This is absolutely true, but just by looking at the sentence above, you’re looking at an “OR” scenario where you either have a full jetpack team or a full turret team. It’s easier to balance than a scenario where everybody could have a jetpack and a turret.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it can’t be done, but I believe that the more interesting balancing point is somewhere between total freedom and shoehorned classes. Something in the line of great freedom in general equipment and skills (basic weapons/armors/generic skills) with each class having its proper class exclusive gimmick and some skills that go with it, just to make sure that said gimmicks cannot be mixed and matched at will for balance and lore reason and can be powerful enough to make a difference if used properly.
Non class system would be great, but lets face the fact that classes are announced already. Maybe in the Phoenix Point sequel we can expect classless system. Let Snapshot get experience first with all their ideas and let them see what works fine or not fine.
I suppose they don’t even have full list of aliens, alien mutations and alien skills so they even don’t know what players should expect and what measures can be used to stop enemy. As Vathar said building classless system around that would be hard to balance.
And yes, you could achieve the same via other means. Weight limits, or inventory space spring immediately to mind. If OP, then make both items big and bulky so that they can only one can be carried. - And even then it could come at the expense of other alternatives.
You are assuming that taking skills or using equipment is “free”. Which is not so, especially if you are going for a complex skill like jetpack operations or drone control. Such skills must have other skills as pre-requirements and/or have high skill point cost.
To continue with your examples, trauma team medic is likely sacrificed his advanced medical training to learn jetpack & powered armour operation and is only trained in using a sidearm as he picked auto turret control skill instead of unlocking PDW or assault rifle usage skills. So only capable of basic medkit operation and being armed with nothing bigger than a pistol at basic proficiency seems like a decent trade-off to me.
Same goes for jet-sniper: he spent a lot of skill points to learn the necessary skills, meaning after several major operations he is still only a rookie sniper as all his training went into jetpack/p. armour. On top of that, we will still be limited by jetpack fuel and/or WP usage limit, leaving him unable to climb ladders and forced to spread him WP between sniping skills and jumping.
Out of our two examples, this last one looks like being a questionable choice of skills tbh, especially with p. armour not all being that useful for a sniper who is normally operating far from his targets. TT medic is not much better either, with nothing to contribute to the fight but a one-use turret and, if noone is injured in the open, only being good as a mobile cover for other soldiers. Now I’m not saying that these examples above are bad, but they certainly don’t seem OP to me.
Another thing to keep in mind, both examples are representative of a high-tier character, so they should only be compared to seasoned soldiers of the “base class”, already significantly specialized in their area of expertise.
Another thing to keep in mind, equipping soldiers is not free. So even if someone has a jetpack operation skills. that doesn’t mean there is a jetpack available for him to use. I do hope here that soldiers will not magically grow a drone or a machinegun right after acquiring a particular skill(looking at you, FXcom).
tl;dr: balance skills, their costs and pre-requirements(other skills & stats). Equipment is not free, advanced equipment even more so; skill is of no use without appropriate equipment.
Since we are on the topic of well… basically skill trees thought I’d bring this up. Dust 514 had passive and active ways of accruing skill points that could be invested in over time.
It wasn’t just isolated to weaponry but everything from: class dropsuits (combat roles), Vehicles, support, leadership, Market was all utilized. (All within unreal engine) I could see this as a viable option for ai based characters allocating themselves to learn a skill ( and we’ve already seen this with Barnabas in briefing 6 )
Just spitballing here but this system was incredibly fun and I think I miss it’s mechanic dearly and hope to see it’s implementation again in some game.
I would like system that adds some randomness, like beginning perks you would see, one or two per soldier so they would feel special, and would make recruiting more interesting, since now its like buying bread.
But also have huge skill trees that are not that much class based.
My ideal would me something similar to Path of Exile passive skill tree, where only difference between classes are starting points and “ascension” perks that are bound to class.
Myself I love tinkering my soldiers to perfection, or for very very specific role. X-com one and two could not satisfy that, so at least squad management.
Hope they will get skill system right, cuz IMO thats only way they could screw up this game beyond saving.
I am not against randomizing starting stats and skills as long as total CP pool of a new recruit is not too low(see my “trash recruits” comment). However, levelling up should not be randomized; as long as skill requirements are met and there are enough CP available for a soldier, you should be able to pick a that skill for him to learn.
