Xenonauts - spiritual successor to X-Com, indie developed

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tgb
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Re: Xenonauts - spiritual successor to X-Com, indie develope

Post by tgb »

Actually the guy in the original art looks like a Con-Ed or sewer worker to me. Perhaps they will be the last hope for humanity when aliens finally do invade:

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Re: Xenonauts - spiritual successor to X-Com, indie develope

Post by ColdSteel »

TiLT wrote:I can see your point, though I don't really agree with it. I'm tired of game and movie soldiers being based off of cartoon characters and overly bombastic variations of US marines. These guys know they're about to die. They're not posing for Guns & Ammo.
See, that's were I think it goes way off-base as far as realism goes. These guys are all special forces. The best from every country in the world. They are the elite, the very best at what they do, and there's just no room at all in their attitude for "know they're about to die". They all, to a man, have supreme confidence in their training and what they can do, no matter what the odds may be. I don't know if you've ever known or met any of these men but the Xenonaut depiction could not be further from the truth. Xcom Enemy Unknown was a better depiction of this, imo.
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Re: Xenonauts - spiritual successor to X-Com, indie develope

Post by baelthazar »

tgb wrote:Actually the guy in the original art looks like a Con-Ed or sewer worker to me. Perhaps they will be the last hope for humanity when aliens finally do invade:
Given my experience, I would assume Co-Ed would be working WITH the aliens, not against them.

I just messed around with OpenXCom and now I'm more interested in Xenonauts. I had forgotten just how hard the original game was!
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Re: Xenonauts - spiritual successor to X-Com, indie develope

Post by Octavious »

baelthazar wrote:
tgb wrote:Actually the guy in the original art looks like a Con-Ed or sewer worker to me. Perhaps they will be the last hope for humanity when aliens finally do invade:
Given my experience, I would assume Co-Ed would be working WITH the aliens, not against them.

I just messed around with OpenXCom and now I'm more interested in Xenonauts. I had forgotten just how hard the original game was!
Anything over beginner in X-COM is f'n hard. It's always been like that, but ya I guess we forget over time. I'd say Xenonauts is a bit easier.

And for the record I don't like the solider art either. The entire feel of this game is a bit different. They took a much more realistic approach to the game. I personally like the X-COM style better and hope they mod the hell out of the game.
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Re: Xenonauts - spiritual successor to X-Com, indie develope

Post by TiLT »

Remember that Xenonauts takes place during the cold war too, so military technology and training aren't at current levels.
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Re: Xenonauts - spiritual successor to X-Com, indie develope

Post by tgb »

For those of you still living in 2004 and want nothing to do with Steam because it's just a fad that will go away and take your games with it, it's available on GOG.
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Re: Xenonauts - spiritual successor to X-Com, indie develope

Post by Citizen »

Octavious wrote:
baelthazar wrote:
tgb wrote:Actually the guy in the original art looks like a Con-Ed or sewer worker to me. Perhaps they will be the last hope for humanity when aliens finally do invade:
Given my experience, I would assume Co-Ed would be working WITH the aliens, not against them.

I just messed around with OpenXCom and now I'm more interested in Xenonauts. I had forgotten just how hard the original game was!
Anything over beginner in X-COM is f'n hard. It's always been like that, but ya I guess we forget over time. I'd say Xenonauts is a bit easier.

And for the record I don't like the solider art either. The entire feel of this game is a bit different. They took a much more realistic approach to the game. I personally like the X-COM style better and hope they mod the hell out of the game.
IDK. Considering that drop ships can circumnavigate the globe on a single tank of gas, night flares are unlimited use (for night missions), starting weapons, ammo and grenades are free and fighters that get shot down magically rebuild (also for free) in 72 hours -- I'd say this version of Xcom his highly unrealistic.

