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In 1958, Earth made first contact. A UFO was spotted heading for the U.S. Ruled out as an ICBM due to its suddenly changing course for Iceland, it proved deadly to conventional aircraft and was grounded but not destroyed with the Nuclear Option. A joint NATO and Soviet force moved on the crash site, but took bitter losses and failed to recover anything of worth. In the wake of the Iceland Incident, the Xenonauts were clandestinely formed through West-Soviet collaboration. As time passed and further alien contact failed to materialise, however, funding and manpower was cut, stripping the organisation to the bone.

1979. An alien fleet arrives in Earth orbit, refusing communication and resisting almost all attempts to repel them. The sole success: A mysterious interceptor taking down a scout craft.

The Xenonauts step forward and claim responsibility, asking the world's governments for funding and permission to operate in their territories against extraterrestrial forces...

Xenonauts is a Turn-Based Tactics game where you command the eponymous organisation, sending interceptors and strike teams out to fight the alien menace while researching their technology in an attempt to become strong enough to take the fight to them. It is a Spiritual Successor to the original X Com UFO Defense, by indie developer Goldhawk Interactive, taking the basic flow of gameplay (strategic layer and tactical layer) and adding new innovations, such as the ability to use cover, fully controllable air combat, while also setting up an entirely new aesthetic by setting the game in the height of the Cold War. Its homepage can be found here and was up for preorder; preorderers got to test the game as it underwent development. A Kickstarter campaign to raise money to add new features finished on June 10, 2012. It officially went beta on April 4th, 2013. On June 1st, 2013 it was added to Steam's Early Access catalog. Its official 1.0 version was released on Steam and GOG.com on June 16th, 2014.

See also Community Edition, a semi-officialas in  mod that enhances certain features without fundamentally changing gameplay.

Goldhawk have stated that there are better than even chances of a sequel happening. On 4th February 2016, Xenonauts 2 was confirmed to be underway, aiming for a 2017 release but later delayed to 2023.

In January 2017 a free pre-alpha of Xenonauts 2 was released on GOG.com. On June 20, 2018 it went to Kickstarter. It is not a direct sequel to the first game but an Alternate Universe, set in an Alternate History present day where decades of alien interference have prevented the end of the Cold War. Following an alien attack on CENTRAL, the surviving Xenonauts have relocated to the backup site ATLAS Base, where they must fight in the air, on the ground and with Field Agents hidden within the Earth's nations to resist the aliens and complete ENDGAME before the aliens can trick the superpowers into global thermonuclear war. Among the changes will be shifting to 3D and air combat becoming turn-based.

Xenonauts 2 finally left Steam's Early Access on July 18, 2023.

Tropes:

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    Xenonauts 

  • Action Survivor: Unlike X-COM, some of the civilians are armed, which can lead to things such as a police officer suppressing an alien with his pistol, or a farmer killing an alien with his shotgun.
  • AKA47: Weapon names are generic, while aircraft include the "F-17 Condor", "MiG-32 Foxtrot" and "CH-48". Can be considered a subversion, as the Xenopedia pages explicitly state the mentioned aircraft as being developed from or based on the real life aircraft.
    • In some cases (particularly with the MiG-32) the Soviets were not willing to share the technology, especially since it wasn't even on the production lines yet. This doesn't bother the Xenonauts much; it's implied in the research screen that they take it anyway when the Russians aren't looking.
    • The Hunter Scout Car IS the Ferret armoured car, even being referred to as "ferret" in the game's code.
  • Alien Abduction: One possible alien activity, as in the original X-Com.
  • Alien Autopsy: Carried out automatically, and when completed, they give a small damage bonus against analyzed alien species.
  • Alien Invasion: You don't say.
  • All There in the Manual: The details of the Iceland Incident are given in the prequel novella that comes with the game, including the foundation of the Xenonauts.
  • All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Aliens can attack bases, just like in the original X-Com.
  • Alternate History: The timeline diverged in 1958 when first contact was made in Iceland. The game itself kicks off in 1979.
  • Always on Duty: No days off for the Xenonauts! Although when the aliens are not attacking, they often sit in the base for days on end, doing nothing productive.
  • Anachronism Stew: The starting Xenonaught pistol is a Beretta M9, which in real life was not manufactured until 1985.
  • Armchair Military: Seen on the title screen.
  • Armor Is Useless: Averted. Even the earliest-researched Jackal Armour allows your troops to survive what would be fatal to an unarmoured soldier, albeit badly hurt.
    • Also invoked for the default armor (or lack thereof): the light gear is explained as giving your troops greater mobility since no known armor can stop alien weaponry.
    • Played Straight against Reapers. Regardless of what armour your soldiers are wearing, one attack from them will instantly turn your troops into zombified horrors, who spawn adult Reapers upon being shot.
  • Artificial Brilliance: Several things are in place to punish players attempting to rely on classic X-Com tactics:
    • Forget setting up firing lines: the AI LOVES throwing grenades at bunched up soldiers.
    • In classic X-Com, you could just sit tight and wait for the aliens to come out of the ship and/or panic and run into your line of fire. Not so here. Alien officers will stay put in the bridge of a UFO, no matter how many turns you pass: you need to go get them.
    • Harridans often will be perched at high points near Androns on the ground, giving them effective cover.
  • Artificial Stupidity: The game will sometimes start a level with your dropship positioned so close to an obstruction that vehicles onboard will be unable to move from the initial location.
  • Artistic License – Military: Female Xenonauts can be shown to have been recruited from special forces units that don't allow women in their ranks, such as the U.S. Navy SEALs. Furthermore, at the time the game takes place (1979) the US military did not allow women in any combat arms field. The closest women could get to that would be serving in military police units. The prequel novella provides what could be considered a handwaved justification: The Sole Survivor of the team sent in during the Iceland Incident was a woman (albeit one who lost both legs in the process).
  • Anti-Frustration Features: Primarily in respect to the original X-Com:
    • Conventional ammo and weapons are free, and they will be automatically resupplied to your units after each battle. This also applies to certain disposable weapons, such as grenades, air-to-air missiles, and base defenses, which are automatically upgraded and supplied at no additional cost as upgrades are unlocked.
      • this becomes unintentionally hilarious if you have interceptors in the air when research to upgrade their weapons are completed, because somehow the aircraft while in mid flight has its old cannons and/or missiles removed and replaced with upgraded ones while en-route to their target.
    • Doors (including UFO ones) can now be opened while standing one square to their left or right, making breaching a far less traumatic experience. They can also be destroyed from long range by your starting rocket launcher.
    • Alien autopsies are performed without your input, instead of being a separate research project. If you do choose to pursue an additional research project into a given species after the autopsy, your troops will receive a small permanent bonus against the researched race.
    • There are more options for capturing live aliens, namely stun gas grenades and rockets. Also, a stunned unit stays stunned until the battle is over.
