Turn-Based Tactics Phantom Doctrine - "tactical Cold War conspiracy thriller" by Hard West devs

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Here's recording of stream.

 

[ArchAngel]

Very good stream, lots of cool info. That "geoscape" looks awesome. This game will be true

 

[agris]

Very good stream, lots of cool info. That "geoscape" looks awesome. This game will be true

Got a rough time point for the strategic view?

 

[Kacper Szymczak]

Got a rough time point for the strategic view?

try 40 minutes in
(but the best part, investigation board, is at 00:30!)

 

[agris]

Got a rough time point for the strategic view?

try 40 minutes in
(but the best part, investigation board, is at 00:30!)

Watched it, I'm seriously excited. The combat looks good from what I can tell, but the base management really shines. That investigative board is a really interesting mechanic - what do we unlock from piecing together the puzzles? Are there "story line" missions, or new randomly generated missions? New gear, intel, etc? In the video, one of the people (you?) mentioned that this was the 2nd or 3rd time they had moved the base. Do we select where each module of the base is placed, and does the look of it change depending on where in the world we are? Are there any base defense missions ala X-Com?

I made some notes and critiques while watching, all are related to art and presentation.

• After the mission, when you're looking at the roster of people available, they are all playing idle animation loops. Several of animations are playing synchroniously. It would be good to have them randomly offset, maybe in period/ODD-NUMBER amounts.
• The customization options look great - fat 'fro dude with a pipe ain't drawing anyone's attention! If you could add little 'lock' icons next to each field, that lock that particular choice when we hit randomize, I think players would really enjoy that. So we could keep Fat and Pipe, and randomize the rest, or Afro and Eyepatch, etc. That extends to all the customization options - it looks like you have room for the lock icon on the modular rectangular panels for each option.
• The investigation board - loved it. The black bars that are covering redacted text look like shiny progress bars for something loading though, and don't fit. It should look more like black sharpie applied to the text. Actually, I believe I saw that used in one or two of the later pieces of intel, so maybe you're already on this.
• Another comment about the presentation of the investigation board: the typeset should look messier, reflecting the fact it was produced on a typewriter, fax machine, or a photocopied. That means imperfections in the font, and the font not always 100% aligned with the paper.
• The paper also looked a bit too clean, although I did see wrinkles. I'm not advocating for photorealistic, but stains, imperfections, tears, I think this would really make it feel like we're looking at intelligence that got into our hands by any means necessary.
• Really nit-picky here, but one of the investigation clues was a an audio waveform. The waveform looks like it was taken from a modern digital audio workstation application. Something more period-appropriate would be what a mechanical plotter generated, or more of a CRT-oscilloscope image. Since you have signals intelligence in this game, a nice vintage O-scope graphic could pay dividends.

One random question: do we get fine camera rotation in this game? The 90 degree increments in Hard West made my OCD cringe a bit.

Anyway, if none of that were changed it wouldn't change my impression: I'll play the game. I liked Hard West, I'm looking forward to playing PD They are just small things that would add to the presentation.

 

[Kacper Szymczak]

Thanks for the notes! Forwarded to the relevant teams. Can't promise much here (some of these seem very implausible) but they'll definitely look into them.

That investigative board is a really interesting mechanic - what do we unlock from piecing together the puzzles? Are there "story line" missions, or new randomly generated missions? New gear, intel, etc?

Thanks, super proud of this one!
So, to answer your question:
One of the game mechanics is Secrets. Secrets is a big set of all things that can be uncovered, eg.: intel for investigation board, a new classified document, enemy agent identity, info that your agent is a double agent, a special talent of your agent, new tech, new trade contact, new training, new chemical compound for body engineering, and some more.
You obtain Secrets from tactical levels, from enemy agent interrogation, from your dying agents (a dying agent utters his/her last words and reveals a secret), and from solving secret files. There are three secret types (normal secret, big secret, huge secret) and secret files reveal the most valuable ones: the huge secrets.
So you collect secret intel to solve secret files to access secret information. More or less.

In the video, one of the people (you?) mentioned that this was the 2nd or 3rd time they had moved the base. Do we select where each module of the base is placed, and does the look of it change depending on where in the world we are? Are there any base defense missions ala X-Com?

Nope, wasn't me. I'm the eye-patched spy.

Initially we wanted to make full base building: select slot for facility, when buying upgrades you place them theme-hospital-style, so you effectively design your own level for the case when you are raided, but in the end we decided that 4 games in 1 is enough and that was a VERY WISE DECISION.
Hope to get back to this idea in future updates.

