[BruceLeeRoy]

This looks so good. I can't believe how closely they are keeping the soul of this series alive.

[subversus]

As you said it's only a matter of time before you play the same exact level again and it will probably play out the same exact way.

well, this I doubt because spawns are randomly generated but still...

[Neuromancer]

well, this I doubt because spawns are randomly generated but still...

Oh I must have missed that, where did they say that?

[subversus]

Oh I must have missed that, where did they say that?

here:

GC: (laughs) So the levels themselves are also completely randomly generated? JS: The levels themselves are hand-crafted but we have an obscene amount… you could not play through a full game twice and see those levels again. But what happens on those levels with aliens when they come up, that stuff is all procedural.

[Lactose_Intolerant]

lol, premade levels. Just make large square sections like gas station, restaurant, buildings, etc. This make me sad.

[El'Kharn]

No wonder people ask if this is a big production... Look at the game. Why does it visually, look so goddamn cheap.

Wut the hell...
Game looks awesome. day 1

[Air Zombie Meat]

here:

Right but it's hard to tell if they actually mean spawns by that. I hope they do.

[Neuromancer]

here:

Oh I took that more to mean the AI that drives the aliens is dynamic and responds to your actions/movements, not that the spawns are random.

[pr1ley]

Super excited for this. I didn't play the original, does it hold up today?

[Air Zombie Meat]

Super excited for this. I didn't play the original, does it hold up today?

Yes it does as long you're prepared to be thrown in at the deep end and learn how to play without tutorials.

[subversus]

lol, premade levels. Just make large square sections like gas station, restaurant, buildings, etc. This make me sad.

just stop waiting this game already and don't be sad. There is another XCOM game is being made, you can play its alpha right now.

Oh I took that more to mean the AI that drives the aliens is dynamic and responds to your actions/movements, not that the spawns are random.

well, I don't think that they would confirm that AI is dynamic because it can't be not dynamic :)

[robin2]

I hope it helped.

Let's consider having just the two most basic action: move and shoot.

In a Action + Action* system you have 4 combinations: shoot+shoot, shoot+move, move+shoot, move+move.
(* and a lot of games use an even more limited Move + Action )
In a TUs system, considering the most simplistic scenario where shooting = 50% of your TUs, you'd still at least have one more combination: move+shoot+move; and this is exactly thanks to its flexibility.

In fact a TUs based system uses it flexibility to build complexity, UFO itself is a good example of this. An A+A system needs superstructures to reach complexity, like units with rigidly defined roles and special abilities/powers.
So TUs-based systems are intimately more flexible than A + A.

And your objection makes little to no sense: If you prefer A + A because it is more svelte I can't say nothing (good for you), but the extra options that a TUs system gives are still there and being too lazy to take advantage of them doesn't make them disappear.


Edit: Oh, and TUs is no Einstein stuff, it is just an expendable resource represented by a value, like MANA from every RPG ever.

[Neuromancer]

well, I don't think that they would confirm that AI is dynamic because it can't be not dynamic :)

We'll see I guess.

[subversus]

Let's consider having just the two most basic action: move and shoot. In a Action + Action* system you have 4 combinations: shoot+shoot, shoot+move, move+shoot, move+move. (* and a lot of games use an even more limited Move + Action ) In a TUs system, considering the most simplistic scenario where shooting = 50% of your TUs, you'd still at least have one more combination: move+shoot+move; and this is exactly thanks to its flexibility. In fact a TUs based system uses it flexibility to build complexity, UFO itself is a good example of this. An A+A system needs superstructures to reach complexity, like units with rigidly defined roles and special abilities/powers. So TUs-based systems are intimately more flexible than A + A. And your objection makes little to no sense: If you prefer A + A because it is more svelte I can't say nothing (good for you), but the extra options that a TUs system gives are still there and being too lazy to take advantage of them doesn't make them disappear. Edi: Oh, and TUs is no Einstein stuff, it is just an expendable resource represented by a value, like MANA from every RPG ever.

as you have said you can use superstructures to build complexity in non-TU system.

