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

[Parabalus]

Good tip for the early game is using bash with heavy weapons. It got nerfed but still often better than shooting (especially the worms etc.) Melee is very good throughout the game, often better than shooting.

Second is to steal aircraft, especially the Synedrion Helios.

If you played XCOM on Legend/Impossible you should comfortably start on Hero.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

third is to never do scavenge missions because the rewards aren't worth it and it causes enemies to mutate super fast for some reason

 

[ArchAngel]

third is to never do scavenge missions because the rewards aren't worth it and it causes enemies to mutate super fast for some reason

You didn't play for a long time. They buffed scavenge missions and nerfed evolutions in meantime. Also you can fight other enemies there, not just pandorans so it has 0 effect on their evolution speed. Also it is one of the easiest mission in week 1 to level up your guys.

 

[Jaedar]

Second is to steal aircraft, especially the Synedrion Helios.

Yeah. Steal many of them, and have them cruise the world in pairs. This way you get to field the maximum squad size (8), while also moving at maximum speed (iirc twice as fast as the second fastest option). The interface support for this is pretty fiddly though, but it's clearly an intended mechanic.

third is to never do scavenge missions because the rewards aren't worth it and it causes enemies to mutate super fast for some reason

When I played you could get lots of resources from these (and occasionally a good weapon from a faction), and they're very easy. Aside from "save lost soldier" missions, they're the best missions you can get, and they become better than lost soldiers as you reach the midgame.

My understanding is that now aliens mutate at a fixed pace, depending only on time, but I may be wrong.

 

[ArchAngel]

My understanding is that now aliens mutate at a fixed pace, depending only on time, but I may be wrong.

it is not fixed but slowed down.

 

[udm]

Is there even any comparable game with PP's aiming system?

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...rcenary-company-striving-for-survival.129795/

Better, if you ask me, since you can peek, sidestep, and all that jazz.

 

[gurugeorge]

Is there even any comparable game with PP's aiming system?

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...rcenary-company-striving-for-survival.129795/

Better, if you ask me, since you can peek, sidestep, and all that jazz.

That looks cool, and because I like this system I've wishlisted it.

But I think the big problem for this type of system is headshots. How do you make a game with all-human protagonists where a headshot isn't (nearly) an instant kill every time? Or at the very least severely incapacitating and putting-out-of-commission?

It's ok with a game like this where you're playing against aliens, cyborgs and mutants, who knows what the hell their heads are like? But it's jarring right from the start with humans in this game when you can't headshot bandits ferchrissakes

 

[Parabalus]

So what's the point of even having DLC2 (Festering Skies) enabled? Outside of the fun of course.

All the others reward you, this one gives zilch outside of the air combat, even after killing the Behemoth. Looking at the wiki there's only

There are less haven defense missions.

 

[ArchAngel]

So what's the point of even having DLC2 (Festering Skies) enabled? Outside of the fun of course.

All the others reward you, this one gives zilch outside of the air combat, even after killing the Behemoth. Looking at the wiki there's only

There are less haven defense missions.

You get a lot of resources and reputation by fighting them over Havens.

 

[lightbane]

How do you make a game with all-human protagonists where a headshot isn't (nearly) an instant kill every time? Or at the very least severely incapacitating and putting-out-of-commission?

Depending on the tech level, helmets help. Or you could make the enemies duck or move head away to take glancing shots so that it's not instant kill. If freaky cybernetics are allowed, then stuff like having a metal skull works wonders. Or having a secondary brain hidden in the torso if the target is crazy enough.

 

[Parabalus]

So what's the point of even having DLC2 (Festering Skies) enabled? Outside of the fun of course.

All the others reward you, this one gives zilch outside of the air combat, even after killing the Behemoth. Looking at the wiki there's only

There are less haven defense missions.

You get a lot of resources and reputation by fighting them over Havens.

But you have to spend on the aircraft and modules, and the behemoth kills havens, reducing trading and discovery opportunities.

 

[ArchAngel]

So what's the point of even having DLC2 (Festering Skies) enabled? Outside of the fun of course.

All the others reward you, this one gives zilch outside of the air combat, even after killing the Behemoth. Looking at the wiki there's only

There are less haven defense missions.

You get a lot of resources and reputation by fighting them over Havens.

But you have to spend on the aircraft and modules, and the behemoth kills >20 havens, reducing trading and discovery opportunities.

Not that much. And you get modules from fights. Behemoth does not always kill havens, it can also just damage them or infest them. And by taking down flyers and getting rewards you also stop Behemoth roaming and send it back to the sea.

 

[Parabalus]

So what's the point of even having DLC2 (Festering Skies) enabled? Outside of the fun of course.

All the others reward you, this one gives zilch outside of the air combat, even after killing the Behemoth. Looking at the wiki there's only

There are less haven defense missions.

