/vx/ - Videogames and Paranormal

I pirated the game, so I can't leave a review on steam. So I'll write my thoughts here instead.

Xenonauts is fun and a good game. Every alien race feels balanced and engaging to fight, and they each have their own gimmick that really raises the "pucker factor" whenever you fight them. Better yet, each gimmick can be planned around if you're savvy enough. Random hit chance of course means that not everything goes smoothly or perfectly, but that cuts both ways. Sometimes you miss shots that you NEED to make or else a soldier will die. Sometimes whatever's about to kill that soldier ends up missing as well by some miracle. There aren't any guarantees, so risk reduction is key.

As a spiritual successor to X-COM: UFO Defense, it must be compared to X-COM. They streamlined the base and inventory management. Unlocking a new tier of weaponry gives you an unlimited amount of magazines for that weapon, but your soldier can still only carry up to their weight limit on their person. In X-COM, advanced ammunition is a resource that you need to manufacture from materials harvested from the aliens. In Xenonauts, these materials are only used to manufacture the weapons, armor, and vehicles, not any consumables.

Xenonauts is more forgiving about resources in general. You can earn money by airstriking downed UFOs, you do NOT need to breach and clear every single one. That lets the game focus more on the geoscape half, where you manage the base radars and interceptors. In Xenonauts, when an interceptor is shot down, it is automatically recovered and repaired over the course of a week for free. In X-COM, the interceptor (and its pilot) are lost for good, and you have to spend rare materials and money to manufacture a new one.

On the tactical layer, there's two things that separates Xenonauts from X-COM. It's the Suppression mechanic, and Cover. In Xenonauts, landing multiple shots on or near an alien will suppress them. It prevents them from doing reaction fire and lowers their Time Units (TU) on the next turn. It's a MASSIVE improvement to survivability if you're properly using machineguns or flashbangs when breaching a UFO. Androns and Drones are immune to being suppressed, but their lack of self preservation is also reflected by them never consciously utilizing cover so it balances out. Anything like this is completely absent from X-COM.

Cover is weird in Xenonauts. In X-COM, weapons have a 3D cone of fire that tightens or widens based on your displayed chance to hit. It's unclear and never explained in the base game, but basically it means you can miss a 110% shot and hit a 0% shot. Xenonauts is fully 2D, while X-COM was 3D with 2D paper dolls (think classic DOOM). Xenonauts does its best to represent a cone of fire, but it assigns a direct percent chance for cover to block a shot. Most waist-high obstacles have a flat 45%, but it seems to be a multiplier rather than a subtractive modifier. A 95% shot can get modified to 83% by cover, for example.

Essentially, the difference in how cover works just means that a crouching soldier in X-COM can hide behind cover more fully. A soldier in Xenonauts crouches, but the chance to hit him doesn't change, only his own accuracy with a gun. On that matter, crouching in X-COM changes the sight-angle of the soldier, but not in Xenonauts.

(I think I'm getting cucked by a spam filter, and I still have a few more posts to make!)

Difficulty: I liked the difficulty in Xenonauts. It felt like it was possible to thrive despite my mistakes on Ironman mode. That's likely because it was so forgiving with resources. Even armor can be recovered from dead soldiers, which wasn't the case in X-COM. Xenonauts also had less bullshit in general, so I'd say it's overall easier.

I've been wanting to do an ironman run in some X-COM mods, but I can't bring myself to do it. Because while Xenonauts is a well-balanced game, the many mods are VERY MUCH NOT BALANCED. Each one always introduces its own flavor of bullshit and then jam-packs the mod with it. (X-COM Files: Almost every enemy has Sniper or Spotter tags {or both} and can put fire on your guys from a mile away. Warhammer: Using any faction besides Space Marines is super bullshit because the enemy gets Terminator armor and you don't. They also have weapons that 1 or 2-shot anyone not in Terminator armor.Every enemy gets Terminator armor by the late game.)

The newer XCOMs feel like bullshit too, because everything is focused on soldier veterancy unlocking new skills, rather than equipment. If a veteran soldier dies in Xenonauts or X-COM, you give his stuff to the next rookie and hope that they get luckier. That rookie has all the same tools (sans psionics) as his predecessor. In the newer XCOMs, if you lose your Colonel with the super cool max-class abilities that lets him shoot three times in a turn, your rookies cannot live up to his memory without first grinding levels through 10+ missions.

Every game wants you to have a deep roster, spreading experience through every soldier without focusing too much on an A-Team that can be lost to a mistake or a bad dice roll. But the ability to actually do that feels very lacking in the newer XCOMs.

Things I wish the games would take from each other:

Tactical Layer:
Xenonauts line of sight/fire indicator
Xenonauts warning you what pieces of cover/terrain/other units could block your shot
Xenonauts suppression mechanic and tactical grenades
Xenonauts quick grenade and quick reload abilities
Xenonauts TU cost for inventory management only applying after closing the backpack window (X-COM applied the cost as soon as the action was done, leading to wasted TUs for simple mistakes)
X-COM's 3D battlefields
X-COM's 3D firing cones
X-COM's extra details on weapons, armor, and enemies. (You could middle-click a researched enemy and get a breakdown on their defenses)

X-COM's bleeding effect on friendlies AND aliens (Xenonauts only had a 5HP/turn bleed on your own dudes)
X-COM FILES expanded the above to include panic, surrendering (for human opponents), and "Overstun" causing damage every turn if the stun damage exceeds the remaining HP by too much.

X-COM letting stun wear off over time, meaning your stunned soldiers can wake up (or be woken up through stimulants) and the aliens might wake up and pick their weapons back up if you left them unattended.

X-COM's procgen arenas. (A prefab chunk is connected to other prefab chunks. The order or type of chunk is mostly random, and always dictated by biome/mission type. In Xenonauts, every arena was fully prefabbed. There was a decent amount of variety, but you ended up doing the same map a few times. Enemy Unknown also had this problem, but XCOM 2 went back to using UFO Defense's prefabbed chunks.)

