KickStarter Xenonauts 2 - now available on Early Access

[SausageInYourFace]

Glad they made it to expanded modding tools!

 

[ArchAngel]

They have it all to do, though. Let us see if they can tackle repetitivness of the first game and bring more pace and suspension. Right now, X-piratez seem like a much better game then Xenonauts despite its crazy setting.

Hopefully, Xenos 2 will hit the right spot.

There is 0 chance their plan is to make this game appeal to x-piratez players, or for any other game that wants to earn decent money.
Hardcore products like X-piratez are always meant for specific small communities.

I hope the game is a bit more like Open Xcom in ways that improve it while also bringing enough new stuff so there is a reason to play it instead of Open Xcom.
Xeno1 didn't have those reasons.

 

[SenisterDenister]

Hopefully the mod tools and being on unity will make total conversions easy to produce, then. Truth be told, I think a lack of modding tools for Wasteland 2 is what killed the game's longevity. Games need mod kits to stay active, I think. Look at STALKER, for instance. A singleplayer game that's had consistent modding and playerbase for over a decade now. Being fully 3d will make it easier than being sprite-based.

 

[SymbolicFrank]

I just missed the kickstarter and bases discussion, I see. I normally look at this thread every few months.

I would like to add, that the best reason to have multiple bases and teams is to train and keep officers. Because there's a cap on promotions per base.

As the game progresses, I put the soldiers with the highest rank at the back of the skyranger, in the best armor. They tend to stay there for the full duration of the mission. Rookies go out, officers stay in.

By the time psi comes available, you have a lot of officers, half of which have become a liability. You cannot afford to lose any in a random battle, and you might want to keep some in reserve, for when the shit really hits the fan. (Like, a blaster bomb exploding inside the skyranger. Happened to me twice.) So, I spread them out over my other bases. The small ones get the psi-risks, the larger ones get a full team with the hotshots.

That way, I can keep on sending recruits out and training better ones. Simply because many things are far too dangerous for good soldiers to do.

At the end of the game, I could use only hardened officers in flying armors with blaster bombs to destroy everything, but that destroys the elerium I need for that as well. Just send in some recruits first, have a bunch of sergeants follow them and have those flying officers circle above.

Well, ok, that doesn't work in Xenonauts of course, because the soldiers aren't expendable enough.

 

[ArchAngel]

I just missed the kickstarter and bases discussion, I see. I normally look at this thread every few months.

I would like to add, that the best reason to have multiple bases and teams is to train and keep officers. Because there's a cap on promotions per base.

As the game progresses, I put the soldiers with the highest rank at the back of the skyranger, in the best armor. They tend to stay there for the full duration of the mission. Rookies go out, officers stay in.

By the time psi comes available, you have a lot of officers, half of which have become a liability. You cannot afford to lose any in a random battle, and you might want to keep some in reserve, for when the shit really hits the fan. (Like, a blaster bomb exploding inside the skyranger. Happened to me twice.) So, I spread them out over my other bases. The small ones get the psi-risks, the larger ones get a full team with the hotshots.

That way, I can keep on sending recruits out and training better ones. Simply because many things are far too dangerous for good soldiers to do.

At the end of the game, I could use only hardened officers in flying armors with blaster bombs to destroy everything, but that destroys the elerium I need for that as well. Just send in some recruits first, have a bunch of sergeants follow them and have those flying officers circle above.

Well, ok, that doesn't work in Xenonauts of course, because the soldiers aren't expendable enough.

And that is another reason why I prefer Open Xcom over Xenonauts.

 

[SymbolicFrank]

And that is another reason why I prefer Open Xcom over Xenonauts.

Yes. All the remakes and sequels did that wrong. They all tried to make it into JA2.

Consider the setting: Aliens are taking over the world! If we don't destroy them, they will enslave every one of us! The survival of our entire species is on the line! Only you can save mankind!

It's not about a team of Heroes, like in an RPG. It's all-out War. Soldiers die. Weapons are made for killing. If a hit only wounds, use a better weapon.

And if that guy who did heroic things during many missions finally dies, you're not happy.

 

[SymbolicFrank]

Btw. At the start of an X-COM game, I buy lots of heavy weapons. And when equipping my soldiers, I only look at their strength. The big ones get a rocket launcher, the medium ones a heavy cannon, then auto-cannons, and the weak ones get a stun rod and whatever else they can carry.

 

[SenisterDenister]

Ah, yes. The classic strategy: Prime grenade, throw rookie.

 

[SymbolicFrank]

Stun or explode

 

[mwnn85]

Just out of interest...

