Some suggestions

[Bobit]

1) Add turnLimit 12 and chronoTrigger 2 to strange lifeform missions. After turn 12, all remaining monsters flee. Reducing the mission frequency was a nice touch, but this would make the missions strategically interesting instead of a spamfest where only mid-long range assault rifles (or pistol equivalent if low-tech) are  used.

2) Under difficulty settings, increase difficultyCoefficient or defeatScore, so that it is possible to lose in the early game on higher difficulty levels, rather than just giving up because you will suffer from having less veterans later. Maybe reduce number of enemies and increase number of monster terror missions, so that instead of being a grind, hard difficulties are actually hard to survive in. Buff score technologies so players can sacrifice their research to hold on, plus it would be nice for non-promotion-related researches to be more useful.

3) Give less (or equal?) score for arriving at a mission and aborting it than not arriving at all. From a gameplay perspective, missions where you arrive only to abort when it gets intense are not fun, and aborting is super  OP. Thematically this could be seen as a failure of the project.

4) I would prefer less minor missions to shorten the game a bit. If you could implement a setting for that, that would be nice. Right now, it's a bit too easy to get a full squad of 100%-TU agents with 100% of available research covered, yet you still have to do every safehouse and such if you want to play well for EXP reasons.

5) Buff reactions/bravery melee (and slight melee in general), light armor, throwing (especially knives which seem much worse than stars), rats, dog armor, flashbangs (enemies outnumber you), civilians, lone madmen, dagon in general (so easy), bolt-actions, explosives, drone armor, reactions training, heal gel, cannons (except for explosive automatic and buckshot non-automatic), hazmat, skulljack, maybe kneel accuracy. Nerf shields, FAL and similar mid-long-range automatics, enemy dodge (makes swords much better for them than you), stims (increase cost, probably too spammable, basically just ammo for the flame glove instead of waiting for recovery for example), agent bravery (non-psi panic seems too rare).

6) Unit pages on UFOpaedia could be better. I don't really care about armor, I care about resistances, dodge, stats. Dunno why there are so many pages for civilians. But I could be wrong.

7) How about adding transformations? There are four cults, why can't I resurrect people or turn them into 10-bravery 90-psi tentacle monsters, lol. Plus I think being able to bring back a veteran soldier at a high price if you recover the corpse is pretty neat.

[TheCurse]

Tritanium crowbar, golf club and pickaxe
9) Rocket boosted sledgehammer. Hardly hits anything, but if it does, oh boy...


As for strange lifeform missions, how about a variable map size? So you end up somewhere between the usual shooting range mission and a crowded room filled with (hopefully less...) creatures.
I´d agree with all other points except 6 and 7, then again don't have much game experience yet to properly judge them.

[Solarius Scorch]

Hi! Took me a while to return to the forums, I've been quite busy recently.

1) Add turnLimit 12 and chronoTrigger 2 to strange lifeform missions. After turn 12, all remaining monsters flee. Reducing the mission frequency was a nice touch, but this would make the missions strategically interesting instead of a spamfest where only mid-long range assault rifles (or pistol equivalent if low-tech) are  used.

It's not a bad idea in theory, but would feel rather clunky. "I had the monster trapped and surrounded by people in flying armours, how did it escape?"

2) Under difficulty settings, increase difficultyCoefficient or defeatScore, so that it is possible to lose in the early game on higher difficulty levels, rather than just giving up because you will suffer from having less veterans later. Maybe reduce number of enemies and increase number of monster terror missions, so that instead of being a grind, hard difficulties are actually hard to survive in. Buff score technologies so players can sacrifice their research to hold on, plus it would be nice for non-promotion-related researches to be more useful.

Well, that would require a lot of tweaking... For now I prefer to stick to one model.

3) Give less (or equal?) score for arriving at a mission and aborting it than not arriving at all. From a gameplay perspective, missions where you arrive only to abort when it gets intense are not fun, and aborting is super OP. Thematically this could be seen as a failure of the project.

It's not that easy:
1. Mission points from battle are random, as they depend on difficulty, how many civilians are spawned (sometimes 3, sometimes 0)
2. The harder the mission, the less punitive it is if you don't go there. So the penalty for a cult base is lower than cullt apprehension, for example. This however doesn't apply to "hot" missions like terrors, where you're supposed to show up.
Maybe just boosting all penalties across the board is in order.