    • Destroyed interceptors will be recovered and repaired, instead of having to buy/build a new one (though it takes much longer than normal repair jobs).
    • When moving soldiers, you can now see how many TUs it will take them to reach a certain spot before moving them, as well as whether they'll have enough left over if you've set them to keep some in reserve for reaction fire.
    • Calling airstrikes on crash sites allows player to skip ground battle sequences (at the cost of destroying any technology or alien leaders that might have otherwise been captured). Air combat can be auto-resolved as well. This helps a lot with the easier battles.
    • If you feel like you are swamped by alien crafts, and have money and a captured black hole to spare, can make an aircraft that one-shots any fleet and fly back to reload relatively easily. The gigantic explosion per encounter will spare nothing, however.
    • You can win a UFO capture mission by simply keeping at least one soldier in the UFO for 5 consecutive turns, thus sparing you the trouble of having to hunt down every alien on the map.
    • During Terror Missions, the Fog of War is lifted after twenty turns, revealing all remaining aliens, with an in universe justification that local forces provide surveillance within that timeframe. It's also a nice little nod to X Com UFO Defense, where the aliens would know exactly where all of your troopers were after twenty turns and actively hunt them down.
  • The Assimilator: The Praetors, in addition to enslaving every race they come across, take their unique abilities in the process. It's implied by the Game Over screen that ends up being humanity's fate as well, which is probably why they don't just nuke Earth into the Stone Age outright.
  • Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Soldiers are promoted to higher ranks based on the number of skill upgrades they achieve through training.
  • A-Team Firing: Most rookies, as per X-Com tradition. This is also the weak point of the Sebilians, due to their close range thermal vision, which is why they favor ambush and flanking tactics.
  • Attack Drone: Employed by the aliens in several variants, and by the Xenonauts with the Scimitar and Hyperion remote-controlled tanks.
  • Awesome, but Impractical:
    • The Fury interceptor. It's the fastest interceptor, and capable of destroying any alien aircraft in one hit. On the other hand, it's also the most expensive to create, and its torpedoes instantly destroy any alien ships, leaving no crash site to recover.
      • In addition, researching and building them each costs a singularity core, which can only be recovered from raiding a battleship, i.e. the strongest UFO in the game (minus The Unfought Dreadnought). So you can only get the Fury once you demonstrably don't need it anymore.
    • The Singularity Cannon is the Xenonauts equivalent to X-COM's Blaster Launcher with several realistic caveats attached. It's hugely overpowered, making it as much a danger to your own men as it is to the aliens. It also weighs a whopping 50kg, requiring the user to be wearing Predator Power Armor, and costs half a million dollars, requires twenty alien alloys (the equivalent requisite of alloys for a Marauder interceptor) to build, and is powered by the same singularity cores required to build the Fury interceptor, so you need to capture a Battleship to build one. On top of that, it requires two hundred man days to build, so you're going to be waiting a long time to get your hands on one.
    • Predator Power Armor. In addition to offering the highest level of protection in the game for any armour, it also enhances its wearer's strength to the point that carrying loads of gear doesn't incur any TU penalty, meaning the soldier wearing it can lug around a BFG with loads of ammo and is the only way to use the Singularity Cannon. It can also be used to destroy cover just by walking through it. However, the armour's gauntlets are so thick, it prevents the use of any weapons or equipment that isn't a heavy weapon, so using it for anything other than a support gunner is out. This includes grenades and medkits.
  • Awesome Personnel Carrier: The later troop transports (Shrike and Valkyrie), but the good old Chinook is pretty awesome too in its own class.
  • A Winner Is You: The ending is just a single splash panel of world leaders celebrating victory. Even the original X-COM for DOS, working on more limited resources, had several of them, telling an actual story.
    • After version 1.5, there is a long and detailed description of what happens: All alien captives fall into a coma, and your military advisor tells you that you should neither turn over your equipment to the United States, nor the Soviet Union, but to unite a new Earth free from prejudice and broken political systems.
    • Again, Cold War, which leaves the ideas of powerful mech units for players behind... to replace them by Powered Armor with an active inventory, providing the soldiers greater versatility than X-Com would have provided.
  • Badass Bystander: Depending on the map, the local human forces you may encounter can be soldiers or police officers, but also armed arabian civilians, arctic researchers or farmers. Since the latter two are often armed with shotguns, they can actually end up killing several aliens during the course of the mission if they're lucky.
    • The aliens have them too. "Non-combatant" crew members seems to be awfully handy with their weapons.
  • Barrier-Busting Blow: The racial ability of the Androns, as well as Predator power armors. Also possible with the more powerful heavy automatic weapons (laser, plasma, magnetic), with the first few shots in a ten-round burst vaporizing the barrier in the way, and the remaining ones making Swiss cheese of the target.
  • BFG:
    • Heavy weapons, obviously. They come in machine-gun and rocket launcher form, though wielding them and a sufficient quantity of requisite ammo leads to TU penalties unless wearing Predator Power Armor. The Singularity Cannon is so big at 50 kilograms and has such a huge recoil that the Predator Armour is necessary just to wield it.
    • Vehicle mounted weapons are this as well for both interceptors and armoured vehicles. The top end vehicle mounted guns can level small buildings in a single shot.
  • Bizarre Alien Biology: The various autopsies reveal that the various alien species have been modified by the Praetors to serve as slave troops. The Reapers reproduce by infecting their host, Chrysallid style.
  • Black Comedy: In an otherwise serious game, one of the loading screens suggests renaming squad members after friends and family to make their deaths more tragic/hilarious.
  • Black Dude Dies First: The police officer sprite is a black man. Given the map they spawn on (Industrial and city maps, with lots of sightlines through windows) and weapons they spawn with (sometimes shotguns but often a mere pistol), they frequently die before your team has even seen an alien.
  • Boarding Party: Arguably the most important element of the game is assaulting downed or landed alien ships to disrupt their missions and capture their valuable equipment.
  • Body Horror: The game over screen tells you that the remnants of humanity were changed into unrecognisable forms.
    • On a smaller, but no less horrifying scale, Reapers, which convert any unit they kill into a zombie that can transform into another Reaper, Chryssalid-style. The captured Praetor provides intelligence that in the event of the failure of the invasion, the aliens plan to mass drop Reapers onto Earth and pick human DNA out from whatever is left afterwards.
    • It's implied that the Praetors altered the Caesians and Sebilians to suit their needs.
  • Bolivian Army Ending: One possible fate for the Xenonauts on the final mission. They kill the High Praetor, but get trapped by swarms of Reapers, and the game ends before they actually die. It can be averted by blowing up the safety interlocks in a final detour, allowing your squad to escape.
  • Boring, but Practical: Rifles. Superior in terms of stopping power to pistols, range compared to pistols and shotguns, rate of fire compared to sniper rifles, and mobility to machineguns, an assault rifle-armed soldier is incredibly flexible, making rifles a good Jack of All Stats weapon, possibly even a Master of All once some of the more powerful options are available.
