A sincere apology for my last thread

Xenonauts 2 does it by giving you chance to hit based on how “blocked” the target is, the distance and etc. I find it to be much more reliable and easier to predict.

Not so. With a percentage you are playing with statistical odds. In xcom 2 with an assault rife which fires a burst of shots the percentage is displayed and you can’t do anything about the RNG. So each bullet hits the same spot. The odds remain the same. But with PP a probability density function (PDF) is used. That means when firing a burst from an assault rife, each bullet is subjected to the PDF.
So 50% of the bullets go in the small circle and the rest outside the small one, but inside the large one.

So if the circle small or large covers the target, you guaranteed a hit.

But if only the small circle is covering a target - a head is good round example, only half the shots are guaranteed. And if the head is only showing because of a lamppost or car, the chances are halved.

If a burst of 4 shots are made then you can risk a miss. The more you see the greater the probability of a hit.

With Xcom 2, one could miss almost indefinitely if the odds are low. You have no control. But with PP, you can move the aiming reticle to decide on the odds accordingly to the shape of the target!

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Finally get through whole topic. Jeez @Martouf82… If you can’t see advantage of Phoenix Point above FiraXCOM, then I don’t know what to say.

Ballistics in Phoenix Point made me so used to that system that I almost vomit when I see FiraXCOM aiming and hit chances. Like Ementrude said above if you can’t hit enemy in Phoenix Point it is your own fault. In FiraXCOM it was just frustrating RNG where by any reason you should not miss in many cases. BoredEngineer has some right here that too high stats make some elements of combat irrelevant, but this is just case of balancing values, and doesn’t make whole mechanic worse than anything found in FiraXCOM. If we will manage to convince devs to make some changes PP will outperform FiraXCOM in almost any way.

Even multiple projectile system of burst is superior. You can hit multiple targets just with one shot action. I won’t mention how it looked in Firaxcom where you were shooting with machine guns…

Above has great connection with destructible environment. You can spray things with gunfire to remove cover and reveal your enemies. Yes sometimes obstacles are too fragile, but that is only matter of proper values balancing - show me something like that in FiraXCOM!

Don’t argue about not existing cover, because here everything is cover. You call it obstacles, but those obstacles practically gives you that cover and in any direction and angles. If enemy has a clear sight on your soldier hugging wall won’t help you. So your example is just a small flaw of the animation system, but whole cover system is just fantastic compared to what we can see in FiraXCOM where bullet go behind obstacles to hit with full burst even without any line of sight. So stop this “non existing cover” blah blah blah…

You have even free aim. You can manually adjust where your soldiers will shoot! Show me something like that in FiraXCOM.

You have friendly fire here, so you need to pay attention to not shoot through your friendlies like in FiraXCOM.

You can perform multiple actions and in any given order, now think for a FIraXCOM… Jeez…

Inventory and proficiency system is way better than FiraXCOM. You can give almost any item to any soldier and use it!

You have modular enemies where elimination of some parts can be crucial to your survival. In FiraXCOM you just hit or you critically hit which means some more damage. Great…

You have multiple bases, multiple aircrafts, multiple fighting teams, 4 factions with different views and techs doing their job on geoscape (not some scripted sh*t), you have vehicles, you have giant monsters (only 2 are bigger but it counts), you have many status effects and groud effects which can alter battlefield and capabilites of soldiers…

So FiraXCOM has cutscenes and some talking characters… Oh and smoke grenades plus some weapon modifications, plus couple of nice maps. Ta DA! That is everything which I can think of better in FiraXCOM.

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Yeah these poems about “it just needs balancing” are getting old half a year after release of the game. So it boils down to talking about potential not about the actual state of the game.
It has a potential to be a great game if all mechanics would work well with each other. The reality is that no one has any idea when this could actually happen.

Some odd features, like friendly fire, to me personally has no meaning. It’s not a mechanics that you can use in a game, its simply a side effect of the algorithm.

Pretty much all of your points fall flat when compared to other games from the same genre, like Xenonauts for example. Even Gear Tactics have a number of improvements that are pretty obvious. Shall we do such comparison? At the end of the day, you are doing pretty much what devs did, market the game “like firaxcom but everything is better”, then fail to deliver or acknowledge that other games already did that in the past or doing it right now.

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But I’m not comparing it to any other game. Question was about FiraXCOM. And being in Council makes me aware of changes that can come to this title. :wink: I advice patience. Of course some bad stuff will stay in the game, but we will have mod community which will make all those cases straight.

Ok, so as long as it has some features that are cooler than some of the firaxcom it’s a great game? What are we talking about then.

