I spent a little bit of time trying to lay the foundations to a mod (that I’d abandoned before starting, instead switching to Rimworld) to rebalance the entire game by making weapons more specific in utility, enemies more varied in roles and less powerful but higher in number, armors generally weaker across the board (except heavy armor), and a complete rework of the skill system to create more variety in cross-classing and reducing the power overall while increasing utility (eg. boom blast + sneak attack no longer a thing you can do every turn, but maybe once or twice in a battle and now requires about 5 different skills for the full effect // rapid clearance having a cap and belonging to the sniper, war cry replaced with suppressive fire and instead given to the berserker, and so much more to create 2 sub-classes for every class and at least 2-3 ideal cross-classing options for dozens of possibilities - generally recreating the current experience in a limited form, and making popular cross-classing options into a single class: making the game more reliant on weapon, armor, and class CHOICES before and during tactical missions)… and a few things that came out of that were a few of these suggestions.
Labs and Fabs would produce resources to generate a steady and predictable flow, less reliant on scavenging/raiding. (This would go in line with less raiding opportunities (mission popups with a timer), scavenging sites being more difficult to come across, and labs requiring a special item to build that would generally come at a steady pace to create a predictable flow in the game’s pacing so it’s no longer possible to beat the game/get far ahead within weeks by cheesing your way through everything)
The first restore would grant you a damaged manticore, the 2nd would grant a damaged scarab, and the 3rd would grant both. (To go in line to the huge nerf to raiding and resource acquisition, to still provide a “bare minimum” means of getting a bit bigger early on - soldiers would also stop costing food to hire, and something else was in the works to make that more steady/predictable too)
bringing complete cyborgs/mutants into the game but with added penalties. rebalancing them to take away large amounts of will (proportionately reducing you to 20% of your maximum (which was also greatly reduced) generally, except for priest mutations which generally provided no armor) costing a lot of resources and time.
a huge rebalance to the technologies had many phoenix/anu/nj equipment not costing tech, anu tech costs replaced with mutagen on some things. So there were “cheap” solutions and “expensive” solutions, Synedrion offered what aliens in other games tend to offer and a return of a special resource similar to elerium-115 to manufacture powerful weapons and armor (which had a huge diplomatic influence in the game, when considering the overhaul to diplomacy that was considered but i’m not going to talk too much about).
in line with resource generation nerf, came a buff to resource generation through trade (and automation of it, because does anyone actually like manually flying an aircraft from point to point and sliding a bar? I like the resources, I don’t like the gameplay)
However, things like…
Would hinder and counter the cost/benefit system.
I believe that conflicts with the skill system, without overhauling and reducing the inventory system similar to new-xcom. (Though interestingly, I’d personally prefer just THAT to a skill system at all - but I did have fun creating the subclass system)
5 and 8 would need more interesting things to be done with aircraft, (Maybe Festering skies will provide? …) before I’d consider spending any time with that.
So I say all this because I just want to express that I don’t think these ideas are terrible, and actually have some potential to create a more enjoyable experience… but, spending so many hours trying to consider the reverberating effects they’d create throughout the game, I can’t imagine that without a complete overhaul of most things (something I believe ought to be done by someone at some point) would they actually do more than break the game further in its current state than add to it.
This game’s a bit like a flimsy popsicle stick bridge, one small change/addition may just crash the whole thing and it kind of needs a redesign (eg. the addition of those Legacy of Ancients weapons really didn’t add anything and instead overruled and nullified nearly everything else in the game, including inventory management while providing missions that can be trivialized by 1 soldier of a specific class - and I have pretty low expectations for Festering Skies). Phoenix Point is a bit special though because of this aiming system, regardless of its many flaws, it ends up being a bit more enjoyable than its modern counterparts IMO (tried playing firaxis xcom again a few months ago and uninstalled it during the first mission - just can’t go back now after witnessing some sectoids kill a soldier in full cover from a horrible 0* angle and watching all those plasma bursts go right through the vehicle).
Maybe use cheats, if you wish to have so huge advantage over how exploration and travel works.
But don’t expect that devs will now rework all what they have done to implement one more advanced change.