StarDestroyer.Net BBS

On base defenses: I think I remember reading that, due to the way the alien campaign AI is programmed, as soon as they find your base they'll keep sending battleships to assault it until one gets through. One unfortunate player got stuck in an infinite loop where he didn't have enough radar coverage to see any battleships coming, but he did have enough AAA to shoot down every battleship that came knocking, and he was stuck in 24h mode. The game would just progress from one "Base under attack!" screen to the next with no opportunity to do anything in between because the aliens sent a new battleship every few hours or so.

Better to just let them land, really.

I thought the base defense was really cool the first few times I played them. "Oh, that's a big alien ship oh god it's coming for my base HOLY CRAP MY MISSILE SILOS MISSED OH GOD WHAT IS THIS SCREEN THAT SAYS BASE DEFENSE?". Then I got to see a tileset I've never seen before, plus the excitement of seeing the base I've designed (which you've only ever seen before in a zoomed-out version on the base screen) and trying to fight in your own corridors and rooms.

On the other hand, I was 13.

Everyone who played remembers that antique time before the battles became trivial and boring yet long and unavoidable chore.

But man people hanging up on sideline shit to the exclusion of actual content is great. There is a non-trivial chance the battles will be horrid (and a pretty strong chane that interceptions will be horrid). Nevermind, quibble moar. :v

Yes, that is an excellent point.. let us not forget that the majority of actual game time is spent on the battlefield.

Hopefully the tactical gameplay (IIRC, I believe the original term was the BattleScape(tm) ) is awesome fun in its own right. At the very least, I think I like the art direction evident on the tactical game from the screenshots on the RockPaperShotgun preview.

I can't really argue about the state of the interception mechanic or the overall battle system, but what we've seen of the battle system it doesn't look any worse than the newer versions of the X-COM style games out there. I'm not really worried yet, I haven't seen anything to put me off of it, too seriously at least, and they're doing some fun things that I like so I'm giving them some leeway before I start caterwauling about changes.

The interception mechanic is basically not a big element of the game, it was just a bit of window dressing and a fun bit of music. I wouldn't want a game to be made in the X-COM license without interception, but you could basically do anything to the interception engine and you could call it 'better'. Really, it should be a bit of interesting strategy to outfit your interceptors and use them smartly to take down targets... buuut in X-COM it just was "make and keep basic interceptors, slap on two plasma beams" and that was basically the solution to all things.

So I'm one of the biggest X-COM fans around but altering the combat model, but keeping to the ethos (turn based, squad based, rather lethal or at least high risk asset management, destructible/usable terrain) is all they need to do. Keeping to the ethos of interception just boils down to "let my ships shoot at their ships as part of the general gameplay," since you feel someone stupid just watching them buzz around on their merry way.

Trailer up:



Also, Rock Paper Shotgun has a bunch of newer articles too.

Most importantly, the classic Guile haircut will be a preorder bonus

Looks good. So far the tone and feel is pretty nice--while it's more Bay-esque than the very low-key grim and quiet deadliness of the original (mixed with the epic high camp awesomeness at a few points) it does leave me feeling that this is an X-COM game and I can play it without having to grit my teeth and pretend it was named something else. Which is what my plan was for that FPS version.

This one looks fun, interesting, and even if it doesn't expand on the originals (persay) it also isn't saddled by the post-TFTD trajectory of the series and does indeed have an original take on stuff that's still getting at the real nugget of fun at the heart of stuff. I won't complain the Cryssalids look different if they're just as scary to fight, and I won't complain about squad size or whatever if I'm getting just as much tactical value out of them as I did out of my 12 member teams in the original.

So far, thumbs up. I'm a very grumpy X-COM fan so this is a very nice thing to see. I really do hope other companies will see this as an easier and more profitable model than continually re-jerking an IP around in a shameless name grab.

Just bringing up a point I read someone else making.. the smaller in-mission squad size means a significant change in the feel of the game.

In the new game, being limited to only six (eight?) squad members on a mission means that we can expect each squaddie to be significantly more powerful than in the older game. Back then, the lethality of the aliens, and the fact that your troops are often cannon fodder (elite cannon fodder in the endgame, to be sure) was a big part of the game. I recall playing with a self-imposed restriction of never using the save/load to re-do mistakes, which made it very tense when my troops start dying.

True, the small squad size and more effective members in the upcoming game mean each death is more keenly felt, but I enjoyed the old days where I'd hire fresh rookies that were literally door-openers

I never used more than six guys and only rehired when someone died.

What?! But who opens the doors?!

Turns out save/load whoring was core to the game? One of the reasons I welcome the mechanical changes in this game as they move the emphasis from tile-counting and Maths to actually fighting aliens.

Cykeisme wrote:What?! But who opens the doors?!

Explosions.

Vendetta wrote:

Cykeisme wrote:What?! But who opens the doors?!

Explosions.

Always the best way to play until you got Plasma for everyone. Nothing but heavy cannons and the odd autocannon for the guy who could carry the weight. Autocannon with incendiaries for night missions of course.

