KickStarter Xenonauts - XCOM-like set during the Cold War

[Cyberarmy]

snip

Welcome!
And remember, we will be WATCHING!


Joking aside, thank you for your great work in Xenonauts.

 

[Jaedar]

2 move system can probably be made to work rather well, but I feel it is one of the biggest reasons for why neuxcom wound up being not so good, especially combined with the heavy reliance on cover.

 

[Ulminati]

I'd also not be too down on Pathfinders (or whatever it ends up being called) just because of the 2-move system;

Welcome to the codex!

I hope you're wearing your thick skin. We've a very lax policy on censorship here. And because people can say anything, a lot of people - drunk on anonymity - WILL say everything. Including some quite unpleasant stuff. If you're willing to take the (warranted and unwarranted) criticism in stride, this place can be a gold mine. A lot of the regulars are very passionate and deeply knowledble about turn-based tactics.

That out of the way, this is how I felt about nu-XCOMs 2-move system:

I am willing to concede that some games have made it work. FFT stopped your turn after your move+attack if memory serves. But I like the flexibility of TUs, such as allowing you to shoot more if you're willing to stand still or foregoing shooting altogether to run further. Xenonauts did pretty well by me (heck, it's the longest I ever managed to stretch a Let's Play in the playground), so I'll give you the benefit of doubt. It just seems strange to abandon a system that worked so well in xenonauts entirely. Judging by the reception it got, you have something people would be willing to pay for. Throwing it all away for a action+shootan system seems counterintuitive.

If it turns out the game is gud, I'll be the first to sing its praises. Just don't murder all the opptertunities for tactical min-maxing in the name of streamlining please.


Also, there'd better be a "peek+shoot around corner" action in your new system or I'll be mighty pissed. It irked me to no end that the only way I could pop xeno moles in nuXCOM when standing near the corner of a house was to step out and expose myself fully for a turn.

Because the survival rates are so low, the Core planets have authorised cloning technology for the Pathfinders. All Pathfinders are gene-sequenced before they begin training and anyone killed during service is replaced with a fresh copy within a few hours - but there can only ever be one at a time (cloning is highly controlled technology in the Core planets). The ramifications of this in terms of military strategy and the consequences for the individuals in the Pathfinders drives much of the narrative.

http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/12601-Our-Next-Big-Game-Pathfinders-(Working-Title)

Please bros... Please no. Dont't take my permadeath away from me. It's all I have left in modern games.

 

[Goldhawk]

No problem at all, thanks for buying the game. I'm not planning to stick around being precious about my game(s) like some kind of weird stalker, but today has involved quite a lot of time spent watching code compile and now having to eat lunch at my desk because the other company in the office are having a meeting at the table ... the exciting life of a video game designer, right there.

But yeah, just to elaborate on my previous point: I can understand the temptation to focus on a specific element of a game, but it's also worth bearing the intentions of the design team in mind. Some people got really, really angry about us making the starting equipment / ammo unlimited or the interceptors recoverable in Xenonauts because of how it would "casualise" the game, but I don't think Xenonauts turned out that way even if some changes could be classed as "casual" when taken in isolation. The important thing is that we didn't want to make a casual game, just streamline elements of a very deep one.

There's certainly a lot more complexity that can be added to the XCOM 2012 two-action system. Adding complexity doesn't necessarily make a game better, of course - I did enjoy XCOM a lot - but we're a developer who makes relatively deep games and we've got no intention of moving out of a niche that's working well for us. But we do need to work on making our systems more intuitive and easy to understand so it is easier for new players to absorb the rules ... that way they can at least understand why the game is beating their ass.

I can certainly understand people's concerns about the direction we're taking, but hopefully we've proved ourselves enough with Xenonauts that you'll give us the benefit of the doubt here.

 

[Darth Roxor]

For the love of God, whatever you do, don't drink from the popamole kool-aid.

Taking inspirations from the mess that was nu-XCOM is very close to drinking from the popamole kool-aid.

 

[Jaedar]

Long war sorta makes the 2 move system fun, but that's mostly because 90% of your soldiers get talents that give them free actions to ignore the system anyway. It's just so inflexible, it's hard to make any tacticool manoeuvres.

 

[Ashery]

...and units can have much more fun special abilities, as you'll probably have noticed that XCOM had more interesting soldier level-ups than the incremental increases in Xenonauts.

Except that this is exactly what turned me off of Firaxis' version. I prefer a system where the difference between a highly skilled veteran and a fresh recruit is a bit more subtle and works within the game's framework rather than one where I'm left wishing my unit was one level higher because of a special ability that would've worked perfectly in my current situation.

I mean, it's not like the difference between a rookie and veteran is particularly small in Xenonauts; putting a rookie in an assault role always makes for a hilarious bloodbath.

 

[CaptainCoxwaggle]

2 move system is fine if you actually need to make the game faster paced because you are controlling a squad of twenty guys individually. Original Xcom for all it's qualities was a bit tedious controlling 14 recruits you crammed into the starranger and later up to 24.