Anyway: as you go and do stuff (risky/stupid stuff), your Danger raises. Danger is the measure of conspiracy discovering your location. Eg. leave an agent behind, and they might be captured, interrogated, and your danger goes up faaast. On certain level od danger (marked red) you risk being raided, which effectively means some of your agents will go missing, you will lose some cash and will be forced to move instantly. So what you usually do is you wait until they are close to finding you and move to a different location. Reasons to delay that is 1) cost 2) lack of good hideout candidates.

One random question: do we get fine camera rotation in this game? The 90 degree increments in Hard West made my OCD cringe a bit.

Yes!

 

[Alienman]

LeChuck?

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

When can I give these people my money?!

 

[ArchAngel]

When can I give these people my money?!

Summer 2018.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

One of the game mechanics is Secrets. Secrets is a big set of all things that can be uncovered, eg.: intel for investigation board, a new classified document, enemy agent identity, info that your agent is a double agent, a special talent of your agent, new tech, new trade contact, new training, new chemical compound for body engineering, and some more.
You obtain Secrets from tactical levels, from enemy agent interrogation, from your dying agents (a dying agent utters his/her last words and reveals a secret), and from solving secret files. There are three secret types (normal secret, big secret, huge secret) and secret files reveal the most valuable ones: the huge secrets.
So you collect secret intel to solve secret files to access secret information. More or less.

Is misinformation possible? Like you uncover a secret that your agent is on both sides of the fence, when in reality he isn't and it was planted here to fuck your paranoia.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Is this an RPG or not? The third tag on steam is RPG.

I liked Hard West, is this just Hard West in a more modern era?

 

[Alienman]

It's a nice video presentation, but the shooting is really poor. Shooting through meter thick brick walls and stuff... it all reminds me too much of the first nuXcom.

 

[veevoir]

Afaik some dev mentioned you can shoot through thinner walls on purpose. I wonder if AI can do it too, if yes - I can forsee a lot of frustrated "0/10 lol ai shot me through walls" players. Going against some gaming tropes is dangerous.

 

[Alienman]

Yeah, I heard that in the video, but it just looks wonky as hell. It's like the characters have x-ray vision and locks in. In another instance you can see one guy shoot through a meter thick potting bed. I have no problem with shooting through walls in general (actually it's pretty cool), but the game has to have real projectiles for that to work properly.

Oh well, I will just accept this as another nuXcom-style game with board-game mechanics.

 

[mwnn85]

Might be worth keeping an eye on; it certainly ticks the right boxes thematically.
Not sure if the clipboard segments exist purely to unlock stuff aka a minigame.
Will it be possible to lose a game if you fail to collect a key piece of info or not enough secret info? Or fail to link info on the clipboard?
Is there ever a reason why you wouldn't want to follow an enemy unit back to base -> recon the area -> attack the area? Since this ultimately leads to a battle and more XP and secret info.

I think it remains to be seen whether the sum of all these game elements results in something that's more...satisfying/deep (?) than seen in Hard West.
Otherwise it might up being what Evil Genius was to Dungeon Keeper or what Omerta City of Gangsters was to XCOM.
Not sure the world needs another ufo/tftd/apoc derivative but that's the gold standard I'll be comparing it to.

Admittedly it is a spy game but hopefully the tactical layer consists of something a bit more challenging than headshotting unaware enemies with silenced weapons.
Given that you rarely miss, can hide behind cover, can see their vision cones + patrol paths, can move around the map with virtual impunity in the infiltration stage, etc
...it could all end up being a bit of a cakewalk.

It's pretty clear from watching the video that stealth is preferable - else you miss out on secret info, cause reinforcements to appear and/or get hit with attack choppers.
Just out of interest if the opponent was a terrorist cell or some such - that could justify combat using either a loud or stealthy approach and the other game mechanics would work much the same way.

 

[xmd1997]

Might be worth keeping an eye on; it certainly ticks the right boxes thematically.
Not sure if the clipboard segments exist purely to unlock stuff aka a minigame.
Will it be possible to lose a game if you fail to collect a key piece of info or not enough secret info? Or fail to link info on the clipboard?
Is there ever a reason why you wouldn't want to follow an enemy unit back to base -> recon the area -> attack the area? Since this ultimately leads to a battle and more XP and secret info.

I think it remains to be seen whether the sum of all these game elements results in something that's more...satisfying/deep (?) than seen in Hard West.
Otherwise it might up being what Evil Genius was to Dungeon Keeper or what Omerta City of Gangsters was to XCOM.
Not sure the world needs another ufo/tftd/apoc derivative but that's the gold standard I'll be comparing it to.

