KickStarter Phoenix Point - the new game from X-COM creator Julian Gollop

[ArchAngel]

Factions all go to war in mid and late game and it is very hard to be friends with everyone. As soon as you do haven defense of one of them you lose reputation with other 2.

Don't lie on the internet, fucker.

I don't know how it works in your Easy campaign but in my Legendary campaign they all hate each other and are completely incapable from protecting their havens from Pandoran attacks. I have to do all the defending or the Index thingy goes up. And every defense gives bonus with that faction but minus with other two. Only defeating Pandoran lairs and citadels gives bonus reputation with all 3 factions.

I beat the game on legendary, note the large amount of fuckers in the screenshot above.
As for the faction rep I already described the ez way to get rep.

The "meta" thus boils down to focusing on an alliance with the factions whose havens keep getting attacked, then once you're allied, keep raiding them to please their rival, ally then betray them in turn to befriend the last faction. I don't know what happens if you let an allied faction's rep drop too low since I managed to keep them topped up thanks to alien bases.

Also Haven defenses don't give that much negative rep, and if you are struggling to level up a faction all you need to do is ignore them.

Yes you can do that but why? By the time you got all 3 factions to allied you could have finished the game 3 times.
mwnn85 was talking about a normal game.

Sick Deflection. You can easily rush the endgame and only ally with one of em given how little gear matters but that doesn't make faction rep management hard once you realize the system is broken.

It is not a deflection when it is true. But it is OK that option to become everyone ally still exists for autists like you to have some more fun.

 

[Raghar]

Factions all go to war in mid and late game and it is very hard to be friends with everyone. As soon as you do haven defense of one of them you lose reputation with other 2.

Don't lie on the internet, fucker.

I don't know how it works in your Easy campaign but in my Legendary campaign they all hate each other and are completely incapable from protecting their havens from Pandoran attacks. I have to do all the defending or the Index thingy goes up. And every defense gives bonus with that faction but minus with other two. Only defeating Pandoran lairs and citadels gives bonus reputation with all 3 factions.

Doesn't this game have inverse difficulty?

I looked at Kaen stream, and he was hiring a soldier for 300 food. Now, in normal difficulty when someone shoots your soldier and you need replacement to avoid fighting at 4 soldiers, and don't play at difficulty level asian. You need to pay 300 - 480 materials and some tech as well. Thus legendary difficulty player can replace in mid game a soldier for 10 days of production of material on base. Normal difficulty, either need to scavenge, or was able to keep sufficient material reserves, just in case.

Thus situation, three snipers shot at one soldiers and blew up his head off. Now we need to replace new soldier. Would be solved differently on 1. legendary 2. normal
1. We wait for our food production to get 300 food and fly to hire new one. We have equipment from first one, at worst we would need to manufacture new weapon.
2. If we don't have enough material and tech in storage, we need to either do fort defense missions, or scavenge on some sites. Then we would move to hire new soldier, which comes with his own weapon, which we can't produce ammo for and when it runs dry, we would need to make our weapon anyway. It came with armor that either kills stealth, or is quite vulnerable to stray machinegun rounds.

Now what happens when someone wants to hire new soldier?
1. We got new soldier and now wee need to spend time to make weapons and possibly armor for him. (Aka need to spend material and tech to manufacture these weapons and armor.) Soldier needs to wait until at least his weapon was manufactured (can he go without armor?). But if there is training facility in base, he can train before his armor is manufactured.
2. We got new soldier and he has weapon of HIS OWN FACTION, and now we just need to decide if we can use him in our squad with these weapons and armor, or if we need to outfit him with weapons that would complement the squad better. (If the soldier needs to be outfitted by something else, you spend additional material and tech to make weapons and armor, even when you spend material during hiring the soldier.)

Now imagine that someone wants to make something like heavy, with cannon and sniper armor... Step 1. hire heavy. Is NJ only place where you can hire heavy? Step 2. Manufacture the sniper armor. Step 3. NJ heavy comes with heavy machinegun, thus next step for heavy with cannon is manufacture cannon. You can multiclass him into sniper to allow him to use hell II cannon with sniper skills. Sniper rifle needs 3 action points, hell II cannon needs 3 action points, thus sniper skills work awesomely.

