KickStarter Phoenix Point - the new game from X-COM creator Julian Gollop

[gurugeorge]

HERE WE GO!
TRAILER IS OUT:

Gosh that looks great!

 

[ArchAngel]

It is coming out today around 18 CET. It will be on Steam workshop in list of mods to subscribe to. If people want additional challenge I would also recommend Better Enemies which is a seperate mod and for better balanced vehicles and mutogs Better Vehicles

 

[ArchAngel]

There should also be a version for GoG at some point. Devs (SG) left some tool for non Steam users to use mods, personally I don't know how to set that up but I see on our Discord people on GoG are discussing it so someone will come up with a way and instructions sooner than later.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

You need all of the DLC to use the mod, right?

 

[ArchAngel]

You need all of the DLC to use the mod, right?

Yes. all content was used for one thing or another. DLC interconnected in different ways, some more and some less.
But this is only Open Beta, there is going to be 2.0 version at some point as well with more polish, more balance and probably some more stuff.

 

[ArchAngel]

It is OUT!
https://phoenixpoint.info/blog/2022...void-mod-adds-new-challenges-enemies-and-more

TERROR FROM THE VOID MOD ADDS NEW CHALLENGES, ENEMIES AND MORE!​

We at Snapshot Games have been impressed by the various mod creators developing content for Phoenix Point and wanted to shine a spotlight on an upcoming mod release from a dedicated team called Phoenix Rising. This is THEIR work, but we wanted you to be aware of it!
Welcome to Phoenix Rising’s Terror from the Void!

From the depths, a new danger has emerged to jeopardize Phoenix and the entire planet. This third wave of Pandoravirus threatens to plunge the world into madness if not confronted, but the road to recovery won’t be easy.
Terror from the Void [Download here] is a fan-created conversion mod that introduces new and changed game mechanics, enemies, and more for Phoenix Point and includes the team’s previous Better Classes changes, which tweak soldier classes and skills. If you’ve only played the standard Phoenix Point to date, expect a very different experience with this mod!
Terror from the Void is an open beta release that includes many new features, with the Phoenix Rising team focusing on a few key areas for their mod: More player choice and campaign progression, increased strategic options, and a high degree of game customization for players.

PLAYER CHOICE AND CAMPAIGN PROGRESSION​

Players can now begin their TFTV campaigns aligned even closer with one of the NPC factions through Origins, granting a starter faction soldier to help fight the Pandorans from Day One; for example, selecting a New Jericho origin will award players with a Technician ready to go. These soldiers can even arrive buffed with higher stats to help you face the horrors to come.

And horrors do await, as the Phoenix Rising team has re-introduced Oneiric Delirium, a game mechanic that takes its toll on your soldiers’ psyche as the campaign progresses. Players must manage their soldiers carefully to keep them operational, as Delirium saps their Willpower, but it can also be harnessed into unique perks or advantages. Be warned, though, as the Oneiric Delirium Index increases, more powerful and harsher effects will rear their head, but players can remove this threat as they progress through the story.
The reframing of Oneiric Delirium is just one piece of a story reinterpretation that the Phoenix Rising team has integrated into the Terror from the Void mod. Much of the existing in-game text has been tweaked, and new lore, characters, and more have been added as well as a reassessing of missions to reflect those changes. You can expect a very different campaign flow than in a standard Phoenix Point campaign!

INCREASED STRATEGIC OPTIONS​

Of course, the core of any mod is how it changes the gameplay, and Terror from the Void offers lots of new challenges and tweaks. Alongside tougher choices when diplomatically engaging with the various factions, TFTV also introduces Void Omens, temporary global effects that bestow bonuses and penalties linked to the addition of Oneiric Delirium. For example, players may find their skills cost more Will Points, but the Delirium has no effect on their soldiers - or for a period of time, havens in the Mist become Infested when destroyed.

New enemies also join the battlefield, including redesigned Umbras that focus on Delirium-tainted soldiers and grow more powerful over time, and Revenants, reanimated soldiers that now fight for the Pandorans that adapt to your tactics. Thankfully, defeating these threats will eventually open new research pathways that grant powerful rewards.
Oh, and don’t think the human enemies are pushovers either. Now, humans deploy in unique groupings based on their faction, which includes different ranked soldiers: a boss, officers, and lower-ranked units. These squads introduce specific tactical modifiers that change how you engage them in combat.

These are just some of what you can expect in the open beta happening right now, with many other surprises and changes awaiting players. And best of all, the Phoenix Rising team has made it easy to toggle the different features on or off so you can tailor the game to your preferred playstyle!
You can download Terror from the Void on Steam, and please be sure to visit the official Phoenix Rising Discord to chat with the team about their mod or share feedback. TFTV requires the base Phoenix Point game and all of its DLC to run.
We thank the Phoenix Rising team for their exciting work and look forward to jumping into the fray. We also wish you all good luck fighting back against the Madness!

