KickStarter Xenonauts 2 - now available on Early Access

[Thorgeim]

Just to show an example:

Spoiler

View attachment 38210

This is from a Youtube video I made, I uploaded it 7 months ago.

Spoiler

View attachment 38211

This is from the latest trailer uploaded by IGN. 2 weeks ago.

Now, I'm still excited for Xenonauts 2. But it still seems it will use set maps, which is very disappointing.

I'm really looking forward to Xenonauts 2 but the lack of random maps is massive decline

If its not at least a little randomized I hope they add it in during EA. After playing beta I cant wait for release, to me it feels great but this might make it a bit boring after some time. Depends how many they've created and hopefully it fits the location of engagements.

 

[Kem0sabe]

 

[agris]

what I don't understand is: yes they ditched the X1 engine for Unreal, but that was at the start of the project 5 years ago. further, the combat tech demo from ~2018 or so featured maps that looked alive. it was a lush, tropical, living and breathing biome.

how that got pared down to the aggressively static X1-style maps, i'll never know. do the X2 maps even feature animated components? screens that blink and bloop, vegetation that sways, lights that move...?

geno citations below

November 2016

June 2018

it's funny (

), if you look at the GOG page for X2, it still has the 2018-era map art. Compared to the Steam page, which is up-to-date, you can clearly see the downgrade.

GOG

Steam

edit: in my quoted post, I may have been wrong about the engine. This is Unity, not UE. I think X2 has always been Unity, whereas X1 was that restaurant sim engine.

 

[Modron]

The winter map from the demo a few months back still looked like the 2018 shots, I wonder if the winter tile set is just nicer or has been downgraded since a next fest or two ago.

 

[agris]

The winter map from the demo a few months back still looked like the 2018 shots, I wonder if the winter tile set is just nicer or has been downgraded since a next fest or two ago.

i would be OK if the maps look 2018-ish, but the stuff we're seeing now is just so bad compared to what he already had

unfortunately, the demo you played may have been several years old and used just to have a presence at the fest and gain interest.

 

[orcinator]

They did add some new enemy gimmicks but I think I'll just stick to waiting for X-Piratez Standalone

 

[Stavrophore]

What i like is that the game didn't reinvent itself, it's X1 built upon - we will see how much new stuff was added. The lack of randomized maps is the biggest downside and will surely make the game feel nuxcomy, where after you had mastered the map first time, you could easily know how to handle it in your next impossible ironman run. I also didn't see any elaborate explanation on cover and concealment mechanics which was a part of previous game with destroying walls and fences due to automatic fire, the videos i've watched so far haven't touched much on this subject. I would like to see penetration mechanics for light concealement/covers, instead of making them have a HP pool and being solely destructible. A machinegun burst won't destroy a thin wall with one burst, but it will penetrate it. Subsequent burst might destroy it though.

 

[Thorgeim]

what I don't understand is: yes they ditched the X1 engine for Unreal, but that was at the start of the project 5 years ago. further, the combat tech demo from ~2018 or so featured maps that looked alive. it was a lush, tropical, living and breathing biome.

how that got pared down to the aggressively static X1-style maps, i'll never know. do the X2 maps even feature animated components? screens that blink and bloop, vegetation that sways, lights that move...?

geno citations below

November 2016

June 2018

it's funny (

), if you look at the GOG page for X2, it still has the 2018-era map art. Compared to the Steam page, which is up-to-date, you can clearly see the downgrade.

GOG

Steam

edit: in my quoted post, I may have been wrong about the engine. This is Unity, not UE. I think X2 has always been Unity, whereas X1 was that restaurant sim engine.

I find beta very slightly better but not as good as some of the presented shots especially detail and lighting. Its probably due to the engine swap and time required but im not getting my hopes up for many improvements, especially if the maps arent generated, it might be too time consuming. I still enjoy the game but its a bit sad, this... after such a long time it doesnt look that much better. I do like some details like weapon animation lining up with muzzle flash/shot direction finally and bullet impacts etc.

