Its been about five years since I was near this forum, and this game - not by choice mind you - but the differences between that game and the one now are staggering
Firstly I'd like to extend a large bunch of banana's to the codemonkeys for their work so far. I think the boys at id should be impressed with what you've done with the engine.
Anyway I'm back and would be happy to help out in regards to design & concept, specifically the polishing. I've also since read a number of scifi invasion series, and would like to share the relevant tropes that can be used to to maintain the suspension of disbelief. For example:
Stephen Barnes - Kaleidoscope Century, Candle: Super Memes (that overwrite your mind), Big Bad Guy isn't so Bad
Harry Turtledove - Colonisation series: Invading on bad Intel, One species's herb is another species's drug, Slow society vs fast society, stealing the enemys weapons and using it against them, STL travel
Robert Buettner - Orphan series: Alien aliens and their more alien tactics, It hurts them but not us
The mail client is a brilliant idea for delivering information in the game. But tone and language of the technical stuff in the ufopaedia needs some work, some of it lacks the seriousness/professionalism you expect from an expert. Thats purely my opinion based on the technical stuff i deal with in RL
UFO storage and dissassembly are a novel inclusion in the game, and improves upon the strategic gameplay. As is the idea of selling ufo's to make countries happy. I'd also like to see if that could be used to affect countries in other ways, or even the global market.
The starting weapons are great in terms of variety and function, and was something that previous games in the genre lacked. As is the ability to dev new ammo for the GL, and categorising the weapons. Shotguns are something that was overlooked in the XCOM series, so its great to see them here.
The storyline looks more fleshed out now, and including other cities being attacked in the intro makes it more plausible. The virus idea seems reminscient of XCOM3, but I'm stuck wondering how a virus gets the ideas to build FTL ships.
Lastly, a new skill I picked up in the past years was OO programming, in Java & VB.net; previously I'd only had experience in procedural for C++ & fortan77. Most of my experience has been in simulation & modelling, generating and cranking out numbers for engineering analysis (FEM, DEM, MCM). I've already got mingw & eclipse, so I'm hoping to get around to checking out the source and whether its within my grasp.