 

[kyosuke]

Is there a way to start the game with mods using the desktop shortcut?
Or is starting within the Steam Client the only way?

NVM. Just adding -mod into the launch options does the trick.

 

[gurugeorge]

Is there a way to start the game with mods using the desktop shortcut?
Or is starting within the Steam Client the only way?

NVM. Just adding -mod into the launch options does the trick.

R-click on the game's name on the left hand side list of your games in Steam and go to Properties, put "-mods" (without the quotes) in launch options at the bottom of the window that pops up, then the game will fire up with mods even from the desktop icon.

 

[kyosuke]

Is there a way to start the game with mods using the desktop shortcut?
Or is starting within the Steam Client the only way?

NVM. Just adding -mod into the launch options does the trick.

R-click on the game's name on the left hand side list of your games in Steam and go to Properties, put "-mods" (without the quotes) in launch options at the bottom of the window that pops up, then the game will fire up with mods even from the desktop icon.

Yeah, did that. Playing the game now.

 

[Visperas]

Report your findings guys!

 

[lightbane]

Hopefully this mod won't make the base game take forever to complete and/or require autistic focus like Long War.

 

[ArchAngel]

Hopefully this mod won't make the base game take forever to complete and/or require autistic focus like Long War.

While Long War takes base game and increases number of missions to about 3x, this mod takes base game that has about 100+ missions until end and reduces that to 60+.

 

[Ibn Sina]

So is the mod good or does it just add more tedium than what already exists in the game? any reports?

 

[Jaedar]

So is the mod good or does it just add more tedium than what already exists in the game? any reports?

I'm too busy with terra invicta

But also interested if anyone else has impressions to report.

 

[Parabalus]

I didn't really like their Nerfed Classes mod, so I'm waiting for at least the first patch for this.

They had some good ideas in the former but it lacked some polish, I'm sure this'll be a great way to play the game in half a year or so.

 

[ArchAngel]

So far people are loving it. It has 5 stars on workshop with only 2 downvotes and about 200 upvotes. And on discord only one person said he didn't like it because he started on Legend when we said Legend is harder than before and then complained how he got owned..

 

[Grunker]

So is the mod good or does it just add more tedium than what already exists in the game? any reports?

It looks like it adds more DLC-like micromanagement mechanics which was one of the main problems with the original game. Haven’t tried it though

 

[ArchAngel]

So is the mod good or does it just add more tedium than what already exists in the game? any reports?

It looks like it adds more DLC-like micromanagement mechanics which was one of the main problems with the original game. Haven’t tried it though

Explain?! It just takes existing mechanics and makes them better or more influential (like with Delirium). And still it is not even close to UFO, I was pushing we make it closer to UFO all the time but they didn't want to. For example I wanted us to limit using global inventory only when at base.

 

[Grunker]

So is the mod good or does it just add more tedium than what already exists in the game? any reports?

It looks like it adds more DLC-like micromanagement mechanics which was one of the main problems with the original game. Haven’t tried it though

Explain?! It just takes existing mechanics and makes them better or more influential (like with Delirium). And still it is not even close to UFO, I was pushing we make it closer to UFO all the time but they didn't want to. For example I wanted us to limit using global inventory only when at base.

“the Phoenix Rising team has re-introduced Oneiric Delirium, a game mechanic that takes its toll on your soldiers’ psyche as the campaign progresses. Players must manage their soldiers carefully to keep them operational, as Delirium saps their Willpower, but it can also be harnessed into unique perks or advantages. Be warned, though, as the Oneiric Delirium Index increases, more powerful and harsher effects will rear their head, but players can remove this threat as they progress through the story.”

This sounds like exactly the type of shit that soured me on the main game; instead of interacting with the complex and fairly robust core gameplay and management, the further the game went on the more I was forced to do some simplistic, routine micromanagement side gimmicks to the point where I ended up spending more time doing all of that boring mini game stuff compared to interacting with systems that had actual work put into them

 

[Jaedar]

Yeah, the delirium stuff did make me a bit wary as well. I guess they made it so you'll have more soldiers that you can swap out, but that just means more micromanagement as you have to equip/unequip stuff before every encounter.

 

[ArchAngel]

Yeah, the delirium stuff did make me a bit wary as well. I guess they made it so you'll have more soldiers that you can swap out, but that just means more micromanagement as you have to equip/unequip stuff before every encounter.

Why would you want to do unequip/equip before every encounter? And how is that different than what you did in UFO and nuXcom?! Equipping soldiers before every missions has been staple of this genre from the start.

 

[Parabalus]

Yeah, the delirium stuff did make me a bit wary as well. I guess they made it so you'll have more soldiers that you can swap out, but that just means more micromanagement as you have to equip/unequip stuff before every encounter.

