UFO Rumor Control: Some Gameplay Comments

[sage]

Erik, can you comment on whether Morale is in the tactical game?

[Erik Rutins]

WKB,

ORIGINAL: WKB
Can you adjust the firing speed and whether or not the camera centers on your shots all the time? If so, can it be done separately for your forces and the aliens?

What exactly do you mean by firing speed? I haven't seen any options to change the camera centering. From the gameplay I've experienced, the camera by default seemed the same as what I remembered from the original X-Com, in that it centers on activity and follows shots. Granted, my memory is a bit hazy as the original was a while ago, but it felt identical.

Can you abort mission in the middle? If so, how does it work? Do your troops have to be inside the ship in order to abort (including incapacitated ones)? Can you carry incapacitated troops to the transport to save them?

Yes. There's a "Flee" button which causes your transport to take off and abandon the mission. Anyone on board goes with it, anyone who's not on board is left behind and considered MIA. I would assume incapacitated troops are lost, but I have not tried to Flee yet myself as my biggest two disasters unfolded quickly enough that my team was dead before I had a chance to retreat.

Do the aliens use explosive grenades? If so, is it possible for them to completely annihilate an incapacitated soldier's body? (we've seen that grenades can destroy terrain, so I'm curious if they could destroy bodies as well)

I don't know the answers to these yet, sorry. However, I've seen a variety of alien weaponry so my assumption would be that they do have some kind of explosive weapon, but I haven't run into it yet. No idea on whether a more explosive weapon would have any effect as far as destroying a corpse, but I have seen that more deadly weapons cause more critical wounds which in turn cause more serious recovery times (with associated increased risks). I just saw my first "Cruiser" in the brief time I had to play during lunch and didnt' manage to shoot it down. So far it's been scouts and fighters. The aliens did just take over one of the nations on the planet though, so I'll probably see a few more interesting things happen tonight.

Regards,

- Erik

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: evilferretvictim
What about the option to set reserve AP (action/movement points)?

I haven't seen that yet or been able to figure out how to do it and I'd forgotten about that being in X-Com until you mentioned it. That would be a nice feature to have if it's not in there. However, whenever you move you not only see the active character's current AP shown on the bottom display, but the "box" that shows where you are moving to also displays how many APs it will take for the soldier to get there. Because of that, without using any reserve option, I haven't had any real trouble figuring out based on those how far I can move before my APs go too low for reactions or other fire.

Regards,

- Erik

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: sage
Erik, can you comment on whether Morale is in the tactical game?

Well, the soldiers each have a "Bravery" stat, but so far I haven't seen them panic. I have seen them paralyzed with fear by a certain type of alien and that appears to be based on their bravery as far as how susceptible they are, but I can't say I've seen much beyond that yet.

Regards,

- Erik

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: evilferretvictim
Sounds good.... Could you throw in some things you *didn't* enjoy about the game (frusterating moments ect), er at least give a mini-reveiew score...Such as 1-100...What could you rate it?

I haven't played enough to rate it yet and besides even if I did, I doubt most folks would believe me. [;)]

However, it seems to be a good re-make of X-Com and it does not diverge from it in any drastic ways that I can find. It feels very familiar even though I haven't played X-Com in years and it has the same fun quality. I'm not far enough in to really get a sense of how the game will evolve, what events will happen, what the storyline on this new planet is vs. the original, etc. However, the only thing so far I haven't been a fan of is the intro movie.

I also saw someone mention on another site about no autopsies. If I understand that comment correctly, that's false. I recovered several alien bodies and was able to set my researchers to work on them, just as in the original. Once research was complete, I had a new entry regarding those aliens in my UFOPedia explaining their abilities and in two cases that research triggered new research options relating to what we'd learned from dissecting the aliens.

Regards,

- Erik

[Erik Rutins]

Thought I should also mention here what I'd commented on earlier regarding copy protection. Our release will come with our standard serial number protection. It's a very user-friendly NON-DRM system. You can download the game, burn it to a CD for a backup copy, run it on your laptop as well as your desktop, etc.

[Delak]

First Erik thank you for taking the time to post about what seems to be shaping up to be a very cool game for us X-Com fans.
Secondly can you commnet on the types of missions they have for example in X-Com we had the Terror Mission, UFO Recovery, and such.
Thirdly can you share your copy of the game with the rest of us or at the very least me [:D]

[Faenaris]

Mr. Rutins, I once again want to thank you for your time. I can imagine you are a very busy man, so, two thumbs up from little old me.

I'm afraid I have to burden you with another question, but it was something that made me wonder. At the official forums (which are a mess to be honest, at least, the English section is), I read a post that claimed that you couldn't build extra bases. Or, to be precise, you could build new bases, but they would be very limited (only hangars and defence systems). Surely, this statement is false?

[owl208]

Thank you for asking that question. If I can add to it: Exactly how many bases can you have? It looked like 9 in the gameplay video. Is the base 1 level like XCOM or multi-level?

