Things to learn from Xenonauts?

[Nutter]

What is and what isn't cheating in an SP game is pretty much irrelevant.

Now that's past, maybe have much larger pool and have the quality of your troops calculated based on your performance?
Maybe adding in alien interest into the equation as well?

[H-Hour]

I hate it when i lose any soldier - and if i do - i restart the mission.

This a play-style, and that's fine. Some people like to hang back and use all long-range weapons. Others like to charge forward. Some want to reverse every negative outcome in the game. Others enjoy the adversity of overcoming mistakes. But the game should not expect or rely on near-perfect performance. With the limit on soldiers that exists, it is pushing the player to play more perfectly from the start of the game, when they would normally play worse.

[kurja]

Do you use the (broken) medi-kits?

no.

[ShipIt]

The number of soldiers to start with should be higher. But unlimited? That just would not fit the overall approach of the game. Ammo, grenades, rockets, scientists, funding - everything is limited.

[kurja]

I did add a smiley on that "cheating" remark, meaning that you shouldn't take it too seriously...

Anyway, the point of my post was that in my opinion the battles should be tougher, now losing 2 soldiers when winning a mission is like a huge catastrophe. Fighting against a technologically and numerically superior enemy should not be easy.

[Jon_dArc]

What is and what isn't cheating in an SP game is pretty much irrelevant.

That's not really true. The issue isn't that the act itself is a problem, but that then you have to balance the game for someone—and what's balanced for a player who never reloads, or reloads only for egregious errors (mis-clicks, etc.), is wildly different from what's balanced for a player who reloads every time something goes wrong. This is especially true in the face of some of the current design decisions, like the tiny number of available soldiers, rarity of supersoldiers, expense of dropships, and a whole host of other things that put a huge gigantic difficulty gap between these playstyles.

IMO, there are currently so many of these that the game would really benefit from a deliberate attempt to reduce the number. If you're on the "savescumming is cheating!" side of the argument, you should want this even more—the message a new player will get, when faced with the incredible shortage of recruits and any real chance of soldier death per mission, won't be "oh, I should play more conservatively"—it will be "oh, I guess they expect me to savescum".

~J

[kurja]

Thats ridiculous. Cheating is god mode and stuff like that, not loading a savegame. And anyone who says something else is just wrong.

Tell that to the nethack community

[Crystan]

I did add a smiley on that "cheating" remark, meaning that you shouldn't take it too seriously...

Sorry i didnt mean to sound offensive or offended. Anyway iam the same opinion as H-Hour - its a playstyle. And i also dislike the unlimited recruits idea.

[TrashMan]

The more rearer the soldiers are, the more people will save-scum to avoid loosing them.

This is a war on a global scale. Phalanx will be able to pick from the entire worlds populations. Ergo, it makes no sense that your soldiers are irreplacable.

If you want the player to fear the loss of soldiers, you have to ask yourself WHAT is hte reason for that fear?

People that roleplay will get attached ot their solider and will dread to lose them regardless of stats.
Power gamers will dread to loose elites that are hard to replace because of stats.

Ultimatively you can't force poeple to care, and you can't force them to play the game in one specfic way.

[kurja]

That's not really true. The issue isn't that the act itself is a problem, but that then you have to balance the game for someone—and what's balanced for a player who never reloads, or reloads only for egregious errors (mis-clicks, etc.), is wildly different from what's balanced for a player who reloads every time something goes wrong. This is especially true in the face of some of the current design decisions, like the tiny number of available soldiers, rarity of supersoldiers, expense of dropships, and a whole host of other things that put a huge gigantic difficulty gap between these playstyles.

IMO, there are currently so many of these that the game would really benefit from a deliberate attempt to reduce the number. If you're on the "savescumming is cheating!" side of the argument, you should want this even more—the message a new player will get, when faced with the incredible shortage of recruits and any real chance of soldier death per mission, won't be "oh, I should play more conservatively"—it will be "oh, I guess they expect me to savescum".

~J

+!

I guess it might be possible to appease all parties with what is already there - different difficulty levels. Toughest level should be made *really* tough so it would be difficult for anyone, save/loader or otherwise.

[geisthund]

I don't know if this is in xenonauts, but I'd like to be able to see the soldier stats more concisely when I'm scrolling through the list of potential hires. Right now I have something ridiculous like 100 potential hires, and i have to click on each one to compare them. I

f there could be a minituarized bar next to their name - like a really small bar chart, this might help.

or perhaps a stat average, or something that flags the exceptional new hires from the mediocre to the crummy ones.

Or maybe if they get sorted based on average ability, then all the really good ones float to the front of the list?

[tembero]

can the nations provide a handful of elite soldiers a month, depending on their happiness, stats average n competant as is presently, then in the shop you can just stock up on cannon fodder, unlimited. These stats would be pathetic! Lol. This would preserve the need to look after your good soldiers for a dream team, maybe even with a mighty duck!

[kurja]

would that require calling one more year?

[Triaxx2]

I suspect that this is why a lot of games have the Iron Man mode. Where, like AI now, it disallows mission saves, and only allows them int he 'overworld'/'geoscape'.

I like the small Soldier pools. As long as I don't end up stuck with truly abysmal soldiers.

[tembero]

I don't have a great deal of trouble, perhaps on the Superhuman mode the Aliens provide a challenge and I have to put an effort in to beat them. Generally however, I play on a normal mode, with lazy tactics 50% of the time, and no surprise my soldiers are all maimed and bedraggled come the end of the month. If I wait the month out most will heal and I will have some new ones, simples. I am not entirely sure why I would request conscripts to make up numbers, I had an issue building a base the other day and only had 2 or 3 soldiers on guard when the aliens found it. Again challenging, but actually a little irritating. If A base was supplied with some basic soldiers on guard when it was built I would have had a better chance, If the soldiers had poor stats I could've put a defeat to being out played and have enjoyed the battle. In the original XCOM - UFO you had infinite soldiers but it didn't deter from looking after your good ones, However alien numbers were greater on the maps also.