X-COM armor damage system. (Xenonauts armor had a base resilience level that went down the more damage of that type was taken. Which meant that a 1911 pistol could eventually bring down a Heavy Drone or Andron Elite after enough shots. In X-COM armor damage was based on the ammunition used on the armor. Some ammo types did no armor damage, but ignored a percantage of it instead. Some ammo types had armor damage but no penetration. Others had neither, some had both. The end result being that a normal shotgun won't ever defeat a tank.)

NuCOM letting you save civilians by getting near them. They're too stupid to live even despite that. Run from the aliens, jackass! At least in Xenonauts, they'll slowly congregate at your landing zone.

Resources:
Xenonauts lets you recover armor from fallen soldiers (if they weren't abandoned or gibbed). NuCOM does that too, but not old X-COM.
Xenonauts letting you recover crashed interceptors. (Should be a percent chance rather than guaranteed. Crashing in the ocean means no recovery, just like the alien wrecks. Crashing on land means we can recover it, just like the alien materials of the UFOs keep it mostly in one piece when they crash.)

X-COM's limited ammo (allows for unique and even rarer specialist ammunition types. Think Kraken Bolts and Vengeance Bolts compared to normal Bolter rounds.)

X-COM's itemization of corpses, captives, and every material you recover. (Xenonauts destroyed the bodies and executed captives, and also automatically sold materials. This led to a problem where I got an important item used for crafting, but because I already had one (unresearched) the extras were automatically sold UNTIL I got the ability to use it for crafting. Nitpick but annoying. Also, you're telling me that I can't find buyers for aliens living or dead?)

X-COM's itemization also led to more interesting crafting. (In Xenonauts, to make advanced craft you only needed Alien Alloys and Elerium. In X-COM, you need to recover/manufacture Alien Flight Controls, Power Cores, Engines, and all matter of other things. It made the decision of using explosives inside the UFO harder to make.)

NuCOM using corpses in crafting and having side-contracts where you can make items / deliver artifacts to another country/client in return for payment rather than using the grey market. (Using chrysallid corpses to make advanced medpacks was a very fun idea. X-COM Files does this as well, through the "Advanced Blood Plasma" thing they did.)

Geoscape Layer:
Xenonauts' aerial combat is SO MUCH BETTER AND MORE ENGAGING. Turning it into an actual playable minigame instead of a simple "approach or don't and let jesus take the wheel" that X-COM did.

Xenonaut's aerial terror missions. Aliens would strafe highways, bomb cities, shoot down passenger jets, etc. It made sense to fuck with humanity during the invasions with more than just ground troops.

Xenonaut's casualty counter. It's the number of civilians dead to terror attacks, abductions, and ground strikes. It doesn't really serve much of a gameplay purpose, but it's great for making the player feel like there's an actual human cost to failing to stop the invasion.

Xenonauts having large amounts of ships appear at once. It keeps the stress and anxiety going on the Geoscape as you struggle to manage your interceptors and focus on taking down important targets.

Xenonauts letting you airstrike downed UFOs. Sometimes it's not worth the risk to your soldiers to breach and clear the UFO. Hit that bitch with a missile and get paid for it. You don't lose points in X-COM for letting a downed UFO mission despawn, but this just feels cooler.

X-COM's funding nations actually being individual nations rather than large blocs like Xenonaut's "South Africa" being everything from Mombasa to Cape Town.

X-COM caring about UFO recovery for crafting and captives makes attacking a Landed UFO a more appealing prospect. There's never a reason to do it in Xenonauts other than a last-ditch effort to prevent an Alien Construction mission, because it just means fighting more enemies.

NuCOM having Alien Abduction missions and special one-off story missions in unique places. In Xenonauts and X-COM, the only time you fight in an urban area is during a terror mission. (The closest Xenonauts gets is having UFOs crash in an "Industrial" area, but half the mission is still breaching a UFO. There could be more room for non-terror urban fighting {without a UFO breach-and-clear} is all I'm saying. NuCOM has abductions, and EXALT. XCOM 2 has rebels infiltrating urban checkpoints. X-COM Files has alien cults in the ghettos and suburbs) (Xenonauts and X-COM have a unique story mission, but it's only the FINAL mission. There's room for more, I feel.)

Vibes:

Each game has horror themes. X-COM's seem to be based on cheesy 80's thrillers. It touches on all the usual tropes: Crop circles, cattle abductions, human experimentation, and plans for genocide. With a little imagination, the enemies are pretty fearsome too (with the exception of the neon-colored Mutons). The early missions tend to feel like slasher flicks rather than military thrillers. You land a bunch of inexperienced rookies into a hotzone with no idea where the enemy is, and then you start taking fire from unseen angles by guns that will disintegrate your soldiers in one hit at best, or leave them alive but burning at worst. You have enough people at the start (16 per mission) to outlast the smaller alien crew (3-6) but then the real losses start mounting when you actually try to breach and clear the UFO...

The descriptions of the alien missions, autopsies, interrogations, and all that really helps the atmosphere. They're advanced, otherworldly, and unknowable. But they bleed! As the game goes on, it feels less like horror (until you fight Chrysallids) and more like pulpy action with lasers and mind-guided bombs crossing the battlefield.

All of the games try to have a horror vibe, but I feel like they all fail at it. X-COM feels like horror for the first 4-5 missions, then you get lasers and upgraded armor and it becomes a fair fight. Enemy Unknown gets the horror vibe right in the cutscenes and in the mission atmosphere, but everything else is so pulpy that the horror is drowned out. XCOM 2 has the feeling of horror, you're a scrappy team of rebels uncovering a genocidal plot kept secret by the new alien overlords. But that only really lasts for the first quarter of the game, they play their hand with the "Avatar Project" way too early for it to keep its punch.

Xenonauts does it worst. The aliens don't appear intimidating, and have no character to themselves. They're all clones that are directly puppeted by the Praetors. In X-COM and NuCOM, while the aliens are still slaves to a caste system, they still have personality and all feel like they're enjoying the work they do, in one way or another.

