KickStarter Xenonauts - XCOM-like set during the Cold War

[Alienman]

Hmm I do not represent Codex in any way, I'm just a member... trying to shame me is not going to work. Why don't you explain?

EDIT:

And Chris, I like Xenonauts, I made a crazy long LP of it and enjoyed every second of it. I just question the motive of changing a system that worked so well.

 

[Goldhawk]

Fair enough; the system represents the difference between fast and slow units by the "short" move being different lengths depending on the movement stat of the unit. Some units can move a long way and still fire their weapon if they have the correct stats for it, just like they can in a TU system.

There are some valid areas of concern about a two-move system related to the frustrating fringe cases where your soldier can move 0-6 tiles and fire or sprint 7-12 tiles and lose the ability to fire ... but you actually really want to move 7 tiles and then fire a less accurate shot afterwards, or so forth. Everyone hates losing that fine control and I get where people are coming from on that point. For some people the thought of that occurring will be enough for them to lose interest in the game, but most people won't

But some people are also raising points of concern that really don't have anything to do with the 2-action system at all and are actually just things that annoyed them about XCOM. That's less useful. The differences between a 2-action system and a 100TU system can be much more subtle than the way XCOM treated it.

(EDIT - I'm only being slightly patronising because Steam is really pissing me off today; I understand you don't have a telepathic link to my mind that allows you to understand exactly what I have planned for our next game.)

 

[Average Manatee]

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.

OK, that sounds better. Not exactly what I would call a "two action" system though. Its more like a normal X-Com/Xenonauts TU system where firing always takes half of your TUs and you can only fire once per turn or save the fire for overwatch. Still begs the question of why you want to have all weapons take the same amount of time to fire in the first place, and aside from that you'd basically be using a straight TU system.

When I think "two action" I literally think only 2 halves of a turn to spend doing exactly 2 things. If you can spend turns in smaller portions then that's entirely different. If I were you I'd try to come up with a better descriptor for it.

 

[tuluse]

Underrail has some movement APs you can only use to move but not other actions. It's a neat system.

 

[Norfleet]

That sounds less like a two-action system and more like a partially separated pool between moving and shooting, which certainly makes sense. The AP system, for all its perks, tends to enforce turret-behavior and static gameplay, because attempting to move at all tends to cripple your ability to actually do anything with that move, so the best option is frequently just to sit and shoot.

Does the initiative score only control order of reaction fire, or does it also affect individual unit turn order? This is often extremely annoying in games particularly when there is no means of reordering units by delaying action, since a "fast" unit is always forced to move first, which is often NOT what you want it to be doing, as any advantage of moving first is completely lost if you cannot coordinate with the rest of your team and without the ability to intentionally delay action until an appropriate time, being FORCED to move is often so disadvantageous that the best initiative effectively becomes the worst initiative because you can only pass your turn.

 

[Absalom]

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

..That concept by itself is actually p interesting. No commander knows exactly how much his soulja's could move.

 

[Ulminati]

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

..That concept by itself is actually p interesting. No commander knows exactly how much his soulja's could move.

I dunno. I guess we'll see how it works (and heckle the devs if it doesn't) once they put out something playable. However, the moment you can break your move action into severl smaller moves, some could argue it stops being a 2-action system.

I agree with Norfleet that a TU system can often lead tu turret-like play. It's rarely worth doing anything but shooting as long as targets are in sight. As an alternative, I'd like to propose Goldhawk that they simply put a strict limit on how many "shoot" actions a person can take in a single turn. You can easily argue that [WEAPON X] can only fire once in the time segment taken up by a turn. And that shooting happens independently from running. If you want to be extra cute about it, you could even add an accuracy buff that your character gains by using little/none of their movement points and is lost the second they start moving. That also opens up for the possibility of some weapons (pistols?) being able to shoot at more than one target per round or "shoot faster" perks.

"1 action and x move points per round" sounds closer to what you were proposing anyway than a 2-action system. Wit the option of your action being sprint x spaces.

 

[Norfleet]

Sounds like that's already covered: You can, in your turn, in any order at any time, move a distance up to your move limit, and take an action (shoot, move more).

Shooting at multiple targets per round would seem to be an extremely advanced perk: The human visual system is simply not equipped to track multiple independent moving targets, so having different weapons would mostly just mean you can unload more bullets in the direction of your target as a "shoot" action.

