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

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

What is the best Nu-XCOM game in your guys opinion?

UFO Defense (the first one) is the best old XCOM correct? Never played this franchise

x-piratez

Is this like a mod for a mod?

Yes.
It's probably also best tactical game ever.

 

[Jaedar]

What is the best Nu-XCOM game in your guys opinion?

UFO Defense (the first one) is the best old XCOM correct? Never played this franchise

x-piratez

Is this like a mod for a mod?

Yes.
It's probably also best tactical game ever.

Is it?
It has a lot of cool stuff, but the balance is all over the place, and there's approximately 50 million different weapons, with dozens more coming every update. And the techtree is an n-dimensional monstrosity.

So it shares some problems with PP really. Constantly adding new bullshit instead of fixing the core gameplay problems.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

What is the best Nu-XCOM game in your guys opinion?

Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children (2020) is a turn-based, squad-based, tactics game that combines well-designed combat mechanics and excellent encounter design with an intricate character customization system, although the characters themselves are pre-defined. There is no exploration, with each mission taking place on a battlefield that constitutes a separate zone, but it adds extensive character customization/progression RPG elements to equipment and inventory.

UFO Defense (the first one) is the best old XCOM correct? Never played this franchise

Yes, the first game in the series, X-Com: UFO Defense, is the best.

 

[luj1]

Thanks Zed.

Although I'll disagree with tactics being the new RPG. Tactics *was* the original RPG.

 

[Nutmeg]

luj1 I'm playing it too now. I don't care at all for certain aspects of it, but the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Can second the recommendation.

 

[Jaedar]

So I'm a bit in with TFTV. I'm not sure if I'm just rusty, or if everything just got nerfed, but it feels harder, and I'm only playing on normal (2nd easiest, as recommended by mod authors). My units just miss a lot more than I remember, and snipers feel like hot garbage most of the time, I remember them being very op in vanilla. Mindfraggers exploding when killed means that the old tactic of just letting them attack and shooting them with a pistol is not very advisable.

I think they also changed something with faction reputation research: I'm only at 30% synedrion, but they seem to be sharing all their research with me (although I do need to do some research on my end to get it). Meanwhile I got a mission from a neutral haven, which I stupidly did which gave me -15 anu rep. And Jericho rep is just tanked because of the "pure" questline. So I guess I'm a synedrion boy. I always liked accurate lasers anyway.

My units are also all getting delirium whenever I do a mission in a red area, but so far it doesn't seem to have any effects.

We'll see if I tire of it as the game goes on.

 

[ArchAngel]

So I'm a bit in with TFTV. I'm not sure if I'm just rusty, or if everything just got nerfed, but it feels harder, and I'm only playing on normal (2nd easiest, as recommended by mod authors). My units just miss a lot more than I remember, and snipers feel like hot garbage most of the time, I remember them being very op in vanilla. Mindfraggers exploding when killed means that the old tactic of just letting them attack and shooting them with a pistol is not very advisable.

I think they also changed something with faction reputation research: I'm only at 30% synedrion, but they seem to be sharing all their research with me (although I do need to do some research on my end to get it). Meanwhile I got a mission from a neutral haven, which I stupidly did which gave me -15 anu rep. And Jericho rep is just tanked because of the "pure" questline. So I guess I'm a synedrion boy. I always liked accurate lasers anyway.

My units are also all getting delirium whenever I do a mission in a red area, but so far it doesn't seem to have any effects.

We'll see if I tire of it as the game goes on.

Accuracy is not changed in the mod but if you didn't play for a while, base game nerfed a lot of accuracy bonuses from equipment. Mindfraggers explode but it is only 2 squares range. You cannot save the dude that has it on him head from getting a bit of acid but you can keep others from its range.
Faction reputation penalties are doubled in most events while bonuses are left the same. Factions sharing some tech when reaching certain thresholds was added into the base game in one the big patches in last year, this is not the working of the mod.
Early delirium has no effect if you keep your stamina high (each 10 stamina reduces 1 delirium worth of negative effect). This is all explained in tool tips if you have them on.