Sectoids are collectivist clones directed not by the Ethereals, but by other higher-caste Sectoids and are small, weak, but sadistic and inquisitive. Floaters are mind-broken and nearly feral, but handed guns and anti-gravity generators. Mutons are tribalistic, yet professional soldiers who enjoy fighting for fighting's sake and even have ritual tattoos and scars. The snakemen are insidious and sneaky, trying to undo humanity from the inside with their genetically modified "thin men" infiltrating human society, but still engaging in terrorism by releasing large man-eating mosnters into city centers. The Ethereals are the masters and overlords of all the other aliens, directing and planning the invasion to serve their own purposes. But each slave race still prosecutes the war in their own manner.

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Keeping the horror vibe for longer, while simultaneously increasing the player's power level would probably be pretty hard. Turning from horror into pulpy action is also probably the goal for these games, but a better balance between the two could be achieved, I feel.

Character:
X-COM has no characters. All of the autopsy reports and other research is written very clinically. That makes sense, but it's a little unengaging. There's 0 personality for the soldiers in X-COM or Xenonauts. Each one is a 2D face, a flag, and a statblock. A blank slate to roleplay if you want, but who's gonna care about 80+ blank slates?

Xenonauts has 1.1 characters. Most of the written reports are all from the Head Scientist who is a smarmy, narcissistic asshole who hates the engineering department. He says that they'll write the Commander's name under his own in the history chapters about saving the world. There's ONE other document written by another character. It's from some officer righting a report about the Alien Base, and also making fun of the scientist.

NuCOM was actually pretty good with the character writing. It was tropey, but it fit with the pulpiness of the game. The soldiers having voicelines during combat is a big plus, though it could get annoying at times. Your head staff chiming in during missions was an excellent touch. It's nice to get other character's opinions, or even dialogue bouncing off from them covering what you're doing in the game. It also helps sell the horror when they're having discussions about the impact of the alien invasion. In-character context and opinions is a really big thing lacking from Xenonauts and X-COM.

X-COM FILES on the other hand, tries to fix this. It introduces a bunch of staff members at the start, and you have to recruit four other important people during the early game as part of the process to reaching the midgame. They all get lots of "intel reports" which is really just them putting in their two cents about what's been going on. They never have any dialogue between them, but they still talk about each other and imply past conversations. It feels fun, but limited by being a mod for a 30 year old game because the modder literally could not do it any other way.

Missions:
X-COM and Xenonauts are lacking in mission types. Here's every mission:
Crashed UFO
Landed UFO
City Terrorists
Alien Base Assault
Base Defense
Final Mission

Every mission is a direct result of a UFO which can be tracked on the radar. Understandably, it's part of the design of the games, both have a building you can make after clearing out an Alien Base that lets you see the objectives of each UFO. It lets you prioritize UFOs with things you don't want to deal with (Base Construction, Base Attack, Terror) and safely ignore unimportant things like the "Alien Research" mission. That's not a combat mission, it's just what the Aliens are doing, and it doesn't generate a combat mission for you until it lands or you shoot it down.

What it means to me is that there's a lack of variety in combat scenarios. Base defense and assault gets samey after doing it twice. UFO missions always have half the alien crew outside, and half inside. Breaching and clearing a UFO is fun, but each UFO only has 2 internal layouts so doing them more than twice means that there's going to be repeats.

Enemy Unknown has Alien Abductions, Exalt Infiltrators, and a few unique story missions, but it's mostly the same thing. At least there, the crashed UFOs can land in more interesting areas. The coolest one I remember is a scout UFO crashing into the top floor of a high-rise building, and XCOM soldiers having to fight them in the burning rubble a few hundred feet from the ground.

XCOM 2 gets more creative. They have in addition:
Free prisoners
Assault convoy
Hack station
Destroy Black Site
Steal Object
Unique Story Missions

However, NuCOM and XCOM2 both have other problems. The player can't decide how to affect these missions. In Enemy Unknown, the Terror and Abduction missions just sorta happen at random. The player's options are to intervene in one of three abductions, and to intervene in the terror mission or let the civvies die. Shooting down UFOs are just opportunities for loot and captives, it doesn't really save any civilians or prevent panic.

In XCOM2 there's rarely any UFOs to track or shoot down. Granted, the world is controlled by the Aliens now so it's not like you could control the flow of missions by doing that. But now, there's hardly any agency for the player on the Geoscape aside from picking where to put rebel outposts. The Long War mods for both games does its best to give the player more agency in the Geoscape, but it's still limited by the original design of the games.

This is where the mods for X-COM (X-COM Files and Warhammer 40k to be exact, I haven't tried any others) do better. They combine the two. The UFOs are doing missions that you can interrupt by shooting them down, and generate combat missions if you ignore them. (Traitor guard will do training exercises, or stop to resupply. Aliens in X-COM Files will cause all sorts of problems using infiltrators or cultist proxies.)

But also there's missions that appear and despawn after a while, with no input from UFOs. They give a score penalty if allowed to despawn, and because they're not tied to a UFO they have free reign on map design. Warhammer doesn't capitalize on this nearly as much as X-COM Files and instead benefits from a vastly improved enemy and environment variety. Terror missions usually happen in military bases, for example.

X-COM Files has SO MUCH variety. Almost too much, which is difficult to accept, but some things end up feeling frivolous. Hunting mutant Chupacabra through the jungle, or tracking Yetis in the arctic. Helping the police raid a Syndicate hideout where they sell alien artifacts, or assisting them in quelling a gang war started by alien cultists. Stalking through ancient crypts hunting vampires, or a cruise ship hunting ghosts. Assassins in highrises, mad scientists in secret labs, deep sea freaks in a beach-side resort, and cultists in their hideouts. So much variety!
Gonna end this by repeating this opinion for a third time: The games need more mission variety. Assaulting UFOs over and over again gets old.

I really really like Tactics games. But it feels like there's a certain itch that is left unscratched by them. I'm not quite sure what it is yet. I may just have to play even more to find out what it is, and then I can make a game that scratches it perfectly. Currently I think it's got something to do with wanting a Tactics game with a fleshed out faction system where you can pick a side, or maybe one that gives even more options to the player and lets them decide how to reach a big goal by completing smaller missions.