  • Bus Crash: UFOs can now attack your transport helicopters (Fighter UFOs will). Not all of the carried soldiers may survive the crash. Be careful sending your Chinook transport to a landed UFO: if it lifts off and heads towards your Chinook, it will shoot it down without a thought.
  • Cannon Fodder: A tactic happily employed by the aliens and sometimes the player too, to a certain degree.
  • Chest of Medals: For performing certain actions, such as surviving a certain number of missions, surviving being wounded in combat, or killing a certain number of aliens, your soldiers are awarded different medals. Each medal will boost that soldier's bravery rating. Obviously, veteran Xenonauts are going to embody this trope more and more as the game goes on as they survive more missions.
  • Chunky Salsa Rule: Soldiers killed in the field can potentially be resuscitated if their bodies are recovered intact, though the chances get slimmer with every minus past zero health. Even if they can't be revived, their gear can at least be recovered and carried back. However, if the victim gets gibbed by a rocket or grenade to the face, all bets are off — they and anything they were carrying is gone for good.
  • Close-Range Combatant:
    • Sebilians, due their poor thermal eyesight, Healing Factor, and general toughness, are geared towards fighting at close ranges.
    • Reapers don't carry guns. Instead, they move frighteningly quickly and have a melee attack that zombifies its victim in one blow. Zombies, by extension, are also this, only when they die, they spawn another Reaper.
    • The Assault loadout for the Xenonauts is geared towards close range combat, giving them the shotgun as a weapon.
  • Cold Sniper: Harridans are the epitome of this trope, being genius marksmen but also completely oblivious to not only morality, but seemingly even reality itself.
  • Cold War: A setting choice that has helped set the game apart from the many other X-COM clones.
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience: alien ranks, and hence threat levels, are partly indicated by the color of their uniform, as well as the fanciness of their swag.
  • The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: For whatever reason the doors of the alien craft only close after an alien turn but are left open after your turn, hence leading to lot of frustration early on while breaching alien craft. It's not an insurmountable problem, though — just blow the door up!
  • Concealment Equals Cover: Averted. Some barriers will impede movement and visibility, but not gunfire. The firing unit will usually suffer some kind of accuracy penalty instead.
  • Cool Plane: All available interceptors, from A.K.A.-47 versions of the F-16 "Fighting Falcon" and the MiG-25 "Foxbat" up to (for the moment quite possibly) a SR-71 copy made with alien technology.
  • Crapsack World: If you don't stop a UFO, the game gives you a popup message about how it's messing with the world and terrorizing people, and these incidents only get worse and worse as the invasion progresses. This damage progressively escalates over time to give you the feeling that you're fighting an escalating war and that the fate of mankind is at stake. Moreover, the Xenonauts and their support personnel all have uniformly unhappy expressions whenever you see them. (Wouldn't you?)
    • The Alien Empire is vast, and you are just a tiny planet a la Gaulish Village of Asterix comics series.
  • Creator Cameo: You can get Chris England's face on your redshirts.
  • Crippling Overspecialization:
    • The Foxtrot interceptor has no cannon, and relies entirely on missiles. Which many UFOs can dodge easily. The SR-71 looking craft only carries a single super-heavy missile, making it only good against enemy capital ships.
    • Predator armour provides the most protection for any armour in the game and boosts its wearer's strength, but restricts whoever is using it to heavy weapons, since its gauntlets are too big to operate small arms.
  • Dead Man's Switch: The Praetors have one at the ready. If, by some bizarre reason, the Earthlings are able to destroy most of the armada, they have several Reaper-packed ships ready to be dropped in every major city, which will wipe out humanity in a matter of days. Fortunately, they never get to use this plan, as the solution the Earthlings do come up with takes them completely by surprise.
  • Death from Above: The aliens can conduct bombing runs on human territory. It's also possible to hand over UFO crash sites to local forces to airstrike to the ground. You will only get a fixed amount of cash (depending on the UFO type), and will lose out on the stat gains for troops, as well as alien materials. However, not having to do every last site manually really helps with tedium.
  • Death of a Thousand Cuts: A typical tactic used against stronger Sebillians, especially before advanced weaponry is researched. All those cuts better be inflicted in the same turn, though—Sebillians heal on their turns.
  • Decapitated Army: Kill the High Praetor overseeing the alien invasion, and the rest of aliens fall into a coma and slowly die from lack of mental input.
  • Deflector Shields: Some larger alien ships are equipped with such. Curiously, while their efficiency is absolute, they take long to recharge, which has a major impact on air combat tactics.
  • Developer's Foresight:
    • Considering that the timeline starts in the middle of the Cold War, where resources are usually scarce and trying to be accepted by both sides of the world from Communism to Capitalism is what the Xenonauts start off with, it's likely the case why funding was quite low during the beginning of the game.
    • While the Rocket Launcher stays in regular condition, its rockets evolve along with the technology as the player progresses, from regular explosives to alienated chemicals to plasma blasts, the existence of Blaster Launcher may no longer be needed.
  • Dirty Coward: unlike most alien captives, the captured Praetor is terrified of death and is willing to do anything to avoid being executed, including betraying the High Praetor's plans.
  • Do a Barrel Roll: Most fighters in the game, both human and alien, can avoid missiles by rolling at the right moment.
  • Do-Anything Soldier: As there are no character classes as such, every soldier can perform all combat roles. This is somewhat averted with the aliens, some of whom specialise in particular tasks (Harridans are snipers, Reapers are close combat specialists etc.). That being said, the randomized stats for all soldiers will of course render making absolutely any soldier perform absolutely any combat role nilly-willy detrimental and ineffective.
  • Doing Research: Wouldn't be an X-Com homage without tinkering with juicy alien technology. You also get a small damage bonus against alien species that are researched.
  • Do Not Run with a Gun: Wraiths are unable to teleport and fire on the same turn.
  • Drill Sergeant Nasty: Averted. The drill sergeant, who handles recruits and current military rosters seems to be aloof and is a Handicapped Badass by the loss of his left arm, until later technologies gave him a claw-hand then a cybernetic arm.
  • Dungeon Bypass: Explosives can be used to create improvised entry points in manmade structures and to ensure that the doors on that UFO you're trying to clear stay wide open.
  • Early Game Hell: Ballistic weapons are mostly ineffective against anything other than basic grunts (and the Sebellians grunts laugh at them anyway), and armor is literally non-existent when you start out. Shooting down UFOs is risky and complicated. Alien activity proceeds mostly unchecked outside your radar coverage, angering the funding nations. You need money to expand your base and build new bases and equipment, but your starting funds are barely enough to keep you going through the first month. Everything gets a little easier once you have access to tier 2 technology, but man, is it tough getting there.
  • Earth Is a Battlefield: A mild case, since the war is rather limited, but nevertheless any place on Earth may become a target at any time. It is an Alien Invasion game after all.