I also hope they mod the shit out of this game, because that's the only way to fix it.
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Re: Xenonauts - spiritual successor to X-Com, indie develope

Post by Lassr »

It seems you cannot zoom in or rotate the view in Xenonauts during battle. Truth or not?
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Re: Xenonauts - spiritual successor to X-Com, indie develope

Post by Citizen »

Lassr wrote:It seems you cannot zoom in or rotate the view in Xenonauts during battle. Truth or not?
Truth.
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Re: Xenonauts - spiritual successor to X-Com, indie develope

Post by TiLT »

It's an indie 2D isometric game. Zooming and rotating are highly unrealistic expectations.
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Re: Xenonauts - spiritual successor to X-Com, indie develope

Post by Octavious »

Citizen wrote:
Octavious wrote:
baelthazar wrote:
tgb wrote:Actually the guy in the original art looks like a Con-Ed or sewer worker to me. Perhaps they will be the last hope for humanity when aliens finally do invade:
Given my experience, I would assume Co-Ed would be working WITH the aliens, not against them.

I just messed around with OpenXCom and now I'm more interested in Xenonauts. I had forgotten just how hard the original game was!
Anything over beginner in X-COM is f'n hard. It's always been like that, but ya I guess we forget over time. I'd say Xenonauts is a bit easier.

And for the record I don't like the solider art either. The entire feel of this game is a bit different. They took a much more realistic approach to the game. I personally like the X-COM style better and hope they mod the hell out of the game.
IDK. Considering that drop ships can circumnavigate the globe on a single tank of gas, night flares are unlimited use (for night missions), starting weapons, ammo and grenades are free and fighters that get shot down magically rebuild (also for free) in 72 hours -- I'd say this version of Xcom his highly unrealistic.

I also hope they mod the shit out of this game, because that's the only way to fix it.
I don't know those things don't really bother me. It's all items that are pretty darn boring to manage. They should have a penalty for replacing the downed ship, but otherwise the rest doesn't really matter to me.
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Re: Xenonauts - spiritual successor to X-Com, indie develope

Post by Lassr »

TiLT wrote:It's an indie 2D isometric game. Zooming and rotating are highly unrealistic expectations.
It was not an expectation, zooming doesn't bother me but sometimes I cannot tell if my soldier is behind cover, or moving to cover, because a bldg or tree is blocking my view. Nothing major though but I wanted to make sure I was not missing a feature that was there but I just couldn't find it.
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Re: Xenonauts - spiritual successor to X-Com, indie develope

Post by Lassr »

I grow frustrated with this game. My soldiers are totally incompetent when it comes to not killing your squad mates. I think I lose more players to friendly fire than enemy fire. You'd think if a friendly is right there beside you you can aim well enough not to hit him or if they toss a grenade they'd be able to at least toss it further than 2 steps away.

I hate reloading but at this point I get tired of training & advancing new recruits. I just want to finish the damn game.
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Re: Xenonauts - spiritual successor to X-Com, indie develope

Post by tgb »

What difficulty level? Friendly fire was never an issue for me. I really need to get back to this some day.
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Re: Xenonauts - spiritual successor to X-Com, indie develope

Post by Lassr »

tgb wrote:What difficulty level? Friendly fire was never an issue for me. I really need to get back to this some day.
I am playing on Easy. Just last night I was firing at an alien 3 levels up on a roof. I had two of my squad mates approx 8 steps in front of me kneeling down behind a flowerbed. My trooper burst fired at the alien on the roof and hit both the players kneeling down behind the flower bed killing them. You should be aiming up, is that so hard.

I had a soldier kneeling down next to my tank for protection, he reaction fired at an alien that appeared and hit the damn tank and destroyed it. You are kneeling next to a damn tank and you cannot avoid hitting something 2 feet from you!!?

Night before I had a trooper toss a grenade at an alien 15+ steps away, the grenade landed next to my commander who was kneeling down 3 steps in front of the grenade tosser. I could not move him because he had already used up his TU's firing at the alien. Seriously, if these guys are that bad they should never be soldiers.

I did go in and adjust the game file to improve accuracy of new recruits. I just have to deal with these other bumbling idiots until then.
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Re: Xenonauts - spiritual successor to X-Com, indie develope

Post by Lassr »

Finally finished the game last night. The end mission was a bitch until I figured out a convenient tactic.
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Re: Xenonauts - spiritual successor to X-Com, indie develope

Post by Citizen »

Yeah I remember reading something about that. Like, all you have to do is X and don't worry about Y and you can make it through. I'm still waiting for a mod that fixes the shortcuts the developer chose to take.
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Re: Xenonauts - spiritual successor to X-Com, indie develope

Post by NickAragua »

Now that they've released the 1.5 patch (to steam only for now), I fired up the game last night for a quick round. Being a self-styled X-Com expert, I figured "what the hell" and cranked the difficulty up to Veteran (one short of the hardest). Built some base facilities. I got a little confused when random "events" started popping up all over the globe and even sent some interceptors to the "UFO Sightings", but since I guess they were reported by hobos and guys in cornfields that was a waste of time.