 

[Serus]

So what would you guys say are the main issues with the game in its current state?

Game was sold as a return to the roots of XCOM UFO Base Defense, what it ended up being was an indie unpolished version of Nu-XCOM. Why would I play this game when I can play NU-XCOM instead?

Because it has 2x better mechanics than nu-Xcom. It is like saying why would I play Pathfinder Kingmaker when I can play Dragon Age 2.

What is the best Nu-XCOM game in your guys opinion?

UFO Defense (the first one) is the best old XCOM correct? Never played this franchise

Best nuXCOM is - by far - from the ones I played that is - XCOM 1 with Long War mod. Possibly with LW rebalance (a sub-mod, i didn't try it). Seriously, it makes this average game into a very good one. It address many issues of the original. Not completely, the engine remains the same but it is enough. Of curse nothing beats the original's atmosphere and the tactical gameplay is very different, certainly a bit more abstract.

 

[Jaedar]

This game is so cool at times. I really like the unique identity of shotguns/rifles/snipers/melee. I just wish there were some more high-tech/lategame weapons: I can't shake the feeling heavy weapons just suck (unless rage bursted), and assault rifles reach peak tech on your first upgrade.

My TFTV playthrough continues. Everyone is deliriumed to hell and back, but you risk permanent debuffs to remove it, so I'm just tanking the wp reduction despite having 1k+ mutagens in the bank. The alien flyer thing has started deploying acid weapons, which are crazy op and it seems there is no aerial tech beyond the basics from each faction (none of which counters psychic guided weapons). But I'm also about to have a permanent income of crystals and mutane, so hopefully I can get some decent ground weapons from that soon. Managed to get NJ and Synedrion to allied so I can get their tech.

Having a really hard time deciding how to multiclass my troops. Feels like most multiclasses just give one useful skill and weapon proficiency (which is admittedly really nice if the base class has shitty weapons).

At this point I can also deploy up to 9 units, and so I am yet again supremely annoyed at not being able to bind aircraft together as a group, so I could move two around simultaneously without it being a massive pain.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Does TFTV change nests? I found them to be a bit of a slog and actually harder than lairs or citadels because the pandorans just keep ganking you.
If it weren't for the mission auto-completing I would keep suffering from squad wipes before extracting.

 

[Jaedar]

Does TFTV change nests? I found them to be a bit of a slog and actually harder than lairs or citadels because the pandorans just keep ganking you.
If it weren't for the mission auto-completing I would keep suffering from squad wipes before extracting.

Not really, I am not sure if its TFTV or a patch change, but the radius of spires activating is much larger. You also have a lower chance of revealing nests, so you do less of these missions. But I have had a really easy time with them.

I settled on a strategy of sending in one chaos truck with an assault trooper. Assault loads into the truck, which uses its insane movement to zoom around until it finds a spire. One round from the truck gun, followed by assault disembarking, firing, and reembarking is enough to take out the spire in one turn. The armor and movement speed, as well as the lack of open spaces also means the pandorans just have issues dealing much damage to the truck. Usually clear out the nest in 3-4 turns.

 

[ArchAngel]

Does TFTV change nests? I found them to be a bit of a slog and actually harder than lairs or citadels because the pandorans just keep ganking you.
If it weren't for the mission auto-completing I would keep suffering from squad wipes before extracting.

Not really, I am not sure if its TFTV or a patch change, but the radius of spires activating is much larger. You also have a lower chance of revealing nests, so you do less of these missions. But I have had a really easy time with them.

I settled on a strategy of sending in one chaos truck with an assault trooper. Assault loads into the truck, which uses its insane movement to zoom around until it finds a spire. One round from the truck gun, followed by assault disembarking, firing, and reembarking is enough to take out the spire in one turn. The armor and movement speed, as well as the lack of open spaces also means the pandorans just have issues dealing much damage to the truck. Usually clear out the nest in 3-4 turns.

Spires having bigger detection radius is TFTV thing. And while finding enemy bases is a bit more difficulty, the real change is that pandoran bases spawn slower in TFTV. This is a reason why you did less of these missions.

