ERYFKRAD
Barbarian
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2012
- Messages
- 30,183
Close enough. You can bang them up then get the Intel.Story sucks. But you could LARP a secret agent.
Can I be a hot chick who bangs dudes for intel?
Close enough. You can bang them up then get the Intel.Story sucks. But you could LARP a secret agent.
Can I be a hot chick who bangs dudes for intel?
I can see how it will get repetitive soon
What's the Codex consensus on this game?
Thanks for the feedback. Any tips for making the mid/late game more bearable? E.g: letting some enemy operations roll even if it means taking more danger, as to avoid doing missions repeatedly, etc?Your instincts are correct. The strategic layer gets to be just a chore with more agents to run around more cities in real time. It's basically a clicker. Somehow Covert Action from 1990 remains the best game about actual spy stuff.
Sid Meier was reportedly dissatisfied with the final product, because he believed that the disparate elements of the game, however good they were individually, detracted from game play. As a result, he developed what he called the "Covert Action Rule": "It's better to have one good game than two great games." He described the origins of this rule in an interview with GameSpot:
The mistake I think I made in Covert Action is actually having two games in there kind of competing with each other. There was kind of an action game where you break into a building and do all sorts of picking up clues and things like that, and then there was the story which involved a plot where you had to figure out who the mastermind was and the different roles and what cities they were in, and it was a kind of an involved mystery-type plot.
I think, individually, those each could have been good games. Together, they fought with each other. You would have this mystery that you were trying to solve, then you would be facing this action sequence, and you'd do this cool action thing, and you'd get on the building, and you'd say, "What was the mystery I was trying to solve?" Covert Action integrated a story and action poorly, because the action was actually too intense. In Pirates!, you would do a sword fight or a ship battle, and a minute or two later, you were kind of back on your way. In Covert Action, you'd spend ten minutes or so of real time in a mission, and by the time you got out of [the mission], you had no idea of what was going on in the world.
So I call it the "Covert Action Rule". Don't try to do too many games in one package. And that's actually done me a lot of good. You can look at the games I've done since Civilization, and there's always opportunities to throw in more stuff. When two units get together in Civilization and have a battle, why don't we drop out to a war game and spend ten minutes or so in duking out this battle? Well, the Covert Action Rule. Focus on what the game is.
Actually, Sid Meier didn't like the way the game turned out:
Sid Meier was reportedly dissatisfied with the final product, because he believed that the disparate elements of the game, however good they were individually, detracted from game play. As a result, he developed what he called the "Covert Action Rule": "It's better to have one good game than two great games." He described the origins of this rule in an interview with GameSpot:
The mistake I think I made in Covert Action is actually having two games in there kind of competing with each other. There was kind of an action game where you break into a building and do all sorts of picking up clues and things like that, and then there was the story which involved a plot where you had to figure out who the mastermind was and the different roles and what cities they were in, and it was a kind of an involved mystery-type plot.
I think, individually, those each could have been good games. Together, they fought with each other. You would have this mystery that you were trying to solve, then you would be facing this action sequence, and you'd do this cool action thing, and you'd get on the building, and you'd say, "What was the mystery I was trying to solve?" Covert Action integrated a story and action poorly, because the action was actually too intense. In Pirates!, you would do a sword fight or a ship battle, and a minute or two later, you were kind of back on your way. In Covert Action, you'd spend ten minutes or so of real time in a mission, and by the time you got out of [the mission], you had no idea of what was going on in the world.
So I call it the "Covert Action Rule". Don't try to do too many games in one package. And that's actually done me a lot of good. You can look at the games I've done since Civilization, and there's always opportunities to throw in more stuff. When two units get together in Civilization and have a battle, why don't we drop out to a war game and spend ten minutes or so in duking out this battle? Well, the Covert Action Rule. Focus on what the game is.
Yes and no! As a ton of wargames would tend to demonstrate(operational art of war, decisive campaign, World in Flames, Advanced Tactics, even lighter ones like Gary Grigsby's World at War), you can have a good combat system withSo that's why Civilization never developed a good combat system
Thanks, that's the interview I remember.Actually, Sid Meier didn't like the way the game turned out:
Yeah, I agree here. CA was very good at this, while Phantom clue board system looks like just a gimmick. See also Floor 13 for a good investigation-driven gameplay.The thing about Covert Action that somebody needs to replicate in modern times is how there is a strategic-level mystery and what you do in the minigames gives you more clues to that mystery [...] Covert Action has an engine for generating an infinite number of mysteries to solve that I've never seen anywhere else
But this is also present in Phantom Doctrine. Things you do in the strat map drives what you do in tac map and vice-versa. This is what I cited before as something that makes the strat map gameplay more open and emergent than nuXcoms. Except if you mean the main storyline I guess?Nutria said:But at the same time, that strategic level drives what missions you're doing at the tactical level and what choices you're making within it. At least if you're actually good at the game.
The problem with Covert Action is the action mini-game, which can take a super long time if you miss some clues or objectives (and you must check a bazillion drawers to look for them, while trying to avoid detection). It's not that bad, but as Sid says in the interview, it takes too long, gets repetitive and detracts from the overall experience. In comparison, Sword of the Samurai most boring mini-game were the army battles but even these were much faster and dumb-simple than Covert Action "action".Nutria said:I'd say it's very much like Sword of the Samurai in that respect, where there's minigames very well integrated into a larger game.
you can have a good combat system without stacking
My bad, I wanted to say that you can have a good combat system with stacking (and not 1 UPT) and without combat minigame.you can have a good combat system without stacking
You say this and then post an image from Operational Art of War demonstrating how the combat system works and that stacking is a huge part of it.
I totally agree though that you don't need to jump into a tactical minigame to have interesting tactical choices.
Btw, I was actually right about this - agents on the analytics board just link the clues together for you, sparing you the work if you want. Seems dumb at first, but if the amount of files and clues keep growing, the feature could be a good idea in late game. Who knows.By the way, what agents assigned to "analytics" do again? I thought they did the clues linking for you that doesn't seem to be the case.
Get troubleshooter instead, wombat is better and it feels a lot less repetitive.its 8 euros in steam, worth it?
This seems to have been "fully" released now... Is it good?Get troubleshooter instead, wombat is better and it feels a lot less repetitive.its 8 euros in steam, worth it?
The publisher currently using their name to push shovelware on steam?after studio imploded, who is earning money of it?
Blech. I would be happy to see the devs make some more $ off of this but I'm sure this is 100% the publisher.