Either factions, or more freedom, or both. Either way promises an increase to complexity in one way, so something else I like about Tactics games might get streamlined in response.

Troublingly, the 30 year old X-COM: UFO Defense is the closest to what I want. It scratches the most itches. These days, there's plenty of Tactics games who cite X-COM or XCOM as their inspirations. But they always change or streamline the parts of X-COM that scratches those itches. So I usually end up liking them less, despite acknowledging that their changes are good and fun for what they aim for either through vibes or mechanics.

Warhammer 40,000: Daemonhunters is a good example of this. It's a good, balanced, and fun game that I like. However, I simply just don't get as much satisfaction from its combat. It's probably nearly as complex as X-COM, but in a different sort of away that I don't like as much. It's a good game, but it leaves more itches unscratched.

I think Jagged Alliance: Wildfire might uncover some secrets about this itch, but it feels really hard to get into. It's slow, clunky, and even less clear about what's going on than X-COM is without the OpenXCOM fan patch.

I just did a couple playthroughs of XCOM 2 and the second things don't go my way I just reload my save. It's bitchmade I know and takes all the weight out of everything but the only time I eat an injury is when I'm towards the end and I get sloppy. I play the same way in civ 3 - I only starting eating losses at the end because I always build more army guys than I need because I play like a nigger and ignore diplomacy. Point is no matter how you balance a game niggers like me will always savescum if we're given the ability to do so. One thing I'd consider doing in your game is make it so people can't do that maybe - at least not after every single thing that happens - or maybe make me have to spend some nigger crystals or something if I wanna savescum. Some resident evil games limit your saves in the form of Ink Ribbons. Didn't mean to go off on a tangent of my own - you just clearly put a lot of thought into this and I wanted to respond somehow.
Also X-COM Files sounds fun. I might have to try that.

>>189892
Savescumming is definitely something I've also put thought into. But it feels like there's a certain bullshit tolerance that people have to learn before they're willing to commit to an Ironman run. Some things aren't just hard, they're bullshit.

I think one of the main things to make Ironman FUN is to make it feel like you can come back from losses. It's really hard to do that in NuCOM. Your best hope is buying veteran soldiers from the store, or getting one as a reward for a different mission. But at that point attrition is gonna kick your ass, and the aliens are gonna advance far beyond your ability to match them. X-COM and Xenonauts' progression is based mostly on equipment rather than soldier skill/level, so they side-step this issue.

Warhammer 40k: Daemonhunters does this good, I think. Each marine has a "Toughness" score that goes down whenever they hit 0 HP. With no more toughness left, they die for good, but you get multiple chances with every marine. Even then, you can spend requisition to get a veteran marine at a decently high level, who then has a few points of toughness so he can survive botched missions.

I do like the idea of limited saves, though I don't know how well that could work in a Tactics Game. An Ironman playthrough forces you to live with your mistakes no matter what. Something like one save per combat encounter (for this example lets say it saves at the start of the fight and that's it) still lets people reload over and over and over. Trying the same fight with the same bad tactics, bad gear, and bad soldiers until the dice rolls are in their favor. I mean, that's how it feels like when I savescum an impossible-feeling mission sometimes. I think I'd save myself from some turmoil if I just took the loss instead.

I think people who are gonna savescum will savescum, and making it harder or more annoying to do that will just lead to a worse game experience who do savescum. If a game has Ironman as an option, I think it should be designed around it. Limited saves probably works better for action games like Resident Evil and Dead Space anyhow.

I think there could be something worth studying in the differences in Tactics games with "Action Points (AP)" or "Time Units (TUs)".

Games with Action Points usually give units 2-4 AP. Every action, or sequence of actions, tends to cost 1 or 2 AP. Movement within a certain distance is 1 AP, whether it's stepping one tile to the right or jumping 8 tiles away. Shooting an enemy or using an ability is 1 AP unless it's a big and slow weapon or expensive ability, then it's 2 AP. Or it might end the unit's turn regardless of how much AP he has left. Things like inventory management are usually done either for free, or for 1 AP. Interacting with the world, like opening doors or inspecting a wall is free or 1 AP.

Games with Time Units tend to give their units 40-100+ TUs. Every action takes either a flat amount of TUs or a percentage of the unit's max TUs. In X-COM, moving one tile is 4 TUs, unless it's difficult terrain then it's 6 or 8 TUs. Changing a soldier's facing is 1 TU per direction. Shooting a gun is 20%, 50% and 65% for snap shots, aimed shots, and automatic fire respectively. A soldier with more TUs can maneuver more every turn between shots, but they can still shoot just as much as the slowest rookie when standing still. Inventory management, interacting with the environment, and all that stuff usually has a flat TU cost.

AP feels more streamlined and abstracted. TUs feels a little simpler to grasp, but it can be slower with its extra precision. Games made in one or the other are both Tactics Games but are balanced in very different ways, and have different vibes to their combat. Games with AP must be balanced around a certain "Action Economy" which is a phrase familiar to some people who play D&D or other TTRPGs. If everyone can only perform two bespoke actions in a given turn, then the side that outnumbers their enemy has more actions and therefore an advantage. If a soldier out in the open has 2 AP, he must give up one of his attacks to move to the nearest cover. In a game with TUs, this will not always be the case. A soldier with a decent amount of TUs will almost always be able to maneuver at least a little bit before shooting back with almost the maximum amount of shots he could use if he hadn't moved at all. I guess what I'm getting at here is that TUs provide more tactical flexibility than AP, something lost with the streamlining of AP.