As you can see, this is also easier on legendary.
(Then we have people who were able to finish game in 6.5 hours, and well if difficulty curve doesn't ramp up much more slowly on normal, he might have easier time on 6.5 hours on legendary, than a normal player.)

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Shaewaroz]

So they actually fixed abominable two action system? I lost all interest to follow this game all the way back when it was announced, since it looked like they were going to use something very similar to two action system. However the current system looks actually pretty decent. Still not as good as the original XCOM that gives you complete freedom, but much better than the Firaxis Rape. Might give this a try after all.

 

[ArchAngel]

Factions all go to war in mid and late game and it is very hard to be friends with everyone. As soon as you do haven defense of one of them you lose reputation with other 2.

Don't lie on the internet, fucker.

I don't know how it works in your Easy campaign but in my Legendary campaign they all hate each other and are completely incapable from protecting their havens from Pandoran attacks. I have to do all the defending or the Index thingy goes up. And every defense gives bonus with that faction but minus with other two. Only defeating Pandoran lairs and citadels gives bonus reputation with all 3 factions.

Doesn't this game have inverse difficulty?

I looked at Kaen stream, and he was hiring a soldier for 300 food. Now, in normal difficulty when someone shoots your soldier and you need replacement to avoid fighting at 4 soldiers, and don't play at difficulty level asian. You need to pay 300 - 480 materials and some tech as well. Thus legendary difficulty player can replace in mid game a soldier for 10 days of production of material on base. Normal difficulty, either need to scavenge, or was able to keep sufficient material reserves, just in case.

Thus situation, three snipers shot at one soldiers and blew up his head off. Now we need to replace new soldier. Would be solved differently on 1. legendary 2. normal
1. We wait for our food production to get 300 food and fly to hire new one. We have equipment from first one, at worst we would need to manufacture new weapon.
2. If we don't have enough material and tech in storage, we need to either do fort defense missions, or scavenge on some sites. Then we would move to hire new soldier, which comes with his own weapon, which we can't produce ammo for and when it runs dry, we would need to make our weapon anyway. It came with armor that either kills stealth, or is quite vulnerable to stray machinegun rounds.

Now what happens when someone wants to hire new soldier?
1. We got new soldier and now wee need to spend time to make weapons and possibly armor for him. (Aka need to spend material and tech to manufacture these weapons and armor.) Soldier needs to wait until at least his weapon was manufactured (can he go without armor?). But if there is training facility in base, he can train before his armor is manufactured.
2. We got new soldier and he has weapon of HIS OWN FACTION, and now we just need to decide if we can use him in our squad with these weapons and armor, or if we need to outfit him with weapons that would complement the squad better. (If the soldier needs to be outfitted by something else, you spend additional material and tech to make weapons and armor, even when you spend material during hiring the soldier.)

Now imagine that someone wants to make something like heavy, with cannon and sniper armor... Step 1. hire heavy. Is NJ only place where you can hire heavy? Step 2. Manufacture the sniper armor. Step 3. NJ heavy comes with heavy machinegun, thus next step for heavy with cannon is manufacture cannon. You can multiclass him into sniper to allow him to use hell II cannon with sniper skills. Sniper rifle needs 3 action points, hell II cannon needs 3 action points, thus sniper skills work awesomely.

As you can see, this is also easier on legendary.
(Then we have people who were able to finish game in 6.5 hours, and well if difficulty curve doesn't ramp up much more slowly on normal, he might have easier time on 6.5 hours on legendary, than a normal player.)

Cost of new soldiers is different and depends on which class you are buying. Basic soldiers + berserkers only cost Food. Priests, Technicians and Infiltrators cost other resources as well.
There is no inverse difficulty.

And you should not be waiting for food. You must keep exploring and doing missions all the time. Get another ship and more soldiers and send them to do missions as well. And if you get weapons from other factions but cannot make ammo, drop those items into general inventory and new research task will show up that lets you reverse engineer the weapon. It uses up that weapon but you can then make a new one and ammo for it. If you cannot (sometimes it needs two same items) or don't want to do that, you can scrap that weapon and make a new weapon that you can build ammo for.

