So I have tried the latest backer build. It’s really coming along nicely but there are a few things that definitely needs to be improved.
Pros
-Great freedom on how to build your soldier. I love the fact that you can give your assault weapons and armor different than the ones from their class. Also being able to choose if you want to spend skill points in health, speed or willpower or new abilities is definitely a huge plus.
-Love the new melee animation for the crabmen. It might not do much damage but compared to the previous animation they had it is a huge improvement. You really see and feel the effort they put into that swing
-Love the phoenix project soldier models, they add a really different feel compared to the new jerico soldiers.
-Love the new weapons. Particularly a fan of the grenade launcher as it helps a lot against groups of enemies you don’t have a clear line of fire on. It might not kill the enemy but will most likely destroy one or both their arms greatly reducing their effectiveness.
Cons
-Cover destruction is just far too easy. A single bullet can destroy cover of any size. This causes a few problems when engaging the aliens in a firefight as your cover practically offers no real protection as it goes down easy and there tends to be little to no cover left between you and the aliens resulting in proloonged engagaments.
One of my best examples is this, my heavy armed with the cannon was on one side of a metal garage wall while a crabmen had taken cover on the other side. I thought why not make my guy fire at the wall clearly a weapon like a cannon should punch through the wall and hit the crabman. Spoiler it didnt, yet on that same mission a sniper misses his shot and hits a tree causing it to explode in a thousand pieces.
-The aliens ranged game is too powerful from the get go in my opinion. They might not be crackshots but they tend to aim decently and considering how easily your guys get damaged and how easily aliens shred armor aswell as the damage each bullet does they tend to be a bit too dangerous if you do not have a grenade launcher to take them out.
-Change the civilian AI. They tend to run towards the aliens or not move at all rather than trying to run to you once they see you.
-Poison is way too powerful. Currently a single poison hit is garaunteed to kill any civilian it hits and if the AI stacks it on one of your soldiers he is as good as dead. Maybe make it do a set amount of damage each turn with additional poison increasing the duration.
-Add a dedicated class to healing and keeping your guys alive. Currently the technician gets his limb fixing ability far too late in his levels. This has caused quite a few problems for me when one of my guys gets his arm shot and rendered useless for the entire mission. Maybe give them an ability to stabilize someone with an item if they get to them fast enough and the guys head isn’t removed.
-Objectives sometimes spawn in areas you and the enemy cannot reach. For example once a crate spawned on top of a roof with no way of getting to it. Since there were no ranged alien they couldn’t do anything to it.
-Your soldiers lack survivability. Even the heavily armored Heavy doesn’t feel armored even with max possible health and decent cover he never seems to be really able to rely on his armor to absorb the few stray shot that hit him. Assault practically have no protection despite what they wear and get wounded very easily especially shotgun wielders. Compared to what the aliens have to offer its strongly in their favor.
- The base defense needs to be revised or you need some serious buffs to the defending forces. Currently the aliens come from far too many directions and in far too great numbers while you have far too few soldiers that you cannot even preplace at the breach holes. I tried it and on their first turn the aliens brought the base integrity to 64% and they tended to ignore my soldiers unless they were directly in their way and my guys had to run from one side of the base with no breaches all the way to the areas they needed to be.
That is the main points and I understand that this is still heavily in developement but those points I feel strongly need to be considered.