  • Easily Thwarted Alien Invasion: Well, not easy at all, but possible. The reasons include:
    • The aliens are invading a planet that is nothing like the ones belonging to any of the constituent alien species - different oxygen levels, thicker atmosphere, etc.
    • The alien ships need to be refitted for atmospheric combat, which is logistically intensive and time consuming, forcing them to rely on small scout craft for the early phases of the invasion.
    • Ultimately, this gives humans time to research and reverse engineer alien technologies, to hopefully stop the Alien Invasion before it gets intense enough to actually go full scale, which is less then a year.
    • Based on some of the interrogations, the aliens are not trying to exterminate humanity, but are trying to determine what traits they can take from humanity. If the player gets a Game Over, the aliens modify humanity for their own purposes.
    • It is later revealed that the alien empire covers an entire galactic arm, and Earth is effectively the proverbial plucky Gaulish village holding out against the full might of the Roman Empire. It's implied that the aliens operate under a decentralized feudal model and the invasion of Earth is the personal project of a low-ranking alien warlord and his armada, and the other warlords in the empire aren't too fussed whether he succeeds or fails.
  • Elites Are More Glamorous: Quite a few of your Xenonauts hail from various special operations forces from around the world, such as the U.S. Army Special Forces, the British Special Air Service, the Soviet Spetznaz, and many others.
  • Empty Shell: The Praetor captive falls into a shocked coma after the High Praetor is assassinated following a Villainous BSoD, dying slowly from lack of sustenance. It's hard to feel pity for the amoral bastard.
  • Encyclopedia Exposita / Monster Compendium: The "Xenopedia", which updates whenever you complete a research topic.
  • Enemy Mine: The Xenonauts were formed through NATO-Soviet (and Third World) collaboration.
  • Energy Weapon: The alien firearms. Laser weapons are the first step in humanity's efforts in this field.
  • The Engineer: Your soldiers can use satchel charges (and explosive rockets and grenades, though these are slightly less reliable) to breach building walls and UFO doors. In the strategic sense, you can also use dedicated engineers in your workshops to whip up new weapons based on captured alien tech for your soldiers.
  • E.T. Gave Us Wi-Fi: Alien technology helps popularize the Internet roughly 10-15 years ahead of schedule.
    Chief Research Officer: This morning we were able to transmit a mildly amusing image of a cat halfway across the world, suggesting it will be an excellent tool for sharing classified information within our organization. I named this impressive creation the "internetwork", and would be very surprised if it didn't catch on.
  • Every Car Is a Pinto: While cars make reasonable decent cover, if a vehicle takes enough gunfire, it will explode.
  • Every Thing Breaks: And how! Though not as in detail as X-Com (1997) or X-Com: Apocalypse, you can destroy huge chunks of terrain, eliminating cover.
  • Expy:
    • Reapers are Genestealers, with the added capabilities of Chrysalids.
    • Sebilians share many traits with the Krogan, such as general appearance, hardiness, and redundant organs.
  • Eyepatch of Power: After you hit Tech Level 3, the head scientist gains some sort of scouter-like device over his right eye.
  • Faster-Than-Light Travel: The aliens have this technology, obviously. Researching the tech is key to defeating them, though not by developing an FTL drive, but instead creating a device that jams FTL travel so the alien fleet can't escape any assassination attempt on the High Praetor.
  • Fast-Roping: Made practical by the Valkyrie transport.
  • Feudal Future: The invasion fleet hints at this. The High Praetor simply is part of a large empire that covets your planet. Whether he succeeds or fails apparently doesn't bother the rest of the alien empire.
  • Final Boss: The High Praetor. He goes down pretty easily, but the fight to get to him is extremely difficult, as is getting out alive afterwards.
  • Flat Character: Of your three main advisers, only your Chief Scientist is given any personality, as shown by his Insufferable Genius tendencies in the Xenopedia. The Drill Instructor is only shown to be missing an arm and the Chief Engineer is implied to be from the Eastern bloc, due to him referring to you as "comrade".
  • From Bad to Worse: In the beginning of the campaign, the aliens will usually stick to small scouts acting in the background, leaving ominous Crop Circles and abducting ship crews out on the seas. At some point though, they begin taking on local forces, winning dogfights and shooting down military transports. Becoming more bold, they continue making brutal assaults, bombarding fishing fleets, shooting at highways, strafing battleships, blowing up bridges, attacking oil rigs and sinking whole cruise liners, racking up casualties in the hundreds every time. It gets worse from there too, as the aliens decide to bring terror to the cities...
  • Game Mod: The current community is pretty active , working on anything from putting more Cool Planes on the game to adding More Dakka for the soldiers to modifying the Encyclopedia Exposita, providing more maps and putting the cut content back in. The developers have actually been pretty good sports about it.
  • Gas Mask Mooks: The art book reveals that one of the original concepts for the Wolf Armour would have had these, though it was rejected for being too Helghast-like.
  • Gender Is No Object: Let's face it, having so many female officers in 1979 is a bit of a stretch. Then again, the whole world is at stake - the reasons behind that were nonsensical even in Real Life. Here, they'd be suicidal.
    • Though it is less justified than in X-COM, since, unlike in X-COM, your soldiers have what unit they were in before joining the Xenonauts listed in the equipment screen, as well as any previous combat experience, meaning you can have female soldiers coming from units that didn't allow women to join in 1979, and some of which still don't allow women to join.
  • Geo Effects: Firing from an upstairs window or a roof grants an advantage in combat. Harridans and any Xenonaut wearing Buzzard or Sential armour can use a Jet Pack to jump to a roof.
  • Gone Horribly Right: Physics has some weird calculations in a turn-based game sometimes. High explosive projectiles such as a rockets and "laser" shots that stray too far away (if accuracy is low but not at zero) from its intended target can also be a good thing, as they pass through solid objects that would have been a hassle to deal with, or even destroy everyone inside a UFO in one shot without blasting or opening the front door first.
  • The Greys: Caesans most resemble the classic Greys in appearance, though they're just as tall as the average human on the tactical map and, uniquely, wear color-coded uniforms indicating their role.
    • Once you autopsy a Praetor you can see that they also have the appearance of Greys, though they’re still distinct from the Caesans.
  • Guns Akimbo: Can be done with pistols, but it doesn't provide any benefit. The ingame encyclopaedia actually mocks this trope, referring to it as childish.
  • Healing Factor: Sebilians heal their wounds at the start of each turn, so you'd better take them down before the turn ends. Research into them doesn't unlock this ability for your own soldiers, as it would take years of gene therapy, but does provide an upgrade for your medkits.
  • High-Altitude Battle: That often leads to a Low Altitude Battle, if the attacked UFO goes down. In the game data, flying crafts even have a maximum service ceiling, indicating that some of these battles might be close to outer space.
