Hello,
First and foremost as this wasn't owed to any of us, thank you very much for making the game. I have now played it up to the 2085 mark at 3 different difficulty levels. So; I feel I can safely state things about the game in general. I'd love to say alot of it will be complimentary. But; this would be untrue. Here are some very basic observations.
Cons:
1. The very soldiers themselves, I get you were looking to make a challenge of things but these guys are a joke! This isn't "realism." Despite the fact that the military is always short man power they don't treat it like "the Special Olympics." You actualy have to be a marksmen with a riffle to pass bootcamp. The "so called elite" soldiers are still unable to hit the broadside of a barn with a nuclear warhead at point blank range. If you then take them and keep them alive and run every combat mission normaly even after over 100 missions with anything but a laser weapon in hand this problem still persists. To put it blunty it's silly. No military in the world would accept these guys. They would give them the thanks for trying speeche and send them on their way.
2. The overwhelming number of alien incursions per real life minute are ridiclous. This is at all of the settings that I have used. Having to start over 12 or more intercepts in 3 or 4 minutes of real life time becomes tedious. The fun factor goes right out the window. If there were at least some interval with which to relax, it would go a very long way. By the time you face the current flavor for more than a rather short period it gets truely annoying. In all of the varriants of X-COM there where indeed flurries of attack. But, there where also enough "lul periods" to keep the player from coming to hate the sight of a intercept.
3. The weapon and ship progression tends to have no meaning very early on. If you don't think so look at your own message boards. Most of your players are talking about using weapons they had to do zero research to be able to use. When the weapons realy hit the wall is at the heavy laser. The problem here is that it takes all of 3 research projects to hit it. Admittedly later on in the game you have to burry the enemy in lazer fire to kill them. But at even "very good" accuracy your soldiers can't hit anything with anything else. The ships hit the wall due to huge time commitment to get even small amounts of antimatter. In all variants of X-COM you eventualy phased out all of your "earth based technology." I just can't ever see this happening with this. In fact in all truth due to the large fuel consumption used for even short hops; the alien based ships do little more than take up hangar space. This seems to make even researching them counter-productive. Yes you can shoot down the larger ships with them. But the required time in diassembly it takes to recover the spent fuel makes doing so beyond prohibative. You can just as easily take the "earth based" Saracen in teams and get the same result without having to spend innumberable hours just to keep fuel available.
4. The Armor more than leaves something to be desired. I hate to burst folks bubbles but if body armor doesn't stop damage it gets flaty refused by any military in the world. It does have limmitations. But, if body armor did next to nothing; no military in the world would pay for it. They have budgets to consider and, spending money on body armor that stops literaly no shot ever is a expense they wouldn't undertake. I get that Phallanx is supposed to be "in a pinch." But stopping dead at armor (see Nanocompsite armor) that fails to stop even the weakest alien round from penatrating it is something no one would ever do.
5. Building new bases being a random roll for a proper start seems silly. I get that for the sake of the story the first base is a mess. But one thing all the X-COM variants got right was; that after the first base the rest where simply of matter of knowledge to get right. This was actualy wether people like believing it or not very realistic. To those that would argue otherwise go look up open pit minning. At our current level of technology we can literaly remove any solid obstacle. So having it be over 70 years in the future and saying "well there will be zero control over starting a new base" is unrealistic. It reeks of being yet more mindless negativity thrown in to add a false sense of challenge. Not everything in a game needs to be a hurdle to get over just to create a sense of challenge.
Now for the positive input.
Pros:
1. Graphicly this game is just beautiful. The geoscape it breath taking. The actual tactical missions are very detailed and beautifully rendered. Though Nanocomposite armor is not very realisic in it's performance as body armor it's very attractive visualy. It's also beautifully rendered on the missions , as is all of the gear. The aliens are also beatifully rendered as is their gear. The addition of having a visual representation of the type of craft involved in intercepts is great. The only "lacking Point" graphicaly are the soldiers faces. But as I couldn't do better, no major complaints there.
2. There is a immense amount of steamlining in this game. Some of the most tedious moments from the X-COM series have been removed. The automatic assigning of gear to a soldier done at the bases equip craft screen is "a Godsend!" The built in interupts that stop the clock for various occurences are very helpful. The fact that the game simply stops a project in production when funding runs low and, begins it again at the exact remaining time it was left off at is fabulous. The auto-sell feature is a wonderful time saver and removes alot of the teduim. The reserve functions in the tactical missons are nice. (Though it's rather annoying to have to instruct soldiers to return fire.)
3. The story line and writting for this game are amazing. The team or Person doing it ;if they are not a author, should seriously consider becoming one. Though sadly the descripions in the UFOapedia often end up feeling like false advertising due to the actualy performance of the weapons and armor. But this aside you have a truely talented soul or set therof on your team there. The sheer volume of time put into a well thought out backstory and progressing storyline are truely impressive.
4. The sheer amount of detail put into the game itself is very impressive. I hate to imagine the amount of your free time just putting this together takes. (I for all that I definitely can find fault with some of the results realy do mean that.) It has a very wide array of just about everything possible avialable. Sadly due to some of the points brought up earlier it's cheapened as you won't ever end using alot of it. But this said that amount of thought, time and effort is truely a thing of beauty.
5. That you took the time collectively at all to do so is something I am truely thankful for. For all that I don't blindly sing the praises of every part of your work, I do realize this wasn't owed to me or anyone else for that matter. That you made it public available and even host a site for your mulitplayer option is great of you. That you made it open source code is another grand gesture to make. Not many people leave "their baby" up to the potential public chopping block like that.
In final review what you've got here does pay homage to X-COM. It sadly at times lacks some of the fun of the original game. This is largely due to the above mentioned cons. I do intend to keep playing it and seeing if I can overcome some of them. That alot of them exsist at all is a blot on a truely inspired work. I would love to see some of them addressed and overcome. You've done a incredible job here. I'd just love to see the focus go more on fun than a false sense of what a challenge is. I'm not a young man and have had alot of challenges. The diffence to me with a game is that the challenge shouldn't outweight the fun. When I was younger used to do what they today call Free Climbing. (Back when I did it folks just called it climbing.) I often felt challenged. But it never once took the fun out of it. That to me is the core of what makes good recreation. It has a challenge. But never so much as to kill the joy of doing it. With that in mind I thank you all again for your time and effort. I realy do apprecate it.
P.S. On a side note the UFOapedia through the base research tab shows the avialable imagery with the project. Oddly enough it does not do so from the geoscape screen. I wasn't sure if you where aware of this or not. Oh yes the game will occasionaly lock up on loading tactial missons and require a system reboot to properly clear it. (three finger saluting it only increases the problem.) I would guess though as my system is only running a gig of ramm that it's a out of memory issue.
