Cepheus Protocol

EDITED BELOW I'm putting this as recommended, but with caution. This game frustrates me because it gives you so much to do, but the game rushes you way harder than I think it needs to. If you're not rushing B you're not going to make any progress - and I think that's intentional, I'll explain why in a bit.

Pros: You have a lot of cool stuff to do, like evacuate civillians, set up checkpoints and all that good stuff. Great, fantastic, I love it. I like that you can set up FOBs and COPs which, in theory, would be great evacuation sites of the island or to your main hub. I say in theory because this has never worked for me.

Cons: pathing is jank, but we all expect that from EA games, it actually doesn't bother me at all, really. But you know what does?
The pacing. Remember when I said this game wants you to rush? Remember when I said in theory you can set up evac sites? Good luck. I'm not a super computer, so I can't multitask 5 groups, evacuating, refuling, rearming and all the other stuff the game wants me to. Yes, each INDIVIDUAL unit has it's own ammo. Which sounds cool until you're super spread out doing multiple things. This also goes for fuel and health. It is task saturation simulator and if you're a perfectionist god help you.

And don't get me started on Patient Zero. If you want to throw away 4 hours of work, go hunt that down. You can't kill it without committing EVERYTHING. And even then, guess what? You still can't kill it. Like, no joke. I managed to kill it by cheesing it with an Apache it got stuck on after superman jumping onto it (Yes, it does that, no you can't stop it, yes it will kill your unit(s) instantly) but, I got lucky, or so I thought. When you kill it, it goes into some cacoon type thing and regenerates. Well, it was stuck onto the apache, so big brain, I fly it over the ocean because there's no saving that unit. Did it work?
no. Killed my unit and teleported back onto the island. What could have been a cool and almost cinematic moment was ruined by what I'm starting to think is a timesink unkillable boss. So what's the point?

Devs: Slow. It. Down. Let people get used to the mechanics and experiment a bit before stomping their head in. I think it would be really cool if we could focus on an objective for an end game. Cure, Evacuate, kill whatever. you're giving us all these side things to do but what's the point if in the end it's just a battle of attrition what we'll lose? And for the love of god up the population capacity. The map is huge and if you're wanting us to experiment don't funnel us down the LAV path. It needs slowed down if we need to think of supply lines, if you want it fast pace, get rid of ammo and fuel.

It's a really cool concept, but it's not what's on the box. You can TRY to do it your way, but you'll end up like me complaining on the comments.

As of the latest update, I feel the pathfinding has gotten significantly worse, especially for civilian AI. They constantly run off in random directions away from units. At first I was using a drone to guide them to a safe spot to pick them up in a helo and noticed this and thought it may be a fear system, which would be neat, but then they refused to board the helicopter, opting to run right into a horde. I should also mention the helo got stuck in a building and did donuts over the LZ.

I liek this game, I really really do. And I want it to succeed. I wouldn't have re-downloaded if I didn't. There's just so many issues that need addressed before new units or mechanics get introduced.

Overall a great game with a lot of promise, if the devs are looking at feedback I think there are three points to look at needs, wants, and dreams

Needs:
1) Overhaul of path finding, it gets pretty janky sometimes with vehicles and units clipping into each other then becoming stuck on terrain
2) Fixing AI for units IE have the infected swarm towards points instead of a constant trickle and have the units become a bit more autonomous
3) Optimization for the mid to late game is desperately needed, the late game can be unplayable at times especially for larger scale operations it becomes a slideshow
4) The map feels empty, this goes in hand with the optimization but it just feels like a ghost town almost when doing operations, I like to turtle and then launch large scale operations to secure a forward operating base and make sure the rest of the missions can proceed from there but even during the early game it just feels empty which while befitting the themes the ambiance is lacking to back that up

Wants:
1) I'd love more building interaction, perhaps make it so units can go inside buildings not just on top of them
2) Terrain destruction, with being able to call in an airstrike and use heavy weaponry like tank APC it would be nice to be able to see the effects of combat on the city
3) Greater range of units, right now it just feels kinda so so I would like to see more and more units added overtime with better ways to customize them
4) Overhaul base building, right now there's not really a reason to take territory other than income as all you need to do is hunt down patient zero to win the game
5) More interactions with the government, the CERC is supposed to be a secretive branch of the government which is great but I can just kill civilians with no repercussions so maybe a system of objectives, missions, orders, directives, and edicts from the government should be necessary like 50% of the map needs to be infected before you're allowed to shoot civilians in hot zones
6) Research, we have scientists and there's not really a reason to have them other than flame troops so put the DNA points to good use and research various technologies to unlock new buildings, units, buffs, etc

Dreams:
1) Slow the pacing way down, I'm a biochemist and molecular biologist in real life and I can say even diseases spread through bites like this one would not go this fast. We know that there's a patient zero but in real life pandemics are a slow burn. It would be much much much more beneficial to the theme if you start out the game as just a task force operating out of some FOB or temporary base and you have to gather intell, respond to small scale outbreaks, follow up on missing persons, quarantine neighborhoods/areas, launch surgical strikes into infected areas to gather specimens with your scientists, etc.. It will be much more beneficial to have this game be a slow burn RTS that slowly expands the scope of what you have to deal with where when you first land you've gotta respond to reports of strange activity and missing persons then a week later you're having to quarantine areas, then a week later you have to blow the bridges, set up barricades and walls, enforce curfew etc, then a week later the infected are actively engaging your forces as their numbers increase and you get reports of strange pods of towering bodies of the infected, then the next week you're having to pull back and abandon large swaths of land as you're completely overrun, and then finally bide your time and build your forces and launch small strategic strikes until you're ready to launch a full scale war to retake the island.
2) Have patient zero evolve with the game, as we see throughout the main game there's different variants of the infected. Patient zero is the central intelligence behind this and it would make sense if she evolved like the infected. Having her go from a normal infected to a spitter to the big worm to a massive tower that constantly spawns infected and converts the local area would be an amazing sense of power scaling and story pacing.
3) Change the way units work, while I love the way you can use complete granular control over the units I dislike it for large scale operations. Sure grouping them together is great but with the way path finding works it kinda breaks down in the late game. Maybe have research to increase unit size so start with one then two/three then five etc so it keeps with scaling.
4) Dynamic evolution, in the wild viruses evolve to overcome challenges presented to them. Bombed all the bridges to secure off one section of the map? Congratulations you have flying infected. Taken care of the flying infected? Well the worm can now make tunnels for other infected to crawl through. Launching large scale operations during the day and then turtling at night? Guess who's having nosy neighbors beat down your door while you're trying to sleep.
5) Faction/civilian interaction and chaos, when society breaks down it breaks down hard and the game should reflect the chaos a situation like this would cause. Fires breaking out across the city, hospitals being overrun, police responding to increasing calls while being picked off, civilians looting, militias forming, gangs fighting in the streets etc. would be amazing factors to deal with besides the infected.

Overall an amazing demo with a bright future ahead of it, I bought this after watching the spiffingbrit play it and I've loved it. The learning curve is steep but once you figure it out the roleplaying and story telling are great.

Its a cool game but the dev team is really weird, they fake patches and updates to use the patch notes to advertise their main product that is a comic book line and a merch store. And yeah you bet they blocked me from the patch discussion after I asked i pointed it out... the CEO seems really bad and this game will never finish, i got it a year ago and can see its on its last legs before they give up on it.