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[Sanctume]

I saw a play through of PP by Beaglerush on twitch. 

The "free aim" looks frustrating as the body parts (like head in the middle of a chest/torso) highlights and unhighlights because it animates.

I am thinking if you just want called shots to a body part, just make the UI similar to battletech fixed point with % to hit. 

PP approach hybrid to TU turn units and new-XCOM blue move/sprint makes the UI seem tediuos. 

I get it that in the og XCOM, the isometric view works ok with UI, and free aim shooting in some direction towards fog of war is a matter of moving the mouse cursor and pressing space to shoot. 

This concept of free aim in animating 3D FPS view is something not for me.  I'm bias though since I don't like FPS views.

[Rince Wind]

I am pretty sure they are still working on the UI.

I am downloading now, but no idea if my toaster will run it.

[Blood_Librarian]

Looks pretty neat.

[Rince Wind]

It is fun. I lost the random mission twice and won the Fort Freiheit one. But probably just because the queen bugged out and didn't move. Ammo is really tight, It would be nice if everyone had 2 reloads.
The 2nd random map loss was mostly because my heavy and sniper had both lost use of one arm. They could use the pistol (one between them) to kill 2 of the crabmen, but after explosives were exhausted the only damage on the queen was by the lone trooper (the other one had died pretty early). When he ran out of ammo he hat to try and run to another crate, but was killed while retrieving ammo. The sniper had died as well by then and gunner crabs were closing in on the heavy. So he made a run for the crate, where there was pistol ammo and grenades. But he was killed by a close combat crab. The queen had around 15-20 HP left and was bleeding heavily.

[Chiefwaffles]

They released a new trailer for the game.
Cool, but nothing anyone already following the project probably hasn't already seen.

However, early access (bought, of course) is available for non-backers now. $50 for early access. It's the "deluxe edition", so it also includes some digital goodies and in-game stuff. $30 to pre-order "from" June 2019 on Steam/GoG.

[NullForceOmega]

Wow, that trailer was pretty solid, I was already interested but that whets my appetite for more info.

[EnigmaticHat]

From the Beaglerush gameplay, it looks like what they're trying to make is something that looks and plays like nucom, but has oldcom mechanics running under the surface.  Like you don't actually make long moves like in nucom, instead you spend TUs to take normal steps.  But it would be hard to tell from the interface.

Its intriguing.  Not 50$ intriguing, but worth watching.  I feel crazy even suggesting this, but my biggest concern is that it seems sort of derivative of nucom.  The way the levels are built and the blue/yellow lines to indicate where you can move is really similar.  The enemy variety could be a huge weakness since its competing against two whole games worth of nucom enemies.  I also share Beagle's dislike of the reaction fire mechanic, its bizarre that you can run around a warzone all you want in total safety but firing a gun from behind cover incites cross-map retribution.  Xcom's suppression/overwatch mechanics captured the feeling of being shot at much more than this games' reaction fire mechanic in its current state.

I do like how they used limited ammo to balance out the fact that guns have infinite range.  It takes two mechanics that would make the game super tedious, but together they justify their inclusion.  They also seem to have a mana system instead of a cooldown system for abilities, which makes sense.  Since your entire inventory is consumables your ability bar doesn't have to be.  This adds a little more choice since you can presumably choose which of multiple abilities you want to use (as opposed to nucom where you're going to want to use everything by the end of the mission).

Spoiler: programming digression (click to show/hide)

If I was the developers and I had to implement a percentage indicator for which part would be hit, here's what I'd do.  I'd just manually place 100 rays evenly within the circle that's around the crosshair, and give the bullet an equal chance of going following any ray.  Compress or expand the circle based on how accurate the weapon is.  Boom, completely accurate percentage chance to hit.  55 rays hit the head?  55% chance to hit.  Only problem would be if the target was far enough away it might fit in between two of the rays and give a 0% chance to hit, which would be awkward.

