Having played through a few times, I’m getting really frustrated by:
Weapon damage / destruction making missions impossible to complete
Permanent character limb damage -random bad luck = totally wiped
Severely-limited ammo - the game is already difficult enough without making a few missed shots mean you’re stuffed. Happy to reload but only able to carry a few rounds? Really?
Item crates. Smacks of online multiplayer and makes the game an inventory management challenge rather than a squad shooter
Inventory management generally. Limited load out is fine but penalties for picking stuff up / changing items seem excessive
Is overwatch really so overpowered that it has to be nerfed / limited by restricting usage with points?
Still hopeful this will be great, though…
You can repair “broken limbs”, not permanent, even during combat. BB1 didn’t have this in yet, BB2 should already with the new class.
In the final game, you can bring as much ammo as you want/can carry, will not be a huge problem probably.
Inventory management will be a part of the final game, I don’t think I can say PP’s Battlescape is supposed to be a “squad shooter” but a “tactical game”.
I would bet on yes, as we could see in FiraXCOMs, overwatch is strong if “unlimited” (they “had to” introduce timers to make players move forward more).
1 and 3.) Forced inventory is an alpha thing. With a proper geoscape and proper gearing, you should have backup weapons and spare ammo
2.) Today’s build should have the NJ specialist class, who can healed limbs. I hope there will be other ways to deal with limb damage though, as this is a faction class and it’s unclear how easy it will be to get one in the final game
4.) Definitely too many crates, but I suspect/hope that it was to showcase the inventory management menu. I’d like it to be significantly less frequent in the real game.
5.) I’m fine with penalties for picking stuff and moving it to and from the backpack. Limits the more egregious backpack-fu from OGXCOM
6.) Overwatch crawl tends to be super effective and super boring. I understand the need to limit it for the sake of variety. Bear in mind that with Fog of war and mist missing, overwatch and return fire don’t work as intended yet and it affects balance immensely.
Hmmmm. I don’t really want the game to tell me how to play - if I want to crawl forward with overwatch, why shoukdn’t I be allowed to? There will be plenty of other time constraints to keep the pressure on…
I believe right now you can do that, you just have to stop to rest and rotate your overwatching soldiers.
I can’t know how will resting function at launch, but right now I think you can regain “enough” willpower to have Overwatch-creep.
If you have to build to an overwatch-heavy style just as much as for any other, I have no problem with it, but I don’t want to have overwatch-creep as a viable tactic without any sacrifice, and low(er) Willpower with slower advancement sounds OK to me.
Will there? I think that largely depends on mission-design, and we didn’t really see much from that yet.
you also may not be able to do slow creeps like we did in xcom, the aliens change with your play style so they may start charging you pretty quickly also if you tend to hang back
Enemies coming out of nowhere and charging is exactly what overwatch spam counters, though.
I’d think if there were something the aliens would do to counter the strategy, it’d be to mutate a mortar or the like to force the squad into a situation where creeping up slowly isn’t safe either.
In a vacuum, couldn’t agree more, but then again that alone doesn’t discourage the actual practice either though; the key element is risk, and although nothing is gained when a squad waits for an enemy to pop out and it doesn’t take the free overwatch damage, there’s not a larger danger presented to the squad than if they hadn’t, and the possibility of roasting an enemy without a shield makes doing so still worthwhile.
Entering overwatch has an opportunity cost. You spent TU and willpower for the opportunity to shoot during the enemy’s turn, on a target that you can’t choose … or shouldn’t be able to, but alien turn order can sometimes be guessed in those games.
Long War had enemies with lightning reflexes that would make you waste your overwatch shots, opening the way for other enemies, and a simple prioritization of action on the AI side would drastically lower the strength of Overwatch tactics.
Alpha build isn’t advanced enough to judge enemy AI, but if there is any flexibility in the enemy’s move order, shielded crabs can play first and draw fire. That’s a very basic counter but it’s easy enough to conceptualize.
Of course, other options such as indirect fire weapons, “squadsight” weapons fired from much further, smokescreens and flashbangs ON THE ALIEN SIDE could be interesting, but that’s a lot trickier to implement and balance.
Of course, and the costs such as Will points exist precisely because of how inherently safe overwatch is out of immediate combat. Other elements such as the mist will likely also factor into this in the future.
There’s certainly more than one way in which the tactic can be subverted or nullified too, but the “start charging you pretty quickly” context from which the discussion originated alone doesn’t accomplish much, unless the “charging” either implies that all the map’s aliens rush the squad at once to overwhelm it or that they run out from fog of war, bypass overwatch, and sucker punch the player before they have a chance to react…neither of which sound particularly elegant or enjoyable compared to some of the other approaches mentioned.
Regarding the crates:
I kinda like the concept after a few playthroughs. It matches the setting of a suicide squad going into an abandoned base and also made me adjust my approach. I’d like to see the concept extended to picking up stuff from cabinets and workbenches like in Jagged Alliance. It was mentioned a couple of times that you’ll be able to pick up items from downed squad mates/aliens. There will alsnot be scavanging missions where the sole purpose will obviously be to find loot.
I know it’s alpha, and that a lot of this stuff will change. I would like to see a bit more ammo on the characters to start. Feels like I fire and miss 3/4 of the time and run out of ammo before the action gets good. What do we start with 1 clip?
This must be bad luck or too much distance. I hit pretty much 4/5 shots. The sniper can shoot at a distance (like 2 screens), for the assault it is best if you can see both units in one screen and the heavy needs to be really close to hit or needs a large enough target.
I can see the crate concept clashing with advancing tech in late game.
Once you have evolved psychoplasmic harpoons and nanomagnetic flying armor, you won’t give a crap about looting an assault rifle or a magazine from a crate, and in most cases, it would make no sense to loot advanced tech if you’re the only one manufacturing such stuff.
It would be nice to have longer missions with a supply drop halfway through though, but that’s a different story.
Other interesting opportunities include a surprise attack of your base. enemy pool is on the “sneaky side”, not super powerful, but hey, they took you by surprise and most of your big guns are locked in the armory
It could as well be complementary. Maybe you don’t have the resources to deploy all your troops with the latest and greatest tech. In this case you would have to save your better weapons for the larger enemies while the bulk of the foot soldiers is being shot at from more basic weapons. Those “basic” troops would need more ammo and it would be beneficial if they can restock as they go.
Also it might be possible that the basic stuff you find in crates is an ingredient for higher tier equipment. For example you would need three assault rifles, one plasma battery and a black hole generator to create the triple barrel black hole gun.
That’s an option and I would be fine with some missions including scavenging, but I’d really prefere if we didn’t see it in every mission. I don’t really like the idea of PP routinely not being able to outfit their troops with enough equipment to do their jobs. I also wouldn’t expect every single mission site to have crates of ammo lying around.
Item 2 - The new Technician class is wonderful. They do heal limbs and other broken body parts. However, and perhaps for the better, it takes quite a while. I stuck him in a corner with another severely injured soldier to test it out. First heal restored all the HP and a bit of a leg. Three more heal later, the rest of the leg, torso and head damage was finally full healed. I think that is about right, else the Technician, with his effectively unlimited healing capacity, be too OP.
Item 5 - I would like to see adjacent soldier be able to pass items from one to the other. I think now you have to drop, move pickup, or something similarly complicated. I have not actually been able to do it yet.
