KickStarter Xenonauts 2 - now available on Early Access

[ArchAngel]

In LW2 using snipers or Heavy weapons too close to enemy lowers your hit chance. Using SMG, Shotguns and Rifles increases it.

This seems like a rather arbitrary imposition. The only drawback to using a sniper rifle on a target that is relatively close to you is that you obviously will not derive any benefit from having a scope. But just because the weapon has a scope doesn't mean you have to actually aim through it, you can just fire it normally. It is not really any worse off than the same rife, sans scope. The drawbacks of using a heavy weapon up close varies somewhat by the heavy weapon involved. Using a rocket launcher upclose doesn't require an arbitary penalty of any kind, it is already its own penalty. A machinegun up close works perfectly fine, and I can tell you this from experience! The main drawbacks of using a machine gun up close is that, as a heavy weapon, it is clumsy to bring to bear on the target. But if you already have it braced and ready to fire, your target being right in front of you is no problem!

Sniper rifles in Xcom 2 are not rifles with scope, they are full on big rifles. Wielding that one effectively vs enemy within few meters of yourself is not same as using a rifle without a scope. Same goes for heavy weapons which are the hand held miniguns like what was used in Predator 1 and Terminator 2. These miniguns have a lesser penalty than sniper rifles.

 

[Togukawa]

It's a disgrace that modern games like nucom and xenonauts are just a glorified boardgame with fancy graphics. Old games like jagged alliance and silent storm managed to actually track the bullets with a proper ballistics model and show a reasonable chance to hit. The decline is real.
It's not rocket science to combine a hitscan bullet tracing model with a Gauss-Hermite quadrature method to calculate your chance to hit.

Bah, hype levels back to zero.

 

[Norfleet]

Sniper rifles in Xcom 2 are not rifles with scope, they are full on big rifles. Wielding that one effectively vs enemy within few meters of yourself is not same as using a rifle without a scope. Same goes for heavy weapons which are the hand held miniguns like what was used in Predator 1 and Terminator 2. These miniguns have a lesser penalty than sniper rifles.

This isn't really true at all. Enemies at close range do not magically gain deflector forcefields that bend bullets fired from nearby around them. They are, in fact, always easier to hit because they occupy a much larger percentage of the field of fire. You can see this simply by trying to position an object inside of a cone: As the object is moved closer to the apex of the cone, it occupies a correspondingly larger angle of the cone. It's only when the target leaves the firing arc that it becomes harder to reacquire.

 

[ArchAngel]

Sniper rifles in Xcom 2 are not rifles with scope, they are full on big rifles. Wielding that one effectively vs enemy within few meters of yourself is not same as using a rifle without a scope. Same goes for heavy weapons which are the hand held miniguns like what was used in Predator 1 and Terminator 2. These miniguns have a lesser penalty than sniper rifles.

This isn't really true at all. Enemies at close range do not magically gain deflector forcefields that bend bullets fired from nearby around them. They are, in fact, always easier to hit because they occupy a much larger percentage of the field of fire. You can see this simply by trying to position an object inside of a cone: As the object is moved closer to the apex of the cone, it occupies a correspondingly larger angle of the cone. It's only when the target leaves the firing arc that it becomes harder to reacquire.

People close can dodge and weave very easily. While you are struggling to use a rifle that is not made to be used fast without a scope so that is why you get a penalty.
Have you played any FPS that at least tries to simulate real life? I know it is not same as RL but in all of them, killing someone close with a sniper rifle is superhard.

 

[Norfleet]

People close can dodge and weave very easily. While you are struggling to use a rifle that is not made to be used fast without a scope so that is why you get a penalty.

Little secret: That won't help you dodge machine gun fire at all. There's saying: "British Officers Don't Duck". You know why? Because ducking, dodging, and weaving, does absolutely nothing to help you avoid unaimed fire. If somebody points a machine gun in your general direction and pulls the trigger, you don't become less likely get to get hit by dodging. Since autofire in these games are unaimed, with the user simply pointing the gun in the general direction of the target and unleashing shots without any effort expended to track and aim, there's NO reason the shots should EVER become worse than the baseline "blindfolded gunner" accuracy, and being closer just means the target, namely, you, occupies a larger angular field.

