I’m very vocal about balance issues and as you will recall the notion that “alpha-strike” (or rather First Turn Strike) could be conceived by design as a “reward” sets me off. The dude shall not abide, this aggression… shall not stand. (As a minimum I will throw a tantrum, I will).
However… A few posts above you mentioned courage and IMHO it is courageous of Snapshot to do something more than updating a classic. They could have easily done that and saved themselves a lot of grief.
More to the point, I think it’s unfair and inaccurate to see the skills, and especially capskills as mere crowd pleasers. IMO, it’s a genuine attempt to add tactical depth that needs balancing.
Like you and virtually everyone else on this forum, I just want a game that presents the same kind of challenge as X-Com '94, but with up-to-date graphics. But I don’t just want a re-hash of X-Com '94.
Phoenix Point has the potential to be that game. The sad thing is, as it stands it’s not even living up to the key goals laid out by its creators:
“[My biggest problem with FiraXCOM was] I’d lost 3 months earlier and I didn’t even know it.” - Julian Gollop
“We wanted to prevent the Inverse Difficulty Curve [you get in FiraXCOM], where it’s incredibly hard at the start of the game and incredibly easy at the end.” - David Kaye
As it stands, you get both of those in spades with PP. And as you pointed out above, the devs seem to think that enabling the latter through alpha-Skills was some kind of a ‘reward’. But I still get the impression that they simply didn’t realise just how stupidly OP they had made Lvl 7 Squads.
So we keep plugging away and plugging away, until hopefully the message gets through and they start turning this Leviathan round and getting it back onto the course they had originally set.
That’s my impression as well. My theory is that their stats - which are normally the most valuable and reliable source of information on how the game is being played - do not show it because players who learn how to FTS either quit playing, or start playing with self restrictions, and/or use it only as needed. Because it’s an exploit, not a strategy.
I remember how in Ultima VII you could make infinite money by betting the same amount on four possible outcomes of a game of chance. Obviously, this was the optimal solution for making money in the game. However, I wonder how many players aware of this exploit actually used it.
Or how many people played Doom with cheat always on.
So you look at the analytics and FTS looks like an outlier. You assume that it might be more difficult than it seems. Adding to that, it’s not immediately obvious what FTS is, because it doesn’t necessarily mean ending the mission in one turn…
IMO, this was a temporary stub for BB5, but the temporary one became permanent.
If it were originally Fantasy with beautiful magic and creatures from myths - everything would look “logical and miraculous.” But this is a story based on the “Power From Inside Man / Mankind” where there is no place for a “super duper” - but there is a place for the Feat / Sacrifice.
Did you play BB3 or 4? Can’t remember which (I think it was BB4), but they provided us with what were essentially Lvl7 Squaddies who could walk over whatever was on the map. I remember commenting on it at the time.
Then BB5 came out, and it was clear that BB4 had simply been a testing ground for the high level Squad skills. ‘Clever,’ I thought, ‘They were testing the Skills it’s going to take time to get to.’ Took almost no time to get to them in BB5, but then I simply thought they had accelerated Squaddie advancement so that we could test the whole of the skill tree.
But no, it was designed that way from the start. So having a Lvl7 Squad only a few weeks into the campaign has always been part of the Snapshot PP plan. I think the idea was that this was where the real interest lay, so get there fast and then provide ‘challenge’ and ‘balance’ through the DDA.
Which might actually work if Lvl7 Squad Skills had limits and Panda advancement was slower and more imaginatively defensive (rather than simoly blasting you with 1-shot Squad-Killers from all sides of the map). But as it currently stands, once you get to Lvl7, there is no challenge and precious little balance.
If tweaks are necessary for Hero/Legend (5 sirens, 10 arthrons, 5 tritons… maybe too much) let it be
But I only use it if one of my soldiers stays in precarious position against several Pandas, without AP,
if I decide to make the bold move, I should face consequences
I wouldn’t. It adds depth. It’s an interesting tactical choice, because you have to decide whether the 2APs spent by the caster are more or less valuable in the the current situation than x APs spread among the squad. And it has a carry-on effects that can have impact over multiple turns, because you are also spending 4WPs.
Though the skills are not realistic, the larger interplay between the exertion they represent and morale is very believable, and as a game system very well done. It does set PP apart.
The problem is balance. Once you start spamming Rally the Troops (and there is very little reason not too), especially as part of a First Turn Strike, to repair broken kill chains, that’s when everything falls apart. Thus the need to do something about it.
