Things we *don't* want Phoenix Point to have

Phoenix Point
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Going a bit off-topic, but…

Or that they have trouble going over ditches… or their heatsinks (or how are they called on tanks? playing too much BT…) are at a great place to throw molotov cocktails at, knowing that the Armor is lower at point (bodypart) X than Y, and knowing if you inflict Z type of damage (dmg number) T times, the tanks is essentially wrecked and useless (dead).

Of course countering mutations with research should be the default, but you will know more about HP/Armor/Function of the enemy’s bodyparts if you autopsy/interrogate them.

I mean, wasn’t capturing a working copy of an enemy tank a greater achievement than simply destroying one? Even more if it’s a new type :slight_smile:

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63

Yes, and IMO this should also be something the player learns: what body parts to target with what type of ammunition, anticipation of how a certain enemy will react, move etc. Its not only about research as a gameplay element, but also some “real” knowledge the player gains…

For me the most interesting part of tactical combat games or simulations (like Steel Beasts Pro PE) is “anticipation” and all types of “Fog of War”… not knowing certain things makes tactical decisions a lot more interesting and “authentic”…

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My only problem is that I would have to make a txt and write down everything to look up when next weekends I can finally play again… And I would rather have these details shown on the UI in game once I “learned it” and make me learn/remember their behavior and tactics rather than their stats.

Though a cool compromise could be “player-guessed stats”, where you have to put numbers/words for the UI to use instead of the game after research (if you shot it with weapon X and it died, you know that it has at Y to Z hp depending on Armor, and the different scenarios it died to can help the player guess its real "numbers).

So instead of 5 pips above the head, it could show “18 bullets of LMB/ 25 bullets of Rifle” written there… But I feel this is more of a mod/second wave territory than base game :smiley:

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I only play a few games: TFTD (for 20 years, my Nr.1), the Souls games and simulations (Steel Beasts Pro, Graviteam Tactics: Operation Star, ARMA). I somehow like to learn and read heavy manuals (like the good old Falcon 4.0 manual) :slight_smile:

I like the way “Graviteam Tactics” solved those problems. Its a simulation with a strategic and a tactical layer. Every detail about armor, ammunition etc. can be read in a database, there is also a simple but fast ballistics and damage calculator in-game. You can use it, but dont have to. And of course you never have exact current info about enemy tanks etc. in the field.
Every single item of the UI can be toggled on/off. Fog of War is simulated, even the radio communication between you and the troops is simulated… Same goes for the terrain: tank tracks for example deform the ground mesh (snow, mud…), snow melts etc…

This game is the real avant-garde, sadly its not only complex (and CPU heavy) but overall extremely complicated to learn. You can put years into learning this sim…

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66

Blockquote
Please include an UI option to disable the damage prediction (and enemy hp symbols, the body part info box etc.), a lot of people like the approach of the original X-Com and a more realistic, pure gameplay.

I’m with @Lobsterman on this - would love a UI toggle that disabled seeing hit points, chance to hit, and armor on the enemy team - assuming we do get some form of visual damage indicators on the creatures themselves. I assume we will get “hurt states” in a future graphics updated backer release, so adding a UI toggle is a low ask and an easy way to increase game difficulty for those who might want it without simply giving the enemies a straight up stat buff.

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67

That’s because most ppl playing a paintball game have no proper training. Let take it to a tactical shooting class that I’ve been to. They instruct you that you should not stay focus on one area and scan. Not spinning your head like crazy but always keep situation awareness to what’s around you when you’re in cover so you can spot any unexpected popups. Now overwatch/cover fire is a different matter as you can generally only be able to take snap shot at target of opportunity within you current field of vision.

In game terms, you should be able to spot 360 but only be able to provide overwatch/return fire say within a 120 degree cone. Take a look at some Shadowrun gameplay. They does this well, while you can spot 360 but you can only provide overwatch fire within a designated cone.

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More than a decade of LARPing, and the tunnel vision hasn’t been beaten out of me yet. Some people just don’t make good soldier candidates. I KNOW its wrong, but when the adrenaline starts pumping, the edges of my vision go red, and my focus gets tighter and tighter.

Not a fan of 360 degree vision. Also not a fan of my affliction. 270 degree, with a 120 overwatch would be about my expectations. Our soldiers, one would hope, are less impaired than I am.

