Xenonauts shaping up nicely

[DakaSha]

Anyone who says that X-Com (and not XCOM, you fucking dumbasses!) sucks is a gigantic faggot. Get the fuck out of this thread, go write something about mass effect 2 and leave us the hell alone. Bastards.

Fanboys make my dick hard.

But X-Com was pretty awesome

 

[Johannes]

How exactly is X-com so superior to the clones? While I don't know much about all the clones/remakes out there, maybe they are indeed shit in some way, but the original was really quite badly balanced and the AI sucks. At least on paper it doesn't seem so difficult to improve on it.

 

[Destroid]

How exactly is X-com so superior to the clones? While I don't know much about all the clones/remakes out there, maybe they are indeed shit in some way, but the original was really quite badly balanced and the AI sucks. At least on paper it doesn't seem so difficult to improve on it.

Star Wars probably doesn't seem difficult to improve on either, but UFO is more than the sum of it's parts.

 

[Black Bart Charley]

How exactly is X-com so superior to the clones? While I don't know much about all the clones/remakes out there, maybe they are indeed shit in some way, but the original was really quite badly balanced and the AI sucks. At least on paper it doesn't seem so difficult to improve on it.

Oblivion probably doesn't seem difficult to improve on either, but its more than the sum of it's parts.

M:

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

What made X-Com games successful back in the day was the near perfect combination of simple, yet elegant mechanics. And coincidentally straying too far from this has also been what has led most of the successors to failure, inducing Apocalypse.

Apocalypse was a failure because Gollop was moving away from the old violent effects/instant death style to his new pewpew/remove a part of a health bar style, because of the ultra-retarded walk and shoot/run around aimlessly enemy AI and the unfinished and unfair (invincible organizations) city part.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

How exactly is X-com so superior to the clones? While I don't know much about all the clones/remakes out there, maybe they are indeed shit in some way, but the original was really quite badly balanced and the AI sucks. At least on paper it doesn't seem so difficult to improve on it.

Real time. HP Bloated characters that can survive multiple shots. Dumbing down the game to be idiot proof (or even literally play itself). None of the "clones" have actually tried to stick to the formula and improve on it, its all about "re-envisioning" Xcom as a game for consoletards.

 

[Heechee]

What made X-Com games successful back in the day was the near perfect combination of simple, yet elegant mechanics. And coincidentally straying too far from this has also been what has led most of the successors to failure, inducing Apocalypse.

Apocalypse was a failure because Gollop was moving away from the old violent effects/instant death style to his new pewpew/remove a part of a health bar style, because of the ultra-retarded walk and shoot/run around aimlessly enemy AI and the unfinished and unfair (invincible organizations) city part.

Speaking of the Apocalypse, the major part of the problems you mentioned was caused by some (alleged) mistakes in the unit statistics. A year ago I played the game with a less known mod which altered the enemy statistics and (if I remember correctly) also the AI. Tactical battles were fucking brutal, almost, if not completely, on par with the previous games (I played in TB mode of course).

 

[Trash]

Got a link for that mod, heechee?

 

[Heechee]

Got a link for that mod, heechee?

I'll dig for it, but no guarantees. I found it deep in the bowels of some x-com-related forum, so it might be gone for good. And it didn't work with all versions of the game (it did work with the original European CD).

 

[someone else]

For Apoc, you can use the editor, apoc'd to change almost everything you wish. It is easy to use. Also, use roadwars mod to make the roads invincible so the ground vehicles don't get destroyed.

I've increased ROF for weapons, reduced homing of missiles, increased health to make up for all the bullets and laser beams flying around in realtime, make selling price of alien and manufactured items to nil so you can only survive on your funding and remove personal shields to make the game more fun. You can also alter the relationship in savegames so Transtellar will not hate you.

 

[WetWorks]

I have to admit i was late to the party and started out with apocalypse (though i did play Laser squad years earlier on the Amiga), and therefore it holds a special place in my heart.

I loved the faction system and the cityscape, as well as the interior missions. Id had a lot of atmosphere and was actually quite deadly, at least in the early stages.

 

[Destroid]

I remember being rather upset with the game the first time my guys got hit with homing missiles that made them drop their armour.

 

[Heechee]

ok, so it wasn't hard to find at all:

http://www.strategycore.co.uk/files/index.php?dlid=720

No AI changes though. I must have got those somewhere else, I have a feeling there were more mods,but maybe it's just my memory playing tricks on me. It's intended to be played in TB and on superhuman.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I modded my copy of X-Com3 to make weapons as deadly and people as squishy as in X-Com1.

I did something similar with air combat.

I made production times dependent on size of items and decreased production costs since they use replicators instead of normal manufacture.

The AI is still retarded, though and it's the greatest problem - it has no chances until it can use explosive weapons as it tends to use the retarded shoot-walk and to run around randomly.

 

[villain of the story]

slated for Christmas 2010

Vaporware

 

[someone else]

Problem with making the personnel expendable in Apoc is that the recruit pool is limited unlike EU.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

It's not really a problem.

 

[zeitgeist]

Taktikzone.de did an interview with Chris England. Not a lot of info that hasn't already been released through other channels, it's more of a "get the name of the game out there" PR thing.

Everything in the game can be controlled by editing a text file, pretty much. The game has been designed so that I can tweak the balance and add new weapons/units/whatever without having to play with the source code, as I'm not a programmer (and they've got better things to do). The great thing about that is that it means everyone else can do the same thing too. It gets more difficult when you want to change the behaviour of an item - for instance, adding a blaster bomb would be hard, as there's no guided missiles already in the game to copy the characteristics from - but if you wanted to change the stats of anything in the game, or make a new grenade that set fire to everything in its blast radius, you could.

 

[kyrub]

new air combat model

we've added a cover system
...
Jagged Alliance 2 aiming system into the game (ie,]right click to make a shot more accurate at the cost of more APs)

Ahh, that's better. I still wonder if they can put the game together, if they don't know each other, foolish. Hope they prove me wrong.

 

[Sitra Achara]

Back on topic:

1. I've pre-ordered the game, and downloaded the last build released for the pre-orderers.
2. The publicly available screenshots are representative of what's in there - functional Geoscape GUI, base building and air combat.
3. The tactical combat is not yet available.

 

[Achilles]

First impressions Sitra? What do you think of the game so far? Does it have potential?

 

[Sitra Achara]

Hard to say, having only seen the Geoscape part.

Going by the private forum posts, the lead dev guy sounds like a reasonable fellow, and is aware of several of X-Com's shortcomings. He also announced several things that sound good, but at this stage I guess it's best to wait and see.

 

[Phelot]

I do kind of fear that they're copying XCOM a bit too much. I don't think any game can live up to that challenge, but it still looks cool.

I kind of wish it wasn't aliens though. Aliens are soooo last decade! People are all about terrorists now.

 

[Achilles]

No. Aliens and X-Com go together.

 

[Phelot]

No. Aliens and X-Com go together.

Yes, and it worked great in XCOM. Why not something different just so it's not a complete rip off? I understand the intent behind this game, but it'd be pretty easy to do.

Oh well, at least they have realistic guns which I like. I hope it has lots of weapon porn. I'd love to pick different types of real life AAMs for my fighters.