I have only seen the base and character screens in BB4. Is it still planned to have a more fleshed out base and building mechanic (similar to x-com and xcom) where it looks and feels like we are building our organization? Or is the base management going to ditch the graphic view and just going to remain pretty much a digital outline as it is now?
My other question is the character customization. Is it planned to allow for appearance customization (aka XCOM) or is this pretty much fleshed out as it will be in the game?
It will be more like X-COM than XCOM, but without typical economics (societies are in ruin, there is no cash). There will be also
staff to manage buildings,
limit of inhabitants
and even artificial intelligence staff working for example in Medical Bay
This is only my speculations but probably you will need to dig out the rock and then build next structure for some resources also keeping watch for energy output, food production for each soldier and staff member etc.
And one of the downgrades from X-COM will be that bases will be randomly placed all over the world. Your task will be just to find them and expand when needed. You wonāt select starting position and all the next bases positions.
Of course to compensate that there is a bonus, because those found bases will give you nice hint of gameās lore, research technology and progression in the campaign (this is my speculation based on rumors showing here and there).
EDIT: Nice addition will be turrets which will help defend bases during alien attacks. Or at least I hope they will add it.
Unfortunately it is planned. Well, quite many players look forward to this feature. Thankfully it will be incorporated in inventory system and by changing armor or mutation elements on the soldier we will also impact his stats.
Do you dislike character customization?? Or perhaps you donāt like that the devs are spending time on a mechanic that you feel is wasted development time?? Iād be interested to know cause I donāt come across many players that donāt want character customization in there game.
If I have dozens of soldiers, sending 8-10 to every mission, on multiple bases, Iāll just ignore any kind of non-strategic/tactical customization (canāt ignore armor/weapon/skills), canāt be bothered to play sims and change the face or w/e on a soldier who might just die 10 minutes later to a random crab.
And would not even notice it usually, armor hides their features during combat, randomized āportraitsā (if used instead of class-icons, like in HBS-Battletech) is decent to remember them.
And then there is the ācan you really afford a surgery to change your soldierās face during the crisisā-aspectā¦ Unless you select your soldiers based on looks rather than on ability or availabilityā¦
So yes, I would prefer if the resources (Dev time, etc.) were spent on stuff which makes the game better for me, be that one more enemy (sub-)type or an extra feature (or just simply more/faster polish), but there seems to be lots of fans of the customization.
That is the answer. I have nothing against it until it will consume too much time and other parts of the game will be underdeveloped. I wonāt be using this feature because it is time consuming, while not adding anything to the gameplay. If someone want to spend some hours to add dots on soldiersā weapons and stripes on armors they are free to go. But it wonāt change anything. Only reason to use it in strategy game for me may be will to distinguish different types of units with different colors. It is feature good for role playing games where you have max 10 units and you want to add some fancy distinguish style to each of them.
I suppose it will be like 8 bases with at least 8 soldiers in each, so at least 64 units. And they will die so there will be need to customize their replacementsā¦ Making them unique would be waste of time for me either.
Thanks for the answers, I will agree that I wouldnāt want the focus of developement time to end up taking away from the core of the gamplay, but at the same time customization is a huge aspect of these types of games for me.
I probably do spend more time on this then I care to admit, especially on Xcom 2 with all the available mods there are, but for me that is part of the experience. Customizing helps me grow attached to my soldiers and see them as there own characters with their own story so I can weep when I eventually lose them. Also helps me be more careful in my decision makingā¦ tactically speaking.
Even with the long war mods for Xcom where you regularly have rosters of up to 70 - 80 soldiers I still spend time customizing each oneā¦ I may be crazy & Iām ok with that
For me my favorite part of Xcom 2 was the character pool, made customization very seamless as well as time efficient. And mods like the character templates with the ability to be able to save loadouts & custom looks were a god send for time managementā¦
I certainly would rather have a complete and excellent game versus a poorly designed game with weak and unbalanced mechanics but cool looking soldiers. So I can see where your argument has itās basis.
Iām with you on this Pawnman. Though I donāt think I spend as much time as you do customizing my team, I do tend to get attached to my veterans and add custom mods to them as time goes on.
Iām a bit like a Vietnam Vet in this regard. New recruits get no love from me at all until theyāve survived long enough to earn a nickname. At that point, Iāll change the nickname to reflect what theyāve done in the game and start customizing them accordingly. It helps me to stop thinking of them as pawns, but as people I have a duty of care to - even if they are just pixels on a screen.
XCOM 2ās ability to save characters and build them from scratch greatly added to this experience. It enabled me to build characters I had ālostā in the Long War and have them miraculously reappear in LW2 with a backstory that explained how theyād survived. So āMobyā Wong, sole survivor of the Nantucket Whale Disaster, reappeared as a Twitchy character covered in scars, who goes berserk any time a Chryssalid is on the board. It adds to the immersion and brings the team to life.
That said, I neither want nor expect the PP devs to spend that kind of time on character customisation tools in the first instance. Itās a cosmetic add-on thatās nice to have but not as important as good gameplay. But for me, it really does help if Iām not simply equipping a bunch of clones with identical faces and unmemorable names when Iām scrolling through my Squaddie screen - so the ability to rename and give them a modicum of individuality is important. Something as simple as calling one Squaddie āDocā and another one āBoomerā enables you to very quickly identify who should be getting the medical training and kit, and who should have the Very Big Cannon ;0)
Yeh I tend to have 6 or so characters and xcoms random character pool they could pull from added a bit of immersion for me, but that being said having lots of different customisation wasnāt as important as being able to change a name/nickname.
In the end when they are all armoured up they are all going to look the same on the tactical map bar different colours.
