Max_Caine

Well, see, there's the thing. If you have equipment that makes night like day, then why bother having night in the first place? May as well make them all day missions.

Actually, that a good point. Will alien panic be in this one? It wasn't in the last one for various reasons.

On Night Operations Night operations in X-Com-a-likes are unpleasant. Mostly because you can't see the alien, but the alien can see you! Generally, night ops tend to be avoided unless there's a big payoff (such as a large, landed UFO). I think that's a shame, as night ops add a spooky air to the game. Would it be possible to make night ops more favorable by adding suitable bonuses/maluses to aliens as well as soldiers? Take Sebillians for example. Their saurian nature might mean they have a strong diurnal cycle, preferring the hours of daylight so they are more fatigued at night, meaning they take a hit to their AP. Psyons might feel more psychologically uncomfortable at night, making them easier to panic. And so on, and so forth.

Chris got burned by PayPal before. I don't know that he wants to open his company to getting burned again.

Regarding rodmar and ninothree ideas for radial bases. Frostpunk did a radial, tetris-style city quite successfully, but as the radial city formed the core of the game, I would imagine that it would take a lot of work to make radial bases work as they do in Frotspunk.

Okay, so things are now verging into the realm of personal insults. Going to have to ask everyone to step back and calm down.

I would fundamentally disagree. The most scary monster in X-Com (1994) was not the Sectopod but the Cryssalid, because the Cryssalid was fast, hit hard, and turned humans into more Cryssalids. Godzilla is not automatically a horrifying being because he is big. Godzilla is a horrifying being because he can't be stopped regardless of what the SDF throw at him. Horror is not predicated on size, but on what the monster can do.

If you look at Retcon Raider's video of Backer Build 2, he talks casually about how the squad will have to fight their way to the vehicle in order to use it. That right there is the sort of thing Chris is talking about. If the vehicle in Phoenix Point is so powerful you can't start with it on a map but have to work to get it then there is fundamental divide in power between vehicles and squads so great that Snapshot has to deny the player the use of the vehicle to start with - it has to be a reward for getting to a part of the map. TBH, the Queen from the promo build doesn't fill me with horror. It fills me with boredom as Retcon Raider showed how easy it was to take the queen apart piece by piece. The crabmen were much harder to deal with than the Queen.

Just as a reminder to everybody, discussion regarding ATLAS and general base mechanics has moved to another thread: here.

Given that X2 is still in it's Kickstarter, the game isn't due for release for a good while yet.

You're preaching to the choir here. It's just.. well.... Ironman Impossible aside, without an in-game compelling reason to take a night mission it's unlikely they will be taken.

The problem with night missions is that if you don't want to do a night mission, all you have to do is wait it out. also people complain that there are all sorts of high tech tomfoolery to help see at night and once you start adding that, why bother with night missions at all?

If we know what enemies are coming, then we'll always pack as many weapons of the best type against them as we can, so enemies will always face weapons which they have the worst resistance for. If we don't know what enemies are coming, then we'll pack as many weapons which are as close to general purpose as we can. This was how it worked in the AfterX series, which went down the whole resistances route. You could get by in Aftershock and Afterlight with ballistic weapons because they were general purpose enough that if you kitted them out with weapon upgrades and slammed in the appropriate type of ammo they would do the job, or if you face starghosts which had massive resistance to bullets, you knew beforehand so you kitted everyone out with warp/plasma/laser weapons. As there is (currently?) only one squad in play at any one time, there would never be a reason not to kit the team out with as many of weapon type X to defeat resistance type Y as is practicable.

Apocalypse was coded in a custom engine. Not Unity.

If there aren't that many planned base defense missions, then it probably isn't worth adding defence to the strategy layer.