  • Highly-Conspicuous Uniform: Justified, xenopedia states since the color spectrum of the aliens is likely vastly different from humans, camouflage patterns and their development would likely be just a huge waste of time and money thus the research department decided to use simple blue jumpsuits to make recognizing friendlies easier; though this doesn't stop soldiers from wondering why they are wearing uniforms that make them look like huge targets.
  • Hover Tank: The Hyperion tank is the final support vehicle available. Reverse engineered alien tech allows it to not only hover, but be remote controlled as well. The hover tech allows it to be heavily armed and armoured, but be mobile, since its hover engine allows it to move at the equivalent speed of a lighter vehicle.
  • How Much More Can He Take?: If it's an elite Sebillian, probably a lot more. Him having a minor Healing Factor doesn't really help you, either.
  • Humans Advance Swiftly: Within only a few months of your soldiers encountering aliens with laser weapons for the first time, they'll be going into battle with their own versions. Within the year, they'll have Powered Armor and magnetic mass-driver firearms. The Internet is also developed 10-15 years ahead of schedule.
  • I Can Still Fight!: Wounded soldiers can be sent on missions, as long as they're not too wounded. Their wounds have little impact on their performance anyway (especially because of a past bug that makes it possible to instantly heal these injuries with a simple medikit).
  • Immortality Immorality: Praetors engineered themselves to be biologically immortal (from the Sebillians), powerful psychics (from the Caesans), and utterly tyrannical overlords to the other alien species, plundering their genomes for desirable traits and degrading them to slave races.
  • Improperly Paranoid: The Wraith interrogation notes how it will spin in its containment cell if approached from opposite directions, due to their compulsion to avoid showing backs to their enemies.
  • In Working Order: Partially applicable to alien technology. While it generally can't be used straight away without Doing Research on it, a soldier can simply pick up an alien plasma rifle and use it in the same battle with only accuracy penalties. It is only after the battle ends when alien weaponry becomes non-functional.
  • Insufferable Genius: The head scientist greets you by saying "Ah, Commander. Please, tell me how to do my job..." Then he only gets more bitter and snarky as he writes more and more Xenopedia articles.
    • It ends with him saying that "nobody has done more than I to ensure the survival of the human race", though he has little doubt that the commander's name will be written in the history book just below his. And commenting that he could destroy the entire planet in seconds if he wanted to, even though you, the commander, are the one in charge
  • Interservice Rivalry: The head scientist repeatedly snipes at the engineers in his Xenopedia articles. The engineers retaliate, placing utilities such as coffee machines next to particularly violent alien specimens.
  • Isometric Projection: Unlike X Com Enemy Unknown, Xenonauts uses a fixed camera angle in the vein of the classic Fallout games.
  • It's Up to You: Averted. While obviously the Xenonauts are the only organization that can really go toe to toe with the aliens, police and military forces will sometimes be on maps which will fight against the aliens when they can, and occasionally local forces will even bring down one of the smaller UFOs for the Xenonauts so they can execute a ground mission.
  • Jet Pack: The Harridans have these on their bodysuits, and the player can develop the human-equivalent Buzzard and Sentinel suits. It's not possible to fire while in flight, though a jetpack soldier can be used to spot enemies and to leap onto the roofs of buildings to provide a high ground advantage, which is especially useful against Reapers, who have no ranged attack.
  • Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: Double subverted. In the early game, the Xenonauts are armed with standard firearms provided in unlimited quantities by funding nations. These are woefully outclassed by the plasma weaponry wielded by the aliens and developing laser and plasma weaponry becomes necessary to do more than Scratch Damage against tougher enemies, such as the Sebilians. Later in the game, kinetic weapons come back into play once your science team develops magnetic weapons.
  • Lampshade Hanging: The Head Scientist enjoys this. Inspecting an Andron wreck will make him comment about its bipedal design (seen below), and he explains *why* you cannot store alien weapons as loot, or why aliens don't attack with their whole fleet.
  • Lean and Mean: Caesans have very slim limbs.
  • Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Soldiers can be equipped with a riot shield. While this limits them to batons, grenades or pistols, the shield can take at least one hit from all but the strongest alien firearms, making them very useful for breaching alien craft.
  • Knockout Gas: Purple-coloured gas whose Xenopedia description is somewhat reminiscent of carbon monoxide—that is, it binds to hemoglobin or analogous cells in the bloodstream—can be deployed via grenade or rocket. It loses its utility as later enemies wear gastight armor (to be replaced with electroshock grenades), but a thick layer of stun gas is an effective barrier against Reapers.
  • Magnetic Weapons: Powerful equipment that arrives later on, which surpasses Plasma weaponry. The Aliens don't have these, instead, this becomes your troops' Infinity +1 Sword, as the aliens develop a significant resistance to Energy weapons.
  • Mecha-Mooks: The Androns you face starting with the second month are more or less the alien equivalent of combat robots. They're extra resistant to most of your starting weapons and totally immune to morale and stun effects, but explosives or lasers will make short work of them. In the "autopsy" report, the head scientist puzzles over why the aliens decided to make them bipedal and humanoid, pointing out the limitations of such a design, but concluding that whether stupidity or arrogance, humanity should take advantage of it.
  • Morale Mechanic: Every soldier has a Bravery rating. This determines their starting morale, which fluctuates through the course of battle as they and their team either inflict or take damage and losses. Soldiers with low morale have a chance of panicking, attempting to flee, or going berserk. Bravery also affects a soldier's likelihood of being suppressed by enemy fire, which causes them to lose the ability to reaction fire during the enemy's round and cuts their TUs in half on their next turn.
  • More Dakka: Some heavy weapons shoot 5-bullets in a burst, while normal weapons shoot 3. This can be (and sometimes is) modded to increase this number almost indefinitely, creating possibly unbalanced but nevertheless immensely fun weapons. LMG class weapons' final tier railgun is another example, tearing any alien caught in its salvo to pieces.
  • My Brain Is Big: Wraiths have bulbous, elongated heads.
  • Mundane Utility: The tanks have powerful headlights, which make them very useful in night missions.
  • Multi National Team: Just like in X-Com, though even more noteworthy as it is set during the middle of the Cold War, includes soldiers and base personnel from both the west and the east, and the various interceptors are based off of designs from both the US and the USSR
  • New Meat: Supposedly elite-level recruits who can't hit the broad side of a barn.
  • Nintendo Hard: The original X-Com was a brutal game if you didn't know what you were doing, and so far Xenonauts looks to be at least as tough, if not harder:
    • You have very little potential to sequence break.
    • Interceptors have a realistic number of missiles, and UFOs can dodge them.
    • New gear takes months to develop, you need to develop a strong understanding of alien technology - averting Possession Implies Mastery - before you can even develop a human-material body armor to defend against the alien weaponry.
    • Alien weaponry plucked out of their users' cold dead hands is useless to the human soldiers, being made of materials too strong to be made ergonomic to human hands, unchangeable by human science, and totally lacking optics. Basic laser weaponry might take till December to finish.