We are talking about that:

50% of your shots in PP are not GUARANTEED to land inside the small circle. Just like 50% of values are not guaranteed to fall within 1/2 the range of a probability density function.

The only time you are guaranteed a hit is if the large circle is completely inside the enemy. Just like in XCOM you are guaranteed a hit if your aiming percentage is 100%. The difference is, in XCOM if your hit chance is less than 100% the game tells you what it is. In PP, you have to guess.

In a more precise sense, the PDF is used to specify the probability of the random variable falling within a particular range of values , as opposed to taking on any one value.

Something Julian Gollop wrote about was that gamers as a whole don’t really understand probability that well. This is why they get frustrated with games like XCOM, rather than any inherent unfairness in the RNG. That’s why he introduced mechanics like the aiming to mask it. But the real difference between PP and XCOM is simply that PP is much more forgiving with its hit chances than XCOM. For example, an assault rifle fires 5 rounds. Each round has it’s own dice roll to hit so it is more likely that damage will average out over a burst. But this isn’t a new concept. Games have been doing it for a long time.

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The issue with cover stems only from the tons of movement characters can do. It’s too simple to just waltz right by the enemy’s cover on your turn and blast them. Overwatch/ reactionary fire needs a rework. I’d like to see something similar to Valkyria Chronicles.

Basically have overwatch fire follow a formula something like:

(Number of tiles moved within overwatch range) * (Number of AP used on overwatch) * (RF stat of weapon) * (overwatch stat of unit) * ( a dodge skill of the moving unit)

The idea would be: I move 2 tiles in front of a team of overwatching units. I take one assault rifle shot, but nothing else.

Next I move 15 tiles in- front of overwatching units: I take 7 assault rifle shots, an MG burst, and 2 Sniper shots.

The idea is that there is no single-use overwatch that fires a full shot, but that every tile moved within overwatch range results in chip shots that would kill the unit if they try to use all their movement AP in front of overwatching units, but moving 1-2 tiles to get to cover, or a slightly better angle doesn’t trigger a full on overwatch attack.

This is contrasted with the current system in which I can overwatch with my whole team and they’ll all blast at an arthron moving behind cover and accomplish nothing, or they’ll all devastate the first arthron to move, but then do nothing to the other 10 arthrons moving around.

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Which explains the issue of comparison with Xcom 2. Players were frustrated with ridiculous misses and J G developed a game which negated these frustrations. Games may have been utilising the method before, but he brought it to PP.

There was never any special unique claim. This aiming system seems fairer and not frustrating. With Xcom 2 which is a great game and has great videos, still bugs and at times ridiculous. The original point was making comparisons between the two games. Both Jake Solomon and JG are neither bothered about the overlaps. But the players have their own opinions.

I prefer this aiming system. I have yet to see a shot miss, that I knew should not miss unless I knew it might miss. In xcom 2, one couldn’t influence the situation unless you flanked the target. PP feels more probable than what xcom 2 does.

This system simply negates extreme random variants by modelling multiple bullets. Xcom 2 wouldn’t. But the result with a single shot is still the same.

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Every flaw in this game you try to address ends with a fanboy saying how great free aim and ballistics are.

Its a: “Dude its an iPhone” type of repetative response that should explain why this game is so perfect.
Facts are tossed aside for it. Bugs are ignored, and mechanics and potential is exaggerated.

Even when I say that units dont “take cover”, there are people here saying they do and can screenshot it but oops i have a big download so i cant.
The only thing about cover system does is that the unit crouches in low cover. Thats your whole cover system!!!

Ok so now a fanboy can come and say how great free aim is again…

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You mistake two things. Mechanics as principle and bugs related to them. :stuck_out_tongue: Mechanics are way beyond what FiraXCOM has to offer. Of course they are bugged in some cases, but it is nothing that can’t be handled without redesigning whole game.

No one here praise Phoenix Point as perfect game so your iPhone reference is misplaced. Actually I am in the Community Council more on the side advocating for changing many aspects of the game to make it more tactical, so I understand your arguments, but again I think that Phoenix Point in current state is way way better than FiraXCOM.

Also cover system is not just soldier “taking cover” so your argument again is not valid.

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Wow, very strange, because almost anyone here who responses to you is also not very happy with the current state of the game. I personally stopped to play it because of the many problems it has. The only thing I said is, that in my opinion the cover system is not a real issue and especially with your personal understanding of ‘taking cover’ I’m mostly on opposite to you.