So I finally get my first UFO contact, and it's two UFOs at a time. Send both interceptors out (double teaming the first one then the second one) and launch a ground assault on the first one. Here comes my only real gripe with the game. Now, I undrestand that it's a small team, but the walking animations for the humans and aliens are awful. They've got these beautiful, smooth firing, crouching and jumping over fence animations, but when moving around, the poor guys look like they're moonwalking. While they're at it, they could have stood to add a few particle effects to bullets and plasma shots hitting stuff.

Anyway, the ground assault went ok. The aliens were hiding out in a bunch of farmhouses so I took a few losses there. Pro tip: when mousing over a target, right click to switch fire modes so that you're not always using the bullshit snap shot that can't hit anything. Due to a misclick, I accidentally had my door breaching guy open the UFO door a little too early and boy did he catch a faceful of plasma.

Afterwards, I learned that I shouldn't send lone Condors against scout UFOs. Needless to say, I didn't save the results of that interception.

Verdict: Not too shabby. Could use a little more "flash" on the tactical interface.
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Re: Xenonauts - spiritual successor to X-Com, indie develope

Post by NickAragua »

A few days later, I'm hooked. It's basically a blow-by-blow recreation of X-Com, except set in the 70s and with a few convenience features added.

A few thoughts on "strategery" (with early game spoilers):

- When intercepting UFOs, you will want to send more than one aircraft out. The light/standard scouts (not to mention corvettes) will chew up the standard interceptors and barely blink an eye. The trick is that the alien craft will lock on to just one of your interceptors and follow it. Figure out which one it is, and turn him around, at which point the UFO leaves itself wide open to being flanked/tailed by the partner.

- Of course, the Foxtrot ("High Speed Interceptor") can take a scout out with a single torpedo salvo, and they can't dodge.

- I've started running into UFOs escorted by little fighters. You'll need to dispatch those first before going for the big guy. Luckily, a Condor can take a fighter one on one.

- The ground game hinges on getting the drop on the bad guys, meaning try to avoid leaving your guys in line of sight of the aliens, especially in the open. One great trick I've figured out is to camp out near a door with a few guys. When you open the door and see aliens on the other side, take a few pot shots then close the door on them!

- UFO breaches are kind of tough, because there's usually at least one alien running back and forth through the front door taking shots at your guys as they run up. If your guys are straight in front of the door, that means that the aliens inside the UFO can also take shots, which is awful without armor. So, my approach is to camp the sides of the door until the jackass running in and out is dead, then prepare to breach.

- Once you do breach, use flashbangs to prevent reaction fire, at which point I just have my shotgun dudes charge in and blast whatever alien scum is visible.

- Still haven't figured out a way to stay profitable. I've got two bases which is apparently way too much.
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Re: Xenonauts - spiritual successor to X-Com, indie develope

Post by persself »

50% til Tuesday morning 24th on Steam = $12.49
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Re: Xenonauts - spiritual successor to X-Com, indie develope

Post by Dave Allen »

persself wrote:50% til Tuesday morning 24th on Steam = $12.49
50% til Tuesday morning on Steam = $12.49 ...again.

I bought it and played a little while tonight. With the community patch/balance mod (v.34) and the large font mod. It was very fun... and I could see it, too. :lol:
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Re: Xenonauts - spiritual successor to X-Com, indie developed

Post by Kraken »

This game is HARD on normal difficulty. Many squaddies died before I started to get the hang of breaching UFOs. It's a great homage to classic x-com, though. I especially appreciate the creepy sound design.
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Re: Xenonauts - spiritual successor to X-Com, indie developed

Post by Sepiche »

I tried to get back into this just recently, but I kept running into weird line of sight issues that really made it unfun to play.

It's a good update of the original XCom, but still seems buggy.
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