As we have stated several times. There are no microtransactions in Phoenix Point and no plans for any. Our business model is a paid game supported by future DLC/Expansions.
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And I cannot state enough times how great that is!! 
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That was my favorite part in the original XCom. Especially in the beginning when you didn’t know which craft you’d encounter. I enjoy the strategical part more than the tactical.
But since it was startet that in the world of PP there won’t be much aircraft left I guess there won’t be any air combat.
Something like a Death Star trench fight on a behemoth would be cool though…
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Air combat in Xenonauts is interesting at first, but becomes very repetitive after a while (kill escort, get behind the big saucer where guns can’t hit you, wreck its ass). i’m curious to see if they will expand on it in Xenonauts 2.
And as far as simultaneous turns, go, has anyone tried Atlas Reactor? That’s the closest thing you’ll get to “XCOM as a Moba”. 4v4 Arena, turn based with simultaneous resolution. Turns have a very strict sequence of events and using your skills at the right time is crucial. Teamplay plays a big part too, as many skills deal with positioning, setting up combos can be very rewarding.
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I’d like to see an Ace Combat style interception sequence for XCOM games, but that would be way too much work…XD
Back on topic…one thing I could do without is a lot of constant exposition from my “assistants.” I don’t really need to hear the Bradford equivalent (Randolph Symes, I guess?) saying “Commander, the aliens are making progress on the Pandora Project. If we want to stop them, we’ll have to move fast” every God-damn week. XD
Now, don’t take this to mean I don’t want any character voices at all. I think it might be cool to learn a little more about Symes, and other possible characters (scientist guy/girl, engineering guy/girl) in between missions, like maybe after a successful (or unsuccessful) mission, there’d be an unlocked option, “speak to Randolph/whoever” on the geoscape, where we’d learn a bit about his background or the world’s background, get some lore, etc. But I don’t need to hear them chattering amongst themselves 24/7.
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Yeah, I liked that too, despite the combat being rather basic. As for PP, while there is not supposed to be an air force at your disposal but I expect there to be no UFOs either. What there could be though are mutated wandering leviathans, both on land and in the sea. I think intercepting those with armoured buggies and gunboats could be a nice twist on the original UFO interception mechanic. Gameplay could be something like Convoy to make the interception more tactical.
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Hello everyone !
What I really don’t want in this game is a difficulty based exclusively on one or two simple parameters.
As an example, I’m sure you’ve all played a game like skyrim where difficulty is mainly based on the amount of HP of the enemies or the possible damages you can inflict them. This is bullshit and by far the laziest way to adjust the difficuly in a game.
Now of course it can’t be like that in PP anyway… But I feel like it would be easy to just change the periodicity of base attacks (rare in casual and every week in commando) or to ajdust the scarcity of ressources.
Needless to say that those things are a good way to balance difficulty but it would disappoint me if those were the the only way of doing so.
I don’t really know what’s possible or not but I’ve thought of :
- Smarter enemies (better focus on wounded targets, smarter movements, better strategies)
- Less access to information (ally who share less, enemies that hide their pans better)
- Traps (Basically if you select a hard difficulty some missions would be ambushes : you can’t win them and you have to understand it as fast as you can and retreat)
- In an other topic, we discussed wether Pandoravirus and the Dead God were thinking of humanity as real threat, thus necessiting to be dealt with or DG is too powerful to even realize we’re still there. In other words, the first case implies Pandoravirus tries to destroy us and aims for havens destruction and strategic strikes and the second implies that monsters are just running wild. I think minor modifications to the storytelling pending on the difficulty could prevent immersion to be ruined when an allegedly all mighty enemy acts as a stupid cockroach in a game where you chosed a more casual difficulty setting.
Again, I might not be as clear as I intended to be and I apologize in advance. Feel free to ask for further explanations if needed, I’ll try my best to reformulate !
Thank you for reading.