[Kagus]

I have no idea how Oldcom calculated its percentages ("calculated", hahaha!), but it had mechanics both for soldier accuracy and projectile drift. And since the projectiles were physically modeled inside the game (as best as they could do with isometric 2D, anyways), you got all sorts of aggravating awesome situations like pinging off of a fire hydrant nearby or thudding into the physical representation of the wall underneath the window you were trying to shoot through, which was neat, forced you to consider non-berserk friendly fire, and led to extremely awkward turns where a newbie would fire at an enemy in the street and their shot would just lazily float past the enemy, down the street, over the gas station, and across a field before smacking into a survivor standing on a roof at the other end of the map.

I recognize that Oldcom's reaction mechanics were a bit clunky, but I actually quite liked them for what they were.


And then there's Apocalypse (which I also quite liked. So shoot me [with your dual-wielded sniper rifles]).

[LoSboccacc]

I really liked most how jagged alliance 1.13 Fab patch did accuracy. You get a visual representation of spread for each subsequent bullet and all bullets hit within that. % are useful if the shots aren't calculated, but if the ux is clear enough to show where projectiles actually go become superfluous

[USEC_OFFICER]

I have no idea how Oldcom calculated its percentages ("calculated", hahaha!), but it had mechanics both for soldier accuracy and projectile drift.

Oldcom's accuracy never actually accounted for bullet spread or projectile drift. Rather, accuracy just determined how tight the shot would be. More accuracy means that the shot is less likely to go wide and has a smaller deviancy when it does go wide. So your actual chance to hit is all over the place depending on distance, terrain, etc, etc. Accuracy has nothing directly to do with percentages, so it was a little silly that it was shown that way.

[Kagus]

Rather, accuracy just determined how tight the shot would be.

Ah, right... I think I might have somehow mixed things up a bit with how the blaster bomb projectiles deviate very slightly in their flight paths.

Blaster bombs, man. Fuck those things.

[EnigmaticHat]

IIRC oldcom's accuracy wasn't the chance of hitting the target, it was the chance of firing a perfectly accurate projectile.  As a result of that (and the fact that certain partial cover could block the perfectly accurate shot) firing rapid fire was the best choice 90% of the time.  Since a "miss" could still hit and a hit could still do 0% damage.  The only reason to take aimed shots was if you were very far away, or if you had to shoot past friendlies.

[Kagus]

IIRC oldcom's accuracy wasn't the chance of hitting the target, it was the chance of firing a perfectly accurate projectile.  As a result of that (and the fact that certain partial cover could block the perfectly accurate shot) firing rapid fire was the best choice 90% of the time.  Since a "miss" could still hit and a hit could still do 0% damage.  The only reason to take aimed shots was if you were very far away, or if you had to shoot past friendlies.

Even without those considerations, auto shot was still mathematically the best option when looking at the given percentage chances. And then Xenonauts came along and said "Hey, what if we shot three projectiles like auto shot, but gave it the TU cost of a snap shot?", and thus shotguns were born.

[Dohon]

A new trailer is out.

Already posted, disregard please.

[BurnedToast]

IIRC oldcom's accuracy wasn't the chance of hitting the target, it was the chance of firing a perfectly accurate projectile.  As a result of that (and the fact that certain partial cover could block the perfectly accurate shot) firing rapid fire was the best choice 90% of the time.  Since a "miss" could still hit and a hit could still do 0% damage.  The only reason to take aimed shots was if you were very far away, or if you had to shoot past friendlies.

Which is kind of realistic, modern assault rifles have burst fire for a reason, and given ammo was not free (unless you abused the magazine fill-up bug/feature) you were basically trading less damage (on average) per bullet for more damage per turn overall. But then it seems like every xcom clone in existence reacted by making auto shot the worst shot choice in every situation :/

I actually totally forgot this game existed before this thread popped up again and now I'm starting to get hyped about it. I'm not sure I really like the alien design - it seems a little too "generic biological-based aliens", but other than that it seems really good so far.