4) I would prefer less minor missions to shorten the game a bit. If you could implement a setting for that, that would be nice. Right now, it's a bit too easy to get a full squad of 100%-TU agents with 100% of available research covered, yet you still have to do every safehouse and such if you want to play well for EXP reasons.

It's very random and I'm not eager to delve into this. I'll keep this in mind, though.

5) Buff reactions/bravery melee (and slight melee in general), light armor, throwing (especially knives which seem much worse than stars), rats, dog armor, flashbangs (enemies outnumber you), civilians, lone madmen, dagon in general (so easy), bolt-actions, explosives, drone armor, reactions training, heal gel, cannons (except for explosive automatic and buckshot non-automatic), hazmat, skulljack, maybe kneel accuracy. Nerf shields, FAL and similar mid-long-range automatics, enemy dodge (makes swords much better for them than you), stims (increase cost, probably too spammable, basically just ammo for the flame glove instead of waiting for recovery for example), agent bravery (non-psi panic seems too rare).

All these are pretty situational and I can't really agree with many points here, as the seem contradictory to general feedback. You want to nerf things which are already considered "not worth it" by many players, such as long range weaponry (universally considered to be superfluous when you have shotguns and pistols) or the flame glove (seriously, someone is using it? That's great, but also quite strange!) or stims (nobody uses them, ever). I'm glad these things are being used, but I'm not nerfing something which is already very unpopular.
And enemies have as much dodge as they should.

6) Unit pages on UFOpaedia could be better. I don't really care about armor, I care about resistances, dodge, stats. Dunno why there are so many pages for civilians. But I could be wrong.

Sorry, I have no idea what you mean and what I should do. Can you elaborate?

7) How about adding transformations? There are four cults, why can't I resurrect people or turn them into 10-bravery 90-psi tentacle monsters, lol. Plus I think being able to bring back a veteran soldier at a high price if you recover the corpse is pretty neat.

Would be nice, but with the current code it can't be done in a sensible way (most notably, without losing your experience). I have a system designed for this, though!

[Bobit]

1) Yes. I never was a huge fan of timers over LW2's endless reinforcements. Still better than nothing imo.

2) Okay, but could you do something about the difficulty? Because no matter how hard the missions are, the early game is still unloseable. And I imagine a safehouse  where you fight 20 enemies is not much more fun than fighting 10. If you don't want to make difficulty balance more complicated, can you just make all difficulties possible to lose early? Or if not to lose, to receive any sort of punishment that doesn't involve losing your agents? It's not a very healthy mechanic when the mission doesn't matter at all and  you just play passively as possible to train your agents (by extension having rookie suicide screens for your vets). I suppose increasing the score penalty for retreating as in #3 would do that a bit.

5)  Wow, nobody uses stims? They're amazing for sprinting and reviving k-o-ed agents, and absolutely crucial for melees. Only downside I can see is that they replace grenades, but if you're only using flashbangs, or you already have 3-6 grenades on the agent, what's the point? They also replace healing sprays, but those are very expensive and only stop the rare bleedout death fmpov. Flame gloves are a great 1x in your squad so long as you consider stims ammo, oneshots everything, highly accurate, arcs. Reload rate is slow and you can't carry enough stims to reload forever, range is bad. Wasn't advocating for a direct flame glove nerf, just it seems a little silly that psi weapons don't actually use your natural recovery but just rely on stims. Guess that's not really a fixable "problem" unless you have a "psi suit" with high stun recovery. that's probably the real solution here.

Long range weaponry seems better than pistols for a short amount of time but more importantly the long-range auto rifles tend to beat out the real long-range bolt/semi rifles by quite a bit, at least until auto-snipers and MGs. I've never really seen shotguns do great, I'd much rather use a shield+SMG for most close range, as I've taken entire bases with shield+SMG rookies. Maybe shotguns are more TU-reliant in terms of avoiding danger?

About the dodge, I just proposed it as a method of buffing player melee without enemy melee. Guess that's kinda the same as lowering enemy melee. I'm not sure if it's just because I don't reflex-train my soldiers much. I'm not sure I would prefer points in reflex over accuracy anyway though. Classic XCOM I guess.

6) The pages on the UFOpaedia which describe, for example, a Red Dawn Grunt, show stats involving their armor. This might be difficult, but it would be neat if they showed more useful stats, like Reflexes.