 

[Raghar]

You need to imagine a situation where a normal difficulty player is in the beginning after these three introductory missions, and either he had bad encounter with fire worms, or had another problem with the other two missions. Now he has ONE soldier less, or TWO, or THREE. And he needs, well new players will not ever know about recruiting from forts. But he needs to hire a new soldier to have chance on ambush or on crate missions. He also wants at least one food making facility on base. What would he do? Lets assume he made two new food production facilities because he needs them, and perhaps even additional living quarters.

See? That's the problem. No resources to hire new guy, no way to produce materials on the base. And any ambush would means losing even more or end of ironman.

 

[geno]

0:34, "the plot and the aesthetic make PP truly shine"

 

[ArchAngel]

You need to imagine a situation where a normal difficulty player is in the beginning after these three introductory missions, and either he had bad encounter with fire worms, or had another problem with the other two missions. Now he has ONE soldier less, or TWO, or THREE. And he needs, well new players will not ever know about recruiting from forts. But he needs to hire a new soldier to have chance on ambush or on crate missions. He also wants at least one food making facility on base. What would he do? Lets assume he made two new food production facilities because he needs them, and perhaps even additional living quarters.

See? That's the problem. No resources to hire new guy, no way to produce materials on the base. And any ambush would means losing even more or end of ironman.

Then you restart the game.
I can agree that the start of the game is not well made for people new to Xcom games.

 

[Shog-goth]

the start of the game is not well made for people new to Xcom games.

And the rest for anyone else...

 

[orcinator]

Factions all go to war in mid and late game and it is very hard to be friends with everyone. As soon as you do haven defense of one of them you lose reputation with other 2.

Don't lie on the internet, fucker.

I don't know how it works in your Easy campaign but in my Legendary campaign they all hate each other and are completely incapable from protecting their havens from Pandoran attacks. I have to do all the defending or the Index thingy goes up. And every defense gives bonus with that faction but minus with other two. Only defeating Pandoran lairs and citadels gives bonus reputation with all 3 factions.

I beat the game on legendary, note the large amount of fuckers in the screenshot above.
As for the faction rep I already described the ez way to get rep.

The "meta" thus boils down to focusing on an alliance with the factions whose havens keep getting attacked, then once you're allied, keep raiding them to please their rival, ally then betray them in turn to befriend the last faction. I don't know what happens if you let an allied faction's rep drop too low since I managed to keep them topped up thanks to alien bases.

Also Haven defenses don't give that much negative rep, and if you are struggling to level up a faction all you need to do is ignore them.

Yes you can do that but why? By the time you got all 3 factions to allied you could have finished the game 3 times.
mwnn85 was talking about a normal game.

Sick Deflection. You can easily rush the endgame and only ally with one of em given how little gear matters but that doesn't make faction rep management hard once you realize the system is broken.

It is not a deflection when it is true. But it is OK that option to become everyone ally still exists for autists like you to have some more fun.

I'm sorry I know how to do addition and subtraction.

 

[Endemic]

Doesn't this game have inverse difficulty?

An inverted difficulty curve is just like the original X-COM series

 

[mwnn85]

Of all the DLC announced - I'm just hoping that Festering Skies will be a bit more than an excuse to fight even more combat encounters but on crashed spaceship maps.

The combat's far better than nuXCOM but fighting the 50th encounter for a few resource crates is gonna start to grate.
I'm not all that impressed with the alien base/hive maps either - the narrow caves/corridors don't show off the combat at it's best.
I think we were all expecting some underwater maps like TFTD when this was first shown.

Blood and Titanium will likely be a Meld knockoff. And I don't know what we'll get with Legacy of the Ancients - overpowered story items/tech? aka Slingshot DLC?

Personally I'd like to see a lot more factions (APOC had 27 organisations!) and a bit more life on the geoscape.
Plus I think it could be interesting if the virus/alien force could infiltrate/takeover the faction outposts and produce infested versions of units aka Infested Terrans.
The closest thing I've seen to a terror mission thus far is shooting those explosive fire worms and/or shooting some rebellious soldiers.

There's so much stuff they could add to this to make it stand out but only time will tell.

