MY THOUGHTS ON THE PERFECT XCOM

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Jason
Posts: 7
Joined: Wed Feb 24, 2016 7:46 pm

MY THOUGHTS ON THE PERFECT XCOM

Post by Jason »

Firstly, Thank you for TLW on XCOM1! You did alot of great things!

I'm looking forward to seeing The Long War come to XCOM2, I wish there was some way I could help. For me the most important thing is to add to the game and not deviate too far from the original intentions or cannon of XCOM2

Has anyone kick started a mod before?

Personally I am looking forward to mod content in XCOM2 that adds more depth to the strategy and more progression without changing any of the core game play and messing to much with cannon. Here is my wish list from spending way to much time thinking it all over ^^. It is just my opinion of how to improve on the game without huge overhauls. Here are my thoughtsafter many hours of thinking about many aspects

GEAR
1. Another tier of armor and weapons as well as reasons for using the lower tier gear would help with that.
2. Secondary weapons should ave weapon mods.
3. It might be cool if the classes were not restricted to their own class specific weapons. Pistols should probably require reloading at some point.
4. I believe weapons should be separated into weights; light, medium and heavy. Any class can use any weapon provided it fits in with the weapon weight requirements. This means say, the ranger can carry a rifle as it is medium weight but not a sniper. Anyone can have a secondary weapon in their item slot provided it is a 'light' weight weapon.
4. Upgradable armor. We have upgradable guns, this could extend to armor but maybe its not necessary.

MAPS
1. I would like to see underground and indoor maps as well as map restrictions such limited number of soldiers or no explosives, this will force players to change from the standard squad build they always take.
2. While Random maps are great they are never as good as fully hand crafted maps, i look forward to fully hand crafted maps being put into the game, maybe with their own special missions

CHARACTERS
1. I wish there was a way (like in Neverwinter Nights) where you could export your character to the pool with all his gear, experience and skills. These more elite soldiers could then appear in the Black Market for hire with a price tag based on their experience in different games.
2. Character progression could be extended to include intermediate ranks where they gain stats and not skills. This could enable you to say, make a ranger who is great at stealth and hacking for example.

GLOBAL STRATEGIC LAYER
There are too many directions to go with this one, I am assuming that the general mechanics of a flying base and subcontinents stays the same.
1. The advanced warfare center is not very interesting the vanilla game, something needs to be added here?
2. From the previous game I really enjoyed giving my most elite soldier a pistol and sending them out on infiltration ops, this fits perfectly with the canon and leads to another mission type, the game even has stealth mechanics, its perfect!
3. I'm not sure I like the random grenade and ammo building mechanic. It may be better to allow us which ones we want to make and balance them better.

BASE BUILDING
Everyone wants this! The planet is covered in resistance outposts, why can't we build upgrades and defend these? I know there is an issue with canon there, the aliens are an overwhelming force so we can't really build lasting bases. Maybe the bases could be built in discarded underground military or research facilities, even subways. To stick with the canon I think once the base has been discovered then there is a defense mission were you try to defend the base and keep all your engineers and scientists dotted about the place breathing. Then the base would have to be abandoned; the surviving gear and equipment transported back to HQ or another base.

MISSION OBJECTIVES
1.I really liked the infiltration rescue missions in the previous game, having one poor person the other side of the map to save against overwhelming odds was fun, it adds variety to the mission pool.
2.It may even be an idea to have an infiltration map where you need to sneak into alone to steal/hack something.

TACTICAL COMBAT LAYER
The turn based combat in XCOM2 feels fairly solid to me. I feel there are a few tweaks to be had though!
1. Firstly, everything breaks so easily! If you get caught off guard on the lower ground its not an issue, just floor the building. Acid, Gas and Fire grenades are very powerful, they shouldn't destroy terrain too. Also small arms such as the pistol, sniper and rifle should have a reduced chance to damage terrain. The enemy can easily be dealt with no matter how good their defenses are because of the explosives and paper houses.
2. Hacking in the harder difficulty modes, especially iron man mode is too risky! When you take a shot or melee someone, you know exactly how much chance of success you have, with hacking you are going in blind and often its not worth the risk. It would be nice to see the success chance displayed before you hack with a drone.
3. DAY/NIGHT CYCLE!Those who have played Xenonaughts will know what I am talking about! Simply, at night time humans have reduced vision but aliens see fully.
4. WEATHER! Why is it always clear skies!ave you never been to England? Weather could effect the troops and be more than just visual. Examples; Rain could reduce accuracy by 5%, Sandstorms could reduce all armor by 1, snowstorms could reduce movement by 1 square.