Have you played any FPS that at least tries to simulate real life? I know it is not same as RL but in all of them, killing someone close with a sniper rifle is superhard.

Have you ever actually tried to fire gun at something? If something is up close to you, it does not become harder to hit. In fact, most gunshots are scored at close range in real life. There is no point at which you will become less adept at hitting a target which is getting closer to you because humans cannot attain that level of angular velocity such that they can leave your tracking cone.

It also doesn't address the issue that results: Where do the bullets go when they are rolled to miss under these conditions? Under an enforced-miss system, the bullets must go anywhere EXCEPT in the direction of the target, otherwise he would be hit. This effectively creates a "Deflector Field" zone around the target.

Now, if you were to apply a penalty to aimed fire in the case of a target moving at a high angular velocity relative to the speed at which the weapon can be slewed to target, but there was no enforced miss effect, so the resulting unaimed shot could still strike the target anyway, then yes, this would be a reasonable simulation of the problem.

 

[ArchAngel]

People close can dodge and weave very easily. While you are struggling to use a rifle that is not made to be used fast without a scope so that is why you get a penalty.

Little secret: That won't help you dodge machine gun fire at all. There's saying: "British Officers Don't Duck". You know why? Because ducking, dodging, and weaving, does absolutely nothing to help you avoid unaimed fire. If somebody points a machine gun in your general direction and pulls the trigger, you don't become less likely get to get hit by dodging. Since autofire in these games are unaimed, with the user simply pointing the gun in the general direction of the target and unleashing shots without any effort expended to track and aim, there's NO reason the shots should EVER become worse than the baseline "blindfolded gunner" accuracy, and being closer just means the target, namely, you, occupies a larger angular field.

Sniper rifles now have machine gun fire? What are you talking about? Get out of your fantasy world and read what people are writing.

Have you played any FPS that at least tries to simulate real life? I know it is not same as RL but in all of them, killing someone close with a sniper rifle is superhard.

Have you ever actually tried to fire gun at something? If something is up close to you, it does not become harder to hit. In fact, most gunshots are scored at close range in real life. There is no point at which you will become less adept at hitting a target which is getting closer to you because humans cannot attain that level of angular velocity such that they can leave your tracking cone.

It also doesn't address the issue that results: Where do the bullets go when they are rolled to miss under these conditions? Under an enforced-miss system, the bullets must go anywhere EXCEPT in the direction of the target, otherwise he would be hit. This effectively creates a "Deflector Field" zone around the target.

Now, if you were to apply a penalty to aimed fire in the case of a target moving at a high angular velocity relative to the speed at which the weapon can be slewed to target, but there was no enforced miss effect, so the resulting unaimed shot could still strike the target anyway, then yes, this would be a reasonable simulation of the problem.

Are we still talking about hard to wield sniper rifles here or just general weapon use? Because you seem to have a problem staying on topic and wonder all over the place.

As for the second part, I would also prefer a simulated bullet trajectory system, it makes sure adjacent shots have 100% hit accuracy. Xcom 2 does not have that so they implemented just a big accuracy bonus to get the same effect for all weapons that it makes sense for.
Also turn based games themselves are just a simulation, nobody stands still in real life waiting to get shot. Also in real life there are many more factors that will decide if you manage to hit someone in addition to just your weapon type, your aiming skill and distance to target. Those are usually simulated by hit %.

 

[Norfleet]

Sniper rifles now have machine gun fire? What are you talking about? Get out of your fantasy world and read what people are writing.

This particular subject also mentioned that heavy weapons, meaning, machineguns, were similarly penalized.

Are we still talking about hard to wield sniper rifles here or just general weapon use?

Just how unwieldy would you reasonably expect a weapon to be before you actually expect to have WORSE to-hit odds for getting closer to the target? Because even with decidedly unwieldy and not intended for use on human targets, like an NTW, you're still going to be more likely to hit the target at closer ranges. You don't start losing the ability to hit things until they can achieve an angular velocity higher than you can track at, which doesn't really happen until you get to melee range.

