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

[ArchAngel]

I managed to read that somehow by highlighting the red text. It was irritating.. but what was more irritating that at start when he talks about other games that use cooldown systems and cannot find one that works well for TB games nobody tells him to check out UNDERRAIL!!

 

[Alienman]

The Lovecraftian term used in most versions of the Cthulhu RPG is 'sanity' and the stat was used to represent the gradual unravelling of a person as they witnessed events of eldritch horror. Now, we can't use that. term as its connotations are pretty offensive

What?

 

[PanteraNera]

If you use that dark red font on a dark blue background again, I will hunt you, find you, and rape kill you.

Sorry fixed it.

 

[Israfael]

People and their irresistible need to have AWESUMBUTTONS... Why even bother with the problem if there would be inventory and non-infinite ammo that would probably cost money/resources to make? nuXcom needed cooldowns and other crutches like overwatch because it lacked the granularity that allowed the old game to do the same things with reaction fire / toon stats and inventory / mass management systems. No reason to use crutches if there are TUs in the game.

 

[Big Wrangle]

The Lovecraftian term used in most versions of the Cthulhu RPG is 'sanity' and the stat was used to represent the gradual unravelling of a person as they witnessed events of eldritch horror. Now, we can't use that. term as its connotations are pretty offensive

What?

I guess it is offensive in the sense that the people somehow become asylum-material because they saw an alien and found out evolution is a thing.

 

[Stavrophore]

There is a reaction fire, but will there be something like new interrupt system from JA 2 1.13 or Xenonauts?

 

[mwnn85]

Hopefully we might get an item to repair limb damage in the next build.
Perhaps alter the medikit to heal and partially fix limb damage? (i.e. from red condition to orange (max) during a battle)

At the moment a soldier with a dead arm can still chuck a grenade but can't fire their main weapon.
I'd remove the will cost for using the medikit item as well.

Those crabmen with shields + gun (tanks) are a real nuisance. The plain gunner variant is a glass cannon. The melee variant seems a bit dim - quite easy to outmanoeuvre it.
I can't wait to see all the combinations that will be possible once more stuff gets added.

 

[ArchAngel]

Hopefully we might get an item to repair limb damage in the next build.
Perhaps alter the medikit to heal and partially fix limb damage? (i.e. from red condition to orange (max) during a battle)

At the moment a soldier with a dead arm can still chuck a grenade but can't fire their main weapon.
I'd remove the will cost for using the medikit item as well.

Those crabmen with shields + gun (tanks) are a real nuisance. The melee variants are a bit dim.
I can't wait to see all the combinations that will be possible once more stuff gets added.

Try to give them a pistol, maybe that works with one hand. And I don't think game should allow you to heal broken and lost limbs during combat.

 

[mwnn85]

I believe the pistol does work with one hand but it all depends on whether you can find one.
All units should probably be armed with one by default as a backup weapon.
Don't really like the pistol ability; makes a mockery of time units/action points.

I'd normally agree that limb damage shouldn't be fixable with a magical item.
But if we're going into combat with only four units and one or two pick up an early arm injury, the battle can essentially be over in the opening turn(s)
I'm not sure if Gallop intends the soldiers to be quite as disposable as the ones in EU/TFTD.

IIRC in xcom (or xenonauts?) a medikit can never heal a soldier fully as either their maximum health gets lowered when hit and/or the medikit heals only a portion of the received damage.
I do remember using them to remove wounds.

 

[luinthoron]

Hopefully we might get an item to repair limb damage in the next build.

They should be able to get the Technician class that didn't make it into the demo and Backer Build 1 finished by then, it was supposed to be able to do this.

I believe the pistol does work with one hand but it all depends on whether you can find one.
All units should probably be armed with one by default as a backup weapon.

One thing I've learned from playing the Backer Build is definitely to have all soldiers in the final game carry a pistol as a backup weapon in case of limb damage.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

I noticed multiple streamers asking if it is possible to turn off Return Fire so their troopers don't waste ammo.

Well, he said in his gameplay video that it would be a toggle, but I'm guessing it's only for your own troops. Suicide by alien will still be a thing

To be honest I would like to see system where workings of said toggle would use a check against unit's stat to see if fire discipline will be held.

 

[Israfael]

It was solved in a very simple way in the Pocket UFO - you can see that there's 4 toggles on the right side of the plasma gun which determined the Alien-Turn behaviour of your toon - it automatically reserved neccessary TUs for auto/snap or aimed shots and did not let you move further if TU pool would fall lower than allocated amount. Shame this game was never ported to Android, it's orders of magnitude better than anything that is there now.

 

[Citizen]

It was solved in a very simple way in the Pocket UFO - you can see that there's 4 toggles on the right side of the plasma gun which determined the Alien-Turn behaviour of your toon - it automatically reserved neccessary TUs for auto/snap or aimed shots and did not let you move further if TU pool would fall lower than allocated amount. Shame this game was never ported to Android, it's orders of magnitude better than anything that is there now.

Not sure if serious...

