Lesser Blight Elemental: Spending resources on an activity that may or may not pay off is gambling by my definition. Referring to game mechanics, I could just call it RNG but I want to distinguish from the kind of RNG that the player is not actively involved in (e.g. procedurally generated characters, timing and composition of enemy spawns, etc.). I'm okay with the latter as long as it evens out to make for a playable game every time.

But when the game makes me roll the dice to determine whether my most basic, required actions succeed at all... yeah, I'm not okay with that. I don't like it in classic games either, even though I grew up with them. The changes to the combat system in Civ 5 were the best thing to ever happen to that series. Unfortunately western RPGs/strategy games that eschew that kind of RNG are pretty rare.

Lesser Blight Elemental: Spending resources on an activity that may or may not pay off is gambling by my definition. Referring to game mechanics, I could just call it RNG but I want to distinguish from the kind of RNG that the player is not actively involved in (e.g. procedurally generated characters, timing and composition of enemy spawns, etc.). I'm okay with the latter as long as it evens out to make for a playable game every time.

But when the game makes me roll the dice to determine whether my most basic, required actions succeed at all... yeah, I'm not okay with that. I don't like it in classic games either, even though I grew up with them. The changes to the combat system in Civ 5 were the best thing to ever happen to that series. Unfortunately western RPGs/strategy games that eschew that kind of RNG are pretty rare.

Joven.317: I haven't yet played anything for Terra Invicta but it sounds like just a normal game mechanic, nothing that should be labeled with the load term 'gambling'. I tend to avoid early access and wait for the final product so I don't turn away from something I'll like later but I have seen nothing yet from this to be worried about.

octalot: Some of the XCOM games lied - there was a hidden modifier that could only change things in the player's favour, which was added on top of the percentage that was shown in the UI. So people who complained about missing an 80% or 90% chance were not only not understanding probabilities, they weren't noticing that it was skewed in their favour.

https://www.reddit.com/r/XCOM2/comments/45u81x/yes_xcom_2s_rng_cheats_in_your_favor_heres_how/

Carradice: It seems like there is a competition for assets on Earth and on space. Then the eventual arrival of alirn ships might lead to a second half of the game. Maybe with skirmishes involving scout ships at first.

Overall, it might work a little bit like Alien Legacy. There you had to thrive as much as you could in a resilient way so that your faction can face the looming threat in the final stages of the game.

The difference is that in Alien Legacy there are no human factions at each other's throats nor diolomacy. That would be what Terra Invicta brings to the table, this twist and modern looking graphics, battles, minigames. Alien Legacy was great and one of a kind. This might be a second effort in that line. Looks full of promise. A game to play after reading The Three Body Problem, especially. Or playing any of the games related to XCOM.