 

[Jaedar]

Spires having bigger detection radius is TFTV thing. And while finding enemy bases is a bit more difficulty, the real change is that pandoran bases spawn slower in TFTV. This is a reason why you did less of these missions.

Considering pandoran evolution is at max, I am pretty sure there are lots of bases that I just haven't found.

These haven reclamation missions are pretty interesting, I think they're a new addition in TFTV.

 

[ArchAngel]

Spires having bigger detection radius is TFTV thing. And while finding enemy bases is a bit more difficulty, the real change is that pandoran bases spawn slower in TFTV. This is a reason why you did less of these missions.

Considering pandoran evolution is at max, I am pretty sure there are lots of bases that I just haven't found.

These haven reclamation missions are pretty interesting, I think they're a new addition in TFTV.

If you are talking about Infested Haven mission, that was added in DLC4 that added corruption mechanic. TFTV just made it so havens can become corrupted even by normal pandoran attacks, not only air attacks. And added some new rewards for doing Infested Haven missions.

 

[Jaedar]

It is done. Ignored all missions except story critical ones after I captured the scylla (a lot of havens went to shit during that week).

In the end, I really like PP. It just feels bad how close to true greatness it is. Even till the end, the game taunts me by having the victory screen show: time played: 1h40min.

Not really a fan of the boss fight at the end. The marks that deal damage felt incredibly cheap (hope you brought a lot of medpacks!), and after it stopped using them the fight was just a complete slog. I get what they were going for, it's kind of a the ultimate 'shoot from correct angle for best effect' but it's just really annoying to have indestructible face plates get deployed. Also made melee weapons useless, so thanks for that.

Aside from the bugginess (and it's not *really* that bad, just a lot of minor things), I really have only two major complaints: it feels like the mission types are incredibly lopsided in how often they appear, and they also feel unfortunately similar. The game really would have benefited from some units only showing up on certain missions (like terror units in xcom). And also from putting more enemies on the map for big missions. It mostly felt like every mission had 6-10 enemies on it. Even the final mission gauntlet had less than 20 (not counting the single reinforcement every third turn). The enemy variety is cool though. Similarly, map sizes could also have done with more variation, it's really only the 2nd tier pandoran colonies that feel notably bigger than other missions.

The second is the rather lackluster gear progression. For armor you'll have every option in the first week or so (a bit longer if we count the mech augs, since it takes a while for that quest chain to complete). Weapons take a bit longer to truly fill out, especially with the super weapons they added in the ancients dlc, but it's still really disappointing when NJ finishes their armor piercing research and the result is a strict sidegrade to the gear they have on day 1. On the other hand, the basic stuff available is really cool. ARs, snipers, shottys, melee, grenade launchers and pistols all feel like they fill a valuable function and the options for each type are sometimes interesting (although I mostly just get lazors). PDWs, heavy weapons (except for nade launchers) and crossbows feel mostly boring and I rarely use them.

The TFTV mod (+ it's recommended submods) felt sorta minor, but all in all added up to a more enjoyable experience. I heard a lot of awful things about corruption and airgame dlcs, but they felt like good additions to the game. The airgame suffers from some bad balancing (damage over time effects are ridonk op) but it's still fun to kit out a fleet and intercept the pandorans.

One thing that bothered me about TFTV were the random team wide buffs the enemy get. I get what they were going for, but if the enemies get 50% shred or 50% paralysis resistance, it doesn't matter that much. Otoh, if they roll 75% damage reduction from first attack every turn it becomes pure hell as it invalidates half your arsenal.

Some of the enemy on death effects also felt overtuned, 5 tile acid explosion from a myrmidon? Not sure if that's vanilla or not. I really like the acid explosion of the facehuggers though, meant they felt like a threat and not just hardcountered by keeping your dudes in pairs.

I'm not sure if it's a base game bug or not, but the aspida firearms kept bugging out for me, and one of the two arms would miss 90% of the time, because the game doesn't calculate aim for each arm independently.... The chaos truck also felt kinda op, since it has access to two weapons, both of which are really good and have lots of ammo, where other vehicles will get like 4 shots per mission.