    • Forget manufacturing items for profit: all items now sell for half their manufacturing costs, not counting engineering salary. The sale prices of all alien artifacts have been significantly lowered, and are sold automatically at the end of the mission, as you cannot use them later. Also, corpses now have no value now - no more sectoid sushi for you.
    • The psionics research tree turns out to be a dead end: Humanity has no psionic potential. Around the time you discover this, alien units which are extremely resistant to energy weapons have become common. If your researchers didn't take a different path at this point, all would be lost.
    • Remember how X-Com Ethereals and Sectiods needed to have a line of sight on you before using psionic powers? Not here. Once the aliens are aware of your presence (i.e., any of them see a human Xenonaut), all the Cesan Psions and Praetors can start unleashing mind attacks on everybody in your squad.
    • And as an added treat: The presence of a live Praetor randomly generates dread within various squad members during his turn, as a free action. Note that your Bravery (the stat that resists psionics) is maxxed, it doesn't matter. Whomever is chosen (and it's usually 3-5) loses 30 Action Points for that round.
    • In the original X-COM, Chrysallids were a terror unit that mostly accompanied Snakemen on terror missions and base assaults. Their equivalent here, Reapers, can turn up anywhere. This makes assaulting Battleships particularly difficult, especially if trying to capture a Praetor alive, as there will be a couple of them on the bridge.
  • Not Enough to Bury: Both enemy aliens and your own soldiers can be "overkilled" if enough damage is done by the killing shot, totally destroying the body and any equipment it might have been carrying. Obviously, this is most noticeable when using explosives.
  • Not His Sled:
    • You might expect that psionics and energy weapons are your endgame tools, like in the original X-COM game. Nope! Humanity has no psionic potential and aliens highly resistant to energy weapons come into play. You have to take a different path and hope you can go far enough before it's too late.
    • In the beginning of the game, any player of the original X-Com game will quickly want to research the Alien Alloys technology, since it used to be the stepping stone to manufacturing armours made of alien alloys, which were incredibly useful in the early game. But not in Xenonauts: as your scientists note in the research report, alien alloys would make an incredibly good armour material...if only they had any tool capable of machining, forging or even cutting it. Instead, the first armor suits you get come (quite realistically) from studying alien weaponry, since understanding how it operates is the key to designing efficient protections against it.
    • The second armour however, is made with alien alloys, once your scientists have finally found a way to work it.
  • Nuclear Option: The move that lead to the Iceland Incident. Also what can happen if you don't deal with a terror site.
  • Oddly Small Organization: The supposedly last line of defense against the aliens command 20 - 30 troops at most. There are various explanations of this state, mostly revolving around some political plotnote . More justified in this game thanks to the presence of police, soldiers, militias, farmers with shotguns, etc., as well as nations having limited capability to shoot down UFOs on their own.
  • Only Mostly Dead: There's a small chance that a "dead" soldier may actually survive a battle (though in critical condition) if their body is recovered. It depends on how far their HP drops below zero, though — if it falls below a certain threshold, Permadeath is guaranteed.
  • One-Hit Kill: It doesn't matter what armor you're wearing, a melee swipe from a Reaper means a zombified soldier. On a different scale, the Fury interceptor's Singularity Torpedo qualifies: one launch, one UFO obliterated, no questions asked.
  • Outranking Your Job: A particular xenonaut's rank depends only on their combat experience, unlike in the original X-COM games. Players who are skilled and lucky enough to keep their veterans alive for long periods of time may end up with squads composed almost entirely of Colonels, Commanders, and Majors.
  • Outside-the-Box Tactic: How do you stop an invincible alien fleet from overrunning your little, fragmented planet? Find a way to scramble all Faster-Than-Light travel across a thousand light-year radius with an elaborate, giant device constructed under your base. Any attempt to destroy it will have to be done at sub-light speeds which will be extremely energy intensive. Whichever future alien race who wants the device off is going to need several thousand years in sublight travel.
  • Plasma Cannon: The only weapon type employed by the alien army (excluding Reapers). It ranges from relatively weak, short-ranged pistols to powerful, well, cannons.
  • Powered Armor: The final two armour types, the Predator and Sentinel, are these.
  • Power Copying: The Praetors do this to every race they enslave; The Psychic Powers of the Caesians and the Healing Factor of the Sebilians are just two of the abilities they took for their own through genetic engineering.
  • Proud Warrior Race Guy: The culture of the Sebilians.
  • Red Shirt Army: Played with. At first you have to make do with Surprisingly Elite Cannon Fodder once you hire more soldiers after your experienced starter squad, but in later phases of the invasion, nations will start giving the player more experienced soldiers, as they are no longer able to combat the alien forces alone with human technology.
  • Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Sebillians, The Brute of the invading alien species, they resemble bipedal alligators or dinosaurs.
  • Required Secondary Powers: The Singularity Cannon is a massively overpowered BFG. So large, in fact, that it cannot be wielded unless its user is wearing Power Armor to boost their own physical strength.
  • Rock Beats Laser: Averted in the beginning (gunpowder weapons are quite useless), played straight in the end( Railguns absolutely murder any alien they hit ).
  • Sadistic Choice: The game starts with you setting up Xenonauts headquarters, and prominently showing your radar coverage from that base. Immediately after you select your starting location, you will receive reports of alien activity everywhere else in the world, outside your coverage. You can either expand as quickly as possible and hope to keep the activity as low as possible to prevent the funding nations from getting upset at your inability to deal with their incidents, or you can save the money and hope that you'll be able to expand before the funding nation gets so upset as to withdraw entirely. Both options are terrible, and reflect the fact that you literally can't be everywhere at once, at least not at first.
  • Sequel Hook: Unlike X-Com, which usually ends with the aliens completely foiled and/or eradicated, the endgame makes it very clear that this is not the case. It turns out the High Praetor's invading armada was just a sliver of the aliens' total might. In fact, it's implied that he was just a low-ranking elder who did this invasion as his own pet project, and they let him do it while they pursued bigger challenges. They most certainly will be back.
  • Short-Range Shotgun: Zigzagged. Obviously they are most effective in closer ranges where all pellets are likely to hit. The accuracy reported over medium ranges is somewhat misleading - it seems to represent the chance to hit for each individual pellet, so the chance that at least 'one' of them connects is a little higher. They are also great for causing suppression.
  • Shout-Out: Kickstarter pledgers who donated at a certain level got their names added to the game as randomly generated soldiers.
  • Sitting Duck: Approaching a landed UFO is a very tricky and dangerous business, but if it works out, it's as good as ours.
  • Smoke Out: smoke in a tile degrades the accuracy of fire passing through it. Sebillians and a few other species are immune, but have terrible long-range accuracy anyway.
  • Sniper Duel: May happen annoyingly often if both sides are unwilling to leave their cover. This is actually a poor tactic, since aliens have unlimited ammo...