Nu-Xcom was shit because the squad size was tiny, and in a game where death is as common in Xcom meant attritional losses were unacceptable. With 14 dudes and a 50% casualty rate you will eventually have a few veterans that have managed to survived, with nu-Xcom a single death early game was a quarter of your force that was getting experience, in addition to rookies being completely useless until they get specialisation ranks while in Xcom they made good coalmine canaries. Xenonauts had a good balance with 8-12 man squads that worked well with TU. Longwar addressed some of NuXcom problems with larger starting squad and fatigue system, but it seems like it's constantly fighting against shitty hardcoded systems and over compensating on difficulty with the alien squad leaders.

 

[Average Manatee]

2 move system is fine if you actually need to make the game faster paced because you are controlling a squad of twenty guys individually. Original Xcom for all it's qualities was a bit tedious controlling 14 recruits you crammed into the starranger and later up to 24.

This. It works well for higher-level strategy games when individual unit microing is less important than overall situational direction, especially commanding groups of units. Which is why it's silly to see 2-AP systems used in games that simultaneously want to focus more on a smaller set of characters with more individuality than simple stats (i.e. perks). The more you want to drill down to a smaller and smaller set of units, the more depth you should want to give to the kinds of orders they can do.

Plus JA2 w/ 1.13 has pretty much a perfect small squad combat system. All open source, you could literally make a 1:1 copy of it in a new setting if you were lazy (/wanted a lawsuit). To namedrop it and then throw it away is a shame.

 

[Volrath]

Next Goldhawk game already confirmed to be shit. Sorry.

 

[Norfleet]

What is it?

 

[Volrath]

Read the previous page...

 

[Goldhawk]

Meh, I'd argue that the 2-action system wasn't really what led to XCOM having limited tactical depth. Adding things like active crouching / prone, a more detailed interrupt system and loads of gun porn to the game wouldn't have made the game substantially better simply because the structure of the missions and levels in XCOM wouldn't allow you to play through them any differently. Your tactics would still be the same; it'd still be advancing down a rectangular map and then clearing out a UFO, it'd just take longer to play through each battle. The broader point of my posts was that specific mechanical choices don't tend to matter that much compared to overall weight of the decisions made by the dev team; a TU system in itself won't make a game hardcore and a 2-action system in itself won't make it casual.

What allows JA2 to be a more engaging tactical game is the interesting mercs and the more freeform mission structure. Even something as basic as choosing which side of the map you want to attack an area from is a huge tactical boon, as is the ability to sneak around a map stealthily instead of the aliens immediately reacting as soon as you enter line of sight. JA2 would be a much worse game if you turned all of the mercs into faceless clones and removed all the tactical choice from it (other than that specifically related to how movement and shooting are linked) than if you somewhat streamline the moving / acting system. The two-action system really wasn't what limited XCOM imo, rather it was how they chose to use it. But naturally you're all entitled to your own opinions on the matter.

Anyway, we'll likely experiment with the action system during development - the engine will almost certainly support a TU system in case we want to use it to make a sequel to Xenonauts. Perhaps it'll turn out that a system where units have 6-10 TU would be feasible based on the smaller squad sizes, but we need to start with the XCOM mechanics first and then experiment with them until we find the sweet spot for what we're trying to achieve. Makes more sense to start with less complexity and gradually add more than the other way around.

It's probable that the game will go through several free iterations so we can get some wider feedback before we do the inevitable Kickstarter / Early Access launch, so maybe check it out then and give your feedback on the way the basic mechanics are shaping up. It'll be useful to get input from all ends of the spectrum when we're making our decisions (although perhaps Volrath will want to sit that one out).

 

[Luka-boy]

Nah. You already admitted in your very first post that it's likely going to be more simplistic.

I can't talk about others, but I have no interest at all in playing a game in that style that's more simplistic. More like the contrary, so that's already a complete deal breaker for me.

Also falling back to this kinds of argument repeatedly:

All I ask is you give us a chance!

I'd wait till the project is officially announced before you make your minds up

hopefully we've proved ourselves enough with Xenonauts that you'll give us the benefit of the doubt here

While sensible, is probably a bad idea in a place full of people that have been burned too many times over the years by trusting devs saying that who ended up just trying to gain time and avoid/delay a shitstorm while making a game they knew would piss off their fans.

 

[Zero Credibility]

Meh, I'd argue that the 2-action system wasn't really what led to XCOM having limited tactical depth.

...

What allows JA2 to be a more engaging tactical game is the interesting mercs and the more freeform mission structure.

No, it's both of these things that make JA2 a superior tactical game. Giving player options in a squad tactical game is a good thing, taking control away from the player is a bad thing. I can not tell how many times I have been pissed at this lack of control in the new-XCOM. I want to fire and then move / retreat? Can't do that. I don't want the entire squad to waste their reaction fire on the first bloody enemy that moves, leaving me helpless against the next one? Can't do that. Why? Fucking streamlining, that's why.