Admittedly it is a spy game but hopefully the tactical layer consists of something a bit more challenging than headshotting unaware enemies with silenced weapons.
Given that you rarely miss, can hide behind cover, can see their vision cones + patrol paths, can move around the map with virtual impunity in the infiltration stage, etc
...it could all end up being a bit of a cakewalk.

It's pretty clear from watching the video that stealth is preferable - else you miss out on secret info, cause reinforcements to appear and/or get hit with attack choppers.
Just out of interest if the opponent was a terrorist cell or some such - that could justify combat using either a loud or stealthy approach and the other game mechanics would work much the same way.

From what I understand from the stream, tailing enemy agents back to their cells require you to allow them to complete their missions first which I'm guessing isn't always a good idea. I asked the devs on their discord channel concerning the difficulty, they said that the game has difficulty modes and that that higher difficulties will require more thorough thinking and that punishment for failures will be severe. They promised that they'll showcase the game on different difficulty levels in future streams.

EDIT:

"CFG design / kszymczak-05/16/2018

we'd love to do content DLCs, are actively planning for it, hard to say anything certain at this moment


key difficulty levels' factors: economy parameters, aggressiveness and scale of operation if enemy AI on the world map, number of enemies in tactical, enemy health


the way I see it - difficulty levels make the game more 'dense', without creating difficulty spikes; ie.: higher difficulty requires more thorough thinking because there are more factors in the game (especially in tactical) and the punishment for failure is more severe (eg. you hope to go stealthy and carry little to no armor - if you fail stealth, you'll have tough time in combat)"
Phantom Doctrine Discord-http://discord.gg/cfg

 

[Kacper Szymczak]

Is misinformation possible? Like you uncover a secret that your agent is on both sides of the fence, when in reality he isn't and it was planted here to fuck your paranoia.

Nope. We had some experiments in various systems where the information was fuzzy, end none of those worked well. What fucks with your paranoia usually is the fact that all agents have secret perks - which need revealing, and could be either special talents or effects of enemy brainwashing.

How much gunporn will this feature?

Well, dunno. I like my guns rather quirky (apart from the obvious AKs and M1911s) so we have this, this and that. There are 40 of those and there's weapon modding with up to 3 slots (ammo type, trigger and such).

Is this an RPG or not? The third tag on steam is RPG.

Not in my opinion.
It's more RPG than XCOM, less RPG than JA2.

I liked Hard West, is this just Hard West in a more modern era?

I'd say the only similar thing is the lack of RNG in combat. Hard West was scripted, dramatic and linear, Phantom Doctrine is way more systemic.

Oh well, I will just accept this as another nuXcom-style game with board-game mechanics.

Yeah, that kind of make sense. Definitely not a combat sim.

Not sure if the clipboard segments exist purely to unlock stuff aka a minigame.
Will it be possible to lose a game if you fail to collect a key piece of info or not enough secret info? Or fail to link info on the clipboard?

Regarding the investigation board, read my note about secrets above. Apart from that: the "minigame" is 100% skippable (you can assign an agent to work on it for you).
And no, you can't fail it. It can just take longer time.

Is there ever a reason why you wouldn't want to follow an enemy unit back to base -> recon the area -> attack the area? Since this ultimately leads to a battle and more XP and secret info.

Compare to classic X-com. Well, sure that's the way to most XP and resources. Still I have yet to see someone go on every tactical mission in PD. It's more sandboxy, in the sense that players go for combat when they feel like it, and go for investigation board when they need a break.

I think it remains to be seen whether the sum of all these game elements results in something that's more...satisfying/deep (?) than seen in Hard West.

Well, the depth is incomparable here, really. Pretty much same with Omerta.

Admittedly it is a spy game but hopefully the tactical layer consists of something a bit more challenging than headshotting unaware enemies with silenced weapons.
Given that you rarely miss, can hide behind cover, can see their vision cones + patrol paths, can move around the map with virtual impunity in the infiltration stage, etc
...it could all end up being a bit of a cakewalk.

It's pretty clear from watching the video that stealth is preferable - else you miss out on secret info, cause reinforcements to appear and/or get hit with attack choppers.
Just out of interest if the opponent was a terrorist cell or some such - that could justify combat using either a loud or stealthy approach and the other game mechanics would work much the same way.

Yes, that is more or less correct.
If you prepare and recon an carefully sneak through and invest in equipment and all that then sure you can do stealth and sure it is easy.
If you crawl your way through and minmax it perfectly and look for the easiest way out, the game will not try to make sure your plan falls apart. Well, there are systems in place for exactly that, but still - manageable.
You miss on the "stealth is preferable" though. Nothing is. Stealth is more predictable and controllable than combat, which instantaneously makes it easier, sure. But if you go prepped for combat, heavy armors and all, then it's smooth sailing just as well.

