Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[GlyphGryph]

Or you could buy it directly from their website, linked in the OP

[Aseaheru]

Ah, thats good, thank you.

As for why to start with this, air combat.

[GlyphGryph]

I want to play this...but this seems like 1 of 500000 X-Com based games...what the hell one should I start with lol

Personally, I think Xenonauts completely surpasses OldCom and it's clones and sequels (Except maybe Apocolypse, which went its own way and is worth playing on its old merits but doesn't really need to be played first - it's a flawed game with a lot of unreached potential, still worth playing, but without the finish and polish and complete experience you really want for a first go). So it's a choice between NewCom (XCOM:EU/EW) and Xenonauts.

Both have good things going for them. NewCom is smaller, more limited, more gamey, and more cinematic. It's also probably a tighter production, but it's an Action Movie game. It's about a gang of heroes who save humanity, about unlocking special abilities and going beyond the limitations of normal humans (like, literally). It is a game about superheroes, and how you guide them to become powerful to take on the greatest threat humanity has ever faced. Every strength your enemy has will eventually be yours to command. The game will try to challenge you, but it expects you to win. It wants you to win - it wants you to earn it, to push your skills to the breaking point, but in the end, it still wants you to win, to see everything it has to offer you.

Xenonauts is a game about a war. A brutal, terrible war. You have a lot more options, a lot more versatility, but fewer "fuck yes" moments or distinct rewards. It is a War Movie, where you will end up feeling frustrated and hopeless as your friends die around you while you crawl through the mud, and where every victory is hard-earned, and victory is not guaranteed. Where victory often comes at a price higher than it was worth. But your men are never more than mortals, and they face a relentless and powerful enemy who possess abilities they never will. And the game does not care if you fail.

[Aseaheru]

What about UFO:AI then? I mean, it has ECM and implants.

[EnigmaticHat]

-snip-

Which is kind of funny because Oldcom was pretty much a superhero game too... both in the sense that your soldiers would eventually become unstoppable psionic badasses casually slinging pinpoint accurate nukes across the battlefield, and in the sense that it looked like a comic book.

Style is pretty much the only way the Xenonauts is less loyal than Newcom.

[GlyphGryph]

Yeah, I should clarify, I think the combination of the two is what really surpasses the old one. There was *definitely* an element of superheroism in Oldcom, and Newcom really played up that aspect, with it's theme of transhumanism, and it made it work really damn well.

[Aklyon]

You do get the same weapons generally between the two as far as progression goes, but then...

Spoiler: Lategame tech spoiler (click to show/hide)

after plasma, your researchers decide that, you know what would work better than our reverse-engineered energy weaponry? Those kinetic MAG weapons, the coilguns and railguns firing alien alloy pieces at velocities to the point where if the darn atmosphere was't there, then we could just blast the xenos out of orbit with the new base defenses and clean up the crashed remains.

[Neonivek]

I kind of remember the final weapons in the original Xcom and how they made some sense that you would have them and not the alien.

It was because... You are essentially throwing money at the aliens. Something the aliens cannot afford but where you are desperate enough to attempt.

It is what I call the "Consumption beats Conservation" Factor. StarCraft for example outright implies this is the case with the Terran and how they are even still a factor in the war even when next to the Protoss and Zerg. Or with Exalted and how the Thousand Metal Dragon is powerful in spite of being made with far inferior technology, yet because it the people who made it are willing to do catastrophic damage to the environment it manages to be a more deadly weapon then the far superior techno-race that came before.

[EnigmaticHat]

But you didn't go past the alien's weapons in the original?  You used exactly the same weapons, you were just better at using them.

[Orb]

Nah, there's fusion weaponry after plasma. Albeit often forgotten because its pretty worthless.

[EnigmaticHat]

The aliens have a weapon from that tier as well, they just don't use it on their ships.

Anyway, I pretty much just lost my I/I (Ironman Insane) Xenonauts campaign, which is also my first Xenonauts game post AI update.  I'm going to keep going, but the primary base suffered a TPK so this is looking bad.  Mild spoilers if anyone cares.  It happened the first time I met those aliens who looked like they were wearing space suits.

Some mistakes were made, but mostly I should have just fucking run.  I was completely unprepared for these guys.  The tactics I used against the previous aliens didn't work at all.  I bunched up my guys too much, causing them all to get suppressed and panic.  The aliens apparently have a longer sight range than me which resulted in the early death of an experienced laser machinegunner.  I got lax and didn't bring enough smoke because Secillians are immune.  After 3 casualties I switched objectives to UFO capture, which would have worked but there was an open space in front of the UFO that three aliens could shoot into.  So I needed smoke, which means I needed to run back to the squad leader's corpse.  Secillians and Ceasans had trained me to think that flank and rear guards are useless, this utterly bit me in the ass.  While a private ran back to grab the smokes one of those crazy disk things circled around and caught the squad from behind.  In the end the last man standing was a private who's riot shield broke.  He pulled out the shotgun from his backpack, rushed out into the open, and one-shot an alien before being gunned down.

For the next run I'm going to move away from the whole 3 machinegunners to a squad thing, which I was mostly doing to be entertaining anyway.  I have very much learned the value of TUs in I/I, as I frequently wanted a maneuvering element to flank suppressed enemies with and no one was good at that.  I'm thinking of adjusting my strategic build but I'm not quite sure how.  I think I'll focus more on the interceptor game to keep my funding up; ultimately the relative benefits of capturing versus bombing UFOs are too low for me to need to capture every UFO I down.  So I'll probably get Foxtrots up and just blow up any corvettes I see, which I assume is what Foxtrots do (I didn't get them).  Finally I'm likely going to rush stunning rather than lasers because lasers are expensive for the (admittedly quite good) benefits they provide.  Stunning will allow any soldier to take out an alien should they get close, which is massively useful as in I/I half my Secillian kills were in close range with LMGs, because that's what it fucking takes.

[Aseaheru]

More armor=less sight.

Although I think the flight suit has added vision.

[Jacob/Lee]

I like giving my shields and assault troops the heaviest armor I can make first. They're usually the first into a confined space (where there isn't much to look at anyway) and the first to get shot at in said confined space. Armor actually having a disadvantage is a strange concept to me after UFO Defense, TTS, OpenXCom, and Enemy Unknown.

[Aseaheru]

Armor in the longwar mod also has disadvantages, makes you go slower.

[Majestic7]

Might be an obvious advice, but if you want to rule the skies, always research advanced explosives when you can. They improve interceptor missiles and make bringing down baddies that much easier. Same with researching heavy weapons, it unlocks new cannons too. The difference between regular and alenium torpedoes is a huge leap and makes a real difference in the usefulness of Foxtrots.