Regarding the 'vibe' of the battles, games with AP tend to be a flow of encounters rather than one major skirmish. NuCOM, XCOM2, Chaos Gate, etc all have "pods" of enemies. Patrols 2-5 strong that wander the map. When seen, they tend to get a free move to scurry into cover and prepare to fight. The flow is fighting one pod to completion, and moving on only when they're dead. Because fighting two or more pods will put the player at a disadvantage, they avoid being too aggressive so they don't accidentally activate a new pod. There are other background mechanics in these games, like the pods will tend to patrol towards the player or between them and an objective. Or they will move towards the sounds of explosions. But they are never 'active' until seen. They won't try flanking around the player's line of sight or preparing overwatch positions in advance. It's a very gamey mechanic that almost every player will learn to cheese. For me, it detracts from the "tactical" feel of a "tactical" game.

In games with TUs, these patrol pods don't exist. Every enemy is on the battlefield, and reacting to what they see or hear. In X-COM and Xenonauts, the "flow" tends to be skirmishing with the aliens outside of the UFO, and then breaching and clearing the UFO. In missions without a UFO, this "flow" is not one of moving from encounter to encounter, it's pushing for total map control against a united front of the enemy. The aliens are in every house, on every street and are shooting civilians where they can. Without the UFO present to cut their forces into two teams of scouts and defenders, it really feels like you're engaging the entire city block all at once. Helping this feeling, in these games you have 8-16 soldiers battling against 20+ aliens. In games with AP, you have 4-6 units against pods of 3-8 enemies. It's a small series of shootouts vs one or two large skirmishes.

The two vibes cannot be reconciled, either. If you fight too many people in an AP system you get fucked by the action economy. If you're outnumbered in the TU system, the extra precision in your actions helps you fight back more efficiently. With too many soldiers to manage, the inefficiencies of the AP system become clearer and more frustrating. Paradoxically, with too few soldiers or enemies the TU system feels slow and boring, there's too little going on every turn. Despite preferring games with TUs, I think that "Tactical RPGs" are probably better off with an AP system. But I would like to try and make one with Time Units anyway.

Tangent:
Games with guns usually balance melee by making it fast, deadly, or survivable. Tactics Games usually do the first two. In an AP system, they combine moving and attacking into one action, allowing the unit to maneuver and attack for the cost of however many AP it is to move a certain distance. It'll also tend to do more damage (or cause more status effects) than being shot. In a TU system, melee attacks will have a flat TU cost instead of a %maxTU cost. A soldier with more TUs can strike many more times in melee than a soldier with few TUs, having more chances to hit and a much higher potential damage in a turn. With enough time units, a strong weapon, and bunched up enemies, a soldier with a melee weapon could clear them all out with extreme alacrity. Something a soldier in an AP system would need a special ability for, rather than raw stats. In X-COM however, melee is a %chance to hit rather than using a 3D cone. Melee could fail where a point-blank shotgun will not.

>>189883
>I've been wanting to make my own Turn-Based Tactics Game for a while now.
Try to made openxcom mod first. The ruleset format not so bad, scripting with lua quite simple, and if you need to modify engine, forum can help. It's right way to make big project from smallest ones. Actually engine is not hardest part. I have some experience with gamedev, you can make proper engine for game like UFO Defence without any experience with coding by approximately 500-1000 man-hours. But content, rules, maps, scenarios and testing this is the hardest part.

>>189887
>X-COM feels like horror for the first 4-5 missions, then you get lasers and upgraded armor and it becomes a fair fight.
Ha-ha, long time ago, when I was child, I playing UFO Defence on hardest level possible. Without translation and understanding most of words. Saves during missions were useless, because of bug with PlayStation version. I didn't fully understand research and manufacturing, but I loved to demolish buildings and burn jungles. Psi-sectoids and cyberdiscs during terror missions fuck my squad again and again. I vividly remember the moment when three last soldiers, separated from Skyranger and encircled with flame, shoots their own zombie-comrades and cryssalids from store's roof. First unforgettable experience. Nightmares for years.

I find my desired balance with Warhammer ROSIGMA + BrutalAI + my own mods for guardmans. From 24 to 36 soldiers on initial Chimeras, more air support during battle for paratroopers, cheap outposts, 1/2 number of enemies. Ironman of course. BratalAL is monstrous. All enemies acts as squad. They are scouting, they use covers, they know how to concentrate reserves and firepower. Their attacks devastating. It is impossible to survive assault of space-marines without loses. No chances. But sometimes it is possible to outsmart them, or at least win by numbers. Overall, enemies acts much more like soldiers in real army, than just bots.

Warhammer ROSIGMA with BratalAL much more complex, than original X-COM. With proper preparations even rookie guardman can withstand 1-2 hits. Veterans are tough, but enemies much more tanky, if you don't have effective weapon. Every single weapon are usable. Shotguns? Best against tyranids. Flamers? Against nurgle. Lasguns? Against space-marines… to make their armor weaker during their devastating counterattacks. And grenade launchers and mortars just make game looks like modern battlefield, where indirect fire is essential and guided shells can reach any corner.

My current tactics for midgame:
- line infantry (rookies + fortify position + hunker down command) = effective reaction fire
- stormtroopers (veterans + officer and commissar + blitzkrieg command) = ×2 rate of fire
- air-assault (inquisition detachment + melta-guns + explosives) = best speed
- heavy weapon squad (AGL team + mortar team + guided bombs) = best reach
- wide variety of heavy weapon on IFV for even more firepower

>Keeping the horror vibe for longer, while simultaneously increasing the player's power level would probably be pretty hard.
Most of all I like "Illusion of immense peril". Define this term not so easy, but I try. Looks like victory is impossible, enemies are clever and much stronger. But you have reserves to make mistakes. Your soldiers are cheap, they grown fast and die fast. You can use them to try various tactics. Furthermore learning on mistakes rewarded even more than savescamming to victory. You can win by numbers, just with more cost. And even if guardmans are expendable you care about officers and veterans, who survived for months, many of them have personalized weapon, history with every single battle, killed enemies, awards.

I think, mistakes during efforts must be rewarded even more than clear victory. Like if survived soldiers evacuate corpse of fallen comrades, they achieve a lot of experience and save rating after fallen assault. And even on geoscape, nations give much more funds and send heroes and teams of spec-ops to help, if you can't stop enemy activity because of losses. They want to win too, after all. Because who need rewards, if you already stronger than enemy? But if game respect stubbornness to fight through defeats, this can make really thrilling experience.