    • On the other hand, when your enemies are armed with pistols, and you have sniper rifles, you have a slight advantage.
    • Or you can just blow covers with missiles.
  • So Last Season:
    • Ballistic weapons are already considered obsolete against aliens, but since humanity starts the game with no alternative, they're better than nothing. They eventually give way to laser, plasma, and magnetic weapons.
    • Downplayed with sleep gas grenades. While most aliens develop a resistance to them and they're useless against Androns to begin with, they still perform well against Reapers, making carrying them during Operation Endgame a viable tactic, as it will give your men a protective barrier of gas that will help cover their escape.
  • Something-Nauts: The titular organization.
  • Sorting Algorithm of Weapon Effectiveness: Conventional ballistic firearms are already obsolete against aliens, requiring the Xenonauts to upgrade. Laser weapons are the first step by adapting existing human tech with a new power source, followed by plasma, which is reverse engineered based on alien weapons, which is turn is outclassed by magnetic firearms. Same goes for explosives, which runs from conventional to Alenium, to plasma, to fusion.
  • Sphere of Destruction: the Singularity Torpedo carried by the Fury interceptor functions this way; the head scientist mentions that they had to specifically limit the radius of the sphere so that it wouldn't accidentally, say, wipe out the planet. As expected, it will completely wipe out a target UFO, leaving no debris and no survivors.
  • Spiritual Successor: To the original XCOM
  • Stat Grinding: Xenonauts' stats are not gained by leveling up, but by performing appropriate actions (strength is increased by carrying close to the encumbrance limit, accuracy is gained by shooting, etc)
  • Static Stun Gun: The shock batons can be researched early in the game, and allow xenonauts to subdue aliens for capture; they're soon supplemented by stun gas and electroshock grenades.
  • Tactical Withdrawal: usually employed by human fighters fighting a heavy UFO (or a formation of them). After unloading all missiles to wound the enemy, the planes are supposed to disengage and return to base, letting the next squadron deliver the killing blow.
  • Take Cover!: The game features more sophisticated cover mechanics than the original.
  • Tank Goodness: After researching, the player can build vehicles in scout car, tank, and Hover Tank variants to assist the xenonauts on missions. The aliens have their own Heavy Drones.
  • Teleporters and Transporters:
    • Larger UFOs have teleportation platforms to travel between decks. Seemingly, the aliens don't like to use elevators or stairs. They're only large enough for a single person to use, so forget about getting a tank up to the bridge of a Battleship.
    • Wraiths have teleportation as an innate ability.
  • There Was a Door: Xenonauts equipped with Predator armor don't need no stinking doors. They can just walk through a wall.
  • Trick Bomb: Grenades come in several different varieties, with frag, smoke, and flashbangs available by default. The frag grenades can be upgraded as Alenium, plasma, and fusion explosives are developed and EMP and knockout gas grenades later become viable alternatives to the stun rod.
  • Unobtainium: As in X-COM, you can salvage the alien fuel source, Alenium, which cannot be reproduced terrestrially. Incidentally, even before attempting to use it as a power source, Xenonaut scientists decided they made for even better missile warheads, giving your interceptors an early shot in the arm in terms of firepower.
  • 2-D Space: seen most prominently during air combat battles. Interceptors and alien aircrafts are placed on a single plane, and your movment options include turn left, turn right and occasionally Do a Barrel Roll.
  • Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay:
    • Players who try to reverse engineer Alien Alloys in the hope of creating body armour out of alien materials will find that they can't craft alien body armour because humanity doesn't have any tools or machining capable of shaping it. To get enhanced armour, you actually need to research alien weapons first, then your scientists can find out how they work and then devise an armour solution from Earth-made materials. Along the same lines, your soldiers start out kitted in bright blue uniforms: no point in camouflage if you don't know what kind of visual spectrum the aliens see in.
    • Along the same lines, you can pick up a plasma rifle from an alien's cold dead hands right from the start, but the soldier will take accuracy penalties because the rifle isn't ergonomically designed for human hands and besides, they lack optics.
    • You'd think by capturing a Sebilian alive you'd be able to find a way to make use of their Healing Factor. However, your head researcher notes that it can't be adapted to human physiology without extensive genetic engineering. What it can do, though, is be applied to improving medkits.
    • FTL research is the key to defeating the aliens, but it would take decades for humanity to develop a working drive. However, jamming FTL drives proves significantly less challenging.
    • Predator Power Armor effectively turns a soldier into a walking tank, giving the highest level of protection, whilst also removing encumbrance limitations, allowing a soldier to carry around heaps of equipment. However, its gauntlets are so bulky that any item that isn't a heavy weapon is unusable, so its use is pretty much restricted to support gunners.
    • Any infantry with a Jet Pack can fly around the map, but can't fire while using it, as they need to use both hands to operate the flight controls.
    • The Singularity Cannon is so large and has such a heavy recoil that it cannot even be carried, let alone fired, by someone not decked out in Predator armour.
    • Humanity does have an initial advantage against the aliens: The flying saucers lack aerodynamics, making human interceptors better at maneuvers in air combat.
  • Unfriendly Fire: There's always a risk of your soldier accidentally hitting each other, especially when using shotguns or machineguns. The aliens have this problem as well.
  • Urban Warfare: Terror missions, naturally. Some other maps, like fan-made desert villages, also require similar tactics.
  • Vertical Mecha Fins: Harridans' armour has these.
  • Video Game Cruelty Punishment: In an apparent attempt to dissuade veteran X-COM players from applying the usual "level everything in sight" tactics, you suffer a rating penalty if civilians get caught in the collateral damage. On the other hand, leveling a house without causing civilian casualties is just fine.
  • Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: An unused weapon due to engine limitations, though some mods restore it. Flamethrowers are extremely powerful, but short ranged, heavy and dangerous to use. If a soldier carrying a flamethrower takes a direct hit then there is a chance they will blow up and take nearby allies with them.
  • The War Room: Seen on the splash screen and represented by the Command Center during base defense missions; alien bases and the command centers of the larger alien UFOs have a similar layout.
  • Unstable Equilibrium:
    • TU is gained by spending at least 250 TU in a single battle. For a solder with 80 TU, it means spending 3 turns running around or shooting. Someone with 50 TU will need to spend 5 turns doing that. In short, the higher TU is, the easier it is to level up.
    • If the player plays poorly and loses experienced xenonauts, subsequent fights will get harder and vice versa.
    • Likewise with funding, as the amount of funds you get is directly tied to how successful you are at destroying UFOs and bases and stopping terror missions before the aliens can wreak havoc. Fail to adequately cover one region, and it'll pull its funding from the project completely, making it more difficult to maintain your bases and replace future losses.
  • With This Herring: Averted in the sense that you get lousy newbies only if you manage to get the reasonably-experienced starter squad killed.
