Yeah, that’s not right… Even worse, it’s taken from the in-game Phoenixpedia 
Thanks for the heads up, I will correct it one of these days.
Yes, every turn its armor on body part - acid on body part, and if armor on body part = 0, HP on body part - acid on body part. So as long as there is any armor on the body part, there is no damage to HP. Which means you can use Technician’s Field Medic and Electric Reinforcement and Aspida’s restore to prevent an operative from taking damage from acid.
5 February
New evolutions. Triton Maniac Alphas and Marksman Alphas, which I remember being a pain in the neck last campaign.
An Anu haven gets attacked, but the defenders are strong enough to fight it off and I can’t be bothered to send a scout team. Shame about the Synedrion haven next to it. Reluctantly I send one of my Helioses.
Unfortunately the Synedrion defenders are useless and die without doing anything. Which leaves me with an interesting tactical problem: we have one Scarab, a level 3 Heavy and a level 2 Assault, both with poor weapons and no armour, with which we have to beat 2 Sirens, 1 Chiron, 2 Tritons, 1 Arthron, 3 Myrmidons, and 15 Fireworms. Is it possible?
Turns out the answer is yes! One Siren dies to double missile volleys from the Scarab, the other gets killed by an acid grenade/fire grenade combo (thanks Voland), we weaken the Arthron and Tritons with the remaining missiles and then kill them with shotgun blasts, the Myrmidons and Fireworms are dealt with by waiting for them to approach the Scarab, popping out, bashing twice, then hopping back in again, and the Chiron leaves once it runs out of ammo. These sort of weird “make do with what you’ve got” battles are probably my favourite part of Phoenix Point.
6 February
Exalted’s Temple still isn’t done.
We hit another Citadel. I’m getting to like the Sanctifier handgun.
Behemoth shows up again.
7 February
Finally the temple finishes. We do the Schism mission. It’s pretty straightforward – Anu opponents are the easiest to kill by a long way.
And we finally get told the Exalted’s big secret. She’s not a religious prophet, she’s just a con-woman who’s tricked all her followers into believing a fake religion, and she’s pretending to worship the Dead God so that her scientists can come up with a way to betray it and “hack” it.
It’s . . . actually really underwhelming. I was really hoping that the Anu route would feel different to the Phoenix Point and New Jericho ones – I like some aspects of Phoenix Point’s story, but the three factions are definitely the weakest part of it. All three factions make a big deal of how different they are, but if you actually look at what they believe and what they do, they’re very similar. All three are atheist and materialistic, all three claim to be fighting for freedom, and all three will enthusiastically commit mass murder and genocide at the drop of a hat. It’s annoying enough that Synedrion and New Jericho are basically two slightly different flavours of American liberal militarism, now it turns out that Anu are pretty much the same thing.
It’s a real let-down. Oh well. I’m definitely not doing the Anu storyline again.
7 February
The Behemoth is harassing Europe this time. More flyers to shoot down.
Another haven defence, this time against a Scylla. Apparently they can do melee attacks against soldiers up on roofs. Good to know. I’m warming up to the Jormugandr, it does a pretty good job against Scyllas and Chirons.
8 February
More haven attacks against Synedrion. I’m bored of haven defences so I stop responding to them.
9 February
Last set of evolutions. Acidworm Chirons and goo Chirons.
One Synedrion haven gets destroyed. The other two get saved by the bell as we start the final mission a couple of hours before they’re about to die.
Final Mission
The final mission starts off harder than I’d expected since I step over the invisible line that triggers the gate guardians and they get a free turn of attacks on me. I think about reloading but decide to play it out, and honestly it isn’t too bad. Only losses are one Berserker who dies to (surprise surprise) enemy snipers. Second wave gives me a couple of unpleasant surprises (the Praetorian Sirens get to move HOW far and still attack?) but they eventually all go down too.
Which just leaves the final boss. It does that annoying thing where it only opens up the hatches to its left and right, leaving most of my soldiers unable to hurt it. Sadly for the boss, we have Scorcher turrets. Four turrets on each side shoot out 8 of its 9 eyes in 2 turns, and a Rage Burst finishes it off. Campaign over.
Playtime: 1 month 9 days
Gametime: 17 hours
Surviving Population: 871,000
Surviving Havens; 87
Soldiers Recruited: 40
Soldiers Lost: 8
Ending
Humanity gets turned into tentacle monsters, the Exalted becomes god-empress, NJ gets genocided, and all the hundreds of thousands of devout followers of the Anu religion just suddenly decide to stop believing in it or any other gods because evolution or something.
Man, the Anu ending is terrible. I used to think their tentacle-monster aesthetic was a “don’t judge by appearances” thing, but it turns out that no, they really ARE the bad guys.
Overall Thoughts
And that’s it! Hope you enjoyed the read.
General thoughts on Festering Skies: It’s pretty good. Not excellent, but the best of the three DLCs so far (admittedly it isn’t hard to be better than Legacy of the Ancients). The air combat is mediocre, but the Corrupted Haven missions are a very good addition.