You get a lot of resources and reputation by fighting them over Havens.

But you have to spend on the aircraft and modules, and the behemoth kills >20 havens, reducing trading and discovery opportunities.

Not that much. And you get modules from fights. Behemoth does not always kill havens, it can also just damage them or infest them. And by taking down flyers and getting rewards you also stop Behemoth roaming and send it back to the sea.

Do you have have the numbers to compare resource income with/without the DLC?

 

[ArchAngel]

So what's the point of even having DLC2 (Festering Skies) enabled? Outside of the fun of course.

All the others reward you, this one gives zilch outside of the air combat, even after killing the Behemoth. Looking at the wiki there's only

There are less haven defense missions.

You get a lot of resources and reputation by fighting them over Havens.

But you have to spend on the aircraft and modules, and the behemoth kills >20 havens, reducing trading and discovery opportunities.

Not that much. And you get modules from fights. Behemoth does not always kill havens, it can also just damage them or infest them. And by taking down flyers and getting rewards you also stop Behemoth roaming and send it back to the sea.

Do you have have the numbers to compare resource income with/without the DLC?

No lol, why would I want to do that kind of statistics. But I played it a few times now and overall you get more than you spend. Also new enemy and missions are fun.

 

[spectre]

How do you make a game with all-human protagonists where a headshot isn't (nearly) an instant kill every time? Or at the very least severely incapacitating and putting-out-of-commission?

Depending on the tech level, helmets help. Or you could make the enemies duck or move head away to take glancing shots so that it's not instant kill. If freaky cybernetics are allowed, then stuff like having a metal skull works wonders. Or having a secondary brain hidden in the torso if the target is crazy enough.

He was speaking in the context of manual aim, where you can pretty much target the head all the time you want; heck, even go hit the face/eyes if the damage model is that detailed. Even if the target is behind, a lot of the time the head might be exposed
(or in fact be the only thing that's exposed). I think it's a good question, and a lot of the games just devolve into headshots galore after the initial to-hit problems are solved (e.g. the notorious case of Fallout, but even Jagged Alliance 2 wasn't free of this problem once you got your hand on some scopes). Not sure if it's worth going out of your way to try and solve this, with a sorta-realistic approach to firefights, every hit from a rifle cartridge should be enough to ruin one's day, even if it doesn't penetrate body armor, it should send the recipient to the ground.
Granted, body armor might have turned a lethal wound into a bruise, but that still puts you out of the fight. Bottom line is, awareness, positioning and who hot first should be the decisive factor instead of the ability to tank hits.

Still, it's not desirable for headshot to be the default move everytime, but I think it's a matter of fudging the numbers on the to-hit chances, so that it becomes a gamble and that center-of-mass shot continues to be the preferred safe bet,
nevermind quicker to line up. I think it can be made to work even with PP's targeting system - the head will always be a small target, too small to be covered by the entire targeting reticle. I think this is how PP implements in currently,
a lot of the time the default shot placement will already give you optimal damage output, so might as well save yourself the time.
This leaves two problems to solve, burst fire and close range shots. It is arguable if burst fire should even be targetable at all (while it's not inconceivable to do so, might be undesirable for balance),
even then, it might be less of an issue because if you want to saturate something with lead, center of mass gives you higher chance to hit, unless we're talking suppressive fire.
On the other hand, CQB is the natural environment where I would expect intentional (or accidental) headshots to happen a lot more, so it might be so there isn't anything to fix here as long
as engagement ranges are kept realistic (a lot of games and media in general tend to have shootouts happening at too short distances) and reaction time is emphasized over precision. This can be hard to pull off believably in turn based,
but RTwP can similate it rather nicely (see: 7.62 High Caliber and UFO After___). I love turn based with all my heart,
but I have to concede that it has its limitations when it comes to realistic firefight simulation.

 

[Jaedar]

So what's the point of even having DLC2 (Festering Skies) enabled? Outside of the fun of course.

I have a strong suspicion that the game is best played without any of the dlc enabled. Living weapons is decent enough I suppose, but I dislike ancients and cybernetics and I have a really hard time believing that adding an air game would make the game better. Is festering skies actually more fun? Either way I'm not going to pay 8 euro for it.

 

[Parabalus]

So what's the point of even having DLC2 (Festering Skies) enabled? Outside of the fun of course.

I have a strong suspicion that the game is best played without any of the dlc enabled. Living weapons is decent enough I suppose, but I dislike ancients and cybernetics and I have a really hard time believing that adding an air game would make the game better. Is festering skies actually more fun? Either way I'm not going to pay 8 euro for it.

It def is fun and worth enabling, I wouldn't play without it (or any other DLC). There's some thought to taking down the later ships.

