The thing is, this general setup doesn’t make much sense.
Let me elaborate, let’s say you are responsible for the armament of Mexico in 1920. WW1 just ended and there is a lot of data available to you as to what kind of weapons and equipment is available to your potential adversaries. So you devise your doctrines accordingly - if your country has a lot of mountains, investing into tank research is probably not the best idea, it might be a better payoff to have mountain guns and mountain troops, more light support artillery and focus on high mobility in mountains instead of motorized infantry. The point is, technology is developed in a direction that gives you an advantage in some area over the capability of your potential enemy. Maybe you can even improve your strength where enemy is already weak but that won’t be a priority. Meaning you don’t want to waste your resources on next generation of personal anti-tank weapons if there is no indication that enemy is capable of significantly improving defense of their tanks against such threat. They will more likely go for a different tactics and then perhaps you need something that can be used at long range instead of being able to punch more.
Why I’m saying this is because of the following: NJ has weapons with higher armor penetration. But why? where they fighting heavier armored pandorians? do they know that enemy will have a higher armor in the feature? why other factions are not doing the same?
In old X-Com you start with basic weapons as enemy us unknown, then you learn their capabilities and get something that is better suited for the field. Then new type of aliens appear and you need to get better weapons again. Even if those weapons are just upgrade in damage, it was dictated and locked into encountering new enemies and getting new research branches as a result. This is at least logical.
In PP we get new aliens but we do nothing about it, we go and talk to some other guys who for some reason have weapons that are better against feature enemies or enemies of a different kind. We don’t get any lore than these factions are somehow targeted by different type of enemies, neither their tech is changing depending on geo graphical location.
Yep that make sense, you’re right.
I wish that when you defend havens, that the pandorian use different units / armor / mutations depending of the attacked faction, so it’ll give a feeling of mutual adaptation (pandoran adapt to jericho, that in reverse also adapt his gear) but it seem that we have the “same” potential mutations on every missions. 
Yeah. I suspect my problem is I’m having trouble getting to the point where you can get the upgraded NJ weapons, then. I tried to restart the game again knowing I should rush to ally with a faction for tech, got super lucky and had 3 NJ bases within easy distance of my HQ for recruits/farming defense missions for repuation, which is great! Before too long, I get the first mission to get better relations with the faction, go clear our an old sattelite base, sounds simple enough.
Then I arrive, and am greeted by 2 Sirens and a mortar Chiron, while half my squad of six is still using the basic assault rifle that mostly just annoys either of those things. And I’m playing on bloody Rookie difficulty. (note- some people have suggested something’s broken with the easy difficulty and it throws out way too may Chirons. Not sure if that’s the case, but if so that’s another broken feature to throw on the pile)
It really feels like the Pandoran threat grows a great deal faster than you can reasonably get the means to deal with it, so you can either find one of the overpowered ability combinations that actually gives you a chance, or just give up.
heh, honestly i think (no offense, i know the game is far to be balanced and polished) that you may screw something on your starting.
Personaly, when the first siren poped up, i was already equiped with piercing, and had enough lvl 7 to one shot them relentlessly xD
-To enhance reputation with a faction, defend their base when attacked but don’t destroy the pandoran nest, so they’ll came back quicker and you can them farm reputation points.
-To gain more time, attack factions that are ennemi to the one you want to befriend. You can barely be friend with all no matter, and it’s a wast of time (and resources) to try.
-Try to focus on killing blow aliens with 2 - 3 soldiers instead of with all your guys (damage ennemi with your assault, but finish them off with sniper / heavy / berserker / priest, if you have any of this), it will give you lvl 7 faster, making the game a piece of cake once you have some op combinations.
Been thinking the same, but it’s not possible in case you backed it ( I did). Backing a game is like the roulette: you put your money down and trust gravity to place the ball on the number you chose…
We chose the wrong number 
I’m not offended, but to be clear- I did every faction defense mission I could as soon as it happened and took the mission to clear the sattellite base as soon as it was an option. I literally could not have done that mission sooner. I didn’t have any level 7 characters because there literally hadn’t been enough missions yet to get one.
I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong if racing directly for AP weapons armed with foreknowledge of how to get them still isn’t good enough.
I mean, I don’t doubt you’ve managed to get AP weapons before the Sirens showed, but even knowing what I need to do to get there it still isn’t fast enough to get them by the time I need them.
I’m going to try one final restart that’s not on the easy difficulty to see if that’s the problem, since there’s some reason to believe Rookie difficulty is actually broken.
Actualy, it’s possible, i had the occasion when they announced they’ll go for epic exclusivity. Cause it was backed as a steam game and the team offered a refund to people wanting it.
Basicaly, can’t promess it’s “the” best way, but it did the trick for me,
I stolen a faction ship really early in the game, and rushed node exploration with a single trash soldier in. He was ambushed once but hit & run made me able to make him survive 2 ambush.
Once i revealed enough faction outpost, i just completed a 2nd drop ship team and goes to “war”, defending one faction, while relentlessly attacking the opposite faction and stealing as much tech and resources as i can.