 

[Goldhawk]

Yes, you're right. I think I framed it badly by explaining it as the XCOM 2-action system. It's true in a way but it is obviously going to cause people to leap to incorrect conclusions that could be avoided if I came up with a better name, and it's probably a very good idea for me to work on that before we do any form of official announcement.

To answer the additional questions, the turn order is defined by the player whose turn it is rather than the Initiative of the units - the Initiative is there only for overwatch purposes and is intended to give additional tools to the player for attacking entrenched enemies, so you could either just take a heavily armoured and armed guy in and eat the reaction fire with his tankiness, or take a more "ninja" type approach where the idea is to react to the presence of the enemy and kill them before they react to you. Otherwise we're a bit limited as to how we can differentiate the "assault" weapons and equipment.

The broad way we're planning to handle the shooting attacks is as follows:
Main Action = Normal Shot
Main Action = Burst Shot
Main Action + No Move = Aimed Shot
Main Action + No Move = Underslung Weapon / Special Ammo attack (although this may vary due to specifics)

The individual combinations can be changed during development but I just think it'll end up being unmanageable if you have several levels of single shot, a burst shot, an underslung grenade launcher, some clips of special ammo and perhaps a standard grenade attack to choose from with each soldier. Doing it this way also allows us to have burst fire take a similar amount of time to a normal shot, but fire additional shots beyond the first at increasingly lower accuracy (possibly "single shot" may be a 3-round burst and "burst" be full auto depending on the weapon, but you get the idea). The problem with that in Xenonauts was that soldiers could carry so much ammo that burst fire would always be a superior choice if the entire burst was not at an accuracy penalty. Approaching the game in JA-style means that managing ammunition can also be a concern and not emptying your entire clip at an enemy just to have a higher chance of killing them can also be a valid choice.

The equipment can then tie into this. A weapon attachment that makes an underslung grenade launcher usable as a Main Action would be really handy if you've got a high Initiative soldier about to burst into a room full of enemies, because it means they could then use it as their overwatch interrupt (admittedly that's not in the game, it's just an example off the top of my head). If you're using a standard TU system it's harder to represent that because you'd need a rule where the overwatch interrupt attack had to use less than the remaining TU of the soldier, and maybe the attachment reduced the TU cost of the grenade launcher enough that you could have the same effect, but it's just not as snappy. So I think there's plenty of complexity to be had from that sort of action system, but getting there does require all the rules to be made more complex than those in XCOM.

 

[Norfleet]

I think it works better that way: In truth, firing a "burst" is no more strenuous or time consuming than firing a single shot: Each action is performed with a single pull of the trigger, the time it takes for the bullets to leave the gun being miniscule.

The problem with that in Xenonauts was that soldiers could carry so much ammo that burst fire would always be a superior choice if the entire burst was not at an accuracy penalty. Approaching the game in JA-style means that managing ammunition can also be a concern and not emptying your entire clip at an enemy just to have a higher chance of killing them can also be a valid choice.

In truth, I can think of very few games where running out of ammo is actually a serious issue. It's never running out of ammo that decides whether or not you burst or fire a single shot: It's your odds of hitting the enemy with the desired amount of damage and the odds that you'll hit something you don't want to hit. If each burst, I fire 3 rounds out of a 30-round magazine, I'm going to get 10 turns worth of fire out of that magazine. How many battles are going to leave you in contact with the enemy for 10 freaking turns? It's not that soldiers carried "so much ammo". Using a typical MAG Rifle, firing primarily in bursts, it was still unlikely that a given soldier would expend his entire magazine in the course of a single mission. You don't get that many chances to shoot unless you're hosing down landscape, and if you're trying to hose landscape, you'd be using the MG for its greater number of bullets fired to increase your suppression...which would probably kill your target anyway. Unless your weapons are horribly ineffective or the number of enemies is simply ludicrous, ammo is never going to be a serious problem...and making the number of enemies ludicrous probably would make the ammo situation more relaxed, rather than more stringent, since all those dead enemies have ammo you can now use.

Your example of JA2 is definitely not the right one, as my huge crate of over 9000 rounds of ammo sitting on my base indicates. JA2 is NOT an ammo-management game. As long as your players are encouraged to ever take single shots, it will NEVER be an ammo management game.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

My initial instinct is against it, but if you actually implement it in a way that has sufficient depth, I won't complain. TBS is a genre that has severely lacked innovation, so considering how much I enjoyed Xenonauts, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt for now.