As for the second part, I would also prefer a simulated bullet trajectory system, it makes sure adjacent shots have 100% hit accuracy. Xcom 2 does not have that so they implemented just a big accuracy bonus to get the same effect for all weapons that it makes sense for.

There sort of HAS to be a bullet trajectory system already: The missed shots have to go somewhere, and the game already reflects this. The nonsense starts to occur when a "missed" shot is enforced as a total miss that cannot directed harm the specified target at all: Your chance to hit a target under these situations can, and usually does, become worse than your chance to hit the target by blind spraying at an impossible-to-hit target that happens to lie in the general direction of the target, and a statistiscal scatter of the bullets fired with the enforced miss deflector in effect results in an absolutely absurd pattern.

 

[ArchAngel]

Sniper rifles now have machine gun fire? What are you talking about? Get out of your fantasy world and read what people are writing.

This particular subject also mentioned that heavy weapons, meaning, machineguns, were similarly penalized.

Are we still talking about hard to wield sniper rifles here or just general weapon use?

Just how unwieldy would you reasonably expect a weapon to be before you actually expect to have WORSE to-hit odds for getting closer to the target? Because even with decidedly unwieldy and not intended for use on human targets, like an NTW, you're still going to be more likely to hit the target at closer ranges. You don't start losing the ability to hit things until they can achieve an angular velocity higher than you can track at, which doesn't really happen until you get to melee range.

As for the second part, I would also prefer a simulated bullet trajectory system, it makes sure adjacent shots have 100% hit accuracy. Xcom 2 does not have that so they implemented just a big accuracy bonus to get the same effect for all weapons that it makes sense for.

There sort of HAS to be a bullet trajectory system already: The missed shots have to go somewhere, and the game already reflects this. The nonsense starts to occur when a "missed" shot is enforced as a total miss that cannot directed harm the specified target at all: Your chance to hit a target under these situations can, and usually does, become worse than your chance to hit the target by blind spraying at an impossible-to-hit target that happens to lie in the general direction of the target, and a statistiscal scatter of the bullets fired with the enforced miss deflector in effect results in an absolutely absurd pattern.

I don't know what you consider a machine gun but I did specify that Xcom 2 has hand held minigun type like seen in Predator 1 and Terminator 2. Those are superheavy weapons and slow to turn and aim properly. And I didn't say they get a penalty like sniper rifles, I said they get some penalty (actually I think they don't really get a penalty to hit but unlike smg, assault rifles and shotguns they don't get any bonus to hit for getting very close to enemy).

Well Xcom 2 and other Xcom like games don't really have fights at realistic ranges anyways. In case of Sniper rifles, the penalty starts kicking in at about 6 or 7 tiles and gets bigger and bigger closer the enemy is. Goes to about 50% hit penalty at closest range. Each tile is about 2 meters of distance. I think this is supposed to represent that you cannot slowly and calmly aim with the rifle but must either do it with your hands so you can do bigger turning motions or aim without a scope which long, heavy sniper rifles are not designed for - so a penalty.

I agree that it would be cool if bullets had a trajectory. Situations like sniper rifles I would solve by not allowing them to be used at all within certain range as they are just too unwieldy at such ranges. Miniguns can be solved in same way Xenonauts does it, they cost so much AP to use you cannot really move much and shoot in same round.

 

[Norfleet]

I don't know what you consider a machine gun but I did specify that Xcom 2 has hand held minigun type like seen in Predator 1 and Terminator 2. Those are superheavy weapons and slow to turn and aim properly. And I didn't say they get a penalty like sniper rifles, I said they get some penalty (actually I think they don't really get a penalty to hit but unlike smg, assault rifles and shotguns they don't get any bonus to hit for getting very close to enemy).

Well, getting a penalty is obviously very different from merely not benefitting from range, as penalties mean that the weapon is actually LESS likely to hit as you get closer to the target...an obvious absurdity. You don't even aim machine guns in X-Com/Xeno, anyway. Or, really, all that much in real life, the goal is just to hose down an area to suppress it.