 

[Norfleet]

To be fair, old-X-Com didn't exactly give you the option to not empty your guns at the first thing in sight, either, and Xenonauts has this peculiar habit where your guys will actually change the firing mode of their weapon just to fire that shot, which means that the guy had to change the fire select and THEN take the shot, and finally change it BACK.

 

[Jaedar]

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't extremely sceptical, but xenonauts was good enough that I won't condemn Goldhawk before seeing/trying some gameplay.

 

[Norfleet]

At this point, I don't believe anything, it's just vaporware, so meh. They can talk all they want, doesn't make it actually exist. Plenty of things people talk about while the game is still vaporware ultimately fail to materialize when they have to sit down and make an actual game out of it. Including the game itself, more often than not. Hear all, believe nothing.

 

[Zero Credibility]

Fair enough, but the comparison was made to JA2. And when it comes to tactical combat, JA2 blows new-XCOM out of the water, and would do so even if you replaced mercs with faceless soldiers and took away the freeform parts of the game, because the combat system itself is superior. If you want the best turn based tactical combat system, start with the one in JA2 (1.13) as the base, not the one in new-XCOM.

 

[Norfleet]

JA2 blows *EVERYTHING* out of the water, though. It's a tough standard to beat. What can you really do to top that beyond throwing on prettier graphics?

 

[Goldhawk]

Meh, I'd argue that the 2-action system wasn't really what led to XCOM having limited tactical depth.

...

What allows JA2 to be a more engaging tactical game is the interesting mercs and the more freeform mission structure.

No, it's both of these things that make JA2 a superior tactical game. Giving player options in a squad tactical game is a good thing, taking control away from the player is a bad thing. I can not tell how many times I have been pissed at this lack of control in the new-XCOM. I want to fire and then move / retreat? Can't do that. I don't want the entire squad to waste their reaction fire on the first bloody enemy that moves, leaving me helpless against the next one? Can't do that. Why? Fucking streamlining, that's why.

Two useful examples because neither are actually symptom of a 2-action system, they're just symptoms of how Firaxis implemented it. The 2-action system that's in our prototype allows you to use your full move action in multiple smaller ones so you can move >> move >> shoot >> move if you want, provided you don't exceed the total number of tiles permitted from a "short move" action (if you go into "long move" territory, you lose your Fire action). And units have Initiative scores that control the order of reaction fire resolution, including allowing you to use your own Fire action before being reaction fired at if your own Intiative is higher than that of the guy on overwatch. But Overwatch is still an action that consumes your Fire action and so the updated mechanics still fit neatly into a 2-action system.

Anyway, I'll make this my last post as I'm starting to repeat myself. A 2-action system isn't in itself that much of an impediment to the tactical combat, it's just you have to look past what XCOM did with its game mechanics to understand that (maybe the above examples will help with that). I posted here to reassure people that we're not intending to dumb down the tactical combat, I just think Firaxis did some really good work streamlining the input system and we can use their work as a foundation to come up with a much more complex tactical system than they did. Those assurances and the fact we delivered broadly what we promised with Xenonauts will be enough for some people here, despite their reservations. If not, that's fine too. At least you now know what we're trying to achieve even if you don't believe we'll actually deliver it.

And with that I'll stop hijacking the Xenonauts thread to talk about our next game - I may pop on again when Pathfinders is announced to answer any questions that people have, but that'll be dependent on my workload. Thanks for being civil; this has been a more pleasant experience than visiting the Steam forums.

 

[m_s0]

Thanks for being civil; this has been a more pleasant experience than visiting the Steam forums.

of RPG Codex.

 

[Jaedar]

Two useful examples because neither are actually symptom of a 2-action system, they're just symptoms of how Firaxis implemented it. The 2-action system that's in our prototype allows you to use your full move action in multiple smaller ones so you can move >> move >> shoot >> move if you want, provided you don't exceed the total number of tiles permitted from a "short move" action (if you go into "long move" territory, you lose your Fire action). And units have Initiative scores that control the order of reaction fire resolution, including allowing you to use your own Fire action before being reaction fired at if your own Intiative is higher than that of the guy on overwatch. But Overwatch is still an action that consumes your Fire action and so the updated mechanics still fit neatly into a 2-action system.

Sounds sorta like a tu system where the tu's are just hidden from the player

Thanks for being civil; this has been a more pleasant experience than visiting the Steam forums.

of RPG Codex.

 

[Alienman]

Why can't a soldier move far and shoot? In a time-unit system that would be allowed if the character in question had the stats for it. The two-move system just seems limited in any way you put it.

 

[Goldhawk]

Come on Alienman, I thought the Codex was better than this. There's a very obvious answer to that question - I'm pretty sure you can figure it out yourself if you spend a couple of moments thinking about it.