>>190033
A wonderful reply, thank you!

I haven't tried making a mod for X-COM proper yet. You are right though, I should give it a try before I sink a few months into making an engine for a project that might never pan out. I've had an idea for a while about a tactics game where you get as many soldiers as you're ever going to get at the very beginning. There are no reinforcements, and you have to make them last throughout the entire game. The current iteration of this idea revolves around 100 space marines from a Raven Guard successor chapter being stranded on a human world that is currently occupied by the T'au. The goal is to use stealth and human agents to get enough resources to repair the strike cruiser so the marines can leave. Being too brazen and open with your operations means the T'au have an easier time finding and exterminating your relatively small fighting force.

>ROSIGMA + BrutalAI
I haven't tried BrutalAI, but I've heard good things about it. I was considering doing a vanilla Ironman run with that mod. ROSIGMA feels VERY hard, at least when I played Sisters of Battle. They don't have the numbers, heavy weapons, or ease of replacement of guardsmen. They don't have the specialist tools of the Inquisition, or the armor of the Space Marines. I think I might have gimped my enjoyment of it by playing the worst faction, lol. Your style of extra guardsmen + brutal AI seems like a jolly old time. I remember getting Stormtroopers from a random event and they were instantly better at killing than my power-armored sisters even with kraken bolts. Armor damage from lasers seems to be more effective and consistent than armor piercing bolters.

>Illusion of immense peril
I like this phrase, and the concept. The best games are able to keep this illusion up for a very long time, or in short bursts in the most engaging situations. One of the greatest feats of Ironman mode in these games is giving the player the incentive to retreat and abandon the mission. It's a unique feeling that other games can rarely emulate. Chaos Gate: Daemonhunters had a consolation prize for strategic failure - failing to prevent the opening of a Chaos Gate got you a measly 2 Requisition. It's not much, but it's nice to know that your boss recognizes that you need help for once. Xenonauts and some X-COM mods let you help out the local forces against the enemy. ROSIGMA gives you thematic reinforcements, and lets you keep the guardsmen you save from terror missions. But it feels like in most of these games, we don't get the respect we deserve.

With my game idea of no reinforcements, attrition becomes a much bigger enemy than anything you could face in the field. Most mission objectives would come secondary to the goal of keeping people alive. Knowingly sacrificing someone -important- for the good of others is a crazy feeling. Sacrificing a rookie or redshirt hardly needs a second thought. But if you can't replace that rookie ever? Suddenly the decision has a lot more weight.

But I struggle to find a good setting or story for this particular game concept. I like the warhammer idea, but that's too advanced to adapt into an X-COM mod. Better left for a future where I'm more skilled, and can actually pay for the license from Games Workshop. Maybe I could do a shorter, more narrative-driven X-COM mod? I'm not sure how well that could work given the global scope of the base game. It's hard to give excuses for not getting reinforcements, because most of those situations would also be resolved fairly quickly, like being stuck behind enemy lines. Maybe the player could be some sort of non-government organization stuck somewhere where the political climate has turned quickly and violently against them. Idk, it needs more brain storming. For an X-COM mod in particular, the number of people you start with might need to be higher than 100 given how deadly the game tends to be.

>>190045
>ROSIGMA feels VERY hard, at least when I played Sisters of Battle. They don't have the numbers, heavy weapons, or ease of replacement of guardsmen.
Sisters and arbiters still don't have their own style of gameplay. But I thought about mod for Sisterhood for next game. Specialized shields for sets of armor, which draw energy from Devotion. Just a simple script to add Devotion as shield to deflect some damage, or dodge first 1-2 shots/blows completely with light armor (like telepath psyker). Yeah, plot armor. This make sisters more tanky during first hardest rounds, but not like space-marines.

Sisters can change armor for free, therefore they can choose various shields before mission without too much micromanagement. Shields strong or weak against certain type of damage. Like red energy shield from Piratez, which ×4 stronger against lasers, or golden shield, which useless against bullets and explosives, but perfectly block melee and warp attacks. This made armor much more specialized, which means new level of complexivity, like change fire-team on edge of assault to recharge shields, or use all available firepower with more risk to already exhausted sisters.

Also, we have script for handheld shields from Piratez, which can be activated at time and then discharge for next few turns. I remember script for older version of Warhammer mod, where telekinetic psyker was able to ward one of soldiers with it's own shield. Sisters definitely deserve some type of officers with abilities like this, as well as basic officer-like commands and more command points than guards. Overall I see sisters as quite weak units, but they brave, fast, and can buff assault team to achieve victory without fatal casualties.

>>190045
>The current iteration of this idea revolves around 100 space marines from a Raven Guard successor chapter being stranded on a human world that is currently occupied by the T'au.
>Being too brazen and open with your operations means the T'au have an easier time finding and exterminating your relatively small fighting force.
>The goal is to use stealth and human agents to get enough resources to repair the strike cruiser so the marines can leave.
>I like the warhammer idea, but that's too advanced to adapt into an X-COM mod.
It looks like crossover of X-COM Piratez and ROSIGMA in terms of gameplay. Cover operations, strike and run tactics, but with possibility to use brute force and numbers by cost of unnecessary attention. Your idea is totally possible for openxcom engine, I can even provide detailed advice for each aspect.