I agree that it would be cool if bullets had a trajectory. Situations like sniper rifles I would solve by not allowing them to be used at all within certain range as they are just too unwieldy at such ranges.

That wouldn't really make much sense, since then you'd get the nonsensical result that you're not allowed to fire directly on a target, but you can fire on it just fine by aiming through it and simply allowing the fact that your target is blocking the line of fire to do the rest.

Therein lies the problem with the notion of a to-hit penalty, really: It's one thing to not grant aiming bonii, but when a to-hit penalty is making your chance of hitting WORSE THAN BLIND FIRE, the result becomes nonsensical. Base CTH of everything is the chance of hitting your target by blindly firing in its general direction, and anything that can reduce your chance to hit below that of blind, unaimed fire, is absurd.

Miniguns can be solved in same way Xenonauts does it, they cost so much AP to use you cannot really move much and shoot in same round.

The "Deflector Shield Effect" is REALLY visibly apparent in unmodded Xeno 1, where a machinegun spray against a target with low CTH will hit absolutely everything downrange EXCEPT the target. CE removed this behavior and you get the expected spray, with to-hit odds somewhat higher than stated simply because missed shots have to go somewhere: An accurately aimed shot strikes the target, a missed shot flies randomly through the target zone, possibly hitting the target anyway.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

It's a disgrace that modern games like nucom and xenonauts are just a glorified boardgame with fancy graphics. Old games like jagged alliance and silent storm managed to actually track the bullets with a proper ballistics model and show a reasonable chance to hit. The decline is real.
It's not rocket science to combine a hitscan bullet tracing model with a Gauss-Hermite quadrature method to calculate your chance to hit.

Bah, hype levels back to zero.

complete waste of time and resources to do shit like that. % Dice work better and the end result is just as accurate if not much more so. These games are turn based because counter intuitively turn based tactics can do a better job of simulating the reality of combat; especially combat with complicated choices and where you control many units each with their own set of tactics etc..

The picture above of the alien 'eating the gun' is a visually approximation of the reality it is representing. It is not actually what is supposed to be happening precisely. The game is replicating a fluid situation where both parties are moving and shooting. The point blank shot is occurring over a set amount of time where the alien likely covered some ground and maybe shot his weapon and same with the soldier. The alien is not sitting still with its head motionless, politely waiting for the soldier to 'take his turn' and fire. The alien would be moving quickly, and perhaps bobbing up and down. The visual representation on the screen is just a representation. The game is a simulation. The actual bullet physics is a waste of time to bother simulating since in a turn based game dice can do it just as well or better. There is no point to demand or even want 'real physics' in a turn based simulation, it completely misunderstands what these games are and it makes no sense whatsoever.

 

[thesheeep]

The picture above of the alien 'eating the gun' is a visually approximation of the reality it is representing. It is not actually what is supposed to be happening precisely. The game is replicating a fluid situation where both parties are moving and shooting. The point blank shot is occurring over a set amount of time where the alien likely covered some ground and maybe shot his weapon and same with the soldier. The alien is not sitting still with its head motionless, politely waiting for the soldier to 'take his turn' and fire. The alien would be moving quickly, and perhaps bobbing up and down. The visual representation on the screen is just a representation. The game is a simulation. The actual bullet physics is a waste of time to bother simulating since in a turn based game dice can do it just as well or better. There is no point to demand or even want 'real physics' in a turn based simulation, it completely misunderstands what these games are and it makes no sense whatsoever.

Hush!
You are ruining the flow of the

 

[Togukawa]

complete waste of time and resources to do shit like that. % Dice work better and the end result is just as accurate if not much more so. These games are turn based because counter intuitively turn based tactics can do a better job of simulating the reality of combat; especially combat with complicated choices and where you control many units each with their own set of tactics etc..

The picture above of the alien 'eating the gun' is a visually approximation of the reality it is representing. It is not actually what is supposed to be happening precisely. The game is replicating a fluid situation where both parties are moving and shooting. The point blank shot is occurring over a set amount of time where the alien likely covered some ground and maybe shot his weapon and same with the soldier. The alien is not sitting still with its head motionless, politely waiting for the soldier to 'take his turn' and fire. The alien would be moving quickly, and perhaps bobbing up and down. The visual representation on the screen is just a representation. The game is a simulation. The actual bullet physics is a waste of time to bother simulating since in a turn based game dice can do it just as well or better. There is no point to demand or even want 'real physics' in a turn based simulation, it completely misunderstands what these games are and it makes no sense whatsoever.