My best soldier was a heavy/berseker. 6 actions per turn, 1 ap jetpack and attacks would just let it traverse half the map on a killing spree. Generic assaults also became SUPREME after I got them ancient shottys.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Yeah, the time played on the victory screen is super bugged. It's always much shorter than it should be.
My first game took about 100 hours and the game told me it was only 17 hours long lol.

Zerker Heavies are indeed powerful.

I like the multiclass mechanic in PP. It allows you to build some pretty fun combos.
AssZerker is another strong build. Super fast and you can chain kill with it.

 

[Visperas]

Great write-up. I'm a bit concerned about the amount of missions myself for my next playthrough. I hate ignoring missions but I'll probably get burned out before finishing it if I do all of them.

 

[Jaedar]

Great write-up. I'm a bit concerned about the amount of missions myself for my next playthrough. I hate ignoring missions but I'll probably get burned out before finishing it if I do all of them.

Yeah, I meant to complain about it in my post but I forgot. With skipping everything in the final week, the total count was still 104 missions (66 general, 38 faction though there might be some overlap?). And that's with me failing to do a bunch of defences because I only had 2 craft with dudes. Out of those 104, almost a third were haven defences. It really feels like there's too many of them, especially as they tend to be on the easier side for missions.

That's a lot of missions. But it also felt like I was supposed to do more: I completely stopped exploring fairly quickly because there wasn't enough time, and the ambushes became ridiculously brutal (4 enemies, including a high tier one spawning in every turn) over time. I think you kinda have to go out of your way to experiment to make it fun for all those missions: try different vehicles, different classes, and so on. At the same time, you risk losing if you don't bring good soldiers, because a lot of your combat strength is in soldier xp and not in gear. And shuffling gear around, while allowed, is a major fucking hassle(I just didn't do it, which is likely a part of why I couldn't afford a third ship of dudes). I wish the TFTV devs would disable moving gear from storage <-> soldiers while not at a base, and then reducing all manufacturing costs to compensate.

 

[razvedchiki]

i went with 3 teams covering most of the globe, 1-2 experienced from team a went to team b rest new etc. the problem was though that a team was always overleveled compared to the other teams because i did most of the main missions with them. its easier to have multiple teams with the terror mod?

 

[ArchAngel]

It is done. Ignored all missions except story critical ones after I captured the scylla (a lot of havens went to shit during that week).

In the end, I really like PP. It just feels bad how close to true greatness it is. Even till the end, the game taunts me by having the victory screen show: time played: 1h40min.

Not really a fan of the boss fight at the end. The marks that deal damage felt incredibly cheap (hope you brought a lot of medpacks!), and after it stopped using them the fight was just a complete slog. I get what they were going for, it's kind of a the ultimate 'shoot from correct angle for best effect' but it's just really annoying to have indestructible face plates get deployed. Also made melee weapons useless, so thanks for that.

Aside from the bugginess (and it's not *really* that bad, just a lot of minor things), I really have only two major complaints: it feels like the mission types are incredibly lopsided in how often they appear, and they also feel unfortunately similar. The game really would have benefited from some units only showing up on certain missions (like terror units in xcom). And also from putting more enemies on the map for big missions. It mostly felt like every mission had 6-10 enemies on it. Even the final mission gauntlet had less than 20 (not counting the single reinforcement every third turn). The enemy variety is cool though. Similarly, map sizes could also have done with more variation, it's really only the 2nd tier pandoran colonies that feel notably bigger than other missions.

The second is the rather lackluster gear progression. For armor you'll have every option in the first week or so (a bit longer if we count the mech augs, since it takes a while for that quest chain to complete). Weapons take a bit longer to truly fill out, especially with the super weapons they added in the ancients dlc, but it's still really disappointing when NJ finishes their armor piercing research and the result is a strict sidegrade to the gear they have on day 1. On the other hand, the basic stuff available is really cool. ARs, snipers, shottys, melee, grenade launchers and pistols all feel like they fill a valuable function and the options for each type are sometimes interesting (although I mostly just get lazors). PDWs, heavy weapons (except for nade launchers) and crossbows feel mostly boring and I rarely use them.