I'M FINE WITH THAT. I'm fine with everything except numbers which I hate passionately since the day I went to school and they made me learn them. Just give me a clear representation of resources available, that is all.

[robin2]

What I hope is that the bar the units have under their supposed health (the dotted one), indicates a flexible behavior movement action.

There is a stripe with a small vertical like: I'm hoping the stripe indicates the total amount of a the move action, and the vertical line how much you have expended it. That would open to a more flexible use of the move action (enabling move + shoot + move). It still is inferior to TUs but it is already more creative than a totally rigid A+A.

Edit: hmmm sadly it doesn't seem the case.. judging about the video.

[elcranky]

Yeah, except there isn't one single optimal solution with a TU-based system; it really doesn't matter how insistently you keep repeating it. If anything, there are more possible combinations using TUs and granular management than using fixed phases in your soldiers' turns. Beside there are many other implications with the new system. Like the fact that in a move+action system LOS checks are losing any significance. And in fact we know that in this new X-com we aren't dealing with cones of vision and lines of sight anymore, as anything isn't covered by the fog of war is constantly visible for any member of your team. So forgive me if I can just laugh or be annoyed when I read your nonsensical statements about how TUs are supposed to take away depth from the combat system.

Of course there is a single optimal solution. LOS checks never had any significance in XCOM because every situation fell into 2 states: LOS needed or not. TU do nothing to enhance that complexity. Most times LOS was needed so you reserved those TU if you are playing optimally. All the TU did was provide an accounting exercise that limited players from optimal play through either misunderstanding of the ruleset or as I usually play winging it without much thought because I have enough experience to have a good feel for the TU limitations.

To me micromanagement is NOT FUN. I prefer to focus on strategy and tactics and not accounting. Also, given today's real world technology, unless the aliens are employing stealth technology, LOS is an outmoded concept as the soldiers should have fairly complete battlespace information.

[Luigi87]

I only started playing the classic X-COM: Enemy Unknown back in January after winning it (thanks to GAF), and absolutely fell in love with it.

So happy to see footage of this. I am very psyched for it, as it is looking great.

[goober]

This game looks like fun, is there any game that is close to this kind of gameplay?

[Brinbe]

Jesus, it already looks astounding. Cannot f'n wait.

[Neuromancer]

This game looks like fun, is there any game that is close to this kind of gameplay?

Do you have a 3DS? Ghost Recon Shadow Wars is pretty awesome.

[Corto]

This game looks like fun, is there any game that is close to this kind of gameplay?

Valkyria Chronicles maybe?

[Boogalogist]

Is there some max character limit you can bring in a mission? I want be able to bring 50 men to a mission!!

[robin2]

Is there some max character limit you can bring in a mission? I want be able to bring 50 men to a mission!!

There is a 4-units limit, which can be upgraded to 6 (new airships I presume).
Of course it is one of the most controversial element of this re-imagination of UFO:EU.

But you couldn't bring 50 men even in Apocalypse (36 max).

[Boogalogist]

Awwwwwwww c'mon. I regularly bring at least 10 men and a tank!! This won't do!!

I hope modders have a field day out here!

[raphier]

As heard on InterCom 5456: "We know what the feck makes X-Com, X-Com. Now let's take away all those small, interesting features. Them folks can't count up to five anyway. Ladders are too mainsteam, gotta be hip-"

Let me straight up guess, if...

- Each level starts with a cutscene where your units escape the ramp and you start with all of them scattered in the radius of your dropship and behind a cover.
- Your funds/points will be shown to you in two to three-digit numbers. (you have 100£, upgrade costs 15£, etc etc...)
- The interceptors will automatically intercept moving targets. You only may be able to choose their style of engagement. (if they don't introduce a laser satellite)
- smoke grenades are either a perk or entirely not within the game. Same goes to night gear.
- All things math (ex. TU's, percentages, etc) will be simplified (17%? more like 20%!).

