Many players want to be able to deploy more soldiers on a mission. Recently I heard the following argument: “I always deploy 8, because 6 is too much like Firaxis XCom”, so I don’t know how feasible it is go to with limits… (Not saying it’s a no-no, just that some players would be unhappy for reasons other than balance/difficulty).
Yes, that makes a lot of sense, and ultimately I think that’s where the solution lies, because it’s part of a much larger problem with the game pacing: there are just no “speed bumps” to prevent a player from doing any number of missions a day with the same team. There is no logistic layer at all, and not even abstract mechanics to replace it. This, together with the missions appearing “on demand”, means that the player is left entirely in charge of the pace of the game and it’s pretty much impossible to balance the game at the same time for a player who goes at wrap speed and the player who is taking things slow.
The question is: what is “this-and-this” and what is “technology X”?
Because when you start looking at specific examples it’s hard to avoid just giving immunities to the Pandas against certain type of damage, or turn them into bullet sponges.
For instance, how should the Pandas evolve to counter paralyzing weapons? My gut reaction is to give them a chance at developing a mutation that increases paralysis reduction in some of them to 5-10 per turn. But, is it fun?
EDIT: yes, this is an open invitation to share any suggestions on Pandoran reactive mutations and what player behaviors should trigger them
A thing to keep in mind is that, sometimes, the reaction to having a weakness found is to double down on strengths.
For example, if the player is deploying paralyzing weapons a lot then shift away from using small units to larger ones (using whatever normal unit budgetting the game uses), so instead of fighting a bunch of arthrons you’re dealing with three chirons every fight.
If the player is using a lot of corrosive then start deploying a lot more lighter, unarmored units with bigger firepower.
If there’s a lot of fire damage being thrown around- You now have to deal with a lot of leaping units! Since most fire damage sets tiles on fires they’ve mutated to move in leaps, so you can’t zone them properly with fire anymore (but a direct hit is still effective)
Well, you cannot have the same mission balanced for 6 and 8 soldiers at the same time (unless you let AI cheat). There will always be someone grubmling whatever you do, and if you care for balance, then you either:
Balance it for 8
Balance it for less and restrict troop number
Create strategic layer consequences
I don’t see any other easy options (though 3rd option is not that easy anyway).
I don’t know the metrics that are being in use and the technology list that was being created. Example would be:
Metric shows certain treshold of melee / shotgun kills per mission was reached (meaning player’s relying on those weapons a lot): start researching “Toxic blood” tech (You have 20% less HP, but when you get wounded/killed make minor poison attack to enemies within 1 tile range).
Metric shows a lot of limb disables are happening (meaning player’s relying on precise weapons): start researching “Fortitude” tech (Certain limbs get +50% HP).
Metric shows there’s a lot of panicking (most probably due to chain kills): start researching “Enrage” (If friendly within X tiles range dies, gain Frenzy).
Also one note: not every tech should be flat applicable to every Panda on the field. For some tech it would be better to affect only some of the enemies. This way we’d have:
More interesting, varied battlefield population
Possibility to employ strong tech, that might even hardcounter some of players tactics (making all Pandas on the fields immune to certain tactics is not fun, but granting such immunitu to 2 out of 10 creates a tactical challenge).
Finally for Paralyzing Weapons, you can choose multiple avenues, for instance:
Flat increase of amount of points it’s needed to paralyze
Add skills, like “Immunological response”: Unless you’re incapacitated, you can release chemical/biological agent (it replenishes in X turns) that will “clear 50%/100% of paralysis status / grant immunity to paralysis for the next turn” (meaning, it’ll be more difficult to paralyze if it’s not done in 1 turn).
Passive regen is good too, though with assumption, that it’s turned of if paralyzed completely (so that, you are not forced to sit on the panda and prod it every turn)
Imo talking about “one shot kill” and balance. It is super illogical when an arthron dies from the loss of an arm or a leg, and human enemies absorb bullets like a sponge (here are headshots, shots to a disabled limb). This is the case when you don’t believe the absurdity on the screen.
add
You need to find a balance between Arthron(Triton) vs Human. Perhaps, remove the vulnerability, but add a “pool of RNG debuffs” (head / torso) of disabled limbs.
add2
Animation of squatting / dodging a person when shooting a shotgun in his face??
When shooting at close distances of 1-2 tiles, the reverse accuracy reduction is applied to the Aim(-75%, -50%), “Large Aim-circle” when near target.(Remove this penalty for the Pistol, but limit the max accuracy.)
I like this one, it could be a skill for a support unit. Like the Aspida restores limbs, neutralizing the disable the arm tactic, this could be e.g. a new property of the mist, which is really fun but underutilized at the moment.
