Phoenix Point - AMA with Jullian Gollop

[Mr. Quiet]

So I supported this project. Now I feel bad that I gave them more than I ever gave Sup's team here for the finished beauty that is OXC.

[kharille]

I've made donations to the warband mod gekokujo and I didn't get much out of chaos reborn, but I'd like to show my gratitude to Julian Gollop.  Played his games throughout the 80's to the present.  Can't remember whether I made some kind of donation to OpenXcom, if I did it must've been a long time ago.

[Mr. Quiet]

I didn't know I can donate to that author. Played Gekokujo endlessly. My favorite of all the Warband mods ever. I've never seen the GoT HBO show so I didn't enjoy CoK. That's been the top mod on Moddb for a long time.

[kharille]

Gek was amazing.  Had this annoying thing though, invest in the game, and a new version comes out which is not game compatible.  Now that he's stopped working on it I'm sad but Bannerlord is coming out.  Anyway, Julian also did other games, used to spend ages in the 80's playing rebelstar raiders.  Rebelstar 86' had a lawnmower, you can actually interact with your environment.  Sadly I've not seen anything to that effect since then unless you want to throw incendiaries and obliterate your environment.

Magic & Mayhem was a fun version of Lords of Chaos, rts, smoother although my first impressions was the graphics were quite disturbing.  Then again, theres Wallace and Gromit.

[robin]

Anyone following the development of this?
I watched a video recently and it looked like.. a reskinned XCOM2012. At least the battlescape action.
I know the are some twists like evolving monsters but .. is the battlescape really 1:1 to the one from XCOM2012? I mean everything looks exactly the same, from the UI to soldier's classes-abilities, cover mechanics, movement-shooting mechanics...

[ohartenstein23]

Yeah, I've been watching it too, however a recent pair of AMAs with Gollop bring up how it's going to be the best of both X-Com 94 and XCOM 2012:

First off, the battlescape mechanics you're seeing are mostly visually taken from the newer xcom. It's not a simple dice roll to hit, the bullets are actually simulated and traced to target, so you can hit different parts on the target, miss and hit terrain, oriss and hit your buddy. This also means taking cover is more of a visual thing too than a hard rule that you should always be in high cover. The classes and abilities are probably somewhat taken from XCOM 2012, but it's going to be a much less linear path down soldier progression, and it was stated that gear will play a large part in the abilities.

As for the geoscape, we'll get multiple bases. That's really most of what was lacking from the newer XCOM There's no interception minigame, though that doesn't seem to fit the game's setting anyways.

[robin]

Thanks
Do we get a proper grid inventory back for soldiers?

[ohartenstein23]

Thanks
Do we get a proper grid inventory back for soldiers?

Not sure, but Gollop did state that you will be able to pick up items from the battlefield like extra ammo or things you want to bring back in case of a retreat.

[Hobbes]

Thanks
Do we get a proper grid inventory back for soldiers?

Yes. You can choose 3 items from the inventory for quick access in the UI

[The Reaver of Darkness]

PS: Your analysis is of course not "wrong"... but it doesn't say how interested people are in the feature... it only says how interested the people are in the feature relative to other features. That's a big difference.

Yes, people might not feel it's very important to stress the time unit system features, while if they had to opt for one system over another, the answers might look very different. I'd imagine the new TU system being currently implemented into Phoenix Point will go over very positively with players. I have a hypothesis that what players like about either the original time unit system or Firaxcom's system are not incompatible, and that rather than select one or the other, you simply have to implement the best of both worlds, and I think that's exactly what Gollop and his team are doing. So if you asked people to choose which system is best, Firaxcom 2 time units or old X-Com 50-80 time units, you might get a good mix of responses. But if you let them try the PP time unit system and ask which of the three is best, you may have a nearly unanimous vote.

[kharille]

Still haven't figured out how to start my game in xcom apoc.  I watched a letsplay from start to finish mind you.  I don't know, maybe its lack of time that I can't get into it myself. 

Not sure if they should simplify it like xcom 2012.  I spent a lot of time on it, but it felt like eating macdonalds, did the job but didn't feel good about it.

[DoxaLogos (JG)]

I can't say for sure if the PP time system is better than Xcom 50-80 time unit system, but PP system looks like a great improvement over the XCOM 2012+ system after watching the demo.

[The Reaver of Darkness]

I think having the visual cue for your shot is really incredible. Openxcom has such a feature if you have confirm movement enabled, but it only shows the range after you choose a destination. With the PP system, you can immediately see all places you could reach and still be able to shoot. That's what was good about Firaxcom's TU system. It's the only thing that was good about it.

[DoxaLogos (JG)]

I think having the visual cue for your shot is really incredible. Openxcom has such a feature if you have confirm movement enabled, but it only shows the range after you choose a destination.

The line of sight indicators I thought were neat.  I got to thinking it would be nice if the battlescape cursor could blink a different color on a target and let you know if there was a "Line of Fire" on it from your current position.  I'm really irritated of having targets "in sight", but no line of fire.

[kharille]

I think its out.  Downloading now, email was out in the last week.  I think this is supposed to be the finished version, not the alpha beta or whatever.