future releases!

 

[udm]

Thanks for providing insight into the game. Very disappointly, it seems like a step down from Xenonauts 1 in areas that were perfectly fine, yet doesn't improve on areas that needed actual fixing, so I'm not sure what could convince me to even buy the game. I might as well go back to playing OpenXcom and Xenonauts if I really wanted to scratch that alien hunting itch.

 

[Alienman]

Thanks for providing insight into the game. Very disappointly, it seems like a step down from Xenonauts 1 in areas that were perfectly fine, yet doesn't improve on areas that needed actual fixing, so I'm not sure what could convince me to even buy the game. I might as well go back to playing OpenXcom and Xenonauts if I really wanted to scratch that alien hunting itch.

I think many of these things will be balanced, changed or fixed. Considering it's not even out in Early Access yet. I think Chris will get a lot more feedback when that happens. Regarding buying the game, I guess it depends on how much you like the X-com like gameplay. I'm a sucker for it, and I think Xenonauts have a different flavor from OG X-com (OpenXcom) so I think it's worth a buy.

 

[Maggot]

The lack of any real ballistic simulation is disappointing. It's crazy that they developed UFO Defense through Apocalypse in half the time it's taking the Xenonauts 2 devs to make a lesser clone.

 

[Haba]

Bigger team working full time (and even more) accomplishes more than a smaller team working part time. No big surprise.

 

[geno]

November is nearly over so it's once again time for our monthly dev update. We've had a productive month here overall, making numerous improvements to the game and adding in several new features too.

Public Releases:
We continued patching V24 this month, eventually releasing V24.7b onto the standard Steam / GOG branches. We got a lot of useful feedback on balancing from the community and I'm actively playtesting V25 at the moment with the intention of releasing it either later this week or some time next week.

V25 is going to be our first open beta build, although it'll spend a few days with our existing community beforehand so we can find any critical bugs in it before we begin the open beta. The first (small) wave of invites will probably therefore be going out in mid-December.

Alien Abilities:
The biggest new feature we implemented this month were the remaining alien racial abilities. These are a bit more "active" compared to the alien powers in the first Xenonauts, with the idea being to pose interesting tactical challenges for the player. I'll give a couple of examples to show you what I mean.

The first is the Wraith, which in Xenonauts 1 could teleport around the map (not particularly funny when you were trying to find the last alien in an alien base, etc). Now they instead have an ability called Cloaking Field, which reduces Accuracy by -2 for each tile of distance when shooting at a Wraith. However, Cloaking Field is disabled for the remainder of the turn when the Wraith takes damage from any source.

The second is the Cyberdrone, which is a late-game alien unit which has heavy frontal armour and rotates in the direction of any sound - gunshots, footsteps, explosions, etc. Using multiple soldiers (or just throwing grenades behind it) allow you to expose the weaker rear armour and can make it easier to kill.

Hopefully this illustrates what we're trying to achieve - basically to make the player think more closely about where to position their soldiers and what attacks or equipment to use. While these abilities still require quite a lot more testing and polishing, once we have them working properly the gameplay will hopefully be richer and the aliens more memorable.

Soldier Equipment:
In V24 soldiers have an equipment slot called the "special" slot (also known as the "undersuit" slot). This is basically an additional item slot where you can carry one item that gives the soldier a particular bonus - e.g. extra armour plates to boost survivability, a tactical visor to boost Accuracy, a mind shield to boost defence against psionics, etc.

As this system hasn't added as many interesting choices to the game as I'd have liked, I've spent this month updating the soldier inventory. Soldiers now have a Primary weapon, a Secondary weapon, and a single 5x5 "vest" grid which contains all the additional items they want to carry into battle (ammo, grenades, extra weapons, etc). Importantly, all the items that previously went in the special slot are now 2x2 items that fit into the vest grid like any other item.

I've been playtesting this over the past few days and I think it's a really fun change. The backpack wasn't really being used that much before, but now vest space (and the carrying capacity of the soldier) are much more important, even at the start of the game. Is it worth giving up that spare ammo magazine and two grenades for +5 Accuracy? It all depends on how you want to set up your soldiers, and it's a system I'm looking forward to discussing and balancing further during the open beta.

General Development Progress:
Other than my work on the two systems mentioned above, most of my time this month has been spent discussing the gameplay experience with our community and ironing out various smaller gameplay / usability pain points in the campaign. General feedback on V24 was pretty good but there's clearly quite a few aspects of the game that are interfering with people's enjoyment of it; many of these should be improved in V25.

There's been several content updates to the game, too - the Engineering screen has now been re-skinned into our new UI style, the updated Arid biome is now present (with eight entirely new maps), and the dropships have been retextured in the tatical combat. We've also been busy planning out the tutorial and creating the map required for it, and we'll start work implementing that in December.

Finally, we've been working on the load times for the game, and have hopefully now fixed the issue where Windows would think the game had frozen and invite you to terminate the process if you had alt+tabbed out while the game was loading.

So overall a rather productive month. I'll wrap up this update there, and hopefully we'll be seeing some of you in the open beta during December!

If you want to sign up for the open beta, please post in the previous update thread. I'll be DMing people Steam keys via these forums when the open beta starts.

 

[Serus]

Bigger team working full time (and even more) accomplishes more than a smaller team working part time. No big surprise.

The first UFO game was developed by 4 (or 5?) persons. Is Xenonauts2 team smaller?

 

[Haba]

Bigger team working full time (and even more) accomplishes more than a smaller team working part time. No big surprise.

The first UFO game was developed by 4 (or 5?) persons. Is Xenonauts2 team smaller?

With MicroProse as their (meagre) bank, and previous development from Laser Squad to draw from. The development started already in 1991, and once they got the publisher, they were burning the midnight oil for more than a little bit. I've read the book.

Not to mention how different time we are talking about. We could whip up a fully functional game during a weekend and just continue adding stuff on it. A programmer could draw the sprites, if necessary. No need to think about drivers and engines - if you needed something, you just wrote the code. And your code determined how far you could push the tech.

Those days games take longer to make (just look at Phoenix Point, r00fles!). And it isn't always because people are less talented or lazy.