I am out.

So, please be good, please be good, please be- oh an ant hive! simple folks have hard time counting on that. Now I feel much saver about this game.

Also,

Bunch of unprofessional jackasses in my team >:( Every vet knows that you deploy a tank and a smoke screen first and foremost.

[iirate]

As heard on InterCom 5456: "We know what the feck makes X-Com, X-Com. Now let's take away all those small, interesting features. Them folks can't count up to five anyway. Ladders are too mainsteam, gotta be hip-" Let me straight up guess, if... - Each level starts with a cutscene where your units escape the ramp and you start with all of them scattered in the radius of your dropship and behind a cover. - Your funds/points will be shown to you in two to three-digit numbers. (you have 100£, upgrade costs 15£, etc etc...) - The interceptors will automatically intercept moving targets. You only may be able to choose their style of engagement. (if they don't introduce a laser satellite) - With the way the gameplay is, smoke grenades are either a perk or entirely not within the game. - All things math (TU's, percentages) will be simplified (17%? more like 20%!). I am out. So, please be good, please be good, please be- oh an ant hive! simple folks have hard time counting on that. Now I feel much saver about this game. Also, Bunch of unprofessional jackasses in my team >:( Every vet knows that you deploy a tank and a smoke screen first and foremost.

- maybe
- doubt it
- no clue
- they said smokes are in, and some classes can use them more effectively
- maybe

[raphier]

- maybe - doubt it - no clue - they said smokes are in, and some classes can use them more effectively - maybe

Lies! Here you have only 41§ and power generator costs simply 5§

It is pretty clear the studio expects me/us to be a little dumb or something. Atleast smoke is in, so I am delighted a lot by that.

[Whoompthereitis]

Looks great to me.

[Minsc]

- The interceptors will automatically intercept moving targets. You only may be able to choose their style of engagement. (if they don't introduce a laser satellite)

This is actually one of the things we were teased about a while ago, but I don't believe we've seen much more of. They mentioned they were expanding the ship to UFO combat from the original (greatly I think?), but never really gave many details on how. Maybe someone else remembers where it was mentioned, I can't find it again. I am curious to see what system they have in place for taking down airborne ufos.

- All things math (ex. TU's, percentages, etc) will be simplified (17%? more like 20%!).

This one's definitely wrong. There's screens with units with non-rounded hp and %s to hit, like this one.

This game looks like fun, is there any game that is close to this kind of gameplay?

Silent Storm + expansion and Jagged Alliance 2 would definitely be worth looking in to if you've tried the original X-Com already.

[platypotamus]

Lies! Here you have only 41§ and power generator costs simply 5§ It is pretty clear the studio expects me/us to be a little dumb or something. Atleast smoke is in, so I am delighted a lot by that.

Wait what? You're offended by the removal of a bunch of zeroes from the end of a number? Why? If that little "§" was replaced by "M§" for Millions of §, would you be less offended?

[Vandiger]

I'm impressed, can't wait to play this.

[raphier]

Wait what? You're offended by the removal of a bunch of zeroes from the end of a number? Why? If that little "§" was replaced by "M§" for Millions of §, would you be less offended?

No, it's merely about defying a principle. You do agree that if soldiers wore pink or red armor, it wouldn't be taken as seriously as green armor, why? Because of principle. I say give things a cost that make sense, just like in the original game you earned what felt like a real funding.

Also if that §M defines that whenever you run under 1M§, it becomes <999,999§ I truly have no problem with that. Otherwise 1M§ is the limit and that's boring in my opinion.

[SkoomaSuckinSwit]

After watching 3 seconds of actual gameplay footage, and I knew this would be mine.
Welcome back, XCOM:UFO Defense.