1. Foundation. Modification is good way to do things. You can use ROSIGMA as base for your mod, and then change direction of campaign. From T'au units (we still don't have them!) to events for second and third months, when T'au fleet occupy planet. My usual casualties with BrutalAI 2.7 soldier per mission, 0.27 per killed enemy. Company of 100 soldiers from start hard to manage, but how about 40 rookies initially, then +30 veterans for each next month (squads are returning after missions).
2. Reverse rating. Rating = enemy attention. Rating is bad. If during T'au occupation you ends month with high rating, next month enemy retaliate. More escorts for transport ships, more patrols on geoscape, more recons to find your base. Much more dangerous assault. As result it is better to finish mission by evacuation, without killing every single enemy. We clearly need more missions of that type. Piratez has good tricks with rating and enemy strategical reaction.
3. Force in numbers. Depends on significance of the mission and knowledge about game you can use biggest vehicle and up to full company for assured victory, but by cost of undesirable attention (trick with generated item/unit like heavy weapon for Chimera, which add quantity of rating after mission), or drop pods / Valkyrie and smaller squad for fast and quite risky strike and run tactics. This may make repeated missions more interesting and first attempts more bearable.
4. Funds through units. Instead of rating you can use units/items to add store space and some funds every month (trick with negative weight/salary). It is possible to build entire funding system around it. Rescue agents/rebels/loyal civilian during mission and they will make funds every month. In Piratez slaves even can help during base assault, like civilians during terror missions (trick with stunned bodies in the stores)
5. Devotion system. Like with my idea for Sisters of Battle. Devotion = shield. Shield represents special quality of armor, which can be very effective against one type of weapon, or weak/useless against another type of damage. Devotion = command points. Like in Guardsman campaign, when officers can spend command points to buff entire squad each round. Defense or reaction? Speed or damage? Now or later?
6. Exhaustion system. Like in X-files. End of every turn damage devotion and max hp of shield. So, take time to recharge shields during mission is not best strategy, better way to change fire-teams. Besides, send exhausted soldiers with weak shields to mission more risky. Devotion slowly restored each day, but it's better to use fresh rookies than exhausted veterans just because of shields and command points. It makes all 100 soldiers valuable from start to endgame.
7. Strike cruiser as base. You can make first base looks actually as debris of damaged cruiser. Just take building system from Piratez, where any construction has stages of damage and destruction of one special tile/unit during base assault damages building after. So, it is possible to make full repairing of first base to be final goal. Some modules need special items, which can be found on missions. Also, you can forbid first type of lift and all next bases will be different structures, like outposts.
8. Strike cruiser under attack. You can even allow fully functional base from start, but make event later, when hypersonic missiles and assault pods attack cruiser. Just use similar event from Piratez, where Technocracy used missiles against one of bases and then government forces attack too.

>>190045
If you use tricky ways with modding to resolve engine problems, you know perfectly clear how to make your own engine better. It's great motivation. Coding overall it's the skill to resolve tricky problems, so if you know how to modding, you know how to coding. Besides, openxcom still popular and has a good community, which means a lot of maps, sprites, rulesets. I think, openxcom as project will not die for next decade too.

BrutalAI is fascinating example, how good things can be. It's just hardest bot for tactical games I even fought. BrutalAI especially good for attack-evacuation tactic, because enemies constantly maneuver and can attack from anywhere, if you careless, but under heavy pressure they are retreating. One time I pursued group of red stone stormtroopers around whole map and just can't reach them even with mortars, because of night and their good camouflage. I strongly recommend to balance this mod for BrutalAI. It just better in every single aspect.

I prefer guardsman strategy, but tanky units is not bad thing. Without expendable units or tanks we forced to exploit game and use quite funny, but stupid tactics, like dwarfs fire-team on pic related. It is easy way to add more armor, but situation, when you forced to turn soldier because of damaged front armor quite stupid. Shield + medium armor is better than just dreadnought armor. Shield for uncontrollable situations, like grenades, sneaky/fast melee unit, or burst through door. First mistake just break shield and damage some armor. Second mistake break armor and injure unit for some hp. Third can be fatal. How far are you ready to go?

Yes, it is essential question. How far are you ready to go? Full-sized assault with overwhelming numerical superiority, or one squad to not draw attention. Fast assault to save soldiers from exhaustion, or careful siege. Continue operation after first/second mistake, or retreat to try later. Freedom of choice is fascinating thing.

>>190063
One moment I'm trying to follow comments about mods that haven't been written for games I haven't played, and the next there's a spam post about ring exchanges and I was hoping I could write a cutesy report about exchanging their post for a ring around my mare's horn but then I couldn't because the spam was fried, flipped and flung far away.

Thank you all for talking about XCom. I liked NuCom but never played the old/original. I played Dark Crusade but not with the Sisters

As it turns out I suck at both tactics and strategy so I have to play kiddie games or break out the god modes. Can I play your probably-for-real_upcoming_really! game as Celestia (or better yet, Luna) ?

>>190067
>Can I play your probably-for-real_upcoming_really! game as Celestia (or better yet, Luna)?
I checked it just now. Surprisingly, we still don't have pony mod for openxcom. But I clearly remember quadrupled sprites from X-files and Piratez (dogs, animals, some monsters even with weapon). So, problem with uncommon height for ponies already solved. Alas, I'm lazy with sprites and animations. But I add this cameo to my to-do list, this need to be done.

>>190065
Your idea has merit. Mods do have a long history of eventually becoming standalone projects. UFO Defense still has some limitations that I don't think I'll be able to fully overcome, but I think I could make something still. It won't be able to check off everything on my wishlist, but I could possibly get a proof of concept on how viable the "100 soldiers only" thing could be.

One of my main concerns is stealth. It just doesn't work very well in this game. It's funny you mention X-Piratez, I downloaded it yesterday and have been giving it a try. I had a "stealth" mission against some bandits to attack an airfield. It mentioned the plane I'm stealing being in parts, so I thought I could pick it up and evacuate. Then the game puts all of my girls basically in the center of the facility (which is dumb) and surrounded by enemies who are literally 3 tiles away and looking at me. I couldn't beat that mission, but I doubt there was actually any crates I could pick up and run with in the first place.

The other concern is the Geoscape. If it were an XCOM mod, I think my idea for the Space Marines handling human agents (who would be able to blend in with the other humans on the occupied planet where Astartes could not) would be very different than what I had in mind.

Let me lay out my idea first.