But unlike the previous DLC, this one seems to be made up of all negative additions, like it really should have part of the base game.

Still, it's not desirable for headshot to be the default move everytime,

This def isn't the case in PP, even against humans, who are fucked up by arm shots much more.

 

[spectre]

I agree, though you're quoting me out of context, it was a more general statement re: to a more general discussion.

So what's the point of even having DLC2 (Festering Skies) enabled? Outside of the fun of course.

I have a strong suspicion that the game is best played without any of the dlc enabled. Living weapons is decent enough I suppose, but I dislike ancients and cybernetics and I have a really hard time believing that adding an air game would make the game better. Is festering skies actually more fun? Either way I'm not going to pay 8 euro for it.

I would most definitely play the first game without the DLC, there's a bit to take on, and you don't need the additional clutter before you get your bearings.
I'm on the fence about Festering Skies as well, perhaps I just need some more experience with it to see how does it all fit together, but it did feel tacked onto the base gameplay.
Still, an UFO-like game really feels wrong without some sort of aerial combat and this DLC also adds myrmidons (the melee mantis thingie). While these are not exactly Cryssalids,
I'd be sad to see them gone from the game.

 

[Jaedar]

I'm on the fence about Festering Skies as well, perhaps I just need some more experience with it to see how does it all fit together, but it did feel tacked onto the base gameplay.

Imo having fighter jets will always feel tacked on until I can order tactical missile strikes during combat.

 

[spectre]

Yeah, or why suffer an alien base on the ground when you can simply blow it all to hell with a bunch of bunker busters. Or slap some miniguns on your transport ship and clear the LZ,
no more reaction fire fuckery. But as a matter of fact, I was referring to something more straightforward.

The most barebones UFO gameplay, what you do from the very beginning goes something like this - radar picks uf a craft => you intercept the craft => ground mission is generated. And this is basically what you keep doing for the rest of the game.
There is some nuance to it, arguably barely enough: e.g. like only two weapons are really viable and the second one pretty much trivializes the pursuit minigame, but it is connected to the rest of the game (for starters, being the main source of ground missions):
you can observe flight patterns and draw conclusions as to alien base locations, milk supply ships as they land, and later on when you're all set up with hyperwave decoders, you can decide to "allow" aliens to succeed with some missions, etc., etc.
So, what I'm saying is, if this entire algorithm was not in the game from the start and in fact it can be pulled out on a whim by enabling/disabling a DLC, there will be a disjoint between air combat and the rest of the game on some fundamental level.

 

[ArchAngel]

Yeah, or why suffer an alien base on the ground when you can simply blow it all to hell with a bunch of bunker busters. Or slap some miniguns on your transport ship and clear the LZ,
no more reaction fire fuckery. But as a matter of fact, I was referring to something more straightforward.

Laughs in Taliban..

 

[gurugeorge]

How do you make a game with all-human protagonists where a headshot isn't (nearly) an instant kill every time? Or at the very least severely incapacitating and putting-out-of-commission?

Depending on the tech level, helmets help. Or you could make the enemies duck or move head away to take glancing shots so that it's not instant kill. If freaky cybernetics are allowed, then stuff like having a metal skull works wonders. Or having a secondary brain hidden in the torso if the target is crazy enough.

He was speaking in the context of manual aim, where you can pretty much target the head all the time you want; heck, even go hit the face/eyes if the damage model is that detailed. Even if the target is behind, a lot of the time the head might be exposed
(or in fact be the only thing that's exposed). I think it's a good question, and a lot of the games just devolve into headshots galore after the initial to-hit problems are solved (e.g. the notorious case of Fallout, but even Jagged Alliance 2 wasn't free of this problem once you got your hand on some scopes). Not sure if it's worth going out of your way to try and solve this, with a sorta-realistic approach to firefights, every hit from a rifle cartridge should be enough to ruin one's day, even if it doesn't penetrate body armor, it should send the recipient to the ground.
Granted, body armor might have turned a lethal wound into a bruise, but that still puts you out of the fight. Bottom line is, awareness, positioning and who hot first should be the decisive factor instead of the ability to tank hits.

Still, it's not desirable for headshot to be the default move everytime, but I think it's a matter of fudging the numbers on the to-hit chances, so that it becomes a gamble and that center-of-mass shot continues to be the preferred safe bet,
nevermind quicker to line up. I think it can be made to work even with PP's targeting system - the head will always be a small target, too small to be covered by the entire targeting reticle. I think this is how PP implements in currently,
a lot of the time the default shot placement will already give you optimal damage output, so might as well save yourself the time.
This leaves two problems to solve, burst fire and close range shots. It is arguable if burst fire should even be targetable at all (while it's not inconceivable to do so, might be undesirable for balance),
even then, it might be less of an issue because if you want to saturate something with lead, center of mass gives you higher chance to hit, unless we're talking suppressive fire.
On the other hand, CQB is the natural environment where I would expect intentional (or accidental) headshots to happen a lot more, so it might be so there isn't anything to fix here as long
as engagement ranges are kept realistic (a lot of games and media in general tend to have shootouts happening at too short distances) and reaction time is emphasized over precision. This can be hard to pull off believably in turn based,
but RTwP can similate it rather nicely (see: 7.62 High Caliber and UFO After___). I love turn based with all my heart,
but I have to concede that it has its limitations when it comes to realistic firefight simulation.