 

[DeepOcean]

The DLC seems meh to me, hope it is more than just "More ways to blow aliens up". I mean, more factions, monsters and mission types seem more important, something with a bigger impact to the gameplay.

 

[Galdred]

The DLC seems meh to me, hope it is more than just "More ways to blow aliens up". I mean, more factions, monsters and mission types seem more important, something with a bigger impact to the gameplay.

Indeed, more content seems to be more needed than more systems at this stage.

 

[orcinator]

The DLC seems meh to me, hope it is more than just "More ways to blow aliens up". I mean, more factions, monsters and mission types seem more important, something with a bigger impact to the gameplay.

Indeed, more content seems to be more needed than more systems at this stage.

The geoscape needs more systems while the battlescape needs more content and to be less of a broken mess.

 

[SymbolicFrank]

The X-Piratez download has been unavailable for about a week because some modder threw a tantrum (he wanted part of the donations). And now lots of people are begging for the download link.

It seems it became very popular after the release of Phoenix Point. And rightfully so: if Gollop ever played this he should be very ashamed.

It's just like with Garriott: they expect to sell total trash with just their name.

 

[ArchAngel]

The X-Piratez download has been unavailable for about a week because some modder threw a tantrum (he wanted part of the donations). And now lots of people are begging for the download link.

It seems it became very popular after the release of Phoenix Point. And rightfully so: if Gollop ever played this he should be very ashamed.

It's just like with Garriott: they expect to sell total trash with just their name.

I don't know about Garriot but PP is opposite of total trash and it will only get better.

 

[Raghar]

The X-Piratez download has been unavailable for about a week because some modder threw a tantrum (he wanted part of the donations). And now lots of people are begging for the download link.

It seems it became very popular after the release of Phoenix Point. And rightfully so: if Gollop ever played this he should be very ashamed.

It's just like with Garriott: they expect to sell total trash with just their name.

I don't know about Garriot but PP is opposite of total trash and it will only get better.

When did that happen? When they added these 3 tiers of weapons for research? Forts which income is damaged by raids by aliens? Ability of forts to reconquer some previously lost settlements, thus geoscape looking more like a war?

Let's quote what one person from metacritic said about it:

Cons

-Base management is nonexistent
-diplomacy aspect is flawed and dosent add anything at all,besides the grey area most games adopt is pure pure fail(hey aliums attack but we fight among us because insert needed drama-ideology here)
-research is not worth it(you can get best weapons-and only weapons oO- early on)
-You have no idea what base your craft is or which base your personell are,good luck with trying to defend havens,which arent needed but is good to have them
-You dont have to research best weapons,there are none
-No need to get better aircraft,all are the same stats wise
-shot that arm?nice if it did 10 damage you re good,sometimes it does 0 damage,just like grenades do
-alien bases are not interesting and you can get stuck,there are parts that if you fall you cant get out,and enemies cant kill you,so restart if that soldier is your last one.
-want to steal tech from a faction?nice. Keep in mind some of these missions cannot be finished.
-Want interesting soldier classes? We dont do that here son

Considering each soldier has only 3 stats, and you buy stats by points that dry when you reach max level... There are not many interesting choices.

 

[ArchAngel]

The X-Piratez download has been unavailable for about a week because some modder threw a tantrum (he wanted part of the donations). And now lots of people are begging for the download link.

It seems it became very popular after the release of Phoenix Point. And rightfully so: if Gollop ever played this he should be very ashamed.

It's just like with Garriott: they expect to sell total trash with just their name.

I don't know about Garriot but PP is opposite of total trash and it will only get better.

When did that happen? When they added these 3 tiers of weapons for research? Forts which income is damaged by raids by aliens? Ability of forts to reconquer some previously lost settlements, thus geoscape looking more like a war?

