Possible number of aliens is one thing but would be nice to give players some clues when he could expect boss on the mission, especially when bosses that big and powerful could easily change the balance and nature of any mission.
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Unless its appearance automatically decreases the number of normal enemies.
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I agree that, particularly with no planning or strategic layer, the backer build’s difficulty is steep.
I don’t necessarily agree with the idea of limiting enemy reaction fire. The UI gives you visibility indicators to help your manage how much reaction fire your soldiers eat.
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Yep, you could get stronger radars to provide info about the ships. I used to love the Very Small scout ships. You could easily pulverize them with an Avalanche missile launcher. Instant gratification! Later on, I’d equip all my fighter planes with Plasma Cannons and watch them wreak havoc. Even so, it did pay to use a cautious approach to UFOs so you could keep the UFO Power Source intact for extraction. In Terror from the deep, things got really hairy. Those Cruise Ship terror missions with Lobstermen were the stuff of nightmares. I never actually managed to beat Terror From the Deep as a kid, but I watched my dad play and finish it 
Good times, good times
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It was definitely scary back then. And the worst nightmare: Tentaculat!
In terms of power and toughness almost every alien from TFTD surpassed their predecessors.
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The pre alpha is not too difficult… I think people stating this fail to see it is a tactical game and not some kind of gun ho genre. My main problem was getting through a session without having the game crash. I am a UFO enemy unknown veteran, I have played most UFO & XCOM games out there. I was able to finish the pre alpha first time around. My heavy and one assault were not injured, my other assault had lost an arm and was running around kiting the queen and chucking grenades and my sniper was stuck in an in between floor in the tower with no way to get out. An enemy had shot the top floor under his feet earlier. I shot a hole in one of the walls with his pistol and went on to take pot shots on the queen with the sniper rifle. All survived in the end. Here are a few suggestions after my full playthrough:
- Crabmen are pretty useless when disarmed, you could give them a shield bash attack with low damage and maybe a knockback.
- The queen is not too powerful but the building autodestruct is overwhelming, maybe consider a more realistic building hit point system (eg. More resistance for concrete walls)
- You need to create better paths within buildings so characters don’t get stuck
- I would like to see the final product have an atmosphere closer to ufo aftermath. Animated elements in the environment, spookier feel.
I understand we are a long way from a finished product and you might have even plans to implement some of the suggestions. I am just providing food for thought.
Thank you for your efforts and keep up the good work
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Brain leech? #brainleechconfirmed?
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- Walls could have certain number of hitpoints (but hidden) so queen or other bigger units would have to destroy it first with its weapon to get further access into the bulding.
They still could go through buildings but more effort (and APs) would be needed to do this. Buildings are supposed to be physical obstacles after all, not some cardboard boxes.
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Ye… ) Imagine that in Firaxis Xcoms. Bam! And your uber mighty colonel is gone. )))
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FiraXcom chryssalids remain lethal for a while in Impossible mode, considering that they have +2 dmg and your troops start with less HP. Anything below captain and not wearing some form of power armor won’t enjoy getting a Chryssalid kiss. In practice, most players surviving the first 2 months will still win the game though, thanks to the stupidity of the reverse difficulty curve.
That said, tentaculats are still my second least favorite thing in XCOM, the first one being the entropy launcher. These things gave me nightmares and I honestly think M. Gollop has to make Phoenix Point perfect to atone for this monstrosity!
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Tentaculats were such BS when they would hide in a cutout and then zap you from behind. Or when they would fly down over a ledge. Entropy Launchers I liked but yet hated. There should have been a reasonable way to counter them that wasn’t “don’t get hit without a disruptor shield” or pausing the game just before impact and then clicking forward + activating prone position (this would throw your character down and if timed right the pod wouldn’t dive into you but instead just circle overhead until it timed out or hit a wall given the massive turn radius).
When playing on turn-based mode the Entropy Launcher was a pile of pure BS though. Can’t do the pause+prone trick, often no time to drop your gear before it disintegrates/explodes, nothing but to pray you have a disruptor shield to absorb it fully.
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this happens because of the silly xcom copy/paste gameplay… the damage/hp model depends more on math than tactical skills
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@Butcher to me it sounds like what you want is a free camera mode so you can explore without danger. Sorry to put it this way, but this build is only intended to give a small feel of how the game plays so backers can see how the game development is progressing. There is no balance, many core mechanics are not implemented yet, and the ones that are still need to be polished. This isn’t a full game for our enjoyment. This isn’t even early access, but a small demo. Let’s treat it like that.