CLASSES
I expect other people have better ideas than me on this one. I can think of 2 potential classes but if you include psi and TLW class there are already 6! That is very good, the classes in this game are decent and synergies really well but maybe that's a problem, I found I had to have at least one sniper specialist and grenadier in every game to do well. Anyway here are my ideas
1. DEFENDER - The defender is a class to deal with those difficult times when cover is sparse or you are defending an objective. His main weapon/item is a huge rectangle shield, anyone adjacent to his side gets half cover, anyone adjacent behind him gets full cover. He also has the ability to deploy his shield in the ground and walk away from it which acts as indestructible full cover. The person directly behind the shield is immune to blast damage but not the elemental effects, this means for example, the acid grenade will still tick damage at the end of the turn. While holding the shield the defender can also be upgraded to smash through walls and cover. The defender will have a sidearm of either a pistol or a sword. As upgrade abilities he may be able to carry extra mines?
2. FIELD TECHNICIAN - The field technician has the ability to take a piece of military field equipment. He will probably have 2 sub-classes, one based on a deploy-able turret, another being a signal jammer (he can only take one or the other to battle). The deploy-able equipment have a limited set of abilities (these can be placed behind the defenders shield to create some cross class synergy). The turret can; shoot/overwatch/reload (cooldown by venting) or be upgraded to rapid fire (+50% damage at expense of 2 ammo) or have increased vision. The radar jammer can delay the countdown timer by interrupting with alien signals, The jammer can be upgraded to either; gain sight on all 'combat active' mechanical enemies or reduce mechanical enemies movement. The jammer could also be upgraded to delay reinforcements by one turn. The squad must have a limit to one jammer otherwise it could break the game! The TECHNICIAN has a pistol or an SMG and must stay within visual range of the jammer for it to work. The Jammer and Turret may seem powerful but you are sacrificing a slot where you could have a ranger or grenadier!

ENEMIES/BEASTS/BANDITS
1. HUMANS - I got not issues with killing humans supporting aliens! Thats an easy way to create new enemies, use the human assets, missile launchers are a huge threat, lets have humans firing those at us!
2. THIN MEN - Bring back the original thin men! they were creepy. Rescuing people, they could also turn out to be thin men.
3. FACELESS - The first time I saw this I was scared, but its rubbish, it needs a buff! Maybe It should be able to morph into different shapes like in the movie 'The Thing!', it needs something!
4. CRYSALID QUEEN - The next logical step for the Crysalid is another larger bug!that gives birth to Crysalid
5. BISON - Another advent soldier class similar to the defender but more suicidal, he has a shield, runs through walls and explodes. ADVENT are controlled slaves, the aliens don't care for their lives, why not have a suicide unit.
6. DRONES - Drones from XCOM1 were a good enemy which had abilities not covered in the new enemy set.

REPLAY-ABILITY
It would be nice to choose a; starting location and starting buff or ability. It would also be nice to have more single player options as there was in the last game.

ATMOSPHERE
For some reason this game isn't scary or tense like t he last one. The last game was scary, XCOM should be scary! I think this will be the hardest thing to fix. All I can suggest is scary music and maybe the addition of scary noises such as recordings horrible things happening. More bloody deaths for characters and the inclusion of nighttime will help. Perhaps there is a creepy enemy that doesn't show up even has 'unknown' on the mission chamber scans and only comes out at night, like the thin men.

These are all my suggestion for 'adding' to the game without changing any of the core mechanics.

That was only meant to be a paragraph, I guess I should go back to studying now...
Coldcall
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Feb 26, 2016 1:44 pm

Re: MY THOUGHTS ON THE PERFECT XCOM

Post by Coldcall »

Yes some good ideas there if they ever do a Longwar XCOM2.

I sort of like that you cannot chose your starting location as that can be gamed by simply choosing easiest starting point.

However on the atmosphere subject. I think its just less scary because it looks darn easy compared to XCOM Longwar. the difficulty and tension in LW added scariness because nothing was ever easy, you had to grind your way through every mission.

I have not yet played XCOM 2 (my Steam download is just about to complete so will get a chance to play it later today) but seeing some of the youtube streams such as Beaglerush and others, the vanilla game looks pretty easy to me even on legendary difficulty. The way the aliens turn works when first exposing is way easier than original game (LW installed) where your squad had to take cover from the very first move or else you would get wiped out pretty fast. I know they say XCOM 2 is harder than XCOM 1 but its got nothing on XCOM 1 with LW, Also the ranger with concealment looks pretty much like a cheat to me as you can scope the map and set up ambush and triangulation way easier.

So I think if the game could be made more brutal then the scary factor automatically ramps up. Just my 2 cents.
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Yzaxtol
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Mar 08, 2016 3:19 pm

Re: MY THOUGHTS ON THE PERFECT XCOM

Post by Yzaxtol »

I'm currently working on a Mod that has a few of your ideas incorporated, mainly the extra types of weapons (re-introducing Laser and Plasma weapons) and configuring the code to allow all classes to wield all primary weapons with major bonuses, sniper rifles grant squadsight, Cannons have a form of rapid fire. (Secondary Weapons are too painful at the moment to modify though :'()

I've also already added new enemy units and currently working on my 8th new class.

Unfortunately though I won't link it here on someone else's mod's forum it would just be rude but these kind of mods are out there if you can find them.
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johnnylump
Site Admin
Posts: 1262
Joined: Wed Nov 11, 2015 4:12 am

Re: MY THOUGHTS ON THE PERFECT XCOM

Post by johnnylump »

Feel free to promote other mods here.
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Yzaxtol
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Mar 08, 2016 3:19 pm

Re: MY THOUGHTS ON THE PERFECT XCOM

Post by Yzaxtol »

Ah, sweet. Then you can check it out here. Spectrum

I wouldn't download it right now I am just a few days away from releasing a MAJOR update called RED.

Adding Laser, Plasma Weapons and Tech, 4 more classes, fully releasing all primary weapons for all classes including the new ones, big balance changes.

Also depending how the next few days and the weekend go, there might be some interesting items and abilities like haywire grenades, personal regenerating shields and extra Armoured suits for tanking.
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