I've got the Kickstarter Demo working with wine-staging 3.13 under Arch Linux with the latest mesa-git drivers:
https://imgur.com/a/2fPUinH

Works rather well; obviously it'd be nice to see this land on as many platforms as possible if there's not a lost of extra work/cost involved.

Not sure why they're building 32 bit executables though ?!?

[mwnn@archlinux Xenonauts2_KickstarterDemo]$ file Xenonauts2.exe
Xenonauts2.exe: PE32 executable (GUI) Intel 80386, for MS Windows

Wouldn't going 64 bit allow the game to use more than 4GB RAM and probably make modding less crashy aka Xenonauts CE.
Plus I wouldn't have to install a bunch of outdated libraries.
There hasn't been a desktop 32 bit CPU released for about 20 years! (Pentium 4/Athlon iirc)

 

[Alienman]

Started a replay of Xenonauts and I have totally forgot how hard this game is. At first everything is going really well, except a few losses of course. Then comes a base mission with those robot dudes and they totally stomped me. Soon after that a terror mission with heavily armored lizard folk and about 1 million reapers. It was game over at that point. I hope the second game remain that difficult.

Above is just a small amount of reapers on that map. 2-3 more came sneaking. One snuck passed my dudes and turned them into zombies.

 

[Sarissofoi]

is that Brasil?

 

[Stavrophore]

is that Brasil?

Wait, does it looks like typical BOPE action in favela?

 

[anus_pounder]

Any life in this one?

 

[Whiskeyjack]

Any life in this one?

The closed beta should be released in October.

 

[Eyestabber]

Any life in this one?

The closed beta should be released in October.

Every time I replay the GoG demo I feel like a junkie licking his table in a desperate attempt to get ANY amount of leftover cocaine.

Goddamit Goldhawk I need more of this "Xenonauts 2" thing. Maybe give us a new mission on the demo? Maybe?

 

[geno]

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...gic-planetary-defence-simulator/posts/2286691

Now the dust has settled on our successful Kickstarter campaign, it's time for a progress update on Xenonauts-2!

There's lots of exciting stuff to talk about, even though the lingering admin from the Kickstarter has kept us busy and the summer holiday period means that we've frequently been without one or more important team members!


Air Combat:
The first thing I want to show off is a very early incarnation of the air combat. The art and design are both still very rough, so try to look past all the placeholder art from the first Xenonauts and the rather simple combat interactions in the video.

Our objectives for the X2 air combat were to make something that was fast-paced but still rewarded the same skills as the rest of the game – tactical and strategic planning (I felt the X1 air combat emphasized reactions over good tactics). I've been playing with a lot of different ideas over the past few years, but I feel we've now hit on a good idea that will be able to combine both speed and tactical depth once complete.

Essentially the player has a certain number of turns to shoot down each UFO before it engages its jump drive and escapes from your interceptors. Your interceptor weapons have limited ammo and generally do more damage the closer you are (as do the alien weapons). Your interceptors can make one move each turn before they attack, but the UFO is also able to move - which it does by moving your jets up and down the battlefield to represent it speeding up / slowing down. Different UFOs will of course have different strengths and weaknesses, and the system supports up to three combatants per side.

I'll likely be writing an entire update devoted to the new Air Combat model once things are a bit more polished and the design has developed further, so I won't try to explain any more about the rules for now – but I just wanted to show everyone that we do already have a basic air combat system working and hooked up to the rest of the strategy layer!





Armory & Soldier Equip:
The next thing I wanted to talk about is the Armory screen and the soldier inventory mechanics. The UI concept above incorporates two major mechanical changes since the start of the Kickstarter, and also gives you some idea of the direction we'd like to take the final UI now we can afford to divert some of our funds to a dedicated UI artist (although it is only a rough style / layout concept, so don't read too much into the details).

The first big mechanical change is the return of the grid-based soldier backpack from Xenonauts 1. We were initially planning to remove this as part of a package of changes to make the inventory system less cumbersome, but we reconsidered our position after the community raised some valid points about why this might make the game less interesting to play. We're currently in the process of implementing the old backpack / inventory mechanics (they'll be in for the closed beta), as well as the other planned changes that were uncontroversial improvements to the system.

The second change is my first concept for the modular armour system that forms part of the modular equipment stretch goal. This works by splitting armour into two different inventory slots: the "Armour" and the "Plating", and giving items in both a set of % resistances against different types of damage.