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@Madxav Sorry to put it this way, but I didn’t want free camera mode or danger-free exploration. How boring! I would like to have the demo that J played. My comment about being disappointed refers to the fact that has been brought up by others… lack of ammo and playability. My comment about being hopeful refers to understanding this was something they gave to us as a reward for our support with the outlook of more being released, given to us to explore and test, and listening to our feedback to make an incredible game. I am hungry for more!!!
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Yeah. Those ones. Scary stuff. -____-’
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EDIT: I wrote this days ago, but apparently on the first day of joining the forum severely limits how much you can post. So apologies if things might have changed since then or have been explained.
I have to agree with the original poster. I advanced slowly on my second try, reserving the sniper ammo, and using recover to restore will points, and I nicely cleaned out at least 4-5 advancing crabmen. Then I got to the middle of the map, found 3-4 crates in the distance, everything was OK. I started to spread out so 2 of my men would go grab the crate, the others to investigate that “office” like building.
Then WHAM, Queen comes out of nowhere behind me, and at least 4 crabmen - 3 with rifles - appears on the rooftops, surrounding my men and flanking them. Due to grenades and rockets being unable to blow up a thin metal wall apparently (the office building) I wasted too many actions trying to kill two crabmen, and the survivor severely wounded one of my men, and their stupid return shots (seriously, shoot ONE crabman, 3 more starts shooting from the other half of the map, what eyesight they must have!) destroyed all my cover (boxes crumble to dust from a stray shot it seems). So I spent more time scurrying for cover and could not even come close to disable the Queen’s legs (with 4 armor…? yeah) So next turn she waltzes in through the house, and one-shot kills one of my men. I used the rocket jump out of desperation to get my heavy to the crate and… it was EMPTY…
Then one of the crabmen got lucky and destroyed my sniper’s rifle from about 2 screens away. Even though I managed to kill one more, I was still left with the queen - who can easily get to soldiers who ran away to the yellow line even - and two more gun crabs. My heavy survived a wound from the Queen but had no hope, so I blew him up heroically with the rocket launcher which… did about 4 damage to the Queen? Seriously? Then my other guy panicked and I was left with my sniper, who had a pistol only. I quit at that point (though no such button exists, so alt+F4)…
I have to say the will system is good on paper, terrible in execution. In the heat of battle when you need to use special abilities, you will not have time to just sit in one place - not even more for cover - and use Recover to regain them. I think Will should be left for PSI and Morale, and they should use Stamina for this, which should say, regenerate if your soldier does not move for a turn, etc.
Get rid of the return fire, it is super confusing that my soldier and enemies alike who are OUT of time units suddenly can shoot back even when they are NOT the target. I think XCOM2 did that fine, make this a modification skill of Overwatch, and it should be activated before the turn same as that, as it is way too powerful and gives multiple free shots to enemies during out turn.
And I am really scared now about difficulty. As I understand Crabmen are the first and weakest enemy type in the game, and even they are overwhelmingly difficult. At least the old games Sectoids and Aquatoids and Gillmen were rather weak and not that accurate despite their superior technology, so even though one shot meant instant death they did not hit you unless you were careless or unlucky…
I dread to think what the more advanced enemies are like…
And yeah, the game looks gorgeous and runs super fine without errors, the zoom and rotate works nicely too. Technically, I feel the graphics and effects are great as they are - it’s the mechanics that need to be changed here.
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Points 1 and 2: You are given an opportunity to test the inventory system. That’s the main point of that. Larger magazine sizes possibly but bare in mind that this is one mission without any strategic layer or opportunity to bring another box with you.
Point 3… yep. It does hurt. You can mitigate it to a degree at the moment but a lot of people (since this is an older post now) have complained about enemy return fire. JG did say there are LOS/Detection aspects missing.
Personally I would say return fire should be granted when a target (including yourself) is attacked within a zone around you. That way you don’t have the situation of shooting a crabman point-blank and his mate (out of LOS) gets upset.
But balance is basically meaningless in this build, just an initial flavour and some bug-hunting. I think I’ve gotten enough of a taste and (to me) it feels pretty good. I’m really excited about the next update to see what’s in store 
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Sounds like you need to review your tactics and understand that RNG will mess you up sometimes no matter how well executed your plans are. That’s life, either adapt or die.
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Ok, I might have to revise my opinion now. Game number 2 - cleared with only the heavy remaining. I got lucky though — was in the trench and the queen bled to death while the last remaining gunner did not want to play. Think this was the lamest queen kill ever (not proud of myself ! )
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You can just destroy her two pincers and then effectively ignore her. Whatever soldier she ends up standing over won’t be able to move until she dies, but she currently doesn’t have any attacks without the pincers.
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