The new Phoenix Point weapons are also nice, particularly the new shotgun and sniper rifle. I had fun playing with them. Perk and weapon rebalances are also good.
On the downside, none of the fundamental problems with the game have been addressed at all. Economy is broken, stealing aircraft is a win button, and the “best” way to play the game is still to act like a total psychopath and murder and rob at every opportunity. There are absolutely no negative consequences for acting like a sociopathic pirate, and tons of rewards for acting like a sociopathic pirate, so . . . yeah.
Oh, and the bugs. And the UI glitches. And the performance issues. And the crashes. I’d like to say that those are getting better . . . maybe? Kinda? It’s hard to say since it’s been a full year since I last played.
But all in all, despite all it’s glaring problems, I do like Phoenix Point. There’s enough good stuff in there that it does outweigh the bad, no matter how frustrating it is that all these obvious issues never seem to get addressed.
I’m thinking of playing another campaign, but if I do, I’d have to play with a pretty heavy set of “house rules”. The game on Legend is just way too easy without them.
See you next time!
Thanks man, as I’ve said before great posts. Just finished a FS campaign myself last night.
Did the Synedrion ending, none of the endings are especially good it seems like. Not for humanity anyway. Didn’t you take down the Behemoth?
My game looked something like this.
Surviving Population: 336.000
Soldiers recruited: 48
Soldiers lost: 18
Airforce: 9
Aircraft lost: 2
The heavy losses are because I went in blind I think, hadn’t played LotA or FS before. Lost 2 of my best dudes in the Behemoth mission, (didn’t know they had to stay in place for 2 turns.) and lost 3 guys taking on my first corrupted node. (Had no idea what I was doing.) Personally I think this is the best game in the TBS genre to date. Even though I agree with you on the stealing issue. I mean I stole 6 of the 9 planes I had and still ended up with almost a 100% with all factions. Not to mention I raided NJ for tech 8 times.
Thx again for the posts great read.
I’ll buy you a beer if you ever come and defend my haven and we can exchange war stories.
Cheers.
Good posts @Saph
I totally agree with you on the pluses and minuses of PP. In fact, I’ve quoted some of your final post to the devs in the CC, because for me it hits the nail right on the head.
Despite the game-breaking super-skills, the interminable HDs that you ultimately end up simply ignoring, the broken economy and the absolutely awful ‘no-penalty’ Diplomacy system that rewards being a total Dick to your allies, PP has something that no other TBS I’ve played quite matches, which is why I’m still playing it 3 years on from its first BB release.
It is from game stats? Because I doubt that it is possible to end game so quickly.
Game stats, yes. It felt too short to me as well – I’m guessing some of the time you spend in game doesn’t “count” for the game’s clock.
No, I never got the option. Based on MadSkunky’s post, I think there’s some special tech/manufacturing option that only unlocks once you complete the Antarctica missions. But since you don’t need to do the Antarctica mission chain for the Anu ending, I never went there.
This was kind of a “speedrun” campaign, since I already knew from my previous campaigns how to turbocharge your economy by stealing aircraft. I’m going to have to stop doing that in future runs, though, it just makes the game way too easy.
Don’t forget on tactical: dumb AI, lack of adaptative evolution for Pandorans, and insufficient reinforcements
Eh, I’m not going to give the devs a hard time about stuff like AI and adaptive evolution, because that stuff’s genuinely difficult. Good AI is hard to code.
What I DO give them a hard time about is stuff that could be changed in a matter of hours or minutes. Things like:
. . . all of which I (as well as lots of other people) pointed out repeatedly throughout 2020 to no avail. Maybe the devs will listen to @MichaelIgnotus someday.
QA is easy fix right now, use it just once per turn as I do 
People keep saying that the AI is dumb, but I don’t get it. Yes, the human AI is dumb, but the panda AI I find quite good. Better than any other TBS game I’ve played.
Except for the little Triton dance.
Y’gotta admit, Tritons using their last little bit of AP to step out of the nice high cover they’ve just spent their previous APs moving to is quite dumb 
I honestly don’t see how difficult it is to add an ‘IF Cover = YES and APs < 1 then STOP’ command to the code.
I don’t see that happen often anymore. Tritons have gotten quite wily.
Non-pandas still do it all the time.
Here’s an example of smart AI: once you’ve disabled the torso of an exploding Myrmidon, it’ll hang out and then take the first opportunity to run into overwatch inside its blast radius. The first time it happened, I smiled. Myrmidon suicide bombers!
RNG, it still happens a lot.
Another example of RNG (I think): I thought for a while that humans had ended their suicidal obsession with healing one another out in the open - exposing both soldiers involved and taking them out of the fight just long enough for both of them to get killed.
But no: it was just RNG (I think). Cos recently, they’re back to their stupid old ways.
Not to mention humans taking cover on the wrong side of the rock 
Panda AI is the best on a market because no other game has Pandas. 