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Ohh, this is a really cool idea. Yeah, I prefer more creative means of difficulty than just “buff the opponent’s stats.” Tighter time limits, tougher diplomacy, and maybe even nasty enemy mutations that only show up on higher difficulties could be creative ways of pulling it off 
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I remember JG thinking about having the mutation-system included in difficulty, so higher diffs will have enemies mutating faster (countering you faster, you have to adapt quicker, etc.)…
Not sure if it will happen, and if yes in what form, but I liked the idea, instead of stat-buffs/nerfs for “difficulty” (hp, damage, accuracy, resources, etc.).
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Thank you, I must have missed that !
Well it’s better than the stats modifiers but still, I wonder if it’s possible to introduce minor variations of the story to justify the variations in enemy bahvior !
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As far as I know difficulty will be handled via deployment points like in some tabletops. The different creatures and different mutations will have a deployment cost, for example a crabman 5 pts and a pincerarm 2pts a shieldarm 3pts etc…, and difficulty level will determine how many points can the AI deploy in the battlefiel, for example normal 100pt, Hard 200pt and so on. Difficulty won’t change the AI behavior but the amount of units with more or less powerful mutations it can display at a time.
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That’s tactical-level difficulty (battlescope, how you win a fight), speed of mutation is strategic-level (geoscope, how you research/deploy), they are not mutually exclusive.
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I don’t have any problem with that unless I happen to meet an absurd number of enemies on a mission where I’m not supposed to.
To me, the number of enemies is not a problem. I’m more concerned by the number of enemies triggered at a time. In EU, it didn’t matter how many pod you’d face in a mission but you’d begin to sweat on a turn where you trigger 5 of them at a time.
Hope they’ll hande this carefully !
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Well, there are no pods they are active from the beguining doing their things, but if you’re stuck for too long in a spot more and more patrolling enemies will find you, and you will attract more and more enemies because of the fight. It deppends how fast you can dispatch them I suppose.
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Enemy pods. Never enemy pods. So bad so bad so bad
Not because “the enemy gets a free turn” when you spot them, but rather how it affects the pacing of the game. If you ever watched how beaglerush plays XCOM:EU on Ironman Impossible you’ll see. He moves on the edges of the map, being careful not to activate any pods, and when he does have to activate, make sure he activates one at a time and eliminate them before moving on. This includes a lot of moving on the edge of the map, counting tiles and such. Missions can take around 50-60 minutes. And then there’s the fact that you’re not encouraged to flank around because it’s too risky. You might end up activating 2 more pods if you move around that wall. Not worth risking bringing 6 more enemies down on you for the potential of killing a single enemy. So you’re encouraged to stay in one place, use high aim / low mobility soldiers and grenades to take out enemies without moving too much.
The pod system encourages you to play this way. Because if you play it like a normal tactical game, you’ll end up activating multiple pods at the same time and get overwhelmed easily.
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Actually, it’s more a matter of activation rather than pods. One thing I like about pods is that it gives a sense of organization to the enemy, you face patrols and squads instead of lone aliens. I’d like to keep that.
Activation mechanics, on the other hand, create most of the issues you mention and are a royal pain in the ass.
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I think 99% of the time when people mention FXcom pods they mean pod popping mechanic, first and foremost. Organized enemy patrol or strike groups are never a bad thing.
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I would not even call it “a pod”.Its scripted discovery mechanism of limited batches of enemies, depending on difficulty. But that was downplay to original scatter and organize (or defend ship) concept of enemies. They would scout, patrol etc. All that was simply taken out.
I don’t want heavy to be able to punch queen in the face using his jetpack. And I don’t want him to have wolverine claws in his armour.
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As this is pretty specific, I guess there’s an underlying message about not having super soldiers with overly fancy stuff, am I correct?
If that’s the case, I more or less agree but where do you draw the line? A certain degree of coolness is often associated with exploring the upper branches of the tech tree, and you still expect battle hardened soldiers to kick ass late game. For example, the Armadillo doesn’t look overly badass but I think we’ve seen a concept of a NJ walker with big bad guns, and that’s also the kind of cool toys I expect to see late game.
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