As the Commander, I demand an option to quickly overview the battlefield with full information on my soldiers deployed, their status, their primary-alternate-carried weapons, location, and health. Let’s call it “Tactical Overview”.
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Maybe this could be added as a minimap option in the bottom of the screen, and you could click on it in order to bring up this screen? Either way, I think something like this could probably work quite nicely
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This would be cool to implement. You could probably even add a Tactical drone to the drone options which flies over the map and highlights any enemies it comes across, obviously at first it would only spot enemies in clear view so enemies indoor wouldn’t show up.
The counter could be enemies mutating camaflage abilities to hide some of them.
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I would suggest that some kind of tactical overview is much needed (whether it be a strategic map option or an actual camera control option), I think isometric view games in general can be bad at conveying enough tactical info (especially when outdoor and indoor environments are mixed).
it’s just traditional for an Xcom style game to have a fixed isometric view even though IMO it doesn’t actually work that well (I think the only modern day tactical game where a fixed isometric view has worked well is Invisible Inc, but that’s largely because it is set indoors, room/floor layouts).
I’m not much of a fan of dynamic action camera angles either with all the shifting/zooming in and out, It’s tricky to get it to work well in a satisfying/immersive non-disorientating way.
I honestly believe one day an Xcom style game will be made without a fixed isometric view (with perhaps more of a top-down view or flexible overhead 3P view) and it will probably be the best in the genre (at least tactically, even if it isn’t aesthetically).
I think the camera controls in Chaos Reborn (Snapshots first title) are excellent, you can tilt the isometric view almost to a top-down view which allows you to play the battlefield virtually like a board game, this kind of overhead view is extremely beneficial in games which are all about positioning (so many great tactical games are purely top-down view).
Valkyria Chronicles (a game which has tactical systems very much like PP) has really good 3rd person camera controls/angles which fit the genre perfectly (the dynamic/action cam works well in VC to).
That would be great. Strategy games need such a screens. And using flying drones to gather data + aliens with camouflage sounds great, too! It would fit nicely to the theme and be organic as a part of gameplay.
I’m not a fan of cluttering the main (battle) screen with too much icons or info (like HP bars above the enemies), but separated screens made solely for that would make my day!
There could be even more content and screens: mission overview to check your goals (so no goals have to be displayed on the main screen and covering part of it), ufopaedia or something like enemy + equipment data screen (with researched types of mutants and owned weapons) etc.