The player starts with hundreds, or even a thousand no-name "agents" who were the crewmen of the Strike Cruiser 'Vagus Anima.' After getting lost in the warp, the ship was heavily damaged, and so these crewmen are no longer needed in their duties until the ship is repaired. So they get stealthily transported across the planet as seeds that will grow into cells of saboteurs and intel operatives. The planet itself is divided into 10 provinces with a few cities in each (ala council of funding nations). Agents passively generate "insights" which will eventually become actionable intel, like static facilities housing repair components, T'au patrol routes, or the address of an annoying pro-T'au politician. Covert operations can be done with these Agents, rolling the dice on the ability of these humans to get the job done. In this way, the Agents are a resource that can be burned. There will always be the chance for losses among them, but more agents can be recruited among the imperial loyalists in the population.

Most of this sounds like it can be done. Indeed, X-COM Files did something similar, where the HQ and Intel buildings added a small amount to "Global Detection" which would occasionally reveal cultist transports or the odd UFO before the invasion fully started. I could possibly have the XCOM bases instead be covert hideouts (like X-Piratez or the Outposts in ROSIGMA) where the amount of Agents living inside directly influence the size/efficacy of the base's radar capabilities.

But something I really wanted for my game was for the player to have the opportunity to be -proactive- in their strategy, like preparing an ambush on the Geoscape. Causing problems somewhere to draw away T'au reinforcements while another team accomplishes the actual objective. For example, causing a mass-shooting in the T'au hab zones (can't let people forget the Space Marines are xenocidal assholes) to get the military's attention while a covert team breaks into a research station to rescue an Astropath. There would be many, many opportunities across the planet for the player to start shit at any given moment on any given day. But the player isn't expected to take even 1% of those opportunities until it serves some greater purpose. It's a planet controlled by the T'au, eventually the player will learn the positions of most of their static military bases. But there won't be a reason to attack them if the T'au can just come in with a fresh garrison.

So at the same time, the player would be sowing the seeds of rebellion among the humans. Gangs of guerrillas cause problems without exposing Agents to risk. Eventually they become big enough to attack the T'au directly, and be able to hold static positions that the Marines conquer. The humans on the planet outnumber the T'au 10:1, and due to some plot contrivances the T'au are cut off from reinforcements as well. (I was thinking of setting this a few years after the 4th Sphere Expansion)

So there'd be guerilla armies, T'au desperately trying to make and keep a frontline, internal politics among the rebel factions, winning the hearts and minds of the humans (it's been a few generations of 'benevolent' T'au rule), each thing changing the environment in which the Space Marines operate on the Geoscape in order to complete their mission of trying to go home. Either by fixing their ship to be warp-capable again, building a psychic relay tower and gathering enough astropaths to phone home, or by conquering the entire damn planet so they can do the first two options in peace.

There's much more to this idea, many little details and tangents. It's not worth getting into all of them right now, I think. I could implement a little bit of each idea in very hacky ways. There's definitely bits and pieces of the different megamods I could use, combining them into my own thing. As a mod, it'd be a lot simpler than the final product, but if I can make the mod fun, then I think it'd be a good sign that the final product could also be good fun. It's worth at least brainstorming how I can adapt my ideas for XCOM, and then do some programming magic and ruleset illusions to smooth the edges. One big problem would be the fact that XCOM missions/UFOs are decided at the turn of the month...

By Celestia, I swear I'm sounding like an 'ideas guy' right now. The scope of what I want might be too large to be feasible, but dammit if this game is just a dream for now then why shouldn't I dream big?

>>190067
That would be fun to make as a mod for my own game, so I don't sued by Hasbro. Maybe I could even hire their VAs for my own shitty dialogue? Talking ponies wouldn't be too out of place in X-Piratez or XCOM Files...

So in entertaining the idea of making a new mod for X-COM, I think I should start with simply adding the T'au as a new alien race to ROSIGMA. I'll be able to get the majority of the work for my own mod (the sprites, sounds, and enemies) done and out to the public before I actually get to work on the events and story arcs I had in mind. The writing and scripting would be comparatively faster than the visual art, methinks. So this project would be in two parts: First as a small submod for ROSIGMA, and then as a bigger 40k conversion standalone with its own planet and narrative arcs.

One problem I realized when whipping up a roster of enemies for the mod is that XCOM can represent wide, squat monsters by having them be 2x2. A lot of the advanced T'au battlesuits (Riptides, Storm Surge) are much taller than they are wide. The same goes for the scout sentinels, but the mod made them look decent enough, probably in part to their boxy nature. I'll have to play with it a lot until I can get some proportions that look good, it'd be a waste to not include a Storm Surge as a boss fight of sorts.

In terms of balancing, the Pulse Weapons would probably just be half a tier better than lasguns. Better damage and range, same armor damage, same accuracy, same lack of penetrating power. Was always strange to me that they were S5 on the tabletop, but for the mod more consistent armor damage is cause for enough concern on the part of the player. Fusion weapons are more focused Melta, Plasma Rifles are the same as their imperial counterparts. Smart Missile Systems can be an interesting weapon. I could have them act like Blaster Bombs, but it might be too annoying or too slow. Alternatively, they could just be rapid fire micro missiles with a 1x1 blast and good demolition power.

I was thinking of trying to represent the gene-curse of the Raven Guard somehow, the Sable Brand. Anypony got any ideas on that? In lore, they become suicidally determined to defeat the enemy. When noticed, they either get sent on suicide missions or get locked up to be experimented on by the Apothecaries. One idea I had was to have a bunch of "stress related" commendations available, that when too many are applied to one marine, he gets an automatic transformation into a new soldier type. There could also be "glorious" commendations that counteract the bad ones, so only the shitters who have terrible luck get afflicted by the Sable Brand. Maybe the new soldier type should have a timer put on them every mission, that after it goes off the marine gets converted into a 'neutral' unit? That way they will fight the enemy but without the player's input. I wonder if I might need to work with Meridian to get that sort of functionality into OXCE...

Is there anything special that anypony here would want to see in a T'au mod for ROSIGMA? I was going to do my best to include as much of the roster as I could, either as enemies on the battlescape or as UFOs to be intercepted. That means Kroot, Fire Warriors, Drones, Battlesuits, Vespid, and Gue'Vesa. Joke ideas are welcome too, a mod like this could use some levity.