Let's quote what one person from metacritic said about it:

Cons

-Base management is nonexistent
-diplomacy aspect is flawed and dosent add anything at all,besides the grey area most games adopt is pure pure fail(hey aliums attack but we fight among us because insert needed drama-ideology here)
-research is not worth it(you can get best weapons-and only weapons oO- early on)
-You have no idea what base your craft is or which base your personell are,good luck with trying to defend havens,which arent needed but is good to have them
-You dont have to research best weapons,there are none
-No need to get better aircraft,all are the same stats wise
-shot that arm?nice if it did 10 damage you re good,sometimes it does 0 damage,just like grenades do
-alien bases are not interesting and you can get stuck,there are parts that if you fall you cant get out,and enemies cant kill you,so restart if that soldier is your last one.
-want to steal tech from a faction?nice. Keep in mind some of these missions cannot be finished.
-Want interesting soldier classes? We dont do that here son

Considering each soldier has only 3 stats, and you buy stats by points that dry when you reach max level... There are not many interesting choices.

Geoscape is already OK, it already offers more than any other Xcom game except Apocalypse. And they will be adding more to it with DLC.
There are tiers of weapons, they are just faction locked. Not 3 but you don't need that. Just because other Xcom games were slaves to 3 tier system it does not make it set in stone (and Long War had 5 tiers).

And that metactic review is full of false information.
1. there is base management, if it just not like new Xcom where you link buildings next to each other to get stupid bonuses. It is like old Xcom. Even placement of buildings matter when you do base defense. Not trash.
2. Diplomacy adds a lot. Way more than any other Xcom game except Apocalypse.
3. I can agree that Research is less important because once you ally with factions they give you all their completed research. It is worth it if you raid other factions a lot and want to reverse engineer their stuff. Not trash.
4. Of course you know in which base your personnel is, and it does not matter in which craft is. But UI could be better. Still not trash
5. Of course there is better stuff lol. NJ has best snipers, Anu best shotguns. Combine NJ and Synderion and you get laser powered turrets for Technicians. Not trash.
6. All aircraft has same stats? Wut? This guy is an idiot or only played the game for 5 minutes
7. This shows you quoted a noobie that didn't understand anything and then complains HAHAHA
I will stop wasting my time here. No point going further.

As for your own comment at the end, while you can train 3 different stuff soldiers have way more stats as each of those 3 things influence many things. And some things can only be trained with perks or modified with equipment (like Perception or Stealth). Not to mention Perception is actually two stats: Sight and Hearing (when you get that red marker). Which other Xcom had that?

 

[Child of Malkav]

The X-Piratez download has been unavailable for about a week because some modder threw a tantrum (he wanted part of the donations). And now lots of people are begging for the download link.

It seems it became very popular after the release of Phoenix Point. And rightfully so: if Gollop ever played this he should be very ashamed.

It's just like with Garriott: they expect to sell total trash with just their name.

I don't know about Garriot but PP is opposite of total trash and it will only get better.

When did that happen? When they added these 3 tiers of weapons for research? Forts which income is damaged by raids by aliens? Ability of forts to reconquer some previously lost settlements, thus geoscape looking more like a war?

Let's quote what one person from metacritic said about it:

Cons

-Base management is nonexistent
-diplomacy aspect is flawed and dosent add anything at all,besides the grey area most games adopt is pure pure fail(hey aliums attack but we fight among us because insert needed drama-ideology here)
-research is not worth it(you can get best weapons-and only weapons oO- early on)
-You have no idea what base your craft is or which base your personell are,good luck with trying to defend havens,which arent needed but is good to have them
-You dont have to research best weapons,there are none
-No need to get better aircraft,all are the same stats wise
-shot that arm?nice if it did 10 damage you re good,sometimes it does 0 damage,just like grenades do
-alien bases are not interesting and you can get stuck,there are parts that if you fall you cant get out,and enemies cant kill you,so restart if that soldier is your last one.
-want to steal tech from a faction?nice. Keep in mind some of these missions cannot be finished.
-Want interesting soldier classes? We dont do that here son

Considering each soldier has only 3 stats, and you buy stats by points that dry when you reach max level... There are not many interesting choices.

What that guy said is the fakest shit I've ever read.

 

[Thal]

I finished the game, some thoughts.

• My earlier assessment that this was a flawed gem was a bit too sympathetic. I still consider it a good game, but as I progressed in the game, the flaws became more apparent.
  
