Testing mechanics.
Assault in melee range loses hand - can’t fire weapon - no longer useful to squad.
Sniper’s weapon shot from hands, weapon disintegrates - no longer useful to squad.
Two unexpected outcomes and these alone made the purchase well worth the money.
Looking forward to further testing and the full game when it releases.
I think the whole ‘limb’ based mechanics really are one of the best features we’ve seen so far. I think this could also be the solution to creating need for certain types of weapons (eg: one handed) as well, whereas Firaxis made it so the pistols have unlimited ammunition, I think that losing a limb or having your gun destroyed could make for some interesting decisions in weapons and equipment
Totally agree. Definitely a great gameplay feature, addition.
I’m not sure. It’s totally random and having my soldiers out of fight because of arm injury sounds like no fun at all. Unless there are some things to mitigate this effect on the battlefield.
Are you being sarcastic? It’s hard to tell.
Anyways, it seems a bit too severe. When this happened to me, I gave my sniper’s pistol to the assault so he can still do some damage. I understand that later you will be able to choose your soldier’s loadouts, so you will be able to prepare for this, but even so not being able to use two handed weapons at all with a crippled hand may be too much. A severe penalty to accuracy would be enough, I think.
The game mechanics allow you to target specific areas to disable an enemy and remove its ability to fight. You can target limbs and remove them, cause bleed etc. The enemy can also do this to you. The playing field is even. If the mechanic is removed then you lessen the experience and the game becomes generic. Your soldiers should be vunerable not invunerable.
Agree with @Tabus. Penalty to accuracy would be enough and even then effects like this shouldn’t be something too common.
@Xaenz, soldiers will be vulnerable even without punishing player every time they got shot in hands… Realism is one thing but the other thing is entertainment. I wonder how long you will be amazed by having your soldiers disabled on the battlefield if this would happen frequently.
If I was been sarcastic you would know.
As to the points you raised I have to disagree. If you were a soldier in a real war whose right arm was blown off and you only had a two handed weapon how could you use it?
My reply to bartekb8.
The game mechanics allow you to target specific areas to disable an enemy and remove its ability to fight. You can target limbs and remove them, cause bleed etc. The enemy can also do this to you. The playing field is even. If the mechanic is removed then you lessen the experience and the game becomes generic. Your soldiers should be vunerable not invunerable.
The limb, bleed etc mechanics make this a great addition to the genre.
I am 58 years old. I am old school. I played games when they were hard. When practice, patience, skill and overcoming the odds was the norm. This is why I welcomed Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne etc which do not hold your hand as do so many games today. I want game developers to innovate and release products which challenge gamers not wrap them in cotton wool. For me the challenge is to overcome the odds and beat the game.
Penalty to accuracy would remove the mechanic which this game is based around and Firaxis may as well take over development. The Firaxis XCom games are good but I welcome what Snapshot are doing with the genre.
@Xaenz, I am a bit younger but happy to live long enough to remember my first games on ZX Spectrum so I understand what you’re talking about. And I remember hundreds of hours spent on playing original X-Com, one of my best games ever 
Believe me or not but I hate dumbing down in modern games. And I like challenging games too, usually playing most of them on hard difficulty right from the beginning. This is not the case, though. Although I see injury mechanics as interesting I feel they shouldn’t be too frequent or/and too punishing. I don’t need too many distractions in the game aside of scary and difficult aliens. There still will be many ways to lose my soldiers.
Dark Souls is difficult but every time you die it is your fault, so game is fair enough. I want similar difficulty in PP - to be result of my mistakes on battlefield, not some random factors. I believe Snapshot give us some tools to mitigate effects of bleeding or disabled limbs but in this build there are no such tools so I can’t help that I don’t like it.
@bartekb8 I understand the points that you have raised and why you may not like the mechanic but for me it adds to the game.
I just play games my way and enjoy when a developer tries to innovate.
For me I do not google or youtube any game for guides etc I simply install and play.
Example: Bloodborne - solo - no co-op - learn the mechanics - kill the bosses - beat the game - restart the game - rinse and repeat.
As long as we can eventually equip our soldiers with items that can alter our defense profile (ie. make our hands /arms less targetable) such as shields or buckler style shields that are smaller but still let us equip weapons, then I’m game for having our unprotected soldiers being prone to such wounds.
Agreed. The game is still in development so who knows what may be added, removed, tweaked in the months to come. I personally did not get the same buzz when playing XCom Enemy Unknown for the first hour than I did from playing Phoenix Point today.
While I’m glad for that mechanic - it definitely seems to add to the game in a way I find enjoyable, I am more than a bit frustrated that only my assault and sniper seem to be able to damage the Queen at all. Grenades (singular!!! who loads out with only one grenade???) seem rather underpowered for cracking armor. Once my two generic grunt redshirts have thrown a grenade, plus any I can loot from boxes, their only value is as… …redshirts.
I hear ya. My first run through, my heavy took hits that killed his rocket launcher, had several hits on the queen that did nothing, then finally he was able to start hurting it with a few decent armor stripping hits to the thorax. Alas, far too late, the rest of the squad was dead by then, and he followed soon after.
I meant something like SWAT 4’s limb system. In that game if you get shot in the hand, you will be very inaccurate but you still have the option to shoot. It would still be very punishing to get a crippled arm, as a soldier who can’t hit anything beyond 5 meters has a very limited usefulness. I don’t see how that would take away from the challenge, but it would make the game less frustrating as you wouldn’t have to give orders every turn to someone who can’t really do anything useful.
I find the scavenging element particularly cool. Makes the battles feel more like a survival adventure as opposed to a gamey mission…i don’t know if that makes sense, but i feel that even if it does make the battles longer, i feel that they’ll be more interesting and alright to save and exit in the middle of missions.
Agree with the point you are making.
I enjoy the current iteration of the mechanic which may change over the development cycle.
It’s currently a waiting game to see how the game and mechanics develop over time.
It makes sense. I was trying to explain to a friend the difference between it and the Firaxis games. You hit the nail on the head with your description.
Fairly sure that snapshot do have plans for ways to fix damaged limbs, using mutation or prosthetic etc by befriending the factions. I think when the punishment of being unable to shoot/shoot accurately is put into this context, it will probably even things out plenty