I think just using a ship, even really early, isn’t enough.
Sirens should not spawn before 1 or 1.5 month of ingame time, it give you time to clean around 20-30 nodes of missions, and if you’ve focused on rep, it’s definetly doable. ^^
Also, if possible, focus on a single team as for fights. Explore with two ships, use a main team, and 3 soldiers of the main team only, to kill alliens, unless the 2nd ship is damaged.
Do NOT relly on passive base healing for your soldiers. It take way too much time. On the end of a mission, spam medkits, it will cost little resources and make your soldier able to fight again at full life. Only return base to restore their “rest” bar (basicaly after 5 - 6 missions of fight or some unlucky textual events, regardless, the white rest bar is pretty quick to recover, you only loose the travel time.
Just some tips, give or take as you please but that may help 
So, I don’t want to sound ungrateful- I truly appreciate the help.
But what I’m saying is my problem’s not that I can’t ally with a faction fast enough. I got lucky and had three NJ bases that were in the area I could see before I even did a satellite scan. I was trying to do that mission to clear a base for them in the second week of the game and the Sirens and Chiron were already there- I literally had the best possible conditions to get allied fast and it still wasn’t enough.
Like I said though, I think that’s because I was playing on Rookie, and I think Rookie is genuinely broken right now.
That said, I’m trying one last time on standard difficulty to see if that’s the problem, so I’ll try out the other tips while I’m at it, thanks a bunch!
Waw yep, 2 weeks is definetly anormal for siren pop i think xD
Considering how the game “seem” to work i guess it’s possible that one pop early but it should be alone or with maybe one crabmen. So not so hard once you snipe the lady’s head, it became an headless meatbag x)
Good luck on your try, devs answered recently that they focus on a patch in a week or two, so it may be a good idea to go away before you loose too much sanity into the game haha, personaly i’ll wait for the patch to continue my gameplay as i’m bored by the stupid fact i’m almost forced to use op combo 
The mission is most likely scripted. Overall, if on rookie you get less enemies then your soldiers level up slower as there are less enemies to kill. That might explain why it’s broken.
Which was very generous of the team, and it made me support them. But while I don’t care about platform politics, I do want a good game. Still, it’s as @mischuleo says.
We put down money, it’s unreasonable to ask for it back after it’s long been spent. Game dev is always a risk.
Yep i suppose it is x) I almost never kickstart, this one was like the only i crowfunded this 3 last years. I’ll say the result was “okey” considering what happen to other platform.
I consider their move to epic a bad one, as i’m 99% sure epic have forced a release date when the game isn’t ready. But heh, i know it will be fixed on the long run before steam release :’)
Considering how bad and ignored the Backer Beta sounds… not sure it would’ve made much difference. Another year of ignoring good feedback from a dedicated community may’ve made the game worse.
Well I was expecting another tier of weapons and armor above the faction ones from the PP R&D department and it looks like there will be some in Ancient DLC.
So I noticed something very weird about progression similar to Stinchkopf.
So in my first game I met Synedrion, played dozens of missions, got up to the point I could get all their shared tech for free, fought six nests, had around 8 havens destroyed that were too far away to reach (that I knew about I found the NJ very late) and another 8 haven defense missions I won, researched everything I could get, captured several aliens, had nearly twenty people (multiple level 7s) and three aircraft and fought heavily armoured Arthons and Tritons with sniper rifles and even met a Scylla before I saw a single Siren (which came in a pair with a mortar Chiron for support), and I’d never seen a Pandoran Lair.
I went huh that was a sudden boost in difficult but I was also playing pretty ineffectively now I know how to play I’ll start again get my feet under myself faster make more effective teams and generally put myself in a better place before I have to fight that.
And my second game has been entirely different, I barely had 8 people when I fought my first Siren which was part of a lair which was literally the second Pandoran base I found (so 1 nest, and then a lair), I had level 4ish people at the time. Completing the lair gave me enough rep with all the factions for their missions, Synedrion and Anu were pretty easy (although I did have a weird mission at this point unrelated where I had a single Chiron and a facehugger as the total opposition for the entire mission), and my NJ mission was nearly as hard as Stinchkopf a Chiron firing acid worms and 2 Sirens plus Arthon support. My highest level person at this point was only level 5, and I’d just got my 11th person, and my second transport ship.
Even though the difficulty level was the same Pandoran progression seemed much faster in my second game, although my own increase in skill has allowed me to actually handle fights that I would previously have thought undoable (a couple of headshots with snipers actually deal with mindcontrolling sirens quite effectively draining their will and breaking the mind control) with lower level and fewer people.
I had the tutorial off the second time making me wonder if some progression might have been linked to specific technologies that I was researching earlier.
And again 
its the pure RNG without Rules and Logic in this Game…
As if they do a Pen&Paper RNG based thing, but roll the dice is off limits and rules… everything just spawns/sets/starts/mixed/evolves on RNG without a single logic or rule behind it…