[Elixist]

This looks great , but fuck dynamic camera angles my god this type of shit is ruining games for me. These glam cams always suck dick Arkahm City, Street Fighter 4, im seeing it in the new Dead or Alive, it makes me feel like im in a quicktime event and I hate that shit. Here watch a repetive 10 sec clip that youve seen a hundred times before you can play again k. Hope you can turn that shit off, the game is beautiful in the isometric view and thats how i'd always like to view the game thanks.

[Pancho]

Looks so awesome. Sadly, none of my friends are excited for this game but I'll defintely get in on it. I never played the first one so this game will probably chew me alive.

[SRG01]

I'm interested to see how many hand-crafted levels they have, if it is indeed an obscene amount. I'm probably one of the rare ones that doesn't like procedurally-created or randomly-generated levels, because you can "see" similar chunks and patterns after a while.

[Decado]

I'd be a hell of alot more excited if they kept decent squad sizes and time units :\

Squads of four? Seriously? Is this supposed to be an RPG or something?

[James-Ape]

I would love for a portable version of this to be released.

[charlequin]

The real issue here is that managing TUs is accounting, and accounting doesn't make for fun game play.

Right. You'll generally find people working in design of well-regarded, strategically deep games these days working to reduce accounting wherever possible, because it's extremely inefficient design-wise -- a fairly small amount of it can quickly push a player's experience into tedium, fatigue, and dissatisfaction, but it generally takes a pretty large amount of accounting-heavy content to produce a small amount of strategic depth. (If you have 1000 possible choices, but 995 of them are straightforwardly bad, you've got a ton of accounting but not much depth.)

Some of the issue here is that there are a pretty good number of players who enjoy strategic depth and also enjoy accounting. These players are going to be inclined towards keeping both around already for that reason, but those players will also be the best positioned to take advantage of the minuscule benefits that careful accounting can extract -- which means they're always going to overestimate the amount of benefit it brings to the table.

Solving this would involve implementing a system where clicking on the unit would have their moveable distance highlight the tiles in a turn's reach, possibly changing color to indicate where the divide between move + shoot vs. move + move reaches.

Right, it's not impossible to create a UI that simplifies the TU process, but you reach a point where it's a question of how much value you're extracting by doing so. A ground-coloring move-then-act system covers most of the scenarios a TU system can and a three-tier action system (major-minor-move, like in D&D 3rd Edition) covers basically all of them.

Let's consider having just the two most basic action: move and shoot.

This isn't really an apples-to-apples comparison though. I mean, if you break it down to the simplest imaginable system:

ACTIONS: You have two actions, a move and an action. The move can be used to move up to 5 tiles. The action can be used to shoot OR to move up to five tiles. You must use the move first.

TURN UNITS: You have ten TUs. Each square you move costs one TU; shooting costs 5 TUs; you can't move after you shoot.

The outcomes are identical in those two systems, even though one uses TU and one doesn't. At that point there's no tactical difference whatsoever. And starting from that point, most individual tactical choices can be implemented in either system in a way that preserves most of the depth. For example, with LOS-checking, you could manually look around yourself (at a cost of 1 TU) on each square, or you could implement a "move cautiously" action in the action system, that halves your movement but checks your LOS on each square. In the vast majority of situations, there's no meaningful tactical difference here.

Do you have a 3DS? Ghost Recon Shadow Wars is pretty awesome.

Isn't it on iOS now too?

[ZombieSupaStar]

hehe

Having played Xcom, Fallout , and Jagged Alliance back when they were new.


I prefer VATS, Action + Action, and Plan & Go, over their old systems.


*runsfromangrymob*

[Unicorn]

wait, what???? levels are not procedural??? now that is bullshit........... edit: and before you say that you can't do procedural levels with UE3 - Hunted did that.

Wait, I thought they were....

[Neuromancer]

Charlequin: I don't think it's on iOS yet, but it's coming.

[Pancho]

How accesible would this game be for someone who never played the first one?

