Feedback: Enjoying the game, but heavies/NJ need some love

Phoenix Point Game Feedback
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I am enjoying the game immensely, and have played it a lot. I like the basic concept of the factional differences. But accuracy is so, so vital to a unit’s operation that I am having significant problems seeing heavy armor/NJ armors as viable compared to Syn ones.

My reasoning is that both mobility and accuracy are extremely important. To be fair, accuracy is only important up to a point, but as it is now, a heavy in a Golem armor cannot really hit anything with the hell cannon. I can go through several maps before getting the first hit.

Syn Phlegeton has +16 acc, +3 speed.
NJ Wardog has 0 acc, +1 speed.
NJ Anvil has -30 acc, -3 speed.
PP Golem has -30 acc, -3 speed.

The best NJ armor is Techops 7, which is reasonably accurate as well as having high armor values. It’s slow though, but that’s a reasonable tradeoff.

Now, this has lead to the advice that, if you want your heavy to be useful, equip sniper helmets and legs. That should NOT be a thing. They have significant penalties in speed and stealth, that should be enough.

A reasonable counterargument is that armor is very, very nice - and it is, against certain enemies - but I find that it gets shredded so fast it doesn’t last beyond the first burst of certain enemies., and a lot of weapons shear right through as well. With that in mind, the penalties are way too high. Lastly, the heavy armors has a non-numerical penalty: Their model size is huge, meaning more shots will hit due to the large silhouette.

Today I got the first living armor stuff, and while the armor is ugly as heck, it is a little stronger than the golem armor, it is hideous, but without any penalties, and it is rather an eyesore.

TL;DR:
I would love to see Synedrion make a heavy armor.
I would love to see the Anvil-2 armor get some love.
I would love to see set bonuses for armor sets to reduce the advantage of mix-and-match armors.
(Or penalties from mismatched armor, but I prefer carrots to sticks.).

This being my first foray into the forums, I may be way off on the community meta here, so it’ll be interesting to hear others’ opinions on this. How do you guys make your NJ armors viable?

Edit: Another little detail. On loading screens you see NJ armors all the time. You get the impression they’re supposed to be good. That makes the disappointment even higher when you find out they’re useless.

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I don’t use other armor for heavies. I do however mutate their head and legs for accuracy.

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For the intent and purpose of this thread, augments of any type are other armor types than Heavy, I’d say. :wink:

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One problem is: as long as the game has strong alpha strike tendencies, speed and accuracy will be more valuable in most cases.

The other problem is: in PP, a head shot is less tragic than losing an arm or both legs in most cases, although the head is the hardest part of the body to be hit (arm also has little area, but is located next to other parts of the body, so that a miss has a good chance of landing elsewhere).
I personally shoot wherever I can at arms (except for Tritons and Sirens). A shot at the arms is much more effective, especially with human opponents.

If a disabled head were significantly more relevant (e.g. WP 1 permanently, so that no abilities can be used or/and -50% accuracy), then an NJ heavy head armor would also be very trendy :wink:

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Your argument seems to basically support the idea that the penalties for the heavy armor is too high, though?

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My heavies are always very effective. Yes, they’re not very accurate, but they don’t lose arms to the first shot from a blast weapon and are very resistant to AR and pistol fire. Yes, the upgraded arthron MG can tear them up, but aside from that they give you a couple turns of disable-free survivability.

You’ve got to get close. At range, they’re only useful against the big guys. Personally, the heavy/berserker combo is one of my favorites. The close range damage reduction makes the armor rock.

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Actually, heavy armor is great. Nothing like a heavy in heavy armor. Speed? Who needs to run when you have a jetpack! With my Heavies I often don’t even bother putting any pts in speed. They fly in, bash and warcry. Next turn blast nearby things with cannon or hmg. Faraway targets? Just bomb them.

The thing about Phoenix Point is that there are many different ways to play it and things that seem meh at first turn out to be great when you learn how to use them.

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I think it’s entirely situational. Disabling heads is the way to go for a morale break, Priest mind control / panic induction. Disabling arms is of course good for humans armed with 2 handed weapons… Unless they also have grenades or back mounted rocket launchers…

TBH, I don’t see any need to mess with any of it all. If anything I would consider reducing accuracy and speed buffs to some armors.

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Not directly.

  • Legs: Depending on the situation, i.e. in the role of the grenadier, tank OK.
  • Body: Absolutely unique (mounted weapons, jetpack) and therefore great.
  • Head: Now I don’t see any point here. Once for the reasons mentioned above. And I would also like to add that the opponents shoot without free aiming, with which they hit the heavily armored body in most cases. I only got head hits from grenades and very rarely from snipers who hit a “hunker down” soldier because the head looks out.

I would not improve NJ Armor, but rather reduce the speed buffs of the “other” Leg Armor “slightly” and reduce the accuracy of the “other” Head Armor “moderately”.

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Are you sure? My impression (and I have read other players mention this) is that enemies target the body parts with least armor.

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No, that is estimated in my experience. Maybe I’m completely wrong … :man_shrugging:

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As others have mentioned, since B&T DLC I don’t care a lot about Heavy armor.

As soon as possible I replace Armor, Clarity Head and Armadillo Legs, doing that you get accuracy penalty 0.
http://phoenix.server317.com/Bionics

Undefendable mission is easy. And you get access to Cybernetics Lab and basic bionic tech

And about mobility , Jetpack is great, for bashing, better position on the map for bombing, or just fly to the spot and help other soldiers using War Cry.

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The DLC 1 is on my list under “self enforcing rules” for not allowed things, unfortunately.
Almost like pay to win, just my opinion.
(Idea, theme and design are very great)

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At some point in development enemies started to aim their weapons. Maybe it is not complete free aim as we have, but definitely they target specific body parts.

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Maybe my experience with the rare head hits has to do with the fact that the AI also weighs up where the chances of a hit are better? Then would other body parts be preferred despite the low armor of the helmet?

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I don’t know AI decision algorithm, but for some reason my soldiers have head disabled more often than other body parts combined together.

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Same here, are they aiming to head becuase of WP lost? I don’t know but it happens, and I prefer head to arms, if I don’t have a technician in the squad

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Same here.

I think it’s because it has generally the lowest armor. For example, Triton snipers will always target a Heavy’s head when he is fully clad in heavy armor, at least IME.

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Or pay to loose if you run into enemies with acid :joy:

Bionics are so good? I think I am a noob then for not seeing their potential.

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Well, I see a lot of advantages.
Very simply said: If the opponents become more difficult, then the same things usually helps on the player side :wink:

But honestly: Only because of acid? The frequency of acid opponents (my experience) and the acid damage (update) have been reduced. And even if they are there, you can only concentrate on the chiron and stay away from the arthrons. With my style of play NO problem at all, actually never had.

  • Resistance to Mind Control, Poison, Blood, Virus is something …
  • In a relative comparison: very good armor and still better speed and accuracy (poor stealth can be neglected in the armor, I personally think)
  • But more importantly, the included skills
  • The disadvantage is the higher acquisition and repair costs (irrelevant in endgame)

@etermes can probably explain it much better.

I stopped using these supertoys when I realized that they affect the difficulty curve exactly the opposite of how I would like it. With the DLC the early game is more difficult because I think the “Pure” is a difficult (but interesting) opponent. In addition, I can’t really afford the supertoys at the beginning.
But: In the endgame I literally swim in resources, I can easily equip the soldiers with the supertoys, which can make me even more effective (to make me even more bored).

But not a big deal: luckily I can just turn off the DLC.

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