The maps in beta definitely dont feel alive, they could have made it much more immersive

 

[ropetight]

what I don't understand is: yes they ditched the X1 engine for Unreal, but that was at the start of the project 5 years ago. further, the combat tech demo from ~2018 or so featured maps that looked alive. it was a lush, tropical, living and breathing biome.

how that got pared down to the aggressively static X1-style maps, i'll never know. do the X2 maps even feature animated components? screens that blink and bloop, vegetation that sways, lights that move...?

geno citations below

November 2016

June 2018

it's funny (

), if you look at the GOG page for X2, it still has the 2018-era map art. Compared to the Steam page, which is up-to-date, you can clearly see the downgrade.

GOG

Steam

edit: in my quoted post, I may have been wrong about the engine. This is Unity, not UE. I think X2 has always been Unity, whereas X1 was that restaurant sim engine.

I find beta very slightly better but not as good as some of the presented shots especially detail and lighting. Its probably due to the engine swap and time required but im not getting my hopes up for many improvements, especially if the maps arent generated, it might be too time consuming. I still enjoy the game but its a bit sad, this... after such a long time it doesnt look that much better. I do like some details like weapon animation lining up with muzzle flash/shot direction finally and bullet impacts etc.

The maps in beta definitely dont feel alive, they could have made it much more immersive

They probably fired the first GFX guys for not making everything blocky like isometric blueprint, shredded the hard drives to erase blasphemy and started over.
It had to be done.

 

[Thorgeim]

damn.. i played openxcom again after some time, playing it back to back with xeno2 beta, i have to say even old xcom somehow feels more "alive", not sure how to describe it, the tension, atmosphere is just so well done for such an old game, x2 maps feel a bit more open but with not enough detail in the current version, so it just feels bland and I dont get the claustrophobic feeling.

 

[Alienman]

Been playing it a bit, and these are my impressions so far. You can read it here, or down below, if interested.

Spoiler

With Xenonauts 2 soon coming out in early access (18 July), I thought I would give it another go and give my impressions. The reason that I’m able to play it now already is that I was a backer on Kickstarter. It has been an incredibly long road since then with many up and downs. But I’m glad the end is near, as a release is finally approaching, even if it’s only the early access kind. So, how is it, is it worth the wait? Will it be a better game than Xenonauts?

Well, that’s hard to say, because some stuff I think is better, like the 3D engine switch, and some additions to the upgrade agent system and such. I will not go into too much detail since things seem to change all the time. But I like the armor system, which adds a lot of individuality to the units that you equip. Do you give them increased armor, or give them a better chance at aiming? Things like that are always good, but other than that, Xenonauts 2 is very similar to Xenonauts, to a fault, while replacing some parts that made the first game cool with something much more generic – and “gamified” aspects.

The alien invasion premise, for example, is almost exactly the same as the first game, but the cool 80s cold war setting has been deleted for something modern and generic. You don’t even get a date now, just days counting upward from the initial invasion. What’s the timeline? Where are we? Are we in the future? The only clue here is that the Icelandic incident still happened in a way, however, the events since then have played out differently. This has me thinking that we might be in an alternative timeline from Xenonauts, and maybe we even get to travel through the dimensions. It would be cool if we somehow got a glimpse into the original timeline if this now is the case. Anyway, besides my speculation there isn’t much to the current setting, you are just dropped into this bland world without any identity to kill aliens and stop their invasion. On top of that, missions have been made much more gamey, as now you got missions with turn limits. For example the rescue of the five civilians -kind. That mission in itself makes no sense since you have to travel there across the world, which would make the time limit run out, and when you are there, there are always five to save, no more, no less. And it doesn’t matter if they die or live. When you have saved a civilian from their stasis field, they are fair game for the aliens. If they manage to kill them – so, what? You have already “saved” them from the stasis pod. It’s a bit weird, and very gamey. Look, I don’t mind different missions per se, but I prefer them to make at least a little sense in the setting. One of the reasons I praised Xenonauts in my review is because of its sandbox nature. Sure, you can spice up the objectives, but why must it feel so… off?

