A couple things that particularly stood out after a few hours of play:
1 - The viewscreen flaking out after using the zoom / targeting functionality. Simply taking shots is fine, but if you take an aimed shot, it seems like edge scrolling stops working. It’s fixed by clicking the left mouse button. I’ve also noticed some awkwardness occasionally when zooming in on an enemy - the targeting reticule will just drift away from the target until you click somewhere.
2 - The mouse scroll wheel is the only way to do several things in the game. This would be fine if the game recognized two finger / edge scrolling on a touchpad, but it doesn’t. As this is quite likely a minority case and not likely to be addressed, a keyboard option for these functions would be appreciated.
Inventory system is currently rather limited. I submitted a bug where it wouldn’t let me even pick up a cross-class weapon, but I’d be rather bummed if I wasn’t able to use it in the final game. My heavy gunner always seems to get an arm injury, and he’s unable to toss his fully loaded machine gun to a rifleman who’s run empty. Would be nice to toss the injured heavy the sniper’s pistol as well.
4 Also related to the inventory system, it’s rather difficult to tell if things on the ground are pickup-able. I spent a half dozen turns trying to grab an alien machine gun or trying to find my dead rifleman’s gun/grenade with very little luck. A highlighting system (possibly even a hold to highlight functionality like in the dragon age series) would be a nice eventual addition.
That said, I’m seeing a solid base of a game here, and I’m super excited to see more.
For your point 4. I think crabmen parts are pickup-able but not yet usable and it seems that you can’t yet pickup things on your dead soldiers.
For point 3. You should be able to exchange your weapons. I gave my sniper pistol to my assault who run out of ammo’s and it works.
Crabmen parts, or at least their rifles are definitely able to be picked up, and technically also used, however right now they cause weird animation glitches for human characters and might end up shooting their user rather than the intended target.
I once found a sniper rifle in a crate and picked it up with my heavy. He could shoot with it just fine. I don’t know why your assault couldn’t use a machine gun if my heavy could use a sniper rifle.
There are no error messages for being out of TUs, the interaction simply doesn’t work then – as always, this is a pre-alpha build, so no polish has been applied at this stage yet, this might well be a symptom of that.
Honestly, I am kinda lost in this mission. How are we expected to defeat so many enemies with such limited ammo? If there is a way to refill ammo, I was not able to find it…
The aiming is another thing I do not understand. Where are the % chances to hit? It seems just random whether I or the crabmen can hit each other, regardless of cover. I can aim for body parts but it just shows how much HP damage that does to the enemy, not my chances to hit.
Also some of my soldiers can shoot multiple times it seems, or even shoot back when fired upon - in fact some enemies shoot at my soldiers when I shoot at ANOTHER enemy. It is really confusing. I know this is not a tutorial mission but a demo, but some explanation would be nice.
I only noticed there is some civilian guy in a green hazmat suit there when the crabs killed him, and then the Queen entered and I was done for…
Also, are grenades just for show? I threw one at a building, expecting to blow up the wall at least, but it did nothing…
@BBShockwave Can I just ask, have you read the game guide included with the Backer Build? It actually explains a lot of these mechanics and behaviours.
I tried again (making sure I had enough tu remaining) and it worked. So I’m assuming that was the problem.
I’ve had grenades work, although I did manage to blow myself up with one, which I don’t think I’ve seen since long war 1 (where it had the enemy highlighted, but it instead blew up at my feet)
Yeah, I read some of it, especially how time units work and aiming, but it did not say anything about to hit chances, just the physical aspect.
As for ammo, the guide mentioned crates but I have not yet noticed where they would be amongst all the building-outcroppings. Does your cursor turn different when you go over the crates, etc? I actually tried picking up weapons from the dead bodies of soldiers lying around (must say the graphics are awesome and the level design is amazing), but that did not work.
Ah thanks, I will retry the mission today anyway, will keep an eye out.
Quick question, so far there does not seem to be a menu system - no save or load or even exit to main screen but that’s understandable for a pre-alpha. I just wanna know whether there will be a save system… the reason I stopped playing Mordheim was that it was no fun building up your soldiers only to see them die or get crippled due to random number god and nothing to prevent it with.
My (rather random and chaotic) thoughts after short time playing:
I assume that this game is so easy because of very basic AI, and that will change ? Because I beat my first mission very easily, loosing one soldier, just because I forgot I have medpacs and can use them to regenerate HP of my soldiers.
Shooting around the corner… So many times I had the perfect position (or so i thought) to kill a crabman, just to see just a wall when lining the shot. Soldiers should lean out when I take the shot. Contextually when I stan near a corner and with control when there are two sides one can shoot from.
First thing in the second backers build (at least for me) should be implementing soldier customization (class, loadout and potential skills) before mission. I would kill for a 4 snipers playthrough, or steamrolling through crabs with 4 heavies. This would also allow to test for overpowered combos and removing them (good example would be 4 heavies, because the one I have in my team is an unstopable machine of death).
Please for backers build 2 - class that can heal injured body parts. What is hit is mostly random and having bad luck on forst few turns can mean 4 soldiers with red hands and loosing ability to use weapons.
I know that’s an X-COM user complaint but it would be really great if the most important action in a turn (attacking) would be under numer 1 on keyboard, instead of almost least important - ending turn. Also little numers under actions would help. It would be great to know what key to press to use any action. That’s one of the things that I think Phoenix Point should adapt from X-COM.
My sniper got hit and his sniper rifle took a bullet and shattered. GREAT ! That was amazing storywise, I imagined he had this rifle for a long time, he maintained it, cleaned it, it was his most dear possesion, and it “died” taking a bullet that would kill the sniper. That was one of the greatest climatic moments for me. Little things like that really make my day.
Maybe for backers build update we could at least get some options to set numer of enemies on a map ? I really would like to test scenarios with 2 times the normal number of enemies. Or only ranged enemies, or only melee. This is similiar to point number 3 - even if it doesn’t make much sense full game wise, it gives more options to test different things, and more ways to potentially “brake” the game. And every time someone reports that kind of “breaking” devs can prevent that in the future.
