With +40 armor? Really? What weapon in the Panda arsenal has the strength to overcome 40 armor + the armor the soldiers are wearing and do anything more than a scratch
Edit: + 40 armor per body part
Interestingā¦ When you first started posting, usually in opposition to some of the things I and others were saying, I assumed you were one of those players who hadnāt yet figured out how to max out your Skill builds and was therefore struggling against overwhelming numbers of OP Crabbies.
Turns out youāre more like me. You know that these ridiculous exploits exist, but using them would utterly ruin your enjoyment of the game, so you donāt. You want a long(ish) tactical game, in which blanket immunity to all enemy damage and the ability to take out 80% of the board in 1 turn simply have no place because they are boring. So you voluntarily donāt use them. You apply a series of personal restraints to keep the game interesting and playable for you.
At the same time, you - like me - see a perfectly legitimate place for the occasional ability to alpha-strike that key Nasty who is otherwise going to rain on your parade. So you argue strongly for skills not to be nerfed, to keep that option on the table. And Iām with you there.
@UnstableVoltage please take note: many of your most loyal supporters and Councillors on this forum - even those who argue against limiting First-Turn Strike skills - are aware of the problem and deal with it by refusing to use them.
We all think this has the potential to be a great game. And most of us who think that seem not to be playing it the way it is currently designed, because playing it that way breaks the game.
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Off the top of my head I canāt specify the weapons as I couldnāt Info the invisible Tritons that were taking sniper shots on my guys. But, I was double electric reinforced and at least 2 of the squad took damage over multiple turns. I didnāt say they got killed, but I think the word that was used was āinvulnerabilityā.
Definition of invulnerable . 1 : incapable of being wounded, injured, or harmed. 2 : immune to or proof against attack : impregnable.
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Donāt bother thinking about it, because the only thing that can do anything more than a scratch is a sniper rifle. Not an Arthron MG not a Chiron explosive or acid, not a Scylla (well, admittedly she is not into dealing damage anywayā¦). So if you want to quibble over semantics, may I remind you that āmanyā has to be more than āoneā.
Thatās just horrible. Got actually injured you say after multiple turns of being hit by sniper rifles? Unbelievable.
Again, why donāt you just use DER every turn? It protects you against everything, even from tritons with sniper rifles, for a few turns. Surely thatās worth a turn of a single member of your squad. I mean, itās no joke, because without DER there is a chance you might get someone on your team killed during a missionā¦
OK, sorry for all the sarcasm but basically what you are saying is that since you can judiciously use the exploits in the game only to counter those behaviors from the AI player that you deem unfair, itās OK for them to stay in.
As an alternative, I suggest that on rookie difficulty Snapshot put an orb of invulnerability and a magic bunny on every map close to the deployment zone. If at any time the players feel like they are facing an unfair challenge, they can pick up the orb, giving their squad + 40 armor to every body part for the rest of the match, and/or the magic bunny, to have unlimited APs.
That way players who donāt feel like exercising judicious self control, or constantly auditing the AI to see if itās displaying unfair behaviors that need to be countered by deploying exploits can just play on veteran or higher difficulty levelsā¦
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And I am not playing Rookie level, for the record. Sarcasm noted. Iām happy that you want to protect the player from themselves.
EDIT: For the record, explosive Chiron can and does damage DER protected units. If hit by enough acid, one needs to continue use of DER until it goes away.
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I would like to look at statistics about how many people will vote for super duper skills and how many for realistic skills, provided that both are possible / interesting.
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If the enemy doesnāt pose a need for āsuperā skills, then they arenāt needed.
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Casual gamers are usually not "give me a win buttonā cry babies. But if you absolutely wann to take them on board, the suggestion from @VOLAND may not even be enough, as they actually have to collect the āmagic bunnyā. It has to be easier. Sorry for the sarcasm ā¦
Seriously: turn strategy is not just a āclick around gameā. You never get such players (at least not many of them 
)! That simply contradicts itself. TBS is a game where you have to think, diversify options and decisions have advantages and disadvantages.
You can also look into other genres. For example, sports games that sell really well are becoming more and more realistic and try to incorporate more simulation every year. Imagine NBA 2K would give every player who has a rating of 90 the super ability to hit 90% of all three-point throws from the center of the field. Who would want this game then? If someone feels compelled to comment now, Curry doesnāt hit them with 90%
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You obviously donāt play Madden NFLā¦
No, but I just read something really bad is happened with this series. It calls āno love for the gameā
Sorry about go off topic
Sports games are mostly bought be loyal fans of the sport, teams and/or players. Yes, they expect some realism, but thatās not necessarily why they buy it. While Iām a big racing fan, I donāt even bother anymore with the franchise games, as they arenāt true simulations. PP mostly has original XCOM players that got hooked with the first baited hook. Apparently some expected a true simulation, while others can be satisfied with fantasy (sans realism).
Of course not, because the problem is not that you find the game too difficult, itās that the difficulty is uneven. So when the game throws something for which you are unprepared you use the equivalent of a magic bunny, or invulnerability orb. Which is the absolutely logical thing to do and Iām sure that you are far, far from alone at this. And I say this without any sarcasm.
What I donāt understand and Iām not going to discuss further with you because on that we apparently canāt agree, is why you think that the players should have recourse to exploits when they feel that the game is treating them unfairly. Seriously, Iām not going to discuss this. I must be too old, or something.
@UnstableVoltage sorry for the bombardment, but this is at least part of the explanation for why you are getting very conflicting feedback on the difficulty.
As you can see, some players are complaining about how easy the game is because they are aware of the exploits, others find the game too hard because they donāt, and some have found some personal accommodation by only using exploits when they feel like they have to.
Again, not to teach a grandma how to suck eggs, but ironing out the difficulty while there are magic bunnies and invulnerability orbs lying around is not easyā¦
And my apologies to @Yokes for going way off topicā¦
PS:
For the record Chiron bomb does 50 damage and 3 shred, applied after the explosion. DER gives 40 armor on top of the armor already worn, so the only way it can do more than a scratch is with the double explosion bug, and then depending on the armor it has to be somewhere under 50 (no armor has less than 10 strength, IIRC).
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Stop with the theoretical math and actually play the game. What I sited was not the double damage bug. It happened and no theoretical math can undo whatās happening, if one actually plays the game.
I am sorry that you feel have you have to counter anything I say as ānot possible - just do the mathā. Iām also sorry that you appear to take what I say as anything personal. I am only reporting my actual experiences during game play. I am not necessarily attempting to undermine any of your comments. But, when my game play illustrates an issue, I feel the need to differ.
EDIT: I reply to the contents of the post, not the poster. I rarely pay attention to who the poster is, just the contents of the post.
No problem. In some part it is interesting and good that Devs will see the issue more clearly. If that would still be on topic then it would be really short thread.
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TBH, itās not as bad as the complainers make out, but they have just introduced Impact Players, which pretty much does what you described in your post above.
OK, back on topicā¦ Though I think Yokesā thread has got way out of control by now - for good reason 
Unless there will be other reasons to argue in it, it soon will be dead, but I will bump it when I will finish my rambling. Iām really intrigues how people would welcome changes I would like to see in Phoenix Point. That also makes me little excited and worried at the same time that reception can differ greatly. 
Some will love them, some will hate them. Most people wonāt even notice.
Thatās the nature of a game and a forum like this. Youāll never be able to satisfy everybody, because each individual wants something different out of the game - especially one thatās as āMarmiteā as Phoenix Point.
The key thing is to find a way to let as many people as possible have an enjoyable experience playing the