Classes? Turns composed of a standard action and a move action? Feats earned through character progression? This is all sounding
vaguely familiar.
The joypad is the only system in place for external use at the moment though...
This is my chief concern of the moment. It could just be the games I'm playing, but it seems like every time I pick up a game that's ported from console to PC, the control scheme and user interface receive less than no attention. I'd feel a lot more comfortable if there was a working mouse-&-keyboard interface at this stage of development, instead of hearing, "Yeah, we're working on that....right now....ish."
I'm not fond of cartoony proportaions (the heavy looks like it came from Gears of War, sniper is skin and bones, etc..)
Either I missed that particular episode of
Looney Toons, or you've somehow confused Firaxis' strategy game with 2k Marin's FPS.
I mean, these are dudes in armor. Compared to the Personal Armor in
UFO Defense, Firaxis has kind of toned it down. Yes, the heavy weapons guy is in a bigger suit, presumably so that it looks like something that can realistically take a shot. Yes, the sniper is in something much less substantial, presumably so that he can worm his way around the battlefield more easily.
This is, incidentally, the part where I think you're *****ing for the sake of *****ing. If you wanted to say that the environments are too ****ing brown, like every "gritty" action game on the planet, then you'd have a decent point. You can look at
WoW and say it's too cartoony. You can look at
those shoulder pads and say it's too cartoony. When you look at
that burning sports bar, covered in smoke and soot and call it too cartoony, you surrender quite a lot of credibility.
And X-Com? It's an old game. With that kind of graphics technology you couldn't do much in the first place.
Don't even try to start that. No, the technology was not available for super-high-fidelity imagry, but developers still had the capability of consciously choosing an art style. Microprose chose massive shoulder pads and huge, center-parted hair. They chose flying saucers, green-and-purple musclemen, and anthropomorphized snakes.
Pong didn't have any room for visual artistic styling. MUDs didn't have any room for visual artistic styling.
UFO Defense did, and they chose a style that comes across as vaguely silly today.
I like having tons of TU's and the huge range of options it presents (like different TU costs to fire a weapon). I like being able to for every soldier being able to do everything if necessary.
I'm not going to disagree about the old X-COM's ruleset being a strong one, but you're being way too reactionary and dismissive about the one Firaxis is building for their new XCOM. As long as there's consequences to movement (such as reaction fire), you have the same risk-reward analysis to make as you did in
UFO Defense/Enemy Unknown, when determining where to move your soldiers. As long as there are a variety of possibilities available for the standard action, then you have the same opportunity costs to consider, when determining what to do with that standard action.
Let's stop for a second and honestly think about how a turn plays out with TUs. You'd spend a chunk on movement and either shoot during your turn, reserve some for reaction fire, or blow all your TUs on movement. On some rare occasions, you may start a turn with a target in sight and eschew movement in favor of firing additional shots. Because each weapon used a percentage of the soldier's TUs, rather than a fixed number of TUs, gaining more TUs was really just equivalent to increasing the character's movement speed and their ability to manipulate their inventory during combat. You didn't really fill your backpack with alternative weapons to swap them about, based on what TUs you had available, when you were ready to shoot; you adjusted your movement habits, so that at the end of each move, you'd have TUs reserved for the type of shot you wanted to take.
So, in the original X-COM, you'd consciously break your turn down into a move action and an attack action. Firaxis' version just has the core mechanic do that breakdown for you. A soldier who would have fewer TUs in
UFO Defense can be represented by a soldier with a smaller movement range in the new system. A soldier with a weapon that fires a quicker snap shot in the old system can be represented by having a larger range available for a single-move in the new system. The only options lost, based on what's been explicitly told to us, is the ability to stand still and spend the whole round shooting (and I'm almost willing to bet that a full-round attack option is so assumed to be available that it just hasn't warranted an explicit mention yet) and the ability to have a soldier burn his entire turn faffing around with the contents of his inventory.
What about a TU-like system that has a wider variety of actions available? I've been playing quite a bit of
Silent Storm lately, which offers units much more to do with their action points (time units) than move and shoot. The turns still neatly break down into a move action and a standard action, though, since a character taking time to plant a bomb, disarm a bomb, pick a lock, pillage a locker, or break line-of-sight and hide is typically taking that action in lieu of firing a weapon. What's it matter if you take that action burning the TUs you'd use to fire or use the standard action that you'd use to fire? It's the same opportunity cost, regardless of how that cost is conveyed to the player.
To your point about rigid class-based limitations, I can see both sides of the argument. Trained soldiers can figure out which end of a rocket launcher is the business end, without needing training specific to that weapon. At the same time, though, when certain units have unique capabilities, that increases the value of that unit in combat. Let's face it: In X-COM, if you needed a rocket launcher to proceed with whatever strategy you had in mind, the value of your heavy weapons guy was inversely proportional to his proximity to the next soldier capable of carrying that rocket launcher. If there's a rigid class structure that says only specifically trained soldiers can use rocket launchers, then you either make sure to bring multiples of them on your mission; you protect your heavy weapons guy like the mission depends on it, or you have to be prepared to rework your entire strategy, should your heavy weapons guy bite the dust.
