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EmptyStudios306 days ago(+1)

Thanks for the feedback, I took a risk making a game aimed at more advanced players in the genre, and I'm glad to see those people enjoy it, even if it's quite hard for newbies (even despite n erfing the game HARD. friendly fire used to do full damage and the basic creatures could 3 shot an average marine)

I'm really glad you got the vibes of the enemies, I was going for an event horizon/doom/E.Y.E feeling with psychic or demonic entities in space, it's a bit tricky to convey that with such simple flat sprite art but I'm glad it clicked for you! There are actually 2 big guys on the ship, but only the one in the reactor fight is truly mandatory.

It always bothered me that the genre has moved towards more percentage based dice rolls when I prefered the simulation elements (I'm a big original xcom fan) which is where the aiming system comes from, it's up to the player to make the call rather than guesstimating a percentage. For snap shots though there is a secret mechanic where you have a bonus chance to make a 'clean shot' where the bullet is guaranteed to go perfectly straight, based on your characters accuracy. As for bonus weapons, there are two, you can find PDWs (an smg alternative) or the revolver on the bridge. I wanted to do more but scope...

Messaging is a very important factor I missed for sure, I really wanted a damage log but it slipped out of my fingers. I also wanted a UI element that would let you cycle through enemy units that were visible to you. A common factor I've seen is people being unable to identify enemies among corpses etc, so that needs a rehaul. There are also some issues with fog of war, many players don't seem to understand the view cones which made them miss obvious enemies.

One question for you since you seem invested in this type of game, what did you think of the reaction fire mechanic? Did you understand it? It's similar to original x-com but I tweaked it based on some things I don't like about their system. I'm happy to explain the mechanic fully but I think it would be valuable to get your thoughts without a technical explanation first :)

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Grotty-Louts306 days ago(+1)

Admittedly I didn't quite realize it at first. In my few beginning turns after recognizing the enemy I had searched for an 'overwatch' button to no avail. It wasn't until a bit later, maybe even after the first time it occurred, that I realized you'd implemented a reaction fire type system, and it very much did remind me of the original Xcom's. Without trying to retread my prior comment, some messaging or camera focusing would probably have made my inattentive head realize this function sooner. It goes without saying that I did not read the manual, I like to learn on the job so to speak.

Regardless as soon as I understood it existed as a system, it definitely changed the way I approached heading onward from there. Always having a squad member watch potential enemy insertion points as we moved throughout the ship, in that way I really think it fed into the gameplay/narrative marriage.

I wish I had more feedback to give regarding it mechanically, I think I'm going to need to play through a few more times to get a better sense of what I might want to say on that subject. I do wonder if a more distinct method of being able to tell when, how often, or at what distance individual squad members are able reaction fire would be warranted or not, so long as the implementation wouldn't mar that immersion that I feel the accuracy cones give versus numeric percentage.

I'm curious, as both it has been a while since I've played a bit of Xcom and I haven't quite had enough time in Breach Protocol observing the system yet -- How did you end up differentiating it from the OG Xcom's? What was it that you disliked about it's way of doing?

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EmptyStudios306 days ago

Xcom does a flat percentage roll every time a unit sees another unit do an action, based on your current TUs, enemy TUs, and the reaction stats of each party. I like the uncertainty of this but It can be a bit silly or unrealistic at times, it also encouraged moving very slowly and keeping a large bank of TUs at the end of your turn to maximise reaction fire, at higher level play this gets tedious as optimal play is to inch forward and punish enemies who stray into your field of view, it also made reactions one of the most powerful stats since it protected you on both turns. I like the mechanic a lot and it functions well to make both turns exciting, but I didn't like the choice structure it presented (take huge risks and face dire consequences if you want to finish missions in reasonable amounts of time, or play boring and slow). I also didn't like how maxed out units would be basically untouchable since they would mow down anything they saw.

My system makes some changes to address these issues, not perfect but I think it has more interesting decision making. Reaction fire is no longer a roll, during the enemy turn as long as your unit has direct line of sight on an enemy, they start filling a 'reaction meter' (3rd bar below hp and TUs), when the meter fills they either snap fire or burst, chosen at random. The speed the bar fills is proportional to your reaction stat, and a bonus depending on weapon (SMGs and shotguns react quicker than ARs, the LMG cannot react at all). 

Once a unit has reacted once the reaction meter takes half as long to refill, to represent your guy actively enterring combat, the initial slow reaction lets enemies get a bit of a drop on the squad, it's always better to shoot on your turn than to wait for reactions (unlike original xcom). At the start of the enemy turn, units also gain or lose TUs proportional to their reflex bonus, this means low reflex units sometimes cannot react at all, and high reflex units will have a pool of TUs even if you exhaust them entirely. 

This lets you be a bit more aggressive with both types of units, mitigating the x-com crawl somewhat. Units with middling reflexes fit somewhere in between and behave more like x-com units, where preserving TUs for reactions is more optimal, I don't think the play pattern in x-com is entirely bad, I just wanted to softly disencourage the pathologically unfun case of inching forward 1 tile per turn.

I think there's still lots of room for iteration but I was relatively happy with how it felt.

P.S. Nothing wrong with ignoring the manual, I expect some people to do that no matter what, ideally I would have some better tutorialisation and ingame resources to understand the mechanics rather than using the crutch of a readme :)

Thanks for your input!!

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