I can imagine it already. The alien, crouching in half cover, moving quickly back and forth and perhaps bobbing up and down. Maybe we just need better animations to show what the situation is really like.

 

[Norfleet]

Which does nothing to account for the fact that, at the range the alien is at, he occupies a massive percentage of the field of fire and bullets would have to be seriously deflected around him for him to not get hit.

 

[Joined on the 4th of July]

If you have highly detailed realistic visuals and at the same time very abstract mechanics, it means your gameplay and representation are at odds with each other. And all the complaints that rise from that contradiction are completely legitimate.

 

[Freddie]

I have a different question - will the game be based in the same time period as the original Xenonauts?

We're not yet decided on that; it's either going to be the same time period (1979) or the early 2000s in an alternate time period where the USSR never fell. Making a realistic world set in the late 70s involves clothes and computers that are so ugly that we kinda balked at doing it properly in X1. But that's an aside; the main point is that not that much will change irrespective of what date we stick on the game. It'll still be modern-ish Cold War.

Just thinking out loud here.

How about around 1983 - 1989? You could have the Cold War atmosphere but also utilise Perestroika and Glasnot as cover for increased need for collaboration against alien menace. You could gather material from TV recordings and documentaries, hell, even publicly available newspaper archives to look for style and feel and source for content to re-purpose for the need of your setting.

There were some really cool toys during '80s on both sides. F-117 Nighthawk was operational in 1983. B-2 Spirit in 1989. From Soviet side make Buran a thing.

The alternate time line set in around 2000 where USSR exists.... I just don't know what's the point?

 

[Haba]

I guess the only thing you can accomplish with that is to push advanced tech with soviet/DDR aesthetic. Ya know, another decades worth of cold war arms race.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/...ts-2-version-070-public-combat-test-released/

This new version of Xenonauts 2 is a free public test build, released free because it is still an early build and we don't yet think we can justify charging for it; full details on where to get the build can be found in this thread. The next update is due on Tuesday 25th April, although if necessary we will also release hotfixes for any game-breaking bugs encountered in this build.

This build has a good number of new features / changes in it. That is a minor miracle given everything that has happened over the past week - but more on that at the bottom of the post!

CHANGELOG:

• Selection Rework: we've changed the way that clicking works to make unit selection and movement in enclosed spaces easier. Essentially selection is now done on the tile rather than on 3D object colliders, which means it's easier to click through units / walls / whatever to select things behind it.
• Door Clicking: we've also changed the input system so open doors no longer block left clicks aimed at the tile behind them (left click selects the tile, right click opens and closes the door).
• New Alien - Reaper: we're putting an early version of the Reaper in the game to test the model and animations. The Reaper does not yet have the "zombify" ability nor any specialist AI so don't expect it to be too scary yet ... but that will all arrive in the next few months.
• Bleeding Wounds:
  • Each cumulative 10HP of damage suffered by a solider causes a Bleeding Wound roll.
  • Each roll is rolled separately and has a 10% chance of inflicting a Bleeding Wound on the soldier (the same shot can cause multiple Bleeding Wounds).
  • Each Bleeding Wound inflicts 5HP of damage on the bleeding soldier at the end of the player's turn.
  • Bleeding Wounds are cured when a unit has a Medipack used on them.
  • If a unit has suffered a Bleeding Wound then it will display a blood drop icon in the top right of the soldier portrait, and you get a notification message when the wound is suffered and at the start of any turn where a soldier is still suffering from bleeding damage.
• Stun Damage:
  • Units can now suffer stun damage and (eventually) be knocked unconscious.
  • Unconscious units are effectively dead from a mission standpoint - they can't currently be revived through any means.
  • Units are rendered unconscious by reducing their Stun HP to zero.
  • Stun HP starts at the same value as normal HP.
  • If anything reduces the modified max HP of a unit (e.g. taking damage) then the max Stun HP is also reduced accordingly.
  • Certain weapons inflict Stun Damage in addition to (or instead of) normal damage, which can be used to bring the Stun HP to zero without killing the unit.
• New Weapon - Medipack:
  • Medipacks allow you to heal wounded soldiers and clear them of any Bleeding Wounds for a flat cost of 20 TU.
  • Remember only half of damage sustained in combat can be healed up; if a unit takes 30 damage then it has its max HP reduced by 15 for the remainder of the mission!
  • Riflemen now have medipacks and pistols as their secondary weapons - right click on the rifle image to access them (or press "X").
  • For now the healing cursor is accessed by holding Ctrl + Alt down, not by clicking on the medikit image (this will change soon). You'll know if you do it right because the cursor will turn green.
• New Weapon - Stun Baton:
  • Your armoured guys have a stun baton and pistol as their secondary weapon - right click on the shotgun image to access them (or press "X").
  • The stun baton is a melee weapon which inflicts stun damage on the target rather than normal damage, allowing you to capture them alive for interrogation. It's basically pointless until the strategy layer arrives but we'd appreciate you trying it out and seeing if it works as intended.
• New Weapon - Submachine Gun:
  • Your sniper and LMG soldier have an MP5 as their secondary weapon - right click on the main weapon image to access it (or press "X").
  • The SMG is essentially a rifle with a shorter range and less armour penetration, so should allow these units to participate in the UFO assault.
• Visual / UI Tweaks:
  • Units now correctly aim in the direction that the bullet travels, so bullets should no longer fly off at apparently weird angles.
  • Damage numbers for multiple hits from a shotgun blast / automatic weapon burst now display as separate numbers rather than a single cumulative total.
  • Damage numbers now show the full damage inflicted, rather than being limited by the remaining HP of the target.
  • Clicking on a 0% hit chance shot no longer fires the weapon, unless you are in force-fire mode (holding Ctrl or having manually clicked on the gun).
  • Xenonauts now aim for the head / chest of their targets rather than their kneecaps.
  • Units now generate a blood pool when killed.
• Bugfixes:
  • Individual aliens can no longer fire beyond their own visual range.
  • Suppressed aliens under the fog of war no longer show "SUPPRESSED", giving away their location.
  • The alien door sound now follows the volume slider from the main menu,

It has been a pretty manic couple of weeks here at Goldhawk HQ and we're pleased that we've been able to push out a decent update despite everything. A number of features also just missed the deadline, so I fully expect the next build on 25th April to be another big update too.

Our coding team been pretty depleted over the past two weeks - one programmer became a proud father shortly after the release of the last build and has spent most of the last two weeks on paternity leave, one has taken a week off to work on his university dissertation, and another has been working pretty much full-time on the strategy layer for the past month. We've effectively only had one coder free to work on stuff for this build, so I consider the changelog to be good going.

The most obvious casualties of this resource shortage have been new maps and grenades / grenade launcher. We've got a bunch of new maps ready to go (with new UFO designs) but we were also planning to add some new types of spawn points into the map editor to give us more control over the AI scripts on units, which should allow us to pace the missions better and allow us to restrict specific units to specific parts of the UFO (instead of them all clustering by the door). Without any coder time available for this, the new maps have been pushed back to next build - and, similarly, we just didn't have time to finish up the logic for grenades and explosions.

Anyway, have a play and see what you think - post up any bugs you see in this thread or use the in-game bug reporter. I think the updated selection system makes the game feel much nicer to play (particularly inside the UFO) so hopefully you can see the improvement!

 

[Eyestabber]

I played this new demo version yesterday. It's looking pretty good. I think going 3d was the right call since their 2d art was pretty...uninspired. Game feels pretty similar overall, which is IMO a good thing. Main improvement seems to be the destructible environments and those are pure . Looking forward to a release date.