The “Armour” is the base layer of armour your soldier is wearing – at the start of the game it's the blue Tacsuit, but your research efforts soon unlock different types of suit that offer better / different protection against the various damage types (ranging up to the endgame Exosuit).

“Plating” represents any additional armour you wear on top of this base suit, so the starting Tacsuit allows players to wear either “Light Kevlar” or “Heavy Kevlar” plating (the heavier plating offers more protection but weighs more). As the player progresses through the research tree, the Plating can be upgraded – e.g. Kevlar vests become more protective Alloy vests, etc.

This system allows players to mix and match armour to suit the specific mission. If you want good Chemical protection, you can equip your soldiers with a Chemsuit but then issue your assault troopers heavy plating and your snipers light plating. The way that plating upgrades through the game keeps older types of armour relevant, too - that same Chemsuit will still be somewhat viable in the late game if you have sufficiently advanced plating available, although advanced tech like an Exosuit would obviously be better in most situations.

Remember that this idea is still at concept stage and not yet implemented, so it may well change prior to release (or even prior to the closed beta!)




New Aliens:
Finally, I just want to show off a quick piece of concept art for a new alien to go in the game. The 3D art for this alien is not yet complete, but it's planned to be a single-tile psionic support unit.

We've got a number of new aliens working their way through our art / design pipeline, and we're making an effort to include some more distinctive aliens in the game this time around. There's certainly a place for humanoid aliens in space jumpsuits in the alien roster, but I think any X-Com successor also needs to embrace some of the absurdity of the original games to properly capture their spirit. A floating alien brain seems a pretty good place to start!

Anyway, that's enough from me - there's a lot more I'd like to talk about but I really should get back to work! The closed beta is still planned for the start of November and I'll keep everyone informed on our progress towards that deadline as it approaches.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Different grenade types confirmed.
I was quite worried about that after playing yhe demo.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Started a replay of Xenonauts and I have totally forgot how hard this game is. At first everything is going really well, except a few losses of course. Then comes a base mission with those robot dudes and they totally stomped me. Soon after that a terror mission with heavily armored lizard folk and about 1 million reapers. It was game over at that point. I hope the second game remain that difficult.

Above is just a small amount of reapers on that map. 2-3 more came sneaking. One snuck passed my dudes and turned them into zombies.

Yeah, reapers are annoying. They can even one shot tanks for some stupid reason. They are more fragile than chrysallids, but chrysallids can't one shot tanks..

Xenonauts is sorely lacking proximity mines. Those would make some of the more tedious parts of the game (breaching and reapers) a lot less cheap.

 

[Mazisky]

I want to suggest Goldhawk a feature rarely seen in a game like this: different bonus\malus or even enemies in day\night missions. It would be pretty cool

 

[SenisterDenister]

So, what, you have to bring mounted flashlights on guns otherwise you have a to-hit penalty on night missions? If you bring the flashlight it restores accuracy but also makes your guys easier to hit?

 

[Elim]

Bored to death, thinking about starting Xenonauts again. What mods are solid? Is that X-Division mod good?
I need Xenonauts 2 in my life right now...

 

[razvedchiki]

i played some versions of x division and i liked it,its more difficult than vanilla with lots of things to research and make.also new types of aliens and alien craft.the air battles were quite difficult to play manually (there is some video in you tube how to do it).also its really huge around 8-10 gigs to download.
what i dont really like is that for every research you need to capture alive an alien specialist,this is incredibly difficult at the start when you only have stunning batons and you have to take down a sebillian motherfucker,those guys are really tough i had my whole squad equipped with batons taking turns and bashing his head to fall alseep and meanwhile he killed all but 2 of my squad!
i really liked xenophobia where you got your research from enemy ship data cores,and every ship of that type after the first one gave you money and alien aloys to build stuff.

 

[Eyestabber]

Yeah, what is it with x-com modders and live alien captures? Long War, FMP, X-piratez and now what the guy above described, they ALL make live alien capture a requirement for several key techs. The original game made no such restriction. It's almost like modders think your researchers need a quest compass to figure out alien tech and can't do that on their own.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Yeah, what is it with x-com modders and live alien captures? Long War, FMP, X-piratez and now what the guy above described, they ALL make live alien capture a requirement for several key techs. The original game made no such restriction. It's almost like modders think your researchers need a quest compass to figure out alien tech and can't do that on their own.

Not entirely true. Whilst it wasn't a requirement in UFO defense, it was in Terror from the Deep.
I wasn't a fan. I get they wanted to make the research tree a little more interesting, but it also introduced a lot of bugs and there was some stupid crap. Like, why I do have to research a goo man to find out how to use a drill?