The only problem I remember with these toggles - they reserved TUs for a shot, but not for rotation. So you can move a soldier in a position only to realise that you don't have enough TUs to face your target before shooting. I'd add a simple slider on which player would manually choose how many TUs he's going to reserve.

 

[Israfael]

Not sure if serious...

Those buttons did not work, as far as I remember - you could still move and it'd go below the allocated TU. But whatever, it might have worked in the legit versions of UFO:EU and TFTD

 

[mwnn85]

I'd quite like it if we had more control with overwatch.

I find it incredibly annoying when you get soldiers who "overkill" an enemy unit in overwatch or fire at something unimportant/distant with a low hit chance and leave a dangerous close unit untouched due to unit turn order.
Phantom Doctrine allows you to pick from circular overwatch or area/cone overwatch - I believe you can overwatch specific targets as well.
Better still would be to restore player control to a friendly unit when it's overwatch state is triggered by the enemy - then we could choose to fire or save the overwatch attack for later in the round.

This doesn't bother me in classic xcom as reaction fire is dependant on the reaction stat and time units.
It's only a problem in xcom (2012) and similar games.

On an unrelated note - I've been playing Piratez recently and I'd like to have the ability to not do any overwatch fire at all but I don't see any toggle for this.
Most of the early guns have small clips plus there's limited carrying capacity so I can't waste bullets on low hit chance shots. Is that even possible in openXCOM?

 

[ArchAngel]

I'd quite like it if we had more control with overwatch.

I find it incredibly annoying when you get soldiers who "overkill" an enemy unit in overwatch or fire at something unimportant/distant with a low hit chance and leave a dangerous close unit untouched due to unit turn order.
Phantom Doctrine allows you to pick from circular overwatch or area/cone overwatch - I believe you can overwatch specific targets as well.
Better still would be to restore player control to a friendly unit when it's overwatch state is triggered by the enemy - then we could choose to fire or save the overwatch attack for later in the round.

This doesn't bother me in classic xcom as reaction fire is dependant on the reaction stat and time units.
It's only a problem in xcom (2012) and similar games.

On an unrelated note - I've been playing Piratez recently and I'd like to have the ability to not do any overwatch fire at all but I don't see any toggle for this.
Most of the early guns have small clips plus there's limited carrying capacity so I can't waste bullets on low hit chance shots. Is that even possible in openXCOM?

Don't leave any TU unspent and they cannot shoot back.

 

[mwnn85]

Don't leave any TU unspent and they cannot shoot back.

Simple as that, eh?

I'm normally using cattle prods, attacking at night and being sneaky in the early game. I don't like to give my position away by firing random shots but sometimes I've equipped a gun in my off hand.

A bit different than in the XcomFiles where I'd prefer them to fire at certain targets.
The starting guns aren't great and some of those enemies love to swarm you like those giant beatles/spiders/insects (?)
The agents just burn through the clips.

You tend to use laser weapons for quite some time in the original games so I never cared how many reaction shots they fired - the more the merrier.

 

[luinthoron]

Not sure if serious...

Those buttons did not work, as far as I remember - you could still move and it'd go below the allocated TU. But whatever, it might have worked in the legit versions of UFO:EU and TFTD

Never had a problem with them myself, but yes, as Circuit pointed out and I've mentioned here earlier as well, the problem was that turning towards the enemy took additional TU before shooting. I usually simply used the toggle with the next highest TU allocation if I really needed to make sure I didn't move too far, possibly switching back and taking a few extra steps if the TUs allowed after that.

 

[PanteraNera]

BREAKING NEWS: THE WAR IS WON; RPGCODEX VICTORIOUS!​

Fellow Codexers, I have gone deep undercover and infiltrated Snapshot Games to influence them to bring us the incline we deserve and make sure that we are heard! To not reveal my identity I was not able to reveal what information I had gathered and needed to stay quiet here. So with no further delay let me leak a screenshot of the current state of the game:

• The ugly, unnecessary 3D AAA graphics are gone! Instead we get what we really want, awesome pixel-art! Keep in mind this is still very early pre-alpha. Nowhere near final.
  
  
  
  
  
• That is also the reason why Backer Build Two will be released early July as they have to completely rework the game.
  
  
• Also this means that the dreaded first-person-shooting is gone. Instead we get something similar to what we had in Fallout 1 & 2!
  Here is a in-game shot from the old engine:
  

Stay tuned for more exciting news in the near feature!

 

[Israfael]

Considering the wild swings we've already seen, I'm not entirely sure you are joking

 

[ArchAngel]

That low resolution screenshot looks better than normal game :D

 

[PanteraNera]

Instead of fake news, have a fresh image from discord:

PP (Phoenix Project=player faction) Assault class

Also I hid some real news in my fake-post above, Backer Build Two is scheduled for early July.
On a side-note the pixelated screen shot is in fact semi-official JohnAtanasov did it (one of the devs) as I knew he did pixel art before I requested him to make a image that makes PP look like UFO:EU (also Fallout is one of his favorite games ).

 

[ArchAngel]

Tell them to put it as an optional thing like PoE had Big head mode.