[Unicorn]

As heard on InterCom 5456: "We know what the feck makes X-Com, X-Com. Now let's take away all those small, interesting features. Them folks can't count up to five anyway. Ladders are too mainsteam, gotta be hip-" Let me straight up guess, if... - Each level starts with a cutscene where your units escape the ramp and you start with all of them scattered in the radius of your dropship and behind a cover. - Your funds/points will be shown to you in two to three-digit numbers. (you have 100£, upgrade costs 15£, etc etc...) - The interceptors will automatically intercept moving targets. You only may be able to choose their style of engagement. (if they don't introduce a laser satellite) - smoke grenades are either a perk or entirely not within the game. Same goes to night gear. - All things math (ex. TU's, percentages, etc) will be simplified (17%? more like 20%!). I am out. So, please be good, please be good, please be- oh an ant hive! simple folks have hard time counting on that. Now I feel much saver about this game. Also, Bunch of unprofessional jackasses in my team >:( Every vet knows that you deploy a tank and a smoke screen first and foremost.

I'm sorta offended that you're so offended.

I mean really? If these are the things you're worried about, they must have done a fan-fucking-tastic job making sure every other aspect of the original was there.

Rounding of percentages. Would you even be able to notice the difference in-game.

[robin2]

you can't move after you shoot.

This is a forcing. It doesn't naturally belong to a TUs-based system.

[ruttyboy]

you may have no problems with maths but you have problems with reading comprehension so I'll mark all words necessary for understanding. My first post in this thread about flexibility: after this post I asked people to explain how the old system is more flexible for me. They explained. And then I explained how the old system is less flexible for me because I had less headroom for actual planning and strategy. I don't give a damn if the old system is more flexible for you because I won't be playing the game sitting in your head. The ultimate goal of all strategy games is to make player form a strategy. The old system left me less choice because instead of thinking about a strategy I had to do maths. If your brain enjoys doing math and building a strategy through numbers and calculations it's fine. I tend to think with images and associations and use them as building blocks for thinking. I hope it helped.

Erm, what's your problem? If you look at my post you quoted it is already an admission that I had misinterpreted your statement.

[StoppedInTracks]

Very disappointed with lack of random generated levels. I could live with 6 team members and lack of TUs but non-random levels is a breaker for me. You will see the same levels in YT videos that you encounter during your gameplay. They said "obscene" amount... how much is this? If the game can be beaten in say 40 level then obscene IMO is 400 levels. Doubt they would create 10 times the amount of levels that you need to complete the game.

[ruttyboy]

Of course there is a single optimal solution. LOS checks never had any significance in XCOM because every situation fell into 2 states: LOS needed or not. TU do nothing to enhance that complexity. Most times LOS was needed so you reserved those TU if you are playing optimally. All the TU did was provide an accounting exercise that limited players from optimal play through either misunderstanding of the ruleset or as I usually play winging it without much thought because I have enough experience to have a good feel for the TU limitations. To me micromanagement is NOT FUN. I prefer to focus on strategy and tactics and not accounting. Also, given today's real world technology, unless the aliens are employing stealth technology, LOS is an outmoded concept as the soldiers should have fairly complete battlespace information.

I think you're missing the point. TUs allow as many actions as you have points for (see my formula earlier in the thread), a two move system allows 2 actions max, how can you not see the difference?

For example, if throwing a grenade costs half the time units of shooting, you immediately have a greater choice, do you move and shoot once, or move and throw two grenades, or move and throw one grenade and then move again?

With a two move system you can only move and shoot, or move and throw one grenade only, it flattens out most actions to be considered the same (shooting is equivalent to a grenade, moving one square is equivalent to moving five squares). To me, that is a huge reduction in depth.

[subversus]

Erm, what's your problem? If you look at my post you quoted it is already an admission that I had misinterpreted your statement.

/rereads the post

Yes, I was sleepy at the time so I might have missed it.

[Neuromancer]

How accesible would this game be for someone who never played the first one?

Sounds like this will be very accessible.