Thinking further about it, the "headshot problem" does seem to be unique to videogames. It's not like you get a lot of headshots IRL, so presumably if the system is set up to be simulationist it's going to mimic that rarity.

How about this: the targeting "circles" wax or wane depending on whether you're aiming for center mass or aiming for an appendage or head? And they wax less the more accuracy you have, and wax least for snipers?

 

[spectre]

Thinking further about it, the "headshot problem" does seem to be unique to videogames. It's not like you get a lot of headshots IRL, so presumably if the system is set up to be simulationist it's going to mimic that rarity.
How about this: the targeting "circles" wax or wane depending on whether you're aiming for center mass or aiming for an appendage or head? And they wax less the more accuracy you have, and wax least for snipers?

Well, the system theoretically has all the tools to represent it well. I think the bare minimum for aiming for center mass being a viable default is to represent weapon accuracy (and inherent inaccuracy) as some form of minutes of angle
and give the bullet a chance something else on a miss. It's already miles ahead in terms of realism compared to the straight up to-hit penalty for various body parts.
However, the majority of the problem is about the difficulty of hitting a moving target, and turn based already does a poor job at representing this (remember when people whined about 65% point-blank hit chance in EXCUM?).
I'd argue that PP already does it better than a whole bunch of other games, because its realistic bullet trajectory means the thing you want to aim for might just be momentarily obstructed due to the stage of the animation and firing angle.

A possible interesting bit of trivia, it seems vidya has been training people to aim for headshots and expect to get them. Not sure if it's been a problem for law enforcement and military training,
but the article seems to suggest that it may be the case:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ab.21794
If so, the headshot fetish seems to be largely a videogame thing. There is one technique I know of called the Mozambique Drill, which recognizes that headshots are the definite way to make sure target stays down,
but even then making that shot depends on first landing two torso shots to bring the target to a stop.

 

[gurugeorge]

Thinking further about it, the "headshot problem" does seem to be unique to videogames. It's not like you get a lot of headshots IRL, so presumably if the system is set up to be simulationist it's going to mimic that rarity.
How about this: the targeting "circles" wax or wane depending on whether you're aiming for center mass or aiming for an appendage or head? And they wax less the more accuracy you have, and wax least for snipers?

Well, the system theoretically has all the tools to represent it well. I think the bare minimum for aiming for center mass being a viable default is to represent weapon accuracy (and inherent inaccuracy) as some form of minutes of angle
and give the bullet a chance something else on a miss. It's already miles ahead in terms of realism compared to the straight up to-hit penalty for various body parts.
However, the majority of the problem is about the difficulty of hitting a moving target, and turn based already does a poor job at representing this (remember when people whined about 65% point-blank hit chance in EXCUM?).
I'd argue that PP already does it better than a whole bunch of other games, because its realistic bullet trajectory means the thing you want to aim for might just be momentarily obstructed due to the stage of the animation and firing angle.

A possible interesting bit of trivia, it seems vidya has been training people to aim for headshots and expect to get them. Not sure if it's been a problem for law enforcement and military training,
but the article seems to suggest that it may be the case:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ab.21794
If so, the headshot fetish seems to be largely a videogame thing. There is one technique I know of called the Mozambique Drill, which recognizes that headshots are the definite way to make sure target stays down,
but even then making that shot depends on first landing two torso shots to bring the target to a stop.

I was thinking of the waxing/waning circle idea as representing shooter's skill within the system (as opposed to just the ballistics). IOW, a sniper being more accurate has a better chance of getting a headshot than a trooper, so when he aims for the head (i.e. anywhere other than center mass, which gives the ballistics the best chance), his targeting circle will wax less.

Think of it this way, as you move the targeting circle away from center mass, it grows bigger, or as you move it towards center mass it grows smaller. The degree of waxing/waning represents the shooter's notional accuracy or skill level - so a sniper's targeting circle will grow only slightly as he moves away from center mass, whereas a grunt's will wax bigger.

 

[gurugeorge]

Ha, you know how the "Golden Rule" of XCOM is "never reveal fog of war after your first move"?

I've figured out the "Golden Rule" of PP - "If your targeting circle is bigger than the mob, find a better position."