Thanks again Erik. We know you are busy and we appreciate your taking time out to post back.

[Arctic Blast]

Thanks a lot for the info, Erik...it's nice to have some actual, solid information about the game!

[EagleMountainDK]

Erik what screen resolutions can we use?

[Erik Rutins]

Hi Delak,

ORIGINAL: Delak
Secondly can you commnet on the types of missions they have for example in X-Com we had the Terror Mission, UFO Recovery, and such.

I'm sorry I can't share the game with you any sooner than Thursday at midnight, we're bound by our agreements. As far as mission types, I've been doing UFO Recovery so far, but the others do exist as far as I know. There are definitely base attacks and terror missions, not sure what other types.

[Erik Rutins]

Hi Faenaris,

ORIGINAL: Faenaris
I'm afraid I have to burden you with another question, but it was something that made me wonder. At the official forums (which are a mess to be honest, at least, the English section is), I read a post that claimed that you couldn't build extra bases. Or, to be precise, you could build new bases, but they would be very limited (only hangars and defence systems). Surely, this statement is false?

I think that may be true actually. I was also wondering about this when I started playing - the manual makes it sound like your additional bases would be the same as the main base, but so far for me the available build options for my auxiliary bases have been hangars, energy, defenses and detection systems. I don't know how this works with base defense, since the manual says that any of your bases can be attacked. Another possibility is that I simply haven't accumulated enough personnel to expand the other bases beyond hangars yet. I'm honestly not sure - perhaps the developers can shed some light on this?

Right now, I'm using my main base to house my labs, workshops, living quarters and hangar for the transport craft. I have four additional bases with 3, 2, 2 and 1 hangar to hold more fighters and detection systems to expand my global reach, but the team itself seems to be stationed at the main original base. I don't know what happens if you lose that base either (yet), whether you'd be able to "move" to one of the others, etc. I think asking the developers for more info on this rather than me would be the best way to find out as I'm still getting up to speed.

Regards,

- Erik

[Erik Rutins]

Hi Owl208,

ORIGINAL: owl208
Thank you for asking that question. If I can add to it: Exactly how many bases can you have? It looked like 9 in the gameplay video. Is the base 1 level like XCOM or multi-level?

Looks like 9 to me as well, though I only have five so far. The bases are single level as far as the construction interface at least. I don't know if they'd be multi-level during an actual base defense/attack mission or not.

One interesting side note is that the manual mentions that if one of your bases is taken, if you recapture it within 10 days it will still be largely intact. After that the aliens have effectively changed too much for the base to be recoverable for your purposes. From that point you're basically destroying the alien base to rebuild your own.

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: Cougar_DK
Erik what screen resolutions can we use?

I'm running it on a 1280x1024 LCD screen with no problems - it seemed to auto-detect that. The in-game graphics settings are for anti-aliasing, color depth and texture compression, rather than resolution, so I'm not sure what limits it might have in that regard. More detail than that would have to be answered by the developers, I'll see what I can find out.

[EagleMountainDK]

Great Erik, looking forward to this.

[Serian]

Erik, thanks for the great impressions. I have a question I have not seen answered or asked yet; are there multi-level buildings in the game as there were in X-Com?

Also, would you say that the game is larger than X-Com, as in more to research, more to build, different terrain/building types, and aliens to defeat?

Lastly, how large will the download file be, how expansive is the manual, and is the manual from Matrix the same one that will be in the retail version?

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: Serian
Erik, thanks for the great impressions. I have a question I have not seen answered or asked yet; are there multi-level buildings in the game as there were in X-Com?

Yes, I've run into a couple of two level buildings on missions so far. They have elevators to go up and down.

Also, would you say that the game is larger than X-Com, as in more to research, more to build, different terrain/building types, and aliens to defeat?

My impression is that it is at least the same size with as much variety, but I'm not the best one to ask this question as I haven't yet had time to play all the way through.

Lastly, how large will the download file be, how expansive is the manual, and is the manual from Matrix the same one that will be in the retail version?

The download file is quite large, around 2GB in size (perhaps that answers your previous question to some degree too). The manual is around 44 pages and as far as I know it's exactly the same one that is in the US retail version.

Regards,

- Erik

[evilferretvictim]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

The download file is quite large, around 2GB in size

Just a week or two ago somebody asked the same question and I was pretty sure one of you said the installer was 1GB... Are you sure you don't mean the required space is 2GB? That just seems like a massive size for a game like this~ If not, how much space does the game take up? Have you ran into any kind of new videos that tie into the story (besides intro) that would warrant the game being so large?

[Erik Rutins]

I don't think we had the final gold installer more than a week ago, so I think that must have been based on an earlier version. The final one does weigh in at 2GB and I assume a lot of that comes down to the 3D art - it is indicative of a lot of content, but I haven't played through the entire game yet to be able to respond to the rest of your questions.