Why would you want to do unequip/equip before every encounter? And how is that different than what you did in UFO and nuXcom?! Equipping soldiers before every missions has been staple of this genre from the start.

Here you have multiple squads, moving in physical vehicles to multiple missions, but their items can teleport between squads.

Very egregious compared to nuXcom.

 

[ArchAngel]

So is the mod good or does it just add more tedium than what already exists in the game? any reports?

It looks like it adds more DLC-like micromanagement mechanics which was one of the main problems with the original game. Haven’t tried it though

Explain?! It just takes existing mechanics and makes them better or more influential (like with Delirium). And still it is not even close to UFO, I was pushing we make it closer to UFO all the time but they didn't want to. For example I wanted us to limit using global inventory only when at base.

“the Phoenix Rising team has re-introduced Oneiric Delirium, a game mechanic that takes its toll on your soldiers’ psyche as the campaign progresses. Players must manage their soldiers carefully to keep them operational, as Delirium saps their Willpower, but it can also be harnessed into unique perks or advantages. Be warned, though, as the Oneiric Delirium Index increases, more powerful and harsher effects will rear their head, but players can remove this threat as they progress through the story.”

This sounds like exactly the type of shit that soured me on the main game; instead of interacting with the complex and fairly robust core gameplay and management, the further the game went on the more I was forced to do some simplistic, routine micromanagement side gimmicks to the point where I ended up spending more time doing all of that boring mini game stuff compared to interacting with systems that had actual work put into them

There are two reason for this:
1. It is way more Lovecraftian than what devs did with the game when they removed it few years back. It gives back way more horror elements into the game.
2. It promotes squad rotation (along some other changes) so you are not always using same 6 (or 8) guys like in nuXcom. So it plays a bit more like UFO where you will sometimes leave a soldier in base and take another. It is still way less micromanagement than both Long War mods where for each mission you had to take some other soldiers and spent a lot of time preparing before each missions.

 

[ArchAngel]

Yeah, the delirium stuff did make me a bit wary as well. I guess they made it so you'll have more soldiers that you can swap out, but that just means more micromanagement as you have to equip/unequip stuff before every encounter.

Why would you want to do unequip/equip before every encounter? And how is that different than what you did in UFO and nuXcom?! Equipping soldiers before every missions has been staple of this genre from the start.

Here you have multiple squads, moving in physical vehicles to multiple missions, but their items can teleport between squads.

Very egregious compared to nuXcom.

Nobody is forcing you to swap items around. I almost never do that and I don't have any problems finishing the game. At best I will "teleport" newly built items to squads that are somewhere going to a mission.
While devs didn't block this (probably just so people didn't need to micromanage base inventory and different ship inventories) game was not designed around 3 squads using 1 set of items. You can easily have a set of items for each soldier.

Anyone complaining about this would have hated even more if inventory worked like in UFO. That management was 3x more complicated. You could also have multiple teams going to multiple missions at same time (from multiple bases that each had its own inventory list).

 

[Jaedar]

Yeah, the delirium stuff did make me a bit wary as well. I guess they made it so you'll have more soldiers that you can swap out, but that just means more micromanagement as you have to equip/unequip stuff before every encounter.

Why would you want to do unequip/equip before every encounter? And how is that different than what you did in UFO and nuXcom?! Equipping soldiers before every missions has been staple of this genre from the start.

Here you have multiple squads, moving in physical vehicles to multiple missions, but their items can teleport between squads.

Very egregious compared to nuXcom.

Nobody is forcing you to swap items around. I almost never do that and I don't have any problems finishing the game. At best I will "teleport" newly built items to squads that are somewhere going to a mission.
While devs didn't block this (probably just so people didn't need to micromanage base inventory and different ship inventories) game was not designed around 3 squads using 1 set of items. You can easily have a set of items for each soldier.

Anyone complaining about this would have hated even more if inventory worked like in UFO. That management was 3x more complicated. You could also have multiple teams going to multiple missions at same time (from multiple bases that each had its own inventory list).

Careful now, your rabid fanboy is showing.

It is optimal to build 1x of each equipment and teleport it between your squads. And each piece of equipment is VERY expensive which provides ample incentive. It would be better if the game was designed with cheaper gear that was stuck in the ship, so you could still have multiple squads with good gear.

Speaking of UFO, I have admittedly only ever played openXcom and UfoExtender, both of which add lots of features to combat micromanagement. But also, gear in UFO is really, really cheap, even before accounting for the economy being broken by laser cannon manufacturing. And it is also tied to the ship, which means you can only share blaster launchers if you physically share them. And you know, you pretty much never need two squads running around at the same time in UFO, just enough boots on the ground to replace losses.