Grenade Launcher Needs to be Changed

Phoenix Point Game Feedback
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Even as a “placeholder,” the grenade launcher is a balance nightmare. I am confused by the discussion of difficulty regarding the game in the forums, especially when this god cannon is available.

As a long time player of xcom, I find the mechanics phoenix point to be refreshing and promising. My soldiers don’t get Crit sniped despite being in full cover, rangers don’t instant snipe aliens from half way across the map with shotguns etc. etc. Hallelujah.

However, I can hardly believe the same developers put in a grenade launcher with 10 ammo capacity. There is almost (one exception) no reason not to use the grenade launcher on every soldier and class.

In the current game state, ammo is limited, yes, but the ammo capacity of each weapon refreshes from mission to mission. So, if you use all your ammo in a mission, but don’t reload, you get it all back. I’ve never had to reload in phoenix point yet, and I find the enemies painfully easy, thanks to the fact that I can launch 80 grenades in a single mission (I could probably launch more before magazines if I just put more than one on each soldier) before I even have to make a decision about whether or not to reload. My enemy has a shield and a machine gun, that’s fine, I have grenades. My enemy is in heavy cover with a pincer and a grenade launcher, that’s fine, I have grenades. My enemy hid inside a building, that’s okay, I can destroy the entire building, and still have 50 grenades in storage… and this is BEFORE AMMO.

The only enemy so far that I’m not rewarded for using grenades on is the queen, but even she died in two rounds without even damaging my squad. Missle launch her to shred her armor once, head shot her 4 times with two snipers in a single round, breaking her will, and a rage shot to the torso the next round and boss mama is dead. 3 soldiers took her down in two rounds… but I’m getting off topic.

Even if the grenade launcher had three ammo capacity, I would be bringing it along on every class. How do I have more grenade shots than pistol shots in a single magazine?

Especially for how the “disable” system works within the game, each grenade can bleed a target from 3-6 times. Even if the grenade doesn’t instant kill an enemy, it usually disables them to the point where they cannot fight back, or they will bleed out in a turn.

Not only is it incredibly efficient and deadly, and ignores any mutation (besides the ODD time the shield blocks the blast completely), I am not punished, like in xcom, for damaging my enemies with heavy explosives. I should, at the very least, be punished for nuking the entire building where the loot for the mission is in.

I hardly even move in a mission in the current phoenix point build, I just move slightly and grenade the map, everything dies, enemies spawn on red squares, and then I just grenade them again.

This is also the only weapon in which I see no class penalty for. The sniper rifle, for example, has a noticeably wider cone when the technician uses it rather than the sniper class. This makes sense. But my sniper seems just as effective with a grenade launcher as my heavy does. This does not make sense. If there is a penalty for using it, I have not noticed it.

Please nerf this gun into the ground.

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The game is currently in pre-alpha status, ie feature incomplete. Once it is feature complete, then balancing will begin.

That said, the devs are aware of balance issues with a lot of the mechanics and do try to provide some balance between the builds.

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As you have noticed this is placeholder and overall Backers Builds are not ment to be balanced. All your arguments are due to this. Just wait for balancing. I suppose that difficulty discussion was mostly about previous iterations of Backers Build, when there was no GL or Armadillo. Let me answer your thoughts.

It actually has 12 ammo. :wink: What is that exception?

Remember that in final release you won’t have replenished ammo. You will have what was left during the mission, and you will need to pay for new magazines and repair of weapons and armours. They will probably nerf GL, but also can increase grenade cost. :slight_smile: Current price of 10 materials for each grenade could deplete your resources and all mentioned cost will definitely do that. :wink:

That is the exception that you have mentioned? I would say this is not an exception. Grenade Launcher is also the most effective weapon against her - unless you want to use almost full willpower of Heavy and full ammo magazine of Deceptor.

As above - balancing. 3 grenades is enough I suppose. :slight_smile:

Remember that we didn’t saw all enemies with all abilities. Crabmen are the grunt soldiers of PV. With more powerful enemies or their different abilities, maybe you would not want to deal with the help of grenade launcher (example - you don’t deal with attached mindfragger with the GL). :slight_smile: And they can develop mutation increasing their HP so explosives won’t be so effective as direct gunfire.

In defense missions you will probably be punished. :wink:

This is because all explosive weapons are 100% accurate right now. But they won’t be like that in final release, so even Heavy won’t hit all the times. Sniper will be worse than that. :slight_smile:

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This pretty much sums it all up. Thanks for saving me a lot of typing.

