My first few missions have felt off. Mainly it is due to enemies returning fire.
Every time one of my squad fires a weapon every single enemy gets to take a return shot at him. what is the point of that? I know that our squad can be set to Overwatch, but that only lets them shot once. Why do the enemies get to shoot every single time my squad shoots?
If 4 enemies are visible and each of my squad shoots once on my turn the enemy squad will return fire 16 times, and then they still get to fire on their turn. That is seriously broken.
It’s an ability called “return fire”. Currently, crabmen gunners have this skill. If one of them sees you attack, it will fire upon you. At the moment, the game doesn’t have a perception system to limit line of sight or range - so you tend to take a lot of shots if you’re out in the open.
Your assaults also have the same skill as long as they’re using an “agile” weapon (a weapon which uses 50% or less time units to fire).
Hey, crabbies with machine guns have infinite ammo—my soldiers need to reload, no? So I don’t think it’s “the same skill”. Where is my misunderstanding? Agree that due to the way the current system works (all crabbies on a mission are the same), fighting against 5 dudes with machine guns that can return fire 20 times per turn feels aggravating.
It’s only temporary. They won’t always have infinite ammo and there will be ways to deal with return fire. We can’t stress enough that this is what you sign up for when you play a pre-alpha. There are going to be parts of the game which are missing, don’t work correctly or have some sort of place-holder until that particular element is done. The play experience is always going to be less than optimal at this stage.
All your advertisements (e.g. Facebook) say “Early access”, which makes it sound in a much more advanced stage than “pre-alpha”. Good to hear the infite ammo bug will be fixed.
Early access simply means getting access to the game early (as in, before it is released) which this is. Access will continue through alpha and into beta before the game is finally released. There is a lot more to be added before we’re into beta.
The infinite ammo isn’t a bug, merely something to help out the AI (as the AI is currently very basic). Much the same with melee: melee aliens can currently attack for no cost (but it does end their turn). This is just a temporary work-around for the AI.
Honestly this wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t cut through cover like butter. I lost soldiers just cause their cover gave out. I don’t mind having to think about how to position the soldiers so they get minimal exposure from the crabman line of fire, but when their cover (which looks solid) goes cause some crab shot it once, that’s kind of annoying.
Destructible cover is fine. In fact I’m pretty sure it’s a mandatory feature since you got the mega-aliens busting through obstacles to move around.
The problem is that cover goes down too fast especially with so much return fire from enemies.
In Phoenix Point is all cover, what you see(use) is what you get. So, you do not have to stand by the cover. You can also be a pair squares away and the cover will have the same effect. If this enemy shoots you from the same direction.
If you only move one square and prevent a field of view of a enemy, it will not be able to shoot you. It is likely that in the future this will change when the enemy have better AI and will use blind shots.
Back to topic…
Each cover has a certain number of HP and armor. Therefore, you can not expect that the roadside fence or thin metal wall will last as long as the concrete wall of the building or hard rock.
As far as I notice in the game, there are more or less two types of cover. I call them soft and hard cover. Hard cover has more HP and armor and it’s harder to destroy it than a soft cover.
In most cases, the armadillo can travel across soft cover and destroy it, but can not travel through hard cover.
So you have to know when to use what kind of cover.
I’ve got to say that although the force and the danger that the aliens actually pose on the battlefield,
I havnt felt very intellectually challenged by them.
What I mean is the enemy doesn’t seem to use any tactical strategies like ambushing, flanking, etc.
I do understand this isnt the full game though, I just wanted to know what kind of enhancements to the A.I would be made.