• By 7th level your guys really do become super soldiers and once you learn how to chain abilities, it becomes less tactical and more cheesy. Moreover, this is more or less required because enemy numbers and hp climb as well. It's not just Dash/shotgun, it's also Mind Crush and manual aim with turrets. The final mission was a really banal exercise, completely devoid of tension of any kind. Well, half of my squad died, so there's that though. It was possible to fail at least.
  
• Geoscape is solid and I like how the best tech has to be gained from allies. Although you can eventually get tech from everyone, it takes so long that the order you do it in matters.
• It's a very long game but the repetitive missions overstay their welcome. I quit my ironman playthrough, since I just couldn't be arsed to go through with it. Repetitive missions and skill abuse isn't really conductive to focusing on tactics, and training your guys to 7th level is just too much busywork.
  
• Resource management is solid. Materials never become abundant.
• Also the timer in Geoscape really added tension to gameplay. I think it went up to 95% with me, which really motivated me in taking out those Pandoran lairs.
  
• There's a solid variety of weapons, and what your carrying makes a world of difference. Same thing with inventory management. If you wish to carry everything, then it's fewer abilites and less Willpower for you.
  
• Vehicles seem utterly useless. Why take one, when you could have 3 soldiers instead?
• Edit: also whats up with the low squad limit. You can fly to two squads in for bigger mission, but doing so is just too much busywork. Anu ship has 8 spots, but it's slow as hell. Once they tone down abilities they should ramp up the carry limit so you can have bigger squads and with one ship.

Fortunately, it's possible to fix most of the major flaws. Tone down some abilities and balance the enemy accordingly, and the game becomes more enjoyable.

 

[ArchAngel]

I finished the game, some thoughts.

• My earlier assessment that this was a flawed gem was a bit too sympathetic. I still consider it a good game, but as I progressed in the game, the flaws became more apparent.
  
• By 7th level your guys really do become super soldiers and once you learn how to chain abilities, it becomes less tactical and more cheesy. Moreover, this is more or less required because enemy numbers and hp climb as well. It's not just Dash/shotgun, it's also Mind Crush and manual aim with turrets. The final mission was a really banal exercise, completely devoid of tension of any kind. Well, half of my squad died, so there's that though. It was possible to fail at least.
  
• Geoscape is solid and I like how the best tech has to be gained from allies. Although you can eventually get tech from everyone, it takes so long that the order you do it in matters.
• It's a very long game but the repetitive mission overstay their welcome. I quit my ironman playthrough, since I just couldn't be arsed to go through with it. Repetitive missions and skill abuse isn't really conductive to focusing on tactics, and training your guys to 7th level is just too much busywork.
  
• Resource management is solid. Materials never become abundant.
• Also the timer in Geoscape really added tension to gameplay. I think it went up to 95% with me, which really motivated me in taking out those Pandoran lairs.
  
• There's a solid variety of weapons, and what your carrying makes a world of difference. Same thing with inventory management. If you wish to carry everything, then it's fewer abilites and less Willpower for you.
  
• Vehicles seem utterly useless. Why take one, when you could have 3 soldiers instead?

Fortunately, it's possible to fix most of the major flaws. Tone down some abilities and balance the enemy accordingly, and the game becomes more enjoyable.

Devs said they will be working on fixing Dash and other OP abilities. And I do agree that closer to finish you get, more bugs and unfinished design shows up. This why I compared it to Kingmaker.

The base is solid and it can be turned to something really awesome with more patches and DLC and with community mods it can be turned to something incredible.

 

[Child of Malkav]

My 1st campaign was abandoned after the ODI got to 46% as I basically lost control at that point.
2nd campaign was successful with ODI only at 30% but it was hell having to fly everywhere across the planet to defend havens and destroy lair after lair, sometimes 5 consecutively.
Also I prefer the PP ending. It seemed more dark and kinda the purpose of why the project was created, to win at all costs. Anyway the world is fucked with only a few hundreds of thousands of people alive at the end.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

Its on Game Pass bros

 

[Shaewaroz]

Tried this out a bit and I have to say so far it has surpassed my expectations. It makes me very, very happy to see XCOM done at least semi competently after all these years of continuous rape. I can only imagine what modders can accomplish with such a fine base game to work with. The game will have mod support, right?

I can't believe it. Gollop actually delivered on his promises.