Vendetta wrote:

Cykeisme wrote:What?! But who opens the doors?!

Explosions.

Lots of nattering in articles on this about destructable terrain, which means SDN XCOM can resume their tried-and-true tactic.

SAVE THE WORLD BY BLOWING IT UP.

I never used more than the bare minimum of forces either, so around 6-8 was my average squad size. I would try to bring at least two Tanks with me on every mission. Their ability to scout for my fireteams made them essential, and them dying was a painful but simple fix--and I always had a pile of them in base anyway, in case of alien invasion. Furthermore, their AI cores are crafted for pure, unswerving loyalty, and so would never threaten to murder my own soldiers, or panic, or anything. The two tanks start off as your best soldiers and mature into your most valuable scouts.

When opening doors, tanks can also bore a hole through a wall, or torpedo it if they've got a rocket launcher.

You'll still have "most expendible" soldiers, but a small squad size is good and proper for ironman playthroughs. More XP per soldier, more rapid advancement, easier deployment, and you don't get caught alone as much. Plus it's easier to get a Psi-Immune squad that way.

I generally hear about massive casualties, huge cannon-fodder rehiring practices, and generally nasty "agent death" scenarios from people who use large squads instead of tanks tanks tanks. Human wave tactics will only get you further in the hole, really. X-COM never favored treating your soldiers as expendable. They're just easy to lose.

Cykeisme wrote:In the new game, being limited to only six (eight?) squad members on a mission means that we can expect each squaddie to be significantly more powerful than in the older game.

4. One of the articles they confirm that it is currently start at 4, "tech up" to 6.

Sounds like more can sit at the base... but it could be messy... We won't know till the game arrives though.

Still don't like the UFO After-X style of "One base, one team, small team." but it did lead to smaller, faster engagements there. Though mission tedium lept up as quickly as it ever did. (Only played afterlight.)

I played with a large squad, but didn't treat them as cannon fodder. I had small fire teams sweep the map thoroughly, and used a turn to camp the door so that my UFO breaching team would have full TUs. Of course, I don't think I played a version where the "Revert to Easiest Setting" bug was fixed... so eh...

That looks pretty damned awesome actually...

Demo's up on Steam.

Demo's very interesting so far. It's clear they have a lot of traditionalists in their design team, as well as people with more tabletop skirmish game sort of experience.

Only did the intro part of the demo so far as I haven't had time to go through it. But well. What a... traditional opening.

Nephtys wrote:Demo's very interesting so far. It's clear they have a lot of traditionalists in their design team, as well as people with more tabletop skirmish game sort of experience.

The basis for the game design essentially was a tabletop game hashed out with Sid Meier (though they started with a direct copy of the original's rules). All of the devs were required to play and beat the original game, too.

Do you honestly think that is anything but marketing buzz? What could they possibly have learned from the original game beyond 'save load is shit' and 'the last level is shit'?

Saying things like that is just de rigeur to keep obsessive fans onside, much like heaps of the comments about the game reveals most people obsessed with UFO may never have played any other turn based 'tactical' game in their lives. Has xyz feature industry standard for a decade = WHAT A GREAT TEAM FIRAXIS HAS.

Also 6gig demo = lol pc.

Except the entire turn based squad strategy genre's largely full of unpolished crap. Seriously, there's a lot of 'nearly good' games in the genre over the years, usually killed by some horrific flaw. X-COM generally worked because on your first few playthroughs, the flaws weren't so terribly obvious. Unlike say, the new JA remake which has unfortunate issues with pacing and combat, or Silent Storm that had hideous load times and those stupid tank suits.

Having some cred in the genre does help design mistakes get identified and eliminated. For example, how to keep the feel of the genre while moving away from the traditional time unit system is pretty important. As is how to keep things sufficiently potentially lethal, while making it actually possible to advance in the game without hideous loss left and right once you got used to it.

Stark wrote:Do you honestly think that is anything but marketing buzz? What could they possibly have learned from the original game beyond 'save load is shit' and 'the last level is shit'?

That in response to Nephtys mentioning how there appears to be a lot of "traditionalists" and boardgame-like play.

Also 6gig demo = lol pc.

They kept in a huge amount of unused (and spoileriffic) media content for no particular reason.

Dude, heaps of people have never finished UFO because the lategame is shit boring, just like JA2 and Silent Storm. That doesn't mean that being amazed about features other games have had for a decade isn't funny as hell. It just means lots of UFO 'fans' are so parochial they literally play nothing else in the genre. And these were the people trying to tell Furaxis how to design a 'good' XCOM game!

The sort of people they are marketing a lot of their buzz to would have been outraged they cut the 'dismount skyranger' element, for crying out loud. That's why you need to placate them with stupid bullshit like 'we tortured all our staff with a fucking awful game' while you go out of your way to design a different and actually new game. Branding paradox!

Phongn, I assumed it was just a crippled full game.