7)

[krautbernd]

2) Okay, but could you do something about the difficulty? Because no matter how hard the missions are, the early game is still unloseable. And I imagine a safehouse  where you fight 20 enemies is not much more fun than fighting 10. If you don't want to make difficulty balance more complicated, can you just make all difficulties possible to lose early? Or if not to lose, to receive any sort of punishment that doesn't involve losing your agents? It's not a very healthy mechanic when the mission doesn't matter at all and  you just play passively as possible to train your agents (by extension having rookie suicide screens for your vets). I suppose increasing the score penalty for retreating as in #3 would do that a bit.

The whole point of early game is to build up your agents and your whole organization structure. I've played multiple games so far, and I've never had the same early game progression twice. Upping the difficulty means running the risk of encountering missions and mission combinations that are unwinnable and will brick you progress early in the game without having the means to correct that. This might lead to very frustrating playthroughs for people who are just starting out and don't know the mod. If I had to choose between an 'easy' early game and making the game 'more difficult' for experienced players I'd choose the the former.

5)  Wow, nobody uses stims? They're amazing for sprinting and reviving k-o-ed agents, and absolutely crucial for melees. Only downside I can see is that they replace grenades, but if you're only using flashbangs, or you already have 3-6 grenades on the agent, what's the point? They also replace healing sprays, but those are very expensive and only stop the rare bleedout death fmpov. Flame gloves are a great 1x in your squad so long as you consider stims ammo, oneshots everything, highly accurate, arcs. Reload rate is slow and you can't carry enough stims to reload forever, range is bad. Wasn't advocating for a direct flame glove nerf, just it seems a little silly that psi weapons don't actually use your natural recovery but just rely on stims. Guess that's not really a fixable "problem" unless you have a "psi suit" with high stun recovery. that's probably the real solution here.

I've never actually used the flame glove either, and i'd agree that most of the stuff you've listed is situational. IMHO early game armor (including heavy tactical vest/tritanium vest) is overpowered when you compare it to later armors. In my experience explosives don't need to be buffed at all, either. I'd agree with you on the stims, though i don't abuse them as much (mostly for fluff/immersion reasons). Why does the healing gel need to be buffed?

These are all extremely dependant on your playstyle, and you are free to change those stats to your liking (as I do, on occasion), but i'd really like them to remain as they are to have an actual baseline as to how they should work.

Long range weaponry seems better than pistols for a short amount of time but more importantly the long-range auto rifles tend to beat out the real long-range bolt/semi rifles by quite a bit, at least until auto-snipers and MGs. I've never really seen shotguns do great, I'd much rather use a shield+SMG for most close range, as I've taken entire bases with shield+SMG rookies. Maybe shotguns are more TU-reliant in terms of avoiding danger?

I've never used shields or SMGs for close range. Either magnums+melee when i can't bring bigger guns or melee all the way in late game.

About the dodge, I just proposed it as a method of buffing player melee without enemy melee. Guess that's kinda the same as lowering enemy melee. I'm not sure if it's just because I don't reflex-train my soldiers much. I'm not sure I would prefer points in reflex over accuracy anyway though. Classic XCOM I guess.

The only time i've found myself matched (or overmatched) was by Black Lotus Assassins and (sometimes) Red Dawn elite troops. Otherwise i've found the tritanium knife (or sword, if you can spare the space+TUs) to work extremely well. Get into melee range and you can almost always avoid damage if your agents are trained. This also works against aliens, especially in early game sectoid encounters. If you manage to blindside them they are practically helpless and asking to get shanked.

The pages on the UFOpaedia which describe, for example, a Red Dawn Grunt, show stats involving their armor. This might be difficult, but it would be neat if they showed more useful stats, like Reflexes.

Not possible with the current mechanics, unless you enter them manually for every enemy. I don't think it's worth it.

[Bobit]

I never tried to suggest buffing grenades (except flashbangs relative to the other grenades). I'd rather carry 1 stim + 3 grenades than 4 grenades, so I'm surprised no one uses stims, that's all. What you say is understandable.

[krautbernd]

I never tried to suggest buffing grenades/armor(?). I'd rather carry 1 stim + 3 grenades than 4 grenades, so I'm surprised no one uses stims, that's all. What you say is understandable.