But yes, in summary - the game isn’t feature complete and there’s been no attempt at balance yet. There are lots of things missing, bugs and dirty little work-arounds to fill in the gaps of missing features while we put it all together.

The bug where you get your ammo replenished after a mission being a big one. When grenades actually become rarer, expensive and not 100% accurate, things will change.

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Thanks for taking the time to respond to this. I wasn’t aware at the time of writing this that the ammo replenishment at the end of missions was a bug, not a mechanic. This makes a lot more sense, though I do stand by the insane grenade clip being well, insane. I’m also happy to hear that the explosives wont be 100% accurate.

Though I am confused as to why you consider the grenade launcher to be the most effective weapon against the queen. I can understand the missile launcher, because it can shred some of that insane armor, but the first thing I did was test-fire a grenade at her; it accomplished almost nothing, but the heavy’s rage shot on her torso nearly kills her. If grenades will be rarer, and more expensive in the future, then the GL will definitely not be the most effective weapon against her.

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I mean currently when there is no ammo cost, so as you mentioned you can spam grenades as you wish. Machine gun doesn’t allow such freedom. Half magazine of grenades will hurt the queen badly and you will still have shots to fend off mindfraggers. Using Rage Burst may kill her or may not (depends on shooting range) and you are left for next turn in really bad situation - probably without willpower to use jet jump, you need to reload to be able to shot, so can’t move, not mentioning that mindfraggers (which are usually in queen vicinity) can get your machine gunner. Of course if you cover Heavy’s back and you are not afraid of leaving him in such condition then yes, MG is better than GL. :wink:

Missile Launcher is little better than GL when you use single shot, but still you can shot twice with GL in single turn - so armour shredding is more probable with GL and thus I think that you can do more damage with GL in single turn.

I think that biggest balance change to GL would be limiting it’s fire to single shot in turn. Then reducing it’s ammo capacity. :slight_smile: And of course decreasing blast radius - now GL has it exactly like Missile Launcher, but the UI shows blast radius of thrown grenade.

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I mean there’s a reason why I often have 2-3 soldiers with the Auto-Cannon (and it’s variants) in the OGs. There’s still reason to use other weapons though as explosives can destroy things you want to save and injure/kill people that aren’t enemies (especially in confined spaces).

Not that I’m saying it doesn’t need to be tweaked, just that it makes sense for the GL to be reasonably powerful as it has other drawbacks. Plus some of those drawbacks currently haven’t been implemented which makes it currently appear to have fewer tradeoffs than what one can expect in the final game.

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Yeah. We should be aware that there will be civilians. :wink:

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After few recent games I realised that Grenade Launcher would be less preferred weapon just with announced inaccuracy of explosive weapons. :slight_smile: Imagine that grenade can go to place where you really don’t want it - it can be really painful. And that would be Heavy class soldier firing. Now imagine that you have 8 soldiers and 6 of them are not Heavy class and they have even worse accuracy with Grenade Launcher - God please turn off friendly fire. :wink: There will be 4 implications just with this inaccuracy:

  • lesser death rate for aliens, so they will bother you longer
  • possible more wounds for your soldiers, thus longer healing times in base and lower deployment potential
  • or lower rate of fire when you are unsure if you won’t hit your other soldiers and, decide to shot with different weapon, thus also less damage to enemies from grenade launcher
  • higher ammo production cost due to higher number of grenades needed to kill enemies (unless you reduce number of grenade shots to avoid friendly fire)

And imagine that there will be also other factors which may limit your Grenade Launcher usage. :wink:

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As I typed in other treads, grenades are for beginners only. Experienced players are not supposed to use them in any of the X-Com games.

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Acid bomb is nice to shred a Sectopod, beginner or not.

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I have no idea which one it’s from, so I’ll guess Xcom 2. Even though it has Xcom in the title, it’s hardly X-com game, as game primarily focuses on using spells, metaphorical or otherwise.

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It is indeed. Depends what you mean by XCOM. XCOM2 is a great sequel to Firaxis XCOM, improving on worked in the original, and ditching what didn’t. Except for the few misteps it’s a great title. But Granades to solve all your problems in that game.

But it does completely ditch some of the core XCOM ideas, which weren’t great in XCOM1, but at least were there - it’s even more then ever a tactics game, with a shop in between missions then strategy/tactics hybrid. Synergy between tac missions and strategy layer and almost completely gone.

Which is a shame - when strategy goals, influence how you play tactically, it’s when XCOM design shines.