But FXCom has better AI, Xenonauts has waay better AI, Wasteland 3 has better AI, Divinity has better AI… 
I have shared a lot of videos, examples, for months, with devs, it’s up to them if those are important or not, but to me AI is too important to overlook those issues.
On top of that there are core problems due to ballistic calculations and others, so I don’t expect big changes
FXCom does not have better AI. I played a lot of FXCom, and I find that the PP panda AI is much better. The pandas do much smarter things. For example, I don’t recall seeing FXCom enemies trigger overwatch and immediately reverse direction — Tritons do that often. Myrmidons position themselves intelligently before attacking. Tritons and Sirens make excellent use of cover. Arthrons use their shields while moving to intercept overwatch fire. The AI often sends in low movers like Tritons and Sirens first to trigger overwatch, which they’re very good at avoiding because they hug the ground. There’s many ways in which the AI shows its quality that I think are underappreciated.
I can’t speak to the other games.
AI quality is not as straightforward as it seems. It is not as much about how realy smart it is but about how it interacts with the game systems to create the perception of challenge.
The worst offender in PP seems to be allied human AI, but it is not exactly dumb; it looks like it because they often get wasted on the first turns of the battle. But human and pandoran AI are probably very similar. Both are programmed to do harm, not to keep their units safe, so they throw themselves into battle with little regard of how vulnerable their movement leaves them. This AI just works better on pandorans, because they are pandorans, but most importantly because they fight in numbers. So they always counter a single unit that approaches them. In fact, no matter how good friendly AI was made in PP, with the way units are deployed, they will be always useless unless they are programed to hide and look for others.
No it doesn’t. FXCom AI works similar but in my opinion is far more wonky. In XCOM enemies are divided in pods (squads), and each one has a “job” (usually patrol or stand still). If a pod gets activated, they engage. Conceal is separated from the rest of the game, and when conceal is broken, all enemy units of the map converge to you or wait for you on their garding position. As when you activate an unit, the hole map is aware of yout as hey are all aware of each other perception ranges. They have a squad agro system with a very general alert level mechanic that feels completelty artificial because it is, and it is made so, so you dont abuse ambush or go stealth. That is why XCOM combat goes by: conceal stage and combat stage, and combat stage goes by: activate pod, defeat pod and eventual reinforcements, repeat. Granted, XCOM has easier time with cover mechanics and aiming, but just because those mechanics are inexistent in XCOM. The major differences are that PP relies more on melee, and that Fxs aproach to AI was just give up any resemblance of complexity in awareness, flank, cover, aiming, and stealth.
No it doesn’t, Xenonauts AI, is quite bipolar. In some ways its enemy AI is arcade level, like you can cheese it with a map corner or a door. In other ways has a nice awareness system to keep track of the position of your troops… and on top of that cheats by being fed with information of the position of your soldiers every couple of turns. As a result, sometimes seems to make perfect moves, when actually it is just taking advantage of knowing where you are when shouldn’t, some other times works just fine, and some other times you can just use the strongest weapon in the game to defeat them. Doors.
So here I would say no. The AI in Xenonauts has far less complex behaviors than enemy AI in PP and is efficient because combat is simple and because is generally aware of where you are. It does not have a “waay better AI” than PP, not by a long shot.
Not even close, Divinity has no real cover or aiming system, positioning does not matter that much, their pathfinding is worse and enemies do not care much about anything else than spamming the most dangerous ability they can.
I did not play Wasteland 3, but I did play Wastelands 2, and that game has much worse AI issues than PP. I’m also aware of the complains in wastelands 3 AI, such us friendly units and pets not even activating, frozen units and constant crashes. That was one of the reasons I did not buy the game at the time.
Civilian AI in PP is not finished or is barely functional. But Civilians are just there for flavor anyway, I never lost a mission due to Civilian casualties. This is not an AI problem, civilian mechanics are just not completed, or fully integrated into the game.
I think the AI is PP certainly can be improved, in some places maybe needs something more than that. But I think you may be remembering the AI of other games better than it really is, and judging the AI of PP harder than you need to.
The AI in PP in my opinion holds perfectly well compared to any other turn strategy game I have played. And certainly is not worse than XCOM, Divinity or Xenonauts. I would say is comparable to XCOM, and mostly because XCOM cheats with the awareness and spawn systems, and it is better than Divinity or Xenonauts, thought those games do not really need anything more complex either.
I have not patience to show you how many silly actions humans (and the worst is the Pure) and Pandorans perform in every mission and campaign.
On top of that, those casualties are linked to morale, WP, making things even worse
Yes, humans act stupid, specially if you think they should act like a player. But that is not the point, or why they feel pointless. And is still besides the point of what I said.
What I said is that the AI in PP in my opinion holds perfectly well compared to any other turn strategy game I have played. PP AI does not make more mistakes or is more dumb than in any other game of the genre. It is actually a fairly competent one.
Also AI is not trying to not make mistakes or make optimal choices. The purpose of an AI is to be perceived as challenging, while giving the player a chance of fighting a superior force and providing fun. AIs are designed to be suboptimal and to make mistakes. Otherwise nobody would play games.