 

[Eyestabber]

Before this thread got derailed into nonsense about "muh graphix" (seriously? Is this IGN?) another poster raised some valid concerns that were never addressed. Here:

I am wondering if X2 will have fixed these issues I had with X1:
1. Not enough maps
2. Too small squads from the start, lack of horror from your troops dying like crazy but you still managing to finish missions like in 1994 UFO.
3. Only able to enter UFOs through main door, rarely through side ones. Not being able to make your own opening in UFO walls
4. Only enemy having PSI. Players not even having access to PSI defense.
5. No crazy weapons like Blaster Launchers (not even in lesser form) or those flame autocannons you start with in 1994 UFO.

To me base Xenonauts 1 was a 7/10 game, CE and mods made it a 8/10. Points 1-3 were fixable with mods, point 4 was possible to disable (but not FIX) with mods and point 5 was not really moddable. I'll add some points of my own:

6. The flying armor. Xenonauts and Nuxcom seem to share a stupid hatred for the Flying Armor. Tho Nuxcom1 DID put it in the game, idiots at Firaxis removed it from Xcom2 because "muh baliiinnseee" and Xeno1 put flying into the game, but no shooting while flying. So let me be 100% straight: dear devs, shove "muh baalaaance" up your and give us the flying armor back. You're fixing a "problem" that never existed. Flying around raining death from above was FUN and a fitting reward for end game X-Com. Please consider reintroducing the flying armor (WITH THE ABILITY TO SHOOT MID FLIGHT) into Xenonauts 2.
7. Tiered aliens. Even though pallet swapping enemies is a longstanding and RPG tradition, the original X-Com never really had to resort to that. Introducing stronger late game aliens while phasing out the early game aliens is IMO a more elegant solution than starting the game killing blue not-sectoids and finishing the game killing black-and-gold not-sectoids.
8. Weapon evolution that boils down to bigger numbers. Come on, let's not pretend Xenonauts weapon tree doesn't boil down to "Rifle I, Rifle II, Rifle III...". This point is ofc related to point 7. I hope Xeno2 bring a tech tree that gives us more tools to combat the aliens, rather than simply improving the existing tools. What about an EMP to disable enemy mechs (but is useless against infantry)? A psi-disruptor grenade/rocket that fries the brain of psionic aliens (but doesn't affect dumb aliens in any way)? Some biological weapon meant to melt the reinforced skins of tough bio aliens (but is useless against robots)?
9. More utility/support options. We have medpacks and smoke, which is nice, but demolition charges are seriously lacking. Xeno1 had a mod to add breach points to UFOS, but the AI doesn't react all that well to it. It would be much better if devs themselves put breaching into Xeno2. Other support/utility options: temporary invisibility, weapon jamming, rapel/hooks, unnamed drones for scouting and drawing out reaction fire. I could go on.

Finally, even if dev ignores this completely, do try not to botch PSI again. PSI in vanilla Xeno1 was utter shite, it was simply a "haha, fuck you" mechanic. Give players the ability to counter PSI or remove it completely.

 

[Darth Roxor]

7. Tiered aliens. Even though pallet swapping enemies is a longstanding and RPG tradition, the original X-Com never really had to resort to that. Introducing stronger late game aliens while phasing out the early game aliens is IMO a more elegant solution than starting the game killing blue not-sectoids and finishing the game killing black-and-gold not-sectoids.

I disagree. Going from blue not-sectoids to black-and-gold not-sectoids is not all that different from going from sectoid soldiers to sectoid commanders.

Strongly agreed on PSI and flying suits tho.

 

[ArchAngel]

Before this thread got derailed into nonsense about "muh graphix" (seriously? Is this IGN?) another poster raised some valid concerns that were never addressed. Here:

I am wondering if X2 will have fixed these issues I had with X1:
1. Not enough maps
2. Too small squads from the start, lack of horror from your troops dying like crazy but you still managing to finish missions like in 1994 UFO.
3. Only able to enter UFOs through main door, rarely through side ones. Not being able to make your own opening in UFO walls
4. Only enemy having PSI. Players not even having access to PSI defense.
5. No crazy weapons like Blaster Launchers (not even in lesser form) or those flame autocannons you start with in 1994 UFO.