5) Buff reactions/bravery melee (and slight melee in general), light armor, throwing (especially knives which seem much worse than stars), rats, dog armor, flashbangs (enemies outnumber you), civilians, lone madmen, dagon in general (so easy), bolt-actions, explosives[...]

EDIT:
These posts might have collided, sorry for that. I'm a bit stumped by what you mean by 'explosives' if that doesn't include grenades. Again, i don't see any explosives that are lacking, grenades or otherwise (though i think some enemies are abnormally resistant to explosive damage). What explosives do you feel need to be buffed, and why?

[Bobit]

Dynamite

[krautbernd]

Dynamite

Why?

[Bobit]

In Xenonauts, timed explosives are called explosives. Grenades are not. My vocabulary leaked over I guess. I was also referring to mines which seem weaker than proxies. Mostly it's because they don't seem useful in this mod's typical superhuman 8v30 situation.

By light armor I mostly meant shieldless vests.

[krautbernd]

What explosives do you feel need to be buffed, and why?

I wasn't asking why you were referring to dynamite as explosives. I was asking why you think it needs to be buffed.

What issue are you running into concerning the vests?

[Bobit]

Explosives are a bit awkward in vanilla for anything except breaching. You can use them against very high-armor enemies, but it will be more difficult than using rockets and high-power grenades if you have any. But in XFiles they are even weaker for these reasons:

1) High-armor enemies are rare. XFiles has mostly weaker but more numerous enemies.

2) Breaches / UFO landings are rare.

3) Shields are usually a better option for a breach.

4) Pickaxes can destroy terrain anyways.

5) Dynamite is of course weaker than a normal explosive. I think it has lower radius. Which is a pretty big deal for a timed explosive.

There's not really any incentive to use leather/kevlar once you have armored, or an incentive to use no shield for a one-hand weapon imo. Jumpsuits are also pretty bad compared to real armor, which is very disappointing. The extra TU/stamina/dodge just doesn't compensate for blocking 75% of shots. The vast majority of tech-equivalent enemies barely penetrate armored shields, and just hunkering down and shooting is often the only safe no-casualty strategy 8v30, so why would you pick armor that lets you move at the cost of dying twice as fast? In a way this all ties back to the unhealthy nature of the early game, which is that mission victory is fairly irrelevant, training and survival is what always matters. How does light armor help you evacuate?

[krautbernd]

Depending on your strength dynamite can be used just like grenades. I usually apply it generously to clustered cultist formations and missile racks during cultist base/outpost assault. It's also great for apocalypse gatherings, jail breaks etc.

Replace with High-Ex when it becomes available. Both are also well suited to clear out (as in, clear them from the map) buildings (Clinics, warehouses, hybrid settlements...). Apart from alien terror units that have high-ex resistance they're my go-to option if targets are obscured or I absolutely need a one-hit kill. Even more fun if you enable instant grenades (which also disallows playing hot potato).

I think the whole point of getting better armor is to ditch the obsolete ones. Why should there be an incentive to use leather/kevlar? They are stepping stones to get to higher tiers. You use them as long as you have to. Again, I personally don't use one-handed weapons (apart from stun/melee) either, and I never use shields - so from my point of view shields are kind of obsolete. That doesn't mean they need to be buffed or nerfed - they simply don't fit my playstyle.

I agree about the jumpsuits, but they are more stealthy iirc. I see them more as a gimmick, a throwback to vanilla and how much progression i've actually made to get to that point. I wouldn't not call the early game unhealthy either (I think I'Ve elborated why). If it really rubs you the wrong way, why not simply change the game to fit your needs and playstyle? That's the whole point of OXC, isn't it?

[Bobit]

Upgrades should make the previous thing partially obselete, as they do with weapons. Alternatively, there should be more armor options so not all of my guys suddenly become immobile tanks.

That would require a sweeping balance overhaul. How the hell am I supposed to balance a 100+ hour mod? Maybe I will attempt it someday, I doubt my success though, I never finish any of my projects. Actually I was working on an ASCII xcom-like a few weeks ago, since there are some things like nonexistent cover which drag the game down in any OpenX mod.

[Solarius Scorch]

I think most stuff discussed here, if not all, is controversial. For example there are excellent, veteran players who consider the jumpsuit to be the best outfit in the game. Etc.

But I'm glad various people have completely different approaches. This is how it should be, I think.