  • Would Not Shoot a Civilian: Absolutely averted by both sides. The aliens love hunting civilian humans, and Xenonauts treat alien non-combatants (or more accurately, alien crew members) like alien soldiers. Justified for the Xenonauts however, since said non-combatants will open fire with alien pistols or other low-level weapons the first chance they can.
  • Zerg Rush: In the final mission, you need to win by killing the High Praetor without delay. After the sixth round, six Reapers will spawn EVERY TURN. Forever. You'll either be overrun by sheer numbers or run out of ammo (and then be overrun) if you try to fight them off.
    • Bear in mind that a Reaper kills a soldier with ONE hit, armor notwithstanding. Once this massive horde closes in, that's the end for your brave troopers... and humanity itself.

    Xenonauts 2 
  • All Your Base Are Belong to Us: The Xenonauts had to flee CENTRAL after an assault by the Cleaners, the human proxy group of the aliens. Later, the player can pull this on the Cleaners and assault their base in Greenland.
  • Alternate History: The game takes place in an alternate present where the Cold War never ended due to alien meddling.
  • Attack Drone: On both sides. On the Xenonaut side, there is the MARS combat platform which can be armed with either a cannon or a missile pod. On the alien side, there is the cyberdrone, a heavily armored cybernetic drone and the servitor, which is a smaller drone that can heal enemies but is also armed with a plasma weapon.
  • Badass Normal: Xenonauts are essentially this. They are average soldiers who initially goes off to fight aliens that are using futuristic tech with modern day weapons and armor. Also, armed civilians and soldiers that appear on certain maps also count.
  • Break Out the Museum Piece: Despite it being the early 21st century, the Xenonauts are still using upgraded MiG-25s and otherwise antiquated Cold War surplus. Justified since, aside from the altered timeline, its revealed that most modern aircraft and weapons prove to be ineffective against the aliens. The Xenonauts are also short on resources, relying on a back HQ bunker from the '60s, and have to cut costs wherever possible.
  • Benevolent Conspiracy: The Xenonauts are thrust into this position, in the face of both thermonuclear war and the prospect of an alien invasion.
  • Chameleon Camouflage: The aliens have the wraiths who essentially have optical camouflage. The xenonauts can later build the stalker armor which has a cloaking field that serves as this.
  • Cool Plane: The two current planes that the Xenonauts can operate in the second game are the old but heavily upgraded X-25 Angel (a variant of the MiG-25 whose older systems prove more resistant to alien EMP weaponry) and the X-55 Phantom, which is a heavily upgraded F-22 Raptor like craft.
  • Les Collaborateurs: The enigmatic Cleaners, who seem to be working with the aliens, are human enemies that the Xenonauts have to contend with. They are later revealed to be EXDEF, formerly a group formed by the West and the Soviets in collaboration to combat the alien threat.
  • Combat Medic: Any soldier can be this if they have a medkit on them. Also, later on, this comes in the form of the automed module which can heal soldiers automatically each turn.
  • Early Game Hell: Early game can be quite hard even with having 9 soldiers for each mission, whether it's facing alien contingents that outclass them in every way or just fighting well-equipped Cleaners.
  • Earth All Along: Played with. The aliens are all inhabitants of different dimensional reflections of Earth, but each version is quite different due to the travails of astrophysics and ecology. Most Earths aren't even inhabitable by multicellular life, hence why the Eternals want humanity's Earth to colonize.
  • Expy: The Cleaners are reminiscent of EXALT in their role as Les Collaborateurs, while their covert MO and "secret military unit gone rogue" background call to mind XOF/Cipher.
  • Faster Than Light: Subverted. Upon examining a Mentarch's navigational logs, your scientists realize that the way the Eternals overcame the light barrier is they didn't; rather they found a way to jump dimensions to alternate versions of their homeworld, which is much less energy intensive. Their homeworld, by the way, is Earth.
  • The Masquerade: Aliens have been secretly manipulating the two superpowers into nuclear war, while a covert organization called the "Cleaners" keeps any extraterrestrial evidence (and potential loose ends) buried. By the time the game starts, however, it's mentioned that this status quo is breaking down as the aliens start losing their patience. The opening cutscene implies that Gorbachev is assassinated either directly by the aliens or by the Cleaners who serve as their human proxies.
  • Mauve Shirt: Your Xenonauts definitely feel like this when you begin the game.
  • The Men in Black: When not donning military gear or hazmat suits, the Cleaners are usually shown with nondescript business-wear.
  • Multiversal Conqueror: The alien empire is actually a collection of alternate Earths that developed life useful to the dimension-traveling Eternals.
  • Mutually Assured Destruction: What the aliens aim to bring about, with the expectation that humanity would be too busy panicking about the Alien Invasion, while the Americans and Soviets pin blame on and eventually nuke each other amidst the chaos. The Eternals also hope to bring this about as it would make settling this version of Earth much easier.
  • Orbital Bombardment: A new element; an orbital alien superweapon will periodically hit the region with the least Panic, causing a large increase in Panic there.
  • The Remnant: After being all but disavowed, as well as being dealt a blow from the Cleaners, the Xenonauts are reduced to operating from a hidden backup base that hadn't been used since at least the '60s.
  • Renegade Splinter Faction: The Cleaners were originally EXDEF, a joint Western and Soviet initiative meant to combat extraterrestrial threats, before going rogue and seemingly becoming the aliens' proxies.
  • Rubber-Forehead Aliens: Your scientists quickly note how oddly similar the aliens are to Earth life, with some sharing as much as 75% of the same DNA as humans. Justified; the aliens' homeworlds are actually all dimensional forks of Earth, so they are actually sentient species from the same tree of life that produced humans, just grown differently - it makes sense that convergent evolution produces similar bipedal structures, as those Earths have similar enough environs to the Xenonauts'.
  • Transhuman Treachery: The Eternals are a highly evolved transhuman species that's set its sight on the Xenonauts' version of Earth.
  • Two Decades Behind: Downplayed. While technology on Earth is comparable to the real life 2010s-2020s, the overall aesthetic remains trapped in The '80s.
  • Ultraterrestrials: The aliens are actually inhabitants of alternate versions of Earth, conquered and put to work by the Eternals, who are themselves inhabitants of a different Earth.
  • Unobtainium: Played straight then subverted. Alien alloy and aelerium are needed to make higher-tier equipment but you can only get them from the aliens. However, later on you can research methods to synthesize these material yourself. However, while it is possible to make them yourself, they are still very expensive and slow to manufacture manually.
  • World War III: A major concern is that the aliens, having prolonged the Cold War long enough, are manipulating the superpowers into nuclear annihilation, in preparation for their planned invasion. If Panic across the world increases enough, that's precisely what happens.
  • You Are in Command Now: In an update to the story, the player character is not the highest ranking commander of the Xenonauts. They had a General that was later mind controlled and turned on the Xenonauts, leaving the player character in command of the whole organization.

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