To me base Xenonauts 1 was a 7/10 game, CE and mods made it a 8/10. Points 1-3 were fixable with mods, point 4 was possible to disable (but not FIX) with mods and point 5 was not really moddable. I'll add some points of my own:

6. The flying armor. Xenonauts and Nuxcom seem to share a stupid hatred for the Flying Armor. Tho Nuxcom1 DID put it in the game, idiots at Firaxis removed it from Xcom2 because "muh baliiinnseee" and Xeno1 put flying into the game, but no shooting while flying. So let me be 100% straight: dear devs, shove "muh baalaaance" up your and give us the flying armor back. You're fixing a "problem" that never existed. Flying around raining death from above was FUN and a fitting reward for end game X-Com. Please consider reintroducing the flying armor (WITH THE ABILITY TO SHOOT MID FLIGHT) into Xenonauts 2.
7. Tiered aliens. Even though pallet swapping enemies is a longstanding and RPG tradition, the original X-Com never really had to resort to that. Introducing stronger late game aliens while phasing out the early game aliens is IMO a more elegant solution than starting the game killing blue not-sectoids and finishing the game killing black-and-gold not-sectoids.
8. Weapon evolution that boils down to bigger numbers. Come on, let's not pretend Xenonauts weapon tree doesn't boil down to "Rifle I, Rifle II, Rifle III...". This point is ofc related to point 7. I hope Xeno2 bring a tech tree that gives us more tools to combat the aliens, rather than simply improving the existing tools. What about an EMP to disable enemy mechs (but is useless against infantry)? A psi-disruptor grenade/rocket that fries the brain of psionic aliens (but doesn't affect dumb aliens in any way)? Some biological weapon meant to melt the reinforced skins of tough bio aliens (but is useless against robots)?
9. More utility/support options. We have medpacks and smoke, which is nice, but demolition charges are seriously lacking. Xeno1 had a mod to add breach points to UFOS, but the AI doesn't react all that well to it. It would be much better if devs themselves put breaching into Xeno2. Other support/utility options: temporary invisibility, weapon jamming, rapel/hooks, unnamed drones for scouting and drawing out reaction fire. I could go on.

Finally, even if dev ignores this completely, do try not to botch PSI again. PSI in vanilla Xeno1 was utter shite, it was simply a "haha, fuck you" mechanic. Give players the ability to counter PSI or remove it completely.

6. Xcom 2 didn't remove it because of balance but because they didn't implement flying into it. Even "flying aliens" were only fake flying, not real like in Xcom 1.

 

[Eyestabber]

Going from blue not-sectoids to black-and-gold not-sectoids is not all that different from going from sectoid soldiers to sectoid commanders.

Well...tiered aliens in Xeno are a straight up "new color -> bigger numbers" which is a system that I think the game abused. Sectoid commanders were just as easy to kill as soldiers, they only brought psi to the table (and maybe a blaster launcher too). It wasn't a straight "moar numbers!" evolution. The real "number evolution" was the introduction of Ethereals, a race that does pretty much everything a Sectoid does, but better. If you look up the pictures of the in-game encyclopedia, you'll see that every single alien species in the game has about 4 tiers. Which "coincidentally" happen to match the weapon tiers.

6. Xcom 2 didn't remove it because of balance but because they didn't implement flying into it. Even "flying aliens" were only fake flying, not real like in Xcom 1.

Whatever the reason, it was big .

 

[Darth Roxor]

Sectoid commanders were just as easy to kill as soldiers, they only brought psi to the table (and maybe a blaster launcher too). It wasn't a straight "moar numbers!" evolution.

Hm, weird, I thought commanders also had much more TU, HP, reactions and accuracy, but after checking ufopaedia turns out it's not the case.

 

[Jaedar]

Sectoid commanders were just as easy to kill as soldiers, they only brought psi to the table (and maybe a blaster launcher too). It wasn't a straight "moar numbers!" evolution.

Hm, weird, I thought commanders also had much more TU, HP, reactions and accuracy, but after checking ufopaedia turns out it's not the case.

Do they even show up with significantly more sectoid commanders later in the game?

 

[Endemic]

Sectoid Leaders can use psi as well, and those show up in groups (in bases or on the larger UFOs).