Another huge issue that was part of the first game that unfortunately made its way over here, is that the maps are still not randomly generated. This was one aspect I thought was going to get fixed now with the engine switch and everything, but it was not to be. Now, I have played Xenonauts 2 a couple of times before, long before the upcoming early access release, so I have seen the maps a few more times than most I would think. For a new player, everything will be new and fresh of course, however, the main problem here is that you don’t even need a new campaign session for the maps to start repeating. Certain town maps, and rural areas I must have seen at least ten times by now. This is probably one of my main issues with Xenonauts 2, and, unfortunately, it kills much of any repeatability. It’s just so boring trudging through the same old maps that many times, applying the same tactics each time. I don’t think they will ever make randomly generated maps for Xenonauts 2, but hopefully, they will make a ton of maps as a replacement.

A few other problems are how abstract the shooting feels for something that is supposed to mimic the original X-com. Covers provide aiming reduction instead of blocking, except for solid walls that is. Those actually provide full body coverage and block line of sight. Taking cover is a total crapshoot, and I guess it was the same in Xenonauts. However, the issue here is that aliens are super accurate and that game was in 2D. I’m thinking it might be a bug because they seemingly don’t seem to be affected by debris in their line of sight. They will shoot the hell out of your agents from across the map, while your guys can’t hit the broad side of the barn if something is in the way. Accompanying this is that the damage range of weapons seems pretty high. You would think researching and building armor for your men would provide them with a chance to live, but most of the time it will not be so. Regular human forces, with regular human ballistic weapons, will still be able to kill your guys with one or two shots, so what’s the point of armor now again? I’m thinking it’s a balance issue, yet, it’s a bit frustrating seeing your top man in freshly researched heavily armored gear gets taken out by a dude in a suit with an MP5 submachine gun.

While the combat is fun, as most of the feeling from the first game still remains, Xenonauts 2 does have a few issues like this that have me concerned. Another final problem I will mention is how dead the game feels in the beginning. Nothing much happens, with no easy tasks to build up your men, and then suddenly you will be thrown into missions that require speed and precision to be successful. After that, it’s basically open season, because the alien will become powerful fast, while you are just getting the hang of the mechanics (if you are new). I’m honestly not sure what is going on here, but luckily, it’s only an early access release which means they will get plenty of feedback to change things for the better.

I’m not saying Xenonauts 2 is bad or anything, and if you liked Xenonauts, you will probably like this one, however, to me at least, it’s not that pure fun upgrade over the first game which I hoped it would be. Not so far. Time will tell how it all pans out, and hopefully, improvements are on the horizon, because despite my negativity I want Xenonauts 2 to succeed and become a grand game in the X-com genre, and eventually replace Xenonauts as the go-to game in this franchise.

Thanks for reading.

 

[udm]

Yeah, I'm definitely sitting this one out, and this is coming from someone who really enjoyed the first game. All I wanted from Xenonauts 2 was ballistic simulation, which they said they couldn't deliver in Xenonauts 1 due to the Diner Dash engine. Now they've upgraded to the Unity engine, they somehow managed to keep the worst parts from Xenonauts 1 while screwing up other aspects? What even is the point of this game then?

 

[thesheeep]

What even is the point of this game then?

As someone who played through Xenonauts 1 when that released and never played it again, the point to me would just be another game in the genre to try out.

I don't even care much about what they did or didn't change, because they took so much time to work on this game that by now I have forgotten pretty much everything about the first one

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[geno]

The most frequent question we get asked is “what are the differences between Xenonauts 2 and the first Xenonauts?”

For most people, the answer "It's a much more polished game that covers similar events, with quite a bit of new content" will be fine. But if you want precise detail on what the new features are (big and small) then we've provided this list for you.

Remember we’re only just starting Early Access, so there will be a further 9+ months of new features / content before the game releases too!