 

[Norfleet]

I'm not seeing the problem with this implementation as it is now described: The reason we prefer TU over Nu-X-Com "2-move" is because we want to be able to shoot, and then move, or move, and then shoot, or move a little, shoot, and then move a bit more. A 2-move system in which you must MOVE, and then SHOOT only, obviously cramps your options. Since your system allows us to do this, I see no problem. It's not as if TU was some kind of great holy grail, since, as I mentioned, it tends to encourage turret-behavior.

 

[Ironmonk]

Why don't call it a 2 AP system, where each action costs 1 AP (some extreme actions may costs 2AP), be it move or shoot... similarly to Shadowrun Returns/Dragonfall? Because that system is quite enjoyable and more or less fits on a "2 action system" category (Yeah, I know you can get more AP by magic and cyberware, but the idea stays the same).

So, you would be able to Shoot and Move or Move and Move or Move and Shoot, as needed.

 

[Norfleet]

I don't think what it's "called" is important, what matters is what it *IS*. Nu-X-Com's system isn't CALLED anything, after all, we choose to call it such. When and if they bother to actually make this, we'll call it as we see it.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

It feels like basically there's movement AP, but one "action" per turn, and some actions also take movement AP.

Edit: Basically, I'll wait until I see it until I pass judgment. Doesn't seem bad conceptually though.

 

[Jaedar]

To leave until your game is announced, you must first announce your game.

 

[someone else]

Waited for completed game before playing. Pretty awesome.

Love blowing up walls and sheds with explosives exposing hiding aliens just like X-com.
The game is easily moddable.

 

[someone else]

Using CE edition.
Fighting the large ufos now.
Game is so far easy on normal difficulty other than psionics. I have way too much money.
Currently lost 4 or 5 soldiers on 40+ missions. My biggest loss was the chopper getting shot down by a fighter out of radar range and losing 2 men. Now I delay sending dropships and send planes to scout ahead of dropships.
With no psionic training I'm going to avoid combat with Ceasan leaders or disarm troops at the end of their turn like in XCom which is a PITA.

Alternatively edit psionicpowers_gc.xml to remove or weaken psionics.
Apparently armor values also have an unused psionic value. Maybe it affects resistance?

I use every weapon except stun batons, even C4s are used.

Fun tip: During dogfights, rightlclick on the throttle to revert from manual to auto speed. Rightclick on top-right target to remove target.


This game is better than modded UFO Extraterrestrial.
I like it 9/10.
Getting tired of tactical missions now, but then that applies to every squad tactic game I have played pass the mid point.
I think more map variety will help, why no commercial/residential maps other than terror sites?

 

[Haba]

Just nuke the boring sites from orbit and only do the special cases yourself.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I occasionaly look at some videos but every one I see is just the guy clearing the map, with the Aliens sitting around and waiting to get slaughtered.
Are they playing on easy difficulty or is the AI still a dud?

 

[Jaedar]

I occasionaly look at some videos but every one I see is just the guy clearing the map, with the Aliens sitting around and waiting to get slaughtered.
Are they playing on easy difficulty or is the AI still a dud?

the AI tends to mostly just stand around on ufo missions, although they occasionally pull off flanks or charges.

On terror missions the ai constantly attacks with everything.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Ok, doesn't this make the game kind of pointless?

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

Ok, doesn't this make the game kind of pointless?

No? UFO missions aren't everything (terror sites, base missions, base defense), and especially on larger UFOs, there are plenty of tense moments when you enter a room filled with enemies on the command level that can lose you plenty of troops.

It lacks the same mortality of soldiers as X-Com, sure, but it's not an easy game.

 

[Jaedar]

Ok, doesn't this make the game kind of pointless?

Idk, honestly, the AI in x-com is about as passive, even on terror missions.

 

[Ulminati]

I remember a couple of episodes with the AI charging out of the UFO while I was setting up and raping me. But on UFO missions they're mostly content to hide behind inside the ufo and let you come to them. Which makes sense tactically. There was a user mod that set more of the AI enemies to "aggressive/roaming", but I can't remember what it was called. And it actually made the game easier as mny enemies came at you in small groups rather than a big concentrated rapeblob