Revising the Heal Mechanic could possibly also result in more rotation of the soldiers. It is currently the case that injured soldiers (also from previous missions) can be completely healed in the current mission and are therefore always used. Make the following changes:
HP cannot go higher than it did when starting the mission
Medikits heal in % (e.g. 50% of the lost HP). That would mean that 150 damage could be cured by 75 HP from one use of the Medikit. The second use would only heal 38 HP (rounded up). This would never completely heal the full damage.
There is no need for such combinations. If you have medkit on mission it should be able to boost your HP for the time of this mission.
It could be like that, but I suppose it could be too punishing, and make medkits redundant.
I think that game should remember the lowest HP value soldier had during combat and reset to it after mission no matter how many medkits were used. If that would mean that his HP is set to 1 then be it. After coming to base he would need to heal almost all his HP pool. And if taken on another combat then he would need to use medkit in first turn just to be operational with more than 1 HP.
Disabled limbs should also stay disabled after mission, so soldier taken on another mission would start with disabled body part (but not bleeding). So you would need to use some tech to enable it on second mission, or just wait for coming to base to recover disabled limb - and it should take more time than standard healing.
I agree , it is unfair that Phoenix Project soldiers can use medkits at the end of the mission (when there are not danger for gathering) or beginning of next mission, replenishing almost full HP,
and also recovering broken body parts in the aircraft, just entering inside,
indeed the rotation is affected, you end using same squad again and again
The way HP and Medkits work right now makes MedicalBay’s irrelevant. You’ll never fly back to base specifically to drop a wounded soldier for HP recovery, since you can stim him right away, making him as good as new. That alone hints HP system is not exactly working as intended.
In other games with out-of combat recovery systems, lose of HP is followed by lose of smal % of max HP (let’s say around 10-20%). Field level patching can only get you so far and sooner or later serious surgery is required.
This is true, but unfortunatelly it cannot work as a strategic layer currency, they way fatigue does. You’re not guaranteed to lose HP, therefore it’s perfectly possible for certain soldiers to run dozens of missions and not getting even a scratch. What’s more, the more troops you take, the less chance for them is to loose HP (since that alows you eliminate threats faster).
On the other hand fatigue is paid for every action and that cost can be easily tailored (less for non combat events, more for fighting, additional cost for taking damage/ getting limbs disabled etc). Still I don’t think it would fully solve problems like “taking 8 man on a 6 man mission”, so working on this might be just a waste of resources.
In other similar games one generally has a easier chance to have more units on hand. One also shares the same base. With PP, the travel time and healing time can easily prevent one from dealing with everything else needed to progress the game.
I find the new scavenging missions to be a significant improvement over the old. Picking things up and carrying them away is more satisfying, if less realistic. I also like having to choose what to take. It is true (as others have said) that with a large squad the missions are easy. I don’t mind that much. It is also true that with a smaller, lower-level squad, the mission is more of a challenge. But I like being able to take everything. On a difficulty level like Hero getting all the resources I can is a priority.
I can think of two ways to make these missions more interesting. First, make the reinforcements increase with each iteration. First wave=1 unit. Second wave=2 units. Third wave=4 units. That would force players to hurry more or to abandon that furthest crate.
Second, make some fraction (say, 1/4 or 1/8)) of scavenging missions also really bad ambush missions with large numbers of enemies behind a building on the further side of the map. That way, players don’t discover them until it is too late to make a quick getaway. And getting that furthest crate is out of the question. When I say “really bad ambush missions,” what I have in mind are the ambush missions in XCOM Long War, where you saw double or triple the number of usual enemies without any way of knowing in advance.
I have a third suggestion for the sake of realism that might not be more fun. I imagine that scavenging resources from ruins in a post-apocalyptic scenario would not be a matter of carrying away crates of pristine, refined resources. It would be a matter of disassembling immobilized vehicles, or loading electronic junk on a truck for later processing. So I think it would be more realistic for a scavenging mission to be a fight over a particular location (such as a warehouse, an overturned truck, or a crashed airplane). Once you eliminate the enemies, the mission ends. Or, less realistically, it takes a certain number of turns for a soldier or multiple soldiers to extract the resources from the hulk. Some soldiers have to defend the others while they work from waves of reinforcements. Or you can choose to not take the time to extract all of the harvestable resources.
What could have been done is a simple mechanics of manually setting a beacon on the box to be picked up by drop ship.
From the start you get into somewhat a infested area and noise of fire fight starts to attract reinforcement. The longer you keep fighting the more boxes you can mark for pickup and more resources you get at the end. The waves can increase in proportion to explosions or heavy weapons being used. So you would finally have some other use for your stealth based characters and weapons. Or you could go loud with a bang to get some of that extra XP for the risk of fighting your way to the evac zone.
This whole current thing with getting to every single box and then manually hauling content is just not really engaging and very meta. You can trivialize these missions by bringing vehicle. I guess finally some use for them.
Can we capture Pandorans in new Scavenging missions?
I know we loose the loot if it is not in soldier inventory at the end of the mission. What about paralyzed enemies?