The problem with completely removing it is that it removes one of the key crutches that players have to ‘get out of jail free’. There’s nothing wrong with using Rally to buy your Heavy the extra AP (s)he needs to get up to that Siren and blow its head off, or for the Sniper to Dash into position and shoot that Bombard Chiron before it cripples your Squad.
So, within limits, it is both interesting and necessary as a situational tool to help the player’s squad cope with all that the Pandas throw at it.
Problem is, as configured, you can spam it all over the place, so that a squad with 4 Rallies can effectively give 2 full turns to all of its members for 1 turn of the Pandas - and a Terminator can simply keep rampaging across the map until everything’s dead.
So the trick is not to get rid of it altogether, but to figure out a way to limit it so that a Squad on Easy or Veteran (or Super-Mode) gets 2 or 3 Rallies per turn, while a Legendary (or Tac-Mode) Squad has to make do with 1.
I also don’t like Rally the Troops. For me it is another magical skill, and I would also change it for some other skill. But it probably won’t happen, so we need to think how to alter it.
It is different than what I have suggested in feedback earlier, but I recon some players really need that skill to let their fantasy Fellowship of Phoenix live long enough.
So in my opinion when one soldier uses it (or actually any other skill restoring AP) then it should apply status of “half hastened” and after that “fully hastened” to soldiers in range. It should restore 1 AP per use (‘half hastened’) up to 2 AP (‘full hastened’) per rest of the turn in range of 8 tiles from “caster” - so there could be more wizards casting it all over the map, but each single soldier can be affected only two times per turn. Having status of “half hastened” would allow for only one additional use, and having already status of “fully hastened” would prevent additional AP restoration. There should be high cost for the wizard of 5 WP (because it would require a lot of mana to bend time for other members of Fellowhip) and 1 AP (caster needs time for incantation) per cast.
Playing Legend now, Moonshot this morning, and surely today final SYN mission.
In my experience, I was not using Rally , maybe only 5% battles, 1 or 2 times max during the missions, so it’s not an essential skill to me.
But If I have to made a suggestion, I agree, applying range and soldiers recovering max 2 AP, about WP , 5 is not a hugh number, I have soldiers with 18, 20 and 22 WP at the end of the game, it would be better Rally cost 3AP
yes you can diverse cost between soldiers, but still summary cost of 10 WP to restore time to allow 1 standard shot more in limited range may be enough… Or maybe not… I would need to think about it in quiet, which is not granted to me at this moment.
EDIT: Maybe make it 2 WP per soldier in range. So if one uses it to affect 7 other soldiers it consumes 14 WP. And then you can’t cast it second time with the same wizard as he lacks WP. But I suspect that with limited range it would affect mostly 3 or 4 soldiers so would consume 6 to 8 WP per 1 AP restored to those soldiers.
No offense, but I think you are taking the wrong approach to this. Both in that you start from the position I hate it, but I have to live with it, and seeing it as something related to difficulty; if it’s just about difficulty, it would be better to make necessary adjustments to difficulty so that Rally is not needed and then remove it.
Instead of thinking of it as magic, think of it as an abstraction. The turns are not a fixed number of seconds, and the APs are not each 1/4 of a turn. If the turns represented fixed time units they would be expressed as such, as it is done in Laser Squad Nemesis (and all other WeGo titles). One of the beauties of turns vs real time or WeGo is that they allow for this kind of abstraction. So an AP is not really a measure of time, but of the capacity for doing things. We can only do so many things not only because we are limited by time, but also by other factors - desire, stress, fear, etc. Rally the Troops is an abstraction for one person making other people go beyond their usual capacity to do more than they can. The how of it is unimportant - maybe it’s their sheer force of personality, their ability to say just the right thing at the right moment over the comms - again, it’s an abstraction. (Also, haste spells don’t work that way )
The problem with what you are suggesting is that it is very cumbersome and actually less tactical, because it’s less flexible. Right now you have a tool that is useful in any situation provided that you value the 2APs and 4WPs spent by the caster as less than the X APs spread among the squad. It allows for a greater variety of strategies than if you are limited by range and amount of WPs.
For example, you can have assault in support roles that hang behind, and it’s an interesting choice because then you may be wasting the 2 other APs, but you neglect his/her offensive capabilities. (I often had this kind of build before Leviathan, because the soft cap on SPs encouraged specialization).
And then you can’t cast it second time with the same wizard as he lacks WP. But I suspect that with limited range it would affect mostly 3 or 4 soldiers so would consume 6 to 8 WP per 1 AP restored to those soldiers.
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