So the big takeaway here is this: if you invest time and energy to perfect your play, the game doesn't go out of it's way to fuck you up. If you feel like getting fucked up, you pick up the pace of your play (eg. skipping mission recon should do you plenty harm).

From what I understand from the stream, tailing enemy agents back to their cells require you to allow them to complete their missions first which I'm guessing isn't always a good idea.

Well, that can be achieved in other ways as well (eg. kidnap, install locator implant) but some enemy jobs can occasionally be relatively harmless (eg. informer assassination, and you're pretty much up to date with secrets).

 

[agris]

Kacper Szymczak please consider removing HP bloat from difficulty settings. It's a very banal way to artificially pad difficulty, and is effectively just tedium. It's much more rewarding to beat a more lethal, thoughtful opponent, than a bullet sponge (read: please give enemies better weapons, improve the AI, or make the combat encounter more difficult by more strategic placement of enemies). Increasing financial penalties, tighter thresholds for maluses, any of that is preferable to "hurr-durr more hp!".

 

[agris]

You obtain Secrets from tactical levels, from enemy agent interrogation, from your dying agents (a dying agent utters his/her last words and reveals a secret), and from solving secret files. There are three secret types (normal secret, big secret, huge secret) and secret files reveal the most valuable ones: the huge secrets.
So you collect secret intel to solve secret files to access secret information.

Emphasis mine. You guys deserve a big old "Fuck yea!" for this, it's a great idea and discourages save scumming simultaneously. I hope the weight, class and calibre of an agent's last breathe secret is bumped up a bit compared to 'normal' secrets. Really make the scummers (read: me) sweat.

 

[Bigg Boss]

Can I run this on my toaster from 2010?

 

[Kacper Szymczak]

Kacper Szymczak please consider removing HP bloat from difficulty settings. It's a very banal way to artificially pad difficulty, and is effectively just tedium. It's much more rewarding to beat a more lethal, thoughtful opponent, than a bullet sponge (read: please give enemies better weapons, improve the AI, or make the combat encounter more difficult by more strategic placement of enemies). Increasing financial penalties, tighter thresholds for maluses, any of that is preferable to "hurr-durr more hp!".

Well, HP change is not exactly for the purpose of bullet sponging.
Here's how it works: as you go, you encounter enemies that are significantly weaker (eg. local police), regular henchmen, and advanced henchmen. On normal, local enforcers and regular henchmen can be one-shotted by your average weapon (if they're out of cover, no awareness etc.) and advanced henchmen are an obstacle that you can't just headshot with a silenced weapon (you need to dig a bit to find better weapons that will handle these effectively). On easy, it is possible to one-shot everyone. On hard, even the regular henchmen won't be one-shottable (is this even a word?).
So when you have a gun that does 90 damage, regular henchmen will have up to 90 hp and the advanced have 100. On easy they will have no more than 85, and on hard even the regular mooks will have over 90. The HP changes are about 10-20%.

IIRC something cool LW2 did was that resistance members could be Faceless spies, and if you suspected that a particular individual was a spy (quite difficult to figure out) you could deliberately send them into harm's way on the tac layer.

Yes, that is exactly what occasionally happens over here. Although it can get tricky, because sleeper agents will reveal themselves when combat starts. And this sucks big time.

Emphasis mine. You guys deserve a big old "Fuck yea!" for this, it's a great idea and discourages save scumming simultaneously. I hope the weight, class and calibre of an agent's last breathe secret is bumped up a bit compared to 'normal' secrets. Really make the scummers (read: me) sweat.

Hey, I'm a big time savescummer as well, and I consider this, simply put, flawed game design. Save systems are there to allow you take a break from the game, not a game mechanic in itself. If the most efficient way to play your game is through savescumming, you're doing something wrong.

Can I run this on my toaster from 2010?

steam page says:
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
MINIMUM:
OS: Windows 7, 8, 10
Processor: Intel i5 Series
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GTX
Storage: 20 GB available space
Additional Notes: TBA

 

[Kacper Szymczak]

btw, I must say I really appreciate the level of competence you guys (and gals?) represent in talks about game design, I very rarely get to these depths when talking with people, even including people who do design for a living, cheers

 

[agris]

What’s your role at CreativeForge?

 

[Kacper Szymczak]

What’s your role at CreativeForge?

lead designer

 

[agris]

What’s your role at CreativeForge?

lead designer

You should pop into other RPG / tactics game threads if you enjoy talking shop like this. Just keep in mind, you'll need strong saves vs. bait, trolling, intolerance and misogyny. The tactics forum has a better topical- to trash-post ratio than general RPG though.