I agree that random skills are stupid idea. Maybe if devs wanted to be creative, some sort of “training” could be very interesting. For example I want my sniper to get head-shot skill, so I get sort of mini-quest stating he has to shoot 5 aliens into head from at least X meters to gain it.
And yes I remember your trash recruits post, totally agree with it. I actually dont care for stats like HP or Will to be low at start, just dont boggle accuracy and its fine with me.
And those perks I meant were supposed to be unique, y cannot get them later in game. This would establish unique soldiers, give them little more of “background”. As I said, X-com 1/2 recruiting was boring.
I feel like Apocalypse had the best recruiting system of the XCOM games. From how things are looking it will already be more flexible than FiraXCOM classes. It will depend on the abilities but I think it would be interesting if the system was like a star where “rookie” is in the middle and the “classes” Branch out from there. At which point you would be able to multi-class but stronger abilities would be deeper down the line.
While I know this is not gonna happen as this kind of decision must be taken much earlier, I kinda like a wheel/star approach if one can find a decent logic to populate it. This means some classes have more affinity and cross training is easier while learning something from a class on the other side of the wheel requires a much bigger investment.
However, this is also better suited to games where only a few characters level up and may become cumbersome for bigger rosters.
This isnt that far from what I said. However this would boggle down the feeling of “choice”.
Training only by doing normal actions would lead to two issues.
One, skills would be almost forgotten, and players would ignore them most time.
Second, way worse, if players did pay attention, it would lead to tactical issues, as players would try to get most xp for their favorite, or throw grenades in middle of nowhere just to get some xp.
Learning even mechanical moves like throwing / shooting goes faster if you focus on it. I dont think soldiers can do that when Queen is rushing on them.
I agree that I don’t expect it to happen at this point. Would make for a good mod if done right or for a PP sequel but at this point it’s most likely too late for such a thing (possible but I seriously doubt it).
As for it being cumbersome, it really depends on how the game is balanced. Given that you’re already going to be choosing skills I don’t see the selection portion being cumbersome. I think such a thing would be best balanced by simply giving you the “option” but not around the expectation of you taking everything. Kind of like how in the OG XCOM games you “could” build a super-soldier with 125 Accuracy, 61 Strength, 81 TUs, etc but it really wasn’t expected or needed.
Though if there were a LOT of skills and you were constantly getting skill ups I can see it being a pain having to do multiple skills and figuring out which ones for each person with a bunch of people at different points. But if it was balanced in a way to prevent ability spam or forced you to master your primary skill before sub-speccing then I don’t think it would be much of an issue.
There is an expansion pack already planned (with TFD feats.) so both keep in mind MOST of MOST of our suggestions will never make it to 2019 title. But expansion packs can go on forever, as long as wanted, paid and developed.
I never use training roulette, since I expect training and developing soldiers to have predictable and not random outcomes.
Not, sniper was shooting all week and randomly developed an affinity for throwing grenades.
I’d be fine with classes or classless but I think having some basic structure is a good starting point.
And I think the better strategic games involve making decisions and choices, and a class-based system is better in this regard - have to pick which classes to use, develop, and then in the field have to properly employ those classes in action. Compared to classless where you could conceivable have everybody good at everything. And it means you have to care more about your troops since getting all of your assault injured/killed has impact (vs just having some jack of all trades change gear to fill in/take over).
Ultimately I’m fine with whatever the designers decide on, as I have way more faith in what designers who know the big picture of the whole game want to do vs some random modder who thought about their pet topic for 5 minutes.
I have been playing Darkest Dungeon alot lately, and something like that could work here also. Basics for anyone unfamiliar with that game.
You have a class. You pick 4 skills from 8 available for that class to go to battle. You can improve those skills, not the class itself. Every now and then your character can get a random positive or negative quirk. Its those quirks that make every character a bit different. Tho you can use ingame currencys to lock the positive ones you want to keep, and you can also remove the ones you like to remove, but both costs alot.
True, tho still would be fun to know as “backers” that are there questions or issues they want us to “help” “give opinions” “compare” or just plain Brain storming. I dont work at gaming industry so i dont know how much everything is already visioned on lead designers vision, or are these things open for discussion FOR REAL.
Maybe in the Phoenix Point sequel we can expect classless system. Let Snapshot get experience first with all their ideas and let them see what works fine or not fine.