The TFTV mod (+ it's recommended submods) felt sorta minor, but all in all added up to a more enjoyable experience. I heard a lot of awful things about corruption and airgame dlcs, but they felt like good additions to the game. The airgame suffers from some bad balancing (damage over time effects are ridonk op) but it's still fun to kit out a fleet and intercept the pandorans.

One thing that bothered me about TFTV were the random team wide buffs the enemy get. I get what they were going for, but if the enemies get 50% shred or 50% paralysis resistance, it doesn't matter that much. Otoh, if they roll 75% damage reduction from first attack every turn it becomes pure hell as it invalidates half your arsenal.

Some of the enemy on death effects also felt overtuned, 5 tile acid explosion from a myrmidon? Not sure if that's vanilla or not. I really like the acid explosion of the facehuggers though, meant they felt like a threat and not just hardcountered by keeping your dudes in pairs.

I'm not sure if it's a base game bug or not, but the aspida firearms kept bugging out for me, and one of the two arms would miss 90% of the time, because the game doesn't calculate aim for each arm independently.... The chaos truck also felt kinda op, since it has access to two weapons, both of which are really good and have lots of ammo, where other vehicles will get like 4 shots per mission.

My best soldier was a heavy/berseker. 6 actions per turn, 1 ap jetpack and attacks would just let it traverse half the map on a killing spree. Generic assaults also became SUPREME after I got them ancient shottys.

Good write up. Let me just give info about what TFTV here changed and what is vanilla.

Number of enemies on map is controlled by difficulty you are playing on (this is vanilla). The base engine they made this game on and how they handled AI is the cause for smaller maps and less enemies per map. Tactical missions are already too slow even with current numbers. Hopefully if they ever do PP2 they fix their mistakes (they know they didn't do this as well as they should but always told us it is no longer possible to do a complete makeover as part of patch or DLC).

If you were playing TFTV then you could not get all armor in week 1 as diplomacy is now way harder. You probably could not get all 3 faction tech in first month either. But otherwise, I do agree. Armor stuff does not really have tiers. Each class gets their standard armor and except for mutations and bionics there is nothing new later. I am not sure if this is bad of good, I got used to it. I think weapon stuff is done much better but I do understand why people feel weapons should have tiers. After all some weapons do have tiers (like Rocket Launchers) but others don't. NJ priercing tech is not just a sidegrade, but it is not a straight upgrade either. But when you run the numbers vs the kind of enemies you fight those weapons will do more damage overall. Not that much but consider that in NuXcom each tier added +1 to weapon damage so your starting weapons went from 4 to 5 to 6 by the end while enemy health went up by more. Old Xcom went from doing no damage to one shotting most enemies when you got Heavy Plasma weapons.. but I think that was actually bad design.

TFTV changes a lot of things but you might not notice unless you played vanilla before and remember a lot of details for comparison. Of course it does not add new maps, new enemies or completely changes basics of the game but for a mod that has been worked on for 1 year only by (mostly) 2 guys with no modding tools and no dev assistance it is good enough for now. And new stuff is coming all the time. DLC 2 is now being rebalanced (bigger changes incoming) as well as bigger changes to all vehicles. Both corruption and airgame DLC received big changes with TFTV, and although we asked for even more changes to airgame this is still better than vanilla. Yea DoT is irritating but it is 2x more irritating in vanilla.

Idea behind team wide buffs was to implement reactivity to your team tactics. And it is not completely random. It follows how you play the game and rolls between top 3 ways you kill enemies when deciding what resistance enemies will have with your most used tactic having most chance to be resisted. And it sounds like it did right because it invalidated half of your arsenal which was the whole point :D You are supposed to adjust your tactics if you find it irritating (like use less snipers). Or first throw a grenade/fire AR at targets you want to sniper to shoot to remove that resistance.

