I don’t get why people feel the need to go all positive or all negative. Their ballistic model is just like Valkyria Chronicles, or the original XCOM so not really innovative, but something that was great to return to the genre, yeah. A lot of stuff about PP is great, under all the refuse.
But to say this game doesn’t need rebalancing? This requires very short play time and very high optimism (or a decent bribe). Some people find the game impossible to win due to loads of poorly balanced enemies, and others realized the game is incredibly easy to break:
Which brings us back to body parts being pointless. And it kind of makes sense… I mean, what IS the weak-point of a bullet sponge? Sponges don’t have arms or legs or heads, in fact.
I’m reminded of Ninja Gaiden 2 3D, where you could cut off all of a ninja’s limbs save one, and he would crawl after you, an suicide bomb you. That’s something that would be cool to see in this game. Instead, by the time you take off a couple of limbs, the enemy dies, despite having plenty of HP.
I sum up the problems of lethality and head shots here:
“…and super easy if you know the basics. Too easy if you cheese it. And with cheese it I am not even talking exploits, but just using normal game mechanics”
Ok. Then tell me please how you solve a lair mission, where you encounter 2 bomb chirons who rip you apart from the other side o the map plus 2 sirens approaching your team and the other stuff of samll aliens.
Right from the off I have been a raving fan of the mechanics and I don’t think for a minute this will change.
I recon they will first tackle the bugs that some players are suffering with, they did say they also would be tackling custom key-binding.
On that note I can’t see the first patch to be overly exciting, but the following ones should start to address the polish and balance.
okay. you need 2-3 assault/snipers lvl 7 if possible (shouldn’t be hard as that get many kills early). You give them shotguns and max move equipment. Normal assault armour if it is all you have, but anu move armour if you have it.
Give them high will and speed.
“If possible” add a priest with the speed boost head.
Activite level 7 assault skill that gives 2 ap on kill.
Now you dash around the map. If you see an enemy use quick shot and one shot them with shotgun. This means of course walking next to the enemy. Dash and high mobility will make this easy.
You can two shot sirens. Just stand next to them and aim on the lowest armour part.
Chirons are easily killed with face shots. You can two shot them with shotguns to face early on.
If you need to kill bosses. A sniper/heavy with the level 7 heavy skill can “one shot” everything in the game.
so 6 man?
a priest.
2-3 shotguns.
2 sniper/heavies.
That is less then 6.
You can also add assault to your priest with the skill to give your team 1 ap a round.
There are also other ways. One is to have a high stealth guy run to the end boss and one shot them. They can run the mission alone too.
I used to have one heavy fly to the spawnery. But you are probably quicker running with your assault dash who has max will and speed.
I see where your tactics comes from, but 2 bomb chirons will kill your team nontheless! So multiple starting of the mission is nevcessary until no bomb shiron or only one appears!
You should be able to run to them and kill them on turn 1.
Or just run to spawnery with dash assault/sniper and destroy it asap. Turn 1 if poss. You can usually guess where the spawnery is.
Tried using assault/sniper shotgun guys yet? They work well.
Also you can snipe the chirons with heavy/sniper if in range and level 7 heavy skill. That will also “one shot” them.
If you are really really struggling then just ignore the base for now.
Immersion and investment in your troops and tracking their triumphs and failures are so key. This is one thing that Xcom2 WOTC got very very right. PP can do this too with time and all the extra money from Epic. (Hopefully)