Base Defence feeback [WITH SUGGESTIONS]

Phoenix Point Game Feedback
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Finally got the chance to play out a Base Defence mission. Unfortunately, I think it had a bug because it neeeeever endeeeeed! I killed the last Siren, then searched the entire base – twice – looking for that elusive last Crabbie: but I never found it. Eventually, I quit the game.

I have to say, I know this is a bug, but this is the point at which you would have lost me if this was a real campaign. Hunting that last frickin’ Crab hiding in the corner is tedious in the extreme, and takes a lot of fun out of the game – especially when you can’t find it.

FEEDBACK ON BASE DEFENCE MISSION:
I was oddly disappointed that it didn’t feel more different than a standard Haven Defences, and I think that’s because there are too many spawn points. This makes it much the same as any other mission, where you are running around fighting multiple fires, rather than feeling like the Defence of Pelham 123, which is what I was expecting.

It will also take a lot of player agency out of Base Building in the final version of the game. What you want is for players to feel that they have meaningful choices when building their bases with defence in mind – do I put the Sick Bay near the entrance, where it’s more likely to get attacked, or do I expose my Lab/Stores/[insert most important room here]? You want them to feel like they have their backs to the wall as they fall back under pressure, taking up new positions at the next choke point which they have designed into the base, to help defend it. Random spawn points in any old room removes all of that agency from the base-building game and makes what room you build where a completely meaningless choice.

SOME SUGGESTIONS:
• Don’t have multiple breaches. Limit the Crabbie entry points to the Main Entrance, the Hangar and rooms on the Map Edge only. I’d advocate giving these different spawn chances as well: Main Entrance 100% chance of 1-4 Crabbies entering every turn; Edge Rooms 25% chance of 1-2 per turn & Hangar 1% chance of 1 Crabbie dropping in increasing by 1% per turn, as the Crabbies hunt for the hidden hangar doors.
• Now make rooms on the Map Edge cost half as much to build as rooms actually inside the mapgrid. Immediately, you are presenting your players with a tradeoff between building fast & cheap or building slow but safe.
• What this should do is present the players with a tsunami of Crabbies storming the main entrance, forcing the Squad to fall back to secondary and tertiary defensive standpoints as they get overwhelmed by numbers. At the same time, they need to worry about breaches in any Edge Rooms they’ve constructed; and they’re presented with the choice of risking that no Crabbies will find the hangar doors or pulling defenders from the gate to cover a possible outflanking incursion from behind.

Immediately this feels more like a ‘defence’ rather than another ‘runaround and shoot Crabbies before they mess up the paintwork’ mission.

FINAL SUGGESTION
Fix the ‘Last Crabbie hiding in the corner’ bug asap. Seriously guys, it really ruins an otherwise excellent game.

Hope that helps
M<

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Overall good ideas, except that. Decreasing cost of a facility because it is on the edge of some imaginary grid inside a mountain is strange.

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building on the outside of the mountain is cheaper and easier than building inside it.

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What KR said. On the side of a mountain, you only have to bulldoze out some earth and Cut & Cover. In the core of the mountain, you have to drill out the rock and add structural reinforcements to prevent cave-ins. But the tradeoff is, a cut & covered edge room is much easier to break into from the outside than something that’s buried deep inside the rock.

Tbh, I don’t really care what the post-hoc rationale is - I just want to be presented with meaningful decisions that give me a headache and matter. And a Base Defence mission that doesn’t feel like just another ‘keep down the Crabbie pointsfest’.

XCOM2’s Ship Defence was always a mission I really looked forward to, because it was so completely different and crucial compared to all the others - it was a desperate defence of a static position against escalating hordes of Nasties , while your Shinobi/Sniper combo scoured the map to take down the Alien Relay before your strongpoint was overwhelmed.

What’s more, despite not having a tactically relevant base layout, it still presented you with the crucial strategic decision of whether & when to install & upgrade Defensive Turrets. It meant you had to sacrifice other vital research & resources in a race to get your turrets built before the Alien Scoutships found you. It meant something. And I loved it for that ;0)

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my feedback:

  1. I may not get the point of defending the base elements, but with 10HP for an element, it’s being destroyed as soon as crabmen spawn.

  2. sometimes crabman stucks in the wall. you can’t spot him (you see just ‘sound hint’), overwatch is not working on him, but he can easily shoot at you

  3. crabmen spam. maybe it’s my mistake, but during the first base defence mission, I have a team of 9. so I can’t have a squad of 2-3 in each room. so surprise surprise, my soldiers are being obliterated in case of the spawn of 3-4 new crabmen in a single room during the single alien turn.

3a) I am afraid that if I choose not to protect the middle rooms, and hold the ground in the middle I will be attacked from each angle and lose the rest of the base structures.

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Maybe the direction of attacks should depend upon the type of creature attacking. For example; Crabmen might be storming the main entrance, meanwhile Fireworms start to drop in through the ventilation system all throughout the base.

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Don’t worry about the Base Elements, Kane. They regenerate between Base Defence Missions (BDMs) at the moment. I get the feeling that the devs are just testing out their physics engines and other things right now. The final BDM will have to be very different if they want their players not to rage quit in frustration.

So instead of overextending yourself, rushing too few squaddies to defend every room , concentrate on holding a core perimeter, then start expanding out from there when the initial assault waves die down.