Acid myrmidons is vanilla thing, they are highest form of evolution of these enemies and they are one of the most scariest enemies in the game.

Aspida thing is a vanilla bug, TFTV team has fixed a few bugs but 99% of the effort is going into fixing gameplay problems and adding new content. If you also installed Better Vehicles, KAOS buggy was nerfed a bit there (his life and speed) but otherwise I do agree that as far as offensive power it is very good due to having more ammo than any other vehicle. But big changes are coming in future for vehicles, from what I understand each is going to get a role now and focus into it instead off all being kind of same with only a slight focus.

I complained Berserker was terrible in vanilla so they made him a late game monster for TFTV. They are the "wizard" of this game. Average while leveling, beast when it has access to a lot of WP and good gear.

 

[Jaedar]

its easier to have multiple teams with the terror mod?

Not really.

If you were playing TFTV then you could not get all armor in week 1 as diplomacy is now way harder. You probably could not get all 3 faction tech in first month either.

Iirc all the armor tech is considered basic, so factions will share it at like 10% rep. Or you can recruit soldiers from their havens and reverse engineer it (which is a feature they added in TFTV I think). 1 week for all the armor is perhaps an exaggeration though.

NJ priercing tech is not just a sidegrade, but it is not a straight upgrade either.

Iirc it really is. For example the AR just has pierce 15 instead of shred 2. It's better in some situations, worse in some. Mostly worse imo, but I recognize that is preference.

Old Xcom went from doing no damage to one shotting most enemies when you got Heavy Plasma weapons.. but I think that was actually bad design.

I do think PP overall handles weapons better than x-com. Just the fact that it has different weapon types, all valid, as well as multiple designs for each type, each with their own pros and cons. What I do miss from x-com are flying armor, blaster bombs and psi: the stuff that really let you wreak havoc and felt like it kinda broke the game.

Yea DoT is irritating but it is 2x more irritating in vanilla.

It's not 'irritating' it just breaks the game. Weapons typically take 10s to cycle after firing, and deal like 100-200 damage to a single module (with ~80% accuracy or something, obviously it depends a lot on the specific weapon). Dots deal 40 damage to every module every 4 seconds (I think). Get hit once and all the modules are scrap after at most 1 more shot. So if the enemy ship has a dot weapon, you need at least two ships to take it out (first to disable the dot weapon, second to kill it), and if you have a dot weapon it's basically an automatic victory...

And new stuff is coming all the time.

Yeah, I noticed the synedrion chest aug went from reducing AP cost of melee by 1 to just not doing that. Felt bad for my specially created ninja.

And it sounds like it did right because it invalidated half of your arsenal which was the whole point :D You are supposed to adjust your tactics if you find it irritating (like use less snipers). Or first throw a grenade/fire AR at targets you want to sniper to shoot to remove that resistance.

I only ever had a single sniper in a team. The problem with the 75% reduction is that it invalidates most heavy weapons, melee and snipers. And it's not like those classes have a lot of different weapons to choose from (hf pistol soloing I guess?), once the effect has rolled. And like I said, the other effects felt mostly like nothingburgers so this one felt waaay overtuned.

I complained Berserker was terrible in vanilla so they made him a late game monster for TFTV. They are the "wizard" of this game. Average while leveling, beast when it has access to a lot of WP and good gear.

They felt better during leveling than vanilla. I think it is better soldiers change, they moved dash from assaults to zerkers, and tftv made the anu pistol cost 1 ap. I found them useful from the start as an alternative to snipers (who feel pretty bad until they get the double overwatch ability), for those cases when the enemy has a lot of armor.

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

Is this game better or worse than the nu Xcom games?

 

[InD_ImaginE]

Is this game better or worse than the nu Xcom games?

Much better tactical layer but worse strategic layer. The Strategic Layer has a lot of feature being thrown to the wall and is just basically a mess.

 

[ArchAngel]

Is this game better or worse than the nu Xcom games?

It is better, it just not as good as old UFO for people that grew up with that.

 

[True Ukrainian]

Xenonauts from the same dev is better than this. Play that instead.