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69

I would prefer ~270 deg for vision. As for overwatch, I was always arguing for a limited selectable arc of fire for it. Not only for realism’s sake but also to allow more focused covering as often you want only particular direction to be covered by a particular soldier to avoid wasting the overwatch on a target another soldier will have a better chance to pick off.

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70

And again as a small reference to my time in the military: scanning your area and not tunnel visioning when you move still doesn’t mean 360 vision. It’s impossible for a human to have that without spinning around like an idiot in the short time-frame presented in 1 turn of PP. You have a squad with you because you are supposed to cover your angles. Furthermore: TBS is an abstraction. Your soldiers don’t run up to cover, get out, shoot and then sit there for 5 minutes while the enemy moves. Ideally those things happen at the same time and continuously, but it’s abstracted to turns for ease of gameplay and control. You do not scan 180 degrees when in active combat, much less 360 degrees.

In terms of the game abstraction: if your soldier has fired towards an enemy, he’s just tunnel visioned on that enemy for that turn. If you try to aim at something, your eyes and brain will naturally focus more on the center of your FoV and ignore the peripheral vision to better let you adjust your aim and hit the target. Trained individuals can still remain aware of their peripheral vision when shooting, but that just means the normal human FoV WITHOUT moving your eyes (because your eyes are trained on the target to aim), which is an amazingly restricted 107 degrees on average to the exterior from the vertical meridian.

This abstraction is something a lot of people don’t really consider when discussing TBS games, see also every single meme of FiraXCOM and missing an enemy adjacent to you when your rifle model clips into the enemy almost. Because that’s not what is really happening. Your soldier didn’t just stand there like a lemon waiting for the alien to walk next to him then shoot and miss, if turns happened at the same time, that shot most likely happened while the alien was still running/dodging and that’s why it misses.

Now the game CAN do 360 degrees vision, but then it drop the simulation tag and moves into abstracted TT moved into a PC setting.

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71

Yes finding the “last sectoid left” was always a pain.

Sound reasonable, Good Idea.:sunglasses:

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72

I don’t know if this has been mentioned before, or not, but it seems to me like a good solution might be to price the cost of hiring Rookies, based on what they’re worth, stat-wise.

Taking Xcom2 for an example, you could price new recruits out at from say 10 supplies, up to 50 supplies, based on their starting stats. Better yet, give us a random set of Rookies, with their random sets of stats, and let us pay extra, to improve what RNG throws out.

That might seem a little “immersion-weird” at first, but it kind of makes sense, if you think about the amount of supplies you have to spend, being an abstract measure of how desperate you are to grab any loonie off the street, who’s willing to join your cause, or whether you’re paying out resources to find the best fresh new faces, out there.

To go for an easier rout, how about allowing us to “sell off” gimpy new recruits to other factions, or send them out to hot-spots that need defenders, where their sub-par-for-us skills will actually be welcome, compared to desperate, half-trained farmers.

It should also be a consideration that sometimes, numbers do make the difference. I’d personally like to see a situation where we have our small A-team squads, and maybe a few specialist-squads, and then we’d have a larger main force pool that recruits get traded in and out of, and which can then be used to hold on to territory. That seems fairly realistic to me, given the game’s setting.

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Rookies definitely will be randomized. They mentioned that you will need to take what you got. So your troops will also consist with older and sick people. With better and worse statistics. I’m not sure if you will pay anything to recruit anybody. :slight_smile: Rookies will want to join you and desperately get shelter in your haven. :wink: Maybe you will pay something to other faction for their recruits or for better soldiers from independent havens.

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74

I don’t want missions like random mission in BB 1.2. I prefer Fort Freiheit. There I don’t loose anyone. I returned to this build to prepare for Build 2, and compare them in some way. But on random map now I can’t finish mission without loosing at least 1 soldier - those damn crabs always need to have one good burst or Brawler hidden behind building… :wink: Of course I’m kidding. Just wanted to share my finding from random map that it is quite difficult.

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75

i don’t think its too much especially if they can repair it within the battle. which you and the aliens will be able to do in the final game

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77

Back to the topic:
Things i DON’T want to see in the final Game:
-Beeing punished for playing well.
I still think back in horror to one of the first mariokart games i played: even though i outplayed my (AI driven) competition really hard, there was always an opponent that was like directly behind me with both more speedboosts and faster than possible. I tried going slower, and had exactly the same competition for 1st place. So the AI cheated more the better i was. This created a feeling of beeing punished for playing well, and i don’t want such things in the game. (i am O.K. with the AI cheating a bit.

