been enjoying the game, thanks for making it

[EarthDefender]

Hello all,

I've spent a few hours with the game and overall I'm quite impressed. Like Rock Paper Shotgun claimed, it really does feel like Xcom with a modern interface. I also like some of the changes that are made to the formula.

Initially I was not very excited about the art style and the setting/time period but both are growing on me.

It seems like I have the same basic combat map each time so far and I'm really looking forward to having some new/different environments. Also don't seem to see many civilians.

Visual effects are nice, really like the fire and the smoke.

SFX is much better than I had expected, so far I dig the weapon sounds that I've heard. My favorite audio element is the radio chatter during/after air combat, that's really well done and works great with the music.

The music sometimes is great, other times it kicks me out of the immersion more than anything else. One of the best parts of the original Xcom, for me, was the music. Melodic strings/pianos etc. have no place in the soundtrack, imho. Almost everything should be synth/sample based. The music in the combat missions is much closer to where it needs to be, I only recall hearing the problem in the geoscape.

Perhaps most importantly, I love how true you guys are staying to the formula but I sometimes have a feeling that you're doing that at a cost. Some examples off the top of my head

- moving up stairs feels slow so I avoid it. It seems like the ui should know I'm trying to go up the stairs when I click on them and move the camera along with my solider intelligently.

- I'd love to see scouting/briefing segments before ground missions. I think this is realistic because a location of the crash would be generally known and intelligence would precede a mission if real 'special forces' type of soldiers are involved. It would likely happen on the plane and would involve simple things like day/night but also expected number of civilians, perhaps expected alien numbers based on ship type. This doesn't have to be verbose or anything beyond a text window.

- i imagine this is in the pipe but all of my missions are in an urban environment and my base was in Greenland and all the crash sites were local. Realistic locations for the the map would be awesome and would add interesting variety if some missions are in the snow in the middle of the woods and others would be in larger city/town.

- lastly, and the idea that I think is most important is to expand the richness of the ground combat by adding what would be 'sense rolls' in a table rpg. I've only had one or two missions where trying to find the last alien was annoying. The idea I had would involve things like, say, "Corporal Bob Fred hears something to the southwest". this would give you hints about enemy locations, if your soldier was capable enough to hear/see/smell something. maps could be bigger and combat would be more interesting and quicker.

again though, I think you're doing great work and really happy that you're trying to make this game. I plan to purchase a few gift copies for friends. Which reminds me, have you considered a KickStarter project for this game? It seems to work well for Tim Schafer...

[EarthDefender]

oh yeah, another idea that I think might be cool is to have fighter pilots be another personnel type that would be recruited, would have varying stats and abilities and would exhibit those attributes during fights.

It would add the same 'human' element to those situations.

edit:

- different weapon types would be great too, like I read in an earlier thread. It would give more interesting tactical options if they had slightly varying stats, like a rifle that does more damage but isn't as accurate. a lighter SMG, a magnum pistol, etc.

Edited February 10, 2012 by EarthDefender

[EarthDefender]

another idea I think would be cool would be preset equipment configurations.

I usually have classes, hvy weapons, medical, breaching, etc and equipment loads are usually very similar. I'd love to be able to customize a handful of these presets and equip my soldiers with one click.

[Gorlom]

oh yeah, another idea that I think might be cool is to have fighter pilots be another personnel type that would be recruited, would have varying stats and abilities and would exhibit those attributes during fights.

It would add the same 'human' element to those situations.

edit:

- different weapon types would be great too, like I read in an earlier thread. It would give more interesting tactical options if they had slightly varying stats, like a rifle that does more damage but isn't as accurate. a lighter SMG, a magnum pistol, etc.

THink this has been declined along the general basis of too much hassle for neglible effects. And im not even sure that giving pilots stats is a posetive gameplay aspects. I admit it seems cool but I don't think it translates well when acctually playing.

- i imagine this is in the pipe but all of my missions are in an urban environment and my base was in Greenland and all the crash sites were local. Realistic locations for the the map would be awesome and would add interesting variety if some missions are in the snow in the middle of the woods and others would be in larger city/town.

Yes, this is still Alpha. Up till and includeing version 8.9 we only had one basic map and tileset. Version 9 also introduced the farm tileset. As I understand it the tileset depends on which hemisphere the crashsite is generated in so setting up base in greenland is not optimal to see variaty atm

- lastly, and the idea that I think is most important is to expand the richness of the ground combat by adding what would be 'sense rolls' in a table rpg. I've only had one or two missions where trying to find the last alien was annoying. The idea I had would involve things like, say, "Corporal Bob Fred hears something to the southwest". this would give you hints about enemy locations, if your soldier was capable enough to hear/see/smell something. maps could be bigger and combat would be more interesting and quicker.

You dont have to hunt down each and every alien on a map. There are secondary victory conditions. For crashsites keep one of your soldiers in each compartment of the crashed ship for 5 turns in a row and you win without needing to hunt the last alien.

I'm not sure how theese sense rolls would work early missions. I don't think they would work well if they were active from the start and I have no idea how you would trigger them to be activated later on in combat in a fluent way without breaking immersion or feeling forced.

[iamkyon]

another idea I think would be cool would be preset equipment configurations.

I usually have classes, hvy weapons, medical, breaching, etc and equipment loads are usually very similar. I'd love to be able to customize a handful of these presets and equip my soldiers with one click.

This suggestion crops up on a regular basis, and I believe it's featured on the team's nice-to-have list.

[Chris]

Yup a lot of this has been mentioned before. I'm glad you like the game and I think a lot of your issues will be fixed in the beta - although pilots levelling up and the crash site location being known aren't planned, and nor is a wider range of starting weapons. I'm a bit busy to go through and explain why in detail for each one but I've read your post and noted your thoughts

[EarthDefender]

sorry about that, didn't spend much time reading the forums before my post.

keep up the good work!