Remember that Overwatch is your friend. Make the Crabs come to you. Set OW traps out of LoS of the Crabbies, so that to shoot at you, they have to step into an interlocking zone of Squad fire. You can usually hold a room this way with just 2 Squaddies.

Also, use Exertion to a) take down that Crabbie with 1 final shot or b) if you can’t do that, drop back into cover behind an OW Zone.

I tend not to find Crabbie spam too problematical, as long as your OW traps trigger. The trick is not to stand and fight, but use your WP advantage to fall back and make them come to you - or if they’re concentrating on the equipment, pick them off one by one.

I’m sure it’ll change in the final build, and hopefully by then you won’t have quite so many spawn points that are impossible to defend.

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Thanks guys!
I will try one more time today.
While I love the idea of protecting the main element (just imagine, that you have to protect a nuclear reactor that powers your base) not to lose the mission. I don’t see a point of placing destructible elements in spawn points (or maybe it’s a different kind of test like MichaelIgnotus said).

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at least this time I dont have to search for enemies (round 1)

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That’s what Grenades are for :wink:

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Seriously, though, don’t shoot at them directly.
Grenade the buggers, then move to cover and set up an Overwatch screen, with overlapping OW cones designed only to be triggered by specific Crabbies moving.
Only take a direct shot if you can get out of LoS of most of their guns &/or can take out the MG you are firing at.
If you have a Pistol-toting Gunslinger, burning his WP to take out the most dangerous Crabbies is an option.

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no worries mate, I nade them to remove their arms and then shot one by one.
however, four turns later I’ve crabbie in the wall again :confused:

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I hope he will bleed out and wont cause any problems

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next example:

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I’ve killed a single enemy that I’ve seen with my Hel soldier. I one shot him, and next second I got a return fire from his invisible friend. He was not visible earlier, he is not visible now, while he can easily MG my soldiers :confused:

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… and now he get a friend. as you can see we have three crabmen, only one is visible for my soldier.

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I wonder if SG is working to fix this or they put their work in next B-Build.

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time will tell. I will try one more time today, but if I’ll have it again I am returning to Tarkov till this issue is fixed :confused:

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Maybe the Crabbies should be replaced by Molemen? :wink:

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Did my first base defense yesterday (twice) and it was really brutal. I was fortunate enough to have 12 soldiers defending. The first time I used grenades and rockets and got the bug where I couldn’t find the last crab-man standing. So I decided to restart and not use a single explosive (thought it was maybe the cause for it). With 12 soldiers (and a lot of exertion) I could have been able to save all the equipment (if it wasn’t for the bug where the crab-men spawn on the lower level and go unnoticed until they one shot your plane in the main area). I did get the bug of the crab-man hiding inside the wall but I saw him creep behind so I knew where he was and took care of him going through the wall myself.
My feeling … exhausted, so many of them spawning everywhere and of course near the spawn points where I have my least experienced troops so less exertion to cope with them. Only one went through the main entrance (both times). And I had 12 defenders, with less I would need to concentrate on 2 or 3 rooms only. Currently it is OK to focus on defending one room, so I could have done it to save my nerves, but I expect the final game to not be as forgiving on losing stuff, so tried my best to save my facilities.

  • They destroy things in one turn so unless you alpha strike them (or make them panic) you have one less facility in your base.
  • The majority of your troops start in the main area, so you have to climb up in the rooms to deal with the threat (unless using exertion, you’re too late to save anything)
  • my snipers often miss the target even if both circles are contained inside a crab-man body-part (I’d assume a guaranteed hit on said part) - not great when it was the arm and the guy returns fire.

How losing facilities in this mission will transfer in the campaign ?

  1. Facility lost, needs to be rebuilt (which takes time before being functional)
  2. Facility only needing some repair (less costly and time consuming)

What I hope is that they get more hit points, but this translates into damage that needs repairing afterwards.

As said in a previous post, have a security room which provides turrets for the main entrance and security cameras in every area to see all aliens in the base would be great.

Having the possibility to close spawn points by collapsing the tunnel (with a grenade for instance) would be great. A grenade costs a lot of materiel, but I guess facilities would be even more expensive so a valuable trade-off to redirect crab-men to other entrances.

Limit the number of tunnels (spawn points) but allow them to give on the lower area. Maybe start with no spawn point but some kind of digging alien creating new spawn points now and then (emitting sound that is detected one turn before they burst into the room)

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You need to remember that enemies have animation, so from the moment you accepted soldier fire action till the moment bullets from that shot hit is small part of time where enemy can rotate. Then shot will miss.

There is also issue with firing from 1 tile away from enemy. Game is seeing end of barrel being behind enemy and that is why bullet doesn’t hit - its flight starting point is already behind enemy.

I suppose second option is more real.

There will be turrets to guard base. If there will be any facility to maintain them or how they will be placed withing the base, I don’t know. But I think there was some artwork with security facility, so maybe you are right.

To be true they cost like ammo for other weapons so are quite cheap in my opinion. :slight_smile:

Overall good observations and ideas.

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Maybe it’s the fact that I’m really lacking the material that makes me think this way. Radar is 200 material.

And for the sniper thing I was indeed at point blank with the pistol wasting my willpower. For sniper rifle I was 4 tiles away though.