-useless but costly one-shots. I hate it when grenades or other one-shot items cost enough that i don’t want to use them, and WHEN i use them they aren’t that much help.

  • Different Factions that feel the same, as in are very similar in gameplay.
    In Warcraft 1 for example both human and orcs had similar units, with only slight variations, but in general it did not matter too much in gameplay if you played humans or orcs. And it does not help if you say “but aliens have mutations while humans have equipment” if it’s the same for gameplay. (1 Example on how you could solve this: Aliens can use Actionpoints and willpower to mutate, thus either changing some of their equiped “mutations”, get some kind of temporary buff or simply heal. Humans on the other hand are limited to the equipment they have/find/produce, but have to pay nearly no Actionpoints/willpower to change equipment. Also it would be nice if Aliens use their own Hitpoiints as ammunition instead of creating it out of thin air. Another thing could be that aliens carry “biomass” with them, and all mutations cost biomass, while biomass itself can be gathered from vegetation or fallen characters.
    Another example could be that 1 Faction has many cheap units and you have to swarm the enemy, while another faction can’t bring more than a few to the battlefield, but those few are quite the elite)

-enemies spawning somewhere without an explanation on how they can possible get there.
If a queen spawns at the edge of the map, that’s ok, she just came in from outside the map. 4 Crabmen spawining inside a building i just had completely scouted, with all entrances/exits visible to me… how did they get there? burrowing through concrete? not really… (not that this would have happened to me yet).

-micro transactions. I think someone else already mentioned this already, but it’s that important to me.

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78

There’s a flaw in your argument that reveals a potentially awesome mechanic: The notion of “overwatch” acknowledges that all movement are completed in one go, and therefor all shots are taken while stationary, at stationary targets (unless, you know, overwatch!). That feels wrong, the realistic version would be what you describe Avenger.

So to make it more realistic, here’s the potentially awesome “fix” I’d propose: You need to declare all your actions before executing them for any given character. If you move and shoot, the shot will be taken from an appropriate location along your path based on the cost of firing your weapon (running and gunning!). The game could project a ghost of it’s prediction of your turn. A random factor could be introduced to simulate the added difficulty of shooting while moving, your character would target the same object, but potentially from a different angle and with a wider spread than intended, missing specific body parts or hitting an obstacle. The randomness could even be a factor of the weapon’s size/AP cost, making smaller weapons an important consideration in tactical deployment and planning. Thoughts?

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79

Similar to Laser Squad Nemesis (or Frozen Synapse, as another example)?

For me, they have a different feeling (I played just the Frozen ~.~), not better/worse, but different. You don’t have the board-gamey turns, which is loved by lots of players, going with simultaneous turns is making the game “more niche” imo (which doesn’t make the game bad by default, just harder to have “enough” profit).

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I’m haven’t played either of those games but I understand that they both have you declare the entire turn for all units before execution, whereas the idea here is still to have turns happen one unit at a time. Also I’m fairly sure that running and gunning as I describe it has never been done (altho if anyone has an example I’d love to see it in action!), all other turned base game I know of you always know exactly where you’re going to be when firing, even if you may not know the exact enemy position.

Another bit could be the ability to spend TU to pause while moving to execute a more accurate shot or another action that requires you stop between cover (checkout out a chest for example).

It had occurred to me to propose having whole turns executing simultaneously for all units but not only has that already been done, it would require massive engine overhaul and I don’t think would fit well with other existing mechanics. I hope this clarifies my thought, but in case it doesn’t I don’t wanna jack this thread I’ma go start another one o.O

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No, I’m fairly sure you’re talking about a completely different game. It would mean to re-think the entire combat gameplay from scratch, with all its mechanics, skills design, aiming and shooting, as well as the overall balance. And probably most map designs.

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  1. Air combat. Of any type. I find it to be the worst part of both the original and the remake.

  2. Microtransactions, of any kind, or as I call it “videogames shooting themselves in the foot”. I know it’s been said, but ANY kind of microtransaction or loot box is an instant dealbreaker. I can’t stand the idea of “oohhh, so you are not proceeding in this mission, would you like to pay JUST 1,99€ and get this totally awesome new gun that will FOR SURE get those aliens!!”

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