General:

• The game has customisable campaign difficulty options, so you can independently change the difficulty on the strategy and tactical layers and enable / disable various gameplay systems based on your own preferences.
  • Easier difficulty settings disable some classic X-Com game mechanics that can catch out newer players (e.g. rotating while shooting does not cost Time Units, etc). These are enabled on harder difficulty settings, or can be manually toggled based on player preference.
• The game has a starting cinematic, and once complete will also have an ending cinematic.
• The three main game characters (the Commander, the Chief Scientist, and the Operations Director) now chat to each other at various points in the game, meaning not all narrative has to be delivered via research text.
• The game includes a tutorial that explains the essential combat and strategic mechanics, and sets the scene for the start of the game.
• The game has extensive tooltips. The support nested links to make browsing information easier (as seen in Crusader Kings 3, Old World, etc).
• There’s also contextual pop-up notifications for new players that explain important but somewhat obscure mechanics / controls as they occur (e.g. RMB to open doors without walking through them, how stun damage and unconsciousness works, etc).
• The game now supports translation, and is available in English, German, French, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, Korean and Chinese (Simplified + Traditional)
• The UI font size is larger than in the first game, meaning there should be few instances of unreadably small text.
• Although the game is designed for 16:9 formats, there’s much better support for non-standard resolutions (particularly ultrawide aspect ratios like 21:9)
• The game now has achievements.

Tactical Combat:

• The game uses a modern 3D engine (Unity), so the graphics are significantly better than the first game although we’ve retained the isometric camera and readable battlefields.
  • The camera can be rotated (using Q / E)
  • The camera can be zoomed (using Pg Up / Pg Down)
  • The tactical UI has been completely redesigned.
  • All of the weapons, grenades, reload options and other actions available to a soldier are now visible at a glance without having to open the soldier inventory.
  • Mission objectives are always shown in the top left of the screen.
  • Pressing space now marks the current soldier as “done”, and selects the next closest soldier. Once all soldiers are done, your turn will end.
  • Pressing space when a unit is moving will massively speed up their movement animation.
  • If you haven’t interacted with one of your soldiers and try to press End Turn, the game will notify you (right-clicking End Turn skips this check).
• There’s a number of new tactical mission types that don’t just revolve around “Kill all the bad guys”, which means the gameplay is much more varied than the first game:
  • Recover Intelligence: this mission type gives you a certain number of turns to break into an enemy building and recover a number of items before enemy reinforcements begin to spawn.
  • Abduction: this mission type contains a number of captured humans in abduction pods, and you must find and free as many as possible before the timer runs out and they are teleported back to the alien homeworld. You win the mission if you free at least half of the humans (which isn’t too hard) but you get better rewards if you free more of them.
  • Eliminate VIP: this mission type requires the player to find and eliminate an enemy VIP, then retreat before enemy reinforcements overwhelm you. There’s also capturable items on the map to recover.
  • The final mission is a two-parter, and this time you actually get to visit the alien homeworld (which I think is important for a game called “Xenonauts”).
• Many of the aliens from the first game return (usually with a visual refresh), but others are entirely new.
  • This new enemies include the “Cleaners”, a new human faction that assist the aliens and have their own series of plot missions.
  • We’ve made an effort to give each alien type a “chunkier” ability that makes facing them in combat more of a tactical puzzle (something XCOM did really well).
  • Aliens now have three tiers of weapons available to them rather than one.
• There should be more variety in the maps compared to the first game for several reasons.
  • There’s more map biomes than the original game. New biomes include the Jungle, the Dockyard and the Boreal biome.
  • There’s already a few more maps in the game compared to the first game, but we’re planning to have almost double by the time the game ships.
  • UFOs now have interior variants rather than being the same layout every time.
  • There’s a game system that intelligently selects maps rather than just picking them randomly, which means maps should repeat less often. It tracks what maps the player has seen and will show valid maps that have not been seen yet before repeating ones that have been seen (this will become more effective as we add more maps).
    • It will also try to select biomes that have not been seen recently when generating random missions (although this doesn’t help with UFO Crash Sites, as these choose the biome based on where you shoot down the UFO).
• The large 3x3 vehicles from the first game are replaced by smaller and more modular 1x1 vehicles. This might initially sound like a downgrade, but in practice they are way cooler:
  • They only replace one soldier, and can bring more than one once you get the advanced dropships.
  • Being smaller, these are much more useful inside buildings or in tight spaces. Their ability to drive through walls opens up a lot of new tactical possibilities.
  • Their equipment is much more modular, with several primary / secondary weapons to choose from.
  • By default they have lots of TU, but you can fit additional Armour that makes them tougher but slower.
  • If destroyed in combat, you can recover their wreckage (assuming you win the mission) and rebuild them at half cost.
  • There’s also cheap Sentry Gun vehicles that you can build which can only be used in base defence missions.
• The player has access to more useful information in combat:
  • It’s now possible to preview the hit chance of a shot from a movement destination before you commit to moving there (hold Ctrl+Shift with a move path selected).
  • There is a new UI element that explains how the % hit chance is being calculated for an attack.
  • The Xenopedia is now accessible in tactical combat (from the Esc menu) if you want to check enemy stats or abilities.
  • On the easier difficulty settings, aliens show their Health and Armour above their head like in XCOM.
• Various items and game mechanics work a bit differently to improve gameplay:
  • Enemy armour plays more of a role in combat, with some enemies wearing heavier armour and others not. Some weapons are relatively ineffectual against armour, whereas others either penetrate it or destroy it entirely.
  • The AI uses movement waypoints to move around the map before they come into contact with Xenonaut units. This means they are often encountered in more interesting positions (in X1 they would often just find a nice corner and camp in it).
  • There’s now a Focus Mind action that allows soldiers to spend TU to regenerate Morale. The morale system is balanced so units now only tend to panic if things are going badly for them specifically, or the team as a whole.
  • We’ve added a new type of grenade called the Demolition Charge, which only inflicts moderate damage against enemies but is excellent at destroying terrain and destroying enemy Armour.
  • The C4 charge is now remotely detonated, allowing you to blow open walls / doors at the start of your turn and do ‘breach and clear’ tactics.
  • Weapons can now have multiple burst fire modes of different lengths (e.g. the machine gun can now fire three-round bursts and ten-round bursts).
  • Recoil now works differently, and is a cumulative accuracy penalty which gets worse with each shot in the burst (Strength still reduces this).
  • Units now have “Body Size” modifiers, increasing the chance to hit against large aliens and making smaller aliens harder to hit.
  • On Base Defence missions, most aliens will be split between Hangars and other entry points, but certain alien types of capable of “infiltration” spawning which allows them to enter through other rooms.
• There’s also a number of more minor quality of life features that improve the game:
  • Line of sight / line of fire is now fully symmetrical, so there’s never any instances where enemies can see or shoot around a corner and you can’t shoot them back.
  • Each weapon has its own overwatch toggle, so you choose whether you want it enabled or disabled on a per-weapon basis.

Content & Research Tree:

• The art and design for most things in the game has been refreshed, including:
  • All the research art in the game is new.
  • All weapon art has been updated.
  • The soldier portraits and body armour have all been updated.
  • Most aliens have had a visual refresh or are entirely new.
  • All UFOs have been visually redesigned.
  • The advanced aircraft and dropships are new designs.
  • There’s an entirely new soundtrack.
  • etc
• The research tree has been expanded and contains more content:
  • Soldiers now have access to “modules”, which they can carry in their inventory to gain bonuses. These can range from armour plates that boost armour and tactical computers that boost Accuracy to items that auto-heal the wearer or boost their psionic defences.
  • There’s an additional tier of weapons, and each tier now has different properties rather than being purely numbers upgrades (e.g. Lasers can be upgraded to recharge ammo). There’s also expanded stun weapon options.
  • There’s some new armour, including the Stalker Stealth Suit which provides active camouflage.
  • Many of the automatic upgrades from Xenonauts 1 now require a one-off engineering project.
• The research tree has been designed so there’s more opportunities to make interesting choices. There’s a lot of early-game research, so the way you prioritise it opens up different ways to approach the game.
• Every research project does something (beyond unlocking further research) – either it unlocks new items to construct in the workshop or it will grant your organisation some kind of bonus.
• Research reports contain summarised gameplay information at the top for those that aren’t interested in reading, but the text is also longer and more detailed for the people that do like the worldbuilding.
• Idle scientists and engineers now produce money, as they help out around the base and reduce your maintenance costs. This means you’re not heavily penalised if you accidentally over-recruit and run out of thigs for them to do.

Strategy:

• The UI for all the strategy screens has been reworked and updated visually.
• There’s a new training system for soldiers, which requires the Training Center base structure. All soldiers at the base passively gain attribute progress points on a daily basis when this structure is built - but the Training Rate increases as your organisation performs more alien autopsies and interrogations, so rookies will passively skill up much more quickly at the end of the game.
  • Soldiers now have diminishing returns on attribute gains (so their base stat rolls are now more important), which also allows rookie soldiers to progress fairly quickly without breaking the game balance.
• The alien invasion on the Geoscape has had some upgrades to be more responsive to player action:
  • A certain number of tactical missions like Terror Sites, Alien Bases and Abduction are no longer linked to UFO activity. This ensures that the aliens continue to pose a threat (and the player continues to get mission variety) even if the player has air dominance and shoots down all UFOs immediately after that spawn.
    • However, those types of missions ARE still spawned by UFOs - so you will face fewer Terror Sites and Alien Bases if you do shoot down most UFOs. They just won’t be completely gone.
  • UFOs now have variable speeds on the Geoscape, which they update every few hours. This means slower interceptor types can sometimes catch faster UFOs, but they’re not reliable at it (as in classic X-Com).
  • Attacks on Xenonaut bases will become more frequent if you are shooting down lots of UFOs. Alien attacks are only targeted at bases that contain aircraft that have recently attacked UFOs!
  • Alien fighters on Air Superiority missions now have squadsight, and will move to engage Xenonaut fighters detected approaching other nearby UFOs (how much of a problem this is usually depends on how far away they are).
  • Alien bases now spawn UFOs that resupply them. If the resupply is successful, those bases will contain additional enemies for a couple of weeks.
  • Aircraft squadrons on the Geoscape now reflect the number of planes in the squadron, and there’s unique icons for each aircraft type.
• Once you reach the late-game, the aliens will begin destroying cities with an orbital superweapon and steadily raising global Panic, which effectively puts a time limit on the game. Although many people will appreciate the tension this brings to the late game, we will also have options to reduce or disable this orbital bombardment so people who dislike the mechanics can play the way they want to.
• The Main Base screen has been updated with several new mechanics:
  • There’s an adjacency system where certain types of base structure are more effective when placed next to other structures of the same type.
  • There’s a power system and (upgradeable) Generator rooms that generate it.
  • Medical facilities at the base now improve the survival chance of “killed” soldiers stationed at that base. This further improves as you unlock new tech and upgrade the building (plus there’s a bonus based on difficulty level).
  • Storerooms now have capacity limits, so larger bases may require more than one.
  • The central base building is now a 1x1 Access Lift, rather than a 2x2 Command Room. This gives you three more grid tiles to play with.
  • Selling items on the Stores screen now causes the price of the item to fall, eventually dropping to about 40% of the starting value. The idea is that the player is encouraged to capture each type of UFO once or twice, but grinding the same type of crash site over and over has diminishing returns.
• Soldier management and equipping soldiers has had quite a few changes and usability improvements:
  • The soldier equip screen is now shown whenever you launch the dropship (although Ctrl+click on the launch button skips this).
  • There’s a button to auto-fill the dropship with your highest ranked available soldiers, rather than having to manually assign them all.
  • It’s now possible to control the orientation soldiers when choosing their position in the dropship (just right-click on their icon to rotate them).
• The Funding Report screen shows your estimated income at end of month, and has a panel that shows a full breakdown of maintenance costs of your whole organisation.

Air Combat:
This part of the game will be getting substantial upgrades during Early Access, but there are already several important changes:

• If you resolve an air combat battle, the game now shows you the planned result and asks if you’d prefer to play the combat manually instead.
• The autoresolve actually plays out a simplified version of the air combat, which should give more accurate results compared to the abstracted system used in the first game.
• You can now choose the starting positions of your fighters in the air combat (this is limited to the frontal semicircle arc of the UFO).
• You can control the speed of time in the air combat. As well as pause and normal speed, you can also select half speed and double speed.
• UFOs have different behaviours; although most will turn to face your fighters, others will try to escape from them.
• UFOs can now have weapon turrets that rotate to track fighters.
• If a UFO has escort fighters, the formation of these craft is semi-randomised.
• The equipment of your aircraft is shown on the Launch Aircraft screen.
• Individual types of fighter can be upgraded with improved armour on the Engineering screen as the game progresses to keep them semi-relevant.

 

[Alienman]

There’s already a few more maps in the game compared to the first game, but we’re planning to have almost double by the time the game ships

This is surprising since I keep getting the same urban map each time. Just unlucky? I wonder how their map-making works. I hope it's easy and visual when they release the modding tools. I could see myself making maps if that is the case. The first game had a messy one.

 

[Saduj]

The way they write about the game in their list of changes reads more like they are talking about a mod rather than a new game. Was disappointed to read they are bringing back enemies from previous game. I thought the previous games' content was all being replaced. But I do like that they are adding human enemies. Seems realistic that there would be traitors and they should be dealt with harshly.

 

[Stavrophore]

Maybe the decision to not have randomized maps or not release modding tools is because they want to sell them in DLCs? Imagine if we get both randomized maps and modding tools, you could make assets or create buildings used for random generation. In order to not feel repetitive the game would need to feature a LOT of map, like we are talking hundreds. The ideal would be to go through whole campaign and not encounter map that you played. A game could possibly track what maps you already used and take them out of the chosing pool for next mission until its depleted, and then start again.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

the game is releasing INTO early access on july 18th? Hasn't it been in early access for like the last 10 years? Did the guy mispeak in the video? I swear the steam page says 'early access' right now...don't tell me its now going into another 5-10 years of early access...lol...

edit: so it seems like it is releasing into early access after 10 years of being in early access. Awesome. Not sure why people were freaking then about their 'bad timing' going up against Jagged Alliance 3, they are not actually releasing their fucking game, so who gives a shit? lol

 

[ropetight]

the game is releasing INTO early access on july 18th? Hasn't it been in early access for like the last 10 years? Did the guy mispeak in the video? I swear the steam page says 'early access' right now...don't tell me its now going into another 5-10 years of early access...lol...

edit: so it seems like it is releasing into early access after 10 years of being in early access. Awesome. Not sure why people were freaking then about their 'bad timing' going up against Jagged Alliance 3, they are not actually releasing their fucking game, so who gives a shit? lol

 

[Stavrophore]

Finally they release open beta to speed up the development. Expect mighty amount of bugs, of course there still will be people doing ironman at day 1 and then will complain that the bug screwed their campaign irreparably.

 

[Joggerino]

Finally they release open beta to speed up the development.

Nah, it's an alpha still

Remember we’re only just starting Early Access, so there will be a further 9+ months of new features / content before the game releases too!

 

[Baron Dupek]

Maybe they patch up and iron out issues in UFO2 ExtraTErrestials before Xeno2 gets released...

Spoiler

who am I kiddin'

 

[Infinitron]

https://af.gog.com/game/xenonauts_2?as=1649904300

 

[Parsimonious cook]

40 € for the game at full price? Damn... thats a bold move. I kickstarted this at the lowest tier to get the game so w/e, but what I have seen so far doesnt seem to justify this price tag at all.