Pretty offensive, but OK, the downloads ends very late yesterday evening and now I go to take some screenies. But I’m pretty sure that this will be almost pointless, you won’t see that as sufficient in your terms of ‘taking cover’ either.
True is that I was wrong, there is no animation or real ‘hugging the wall/cover’, so sorry if I throw this in the ring.
But I will stay with my basic statement:
Any obstacle has a real protection effect to the soldier behind it and ‘Low Cover’ is not always better than ‘High Cover’. With this i completely disagree with your ‘there is no cover system’.

Cover screenies

The setup:

Aim 1, here you can see that the soldier behind the ‘full cover’ is completely protected (100% of the bodyparts, but with the exception of his gun) from any shots direct in line to the cover:

Aim 2, arroung 45°, here the ‘full cover’ starts to give no protection at all for the soldier. If he would ‘hug the stone’ it would be clearly somewhat better in terms of ‘cover’:

Aim 3, close to 90°, the result is clear i think:

No you can go on to argue …

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I dont know why the comparison with Firaxcom is needed all the time.
Firaxcom is a finished product, it dont need redesigning: it will get a sequal.

This game however is unfinished, major bugs, unbalance etc.
And when you address a flaw on this forum fanboys flock to tell you you are wrong, it does not exist, firaxcom is bad, pp is so much more, and we got free aim. And thats exactly how an iphone response looks like. But with one difference, the iphone did work

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Dude, there’s no need to be offensive,

The only ‘fanboy’ I can see here right now is you, who seems to think that the sun shines out of XCOM’s every orifice.

For the record, I loved XCOM. It revived TBS games for me. But it had its flaws, which is why I have basically ignored anything from WOTC onwards and concentrated on LW2 until this came along.

I suggest that instead of being obnoxious on just one thread, you go away and read some of the rest of this forum. Pretty much everyone responding to you on this thread, from the OP to Yokes, to Skunky to Voland has gone on record more times than you can count to say: “PP has a lot of potential, but it’s not there yet, and here’s what we think you need to do do fix it.”

We’re fans, but we’re not fanboys. We know its flaws even better than you do, and we have put hours of time into analysing and breaking them down in extreme detail - but unlike you, instead of being obnoxious about them, we patiently point them out to the devs and suggest ways that they can be improved. That’s why most of us are on the Community Council - because we want to make this game better, and we recognise that the best way to do that is not by being rude, but by being constructive.

So why don’t you go away and play XCOM to your heart’s content, while we stay here and do the more grown-up job of trying to make this as good as it potentially could be, which could be way better than XCOM (though we all say again and again that it’s nowhere near there yet). :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

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Thank you for taking time on this.
Aim 1 gives you 100% coverage, Aim 3 gives you no coverage. We can all agree on that.

Can you see the problem with Aim 2? he is open for shots 100%


If he took “cover” he might expose a leg or an arm. BUT HE IS NOT TAKING COVER!!!

Imagine we gave you a gun and a rock to hide behind, you would stand there like that?
He is standing there like a deer in the wilds, not knowing there is danger.
He’s on the battlefield! his life depends on it. And high cover gives him a measily 20% angle of cover at best. That is not realistic

And a whole forum is like: oh people dont understand cover and trajectory, pp is the best, we got free aim, firaxcom is bad

Call your mother or your girlfriend, ask her if that dude is taking cover behind the rock or not, let her be the impartial judge.

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Again offensive, why?

Simply NO, just read the posts …

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Cover in all of these styles of games is an abstraction.

In PP, it is abstracted to the point that standing behind a rock gives you protection (ie. cover) against fire from the other side of that rock, until someone gets a flanking angle on you. It’s not perfect - and its flaws are exacerbated by the fact that skill & armour buffs can essentially give Snipers pinpoint accuracy across the whole of the map, so that your little toe can be peeking out and the Sniper can shoot it off (though as a counter to that I’d refer you to the countless ‘LoS doesn’t work cos I can’t see enough of the target to shoot at it’ complaints on this forum).

But it’s still cover - defined as ‘something that you can hide behind which will block your opponent’s shot’ - and it’s no more or less of an abstraction than an arbitrary -40% nerf on your ‘to Hit’ percentage, which is what you get in XCOM.

Personally, once I’d figured out how to take advantage of it, I have found the cover system in PP to be much more flexible and ‘realistic’ (inasmuch as a TBS can be realistic) than that in other games. Doesn’t mean it’s perfect. Doesn’t mean you like it as much as XCOM. But just because it doesn’t work the same way as XCOM doesn’t mean it’s not cover.

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OK. This thread is now closed.

Aside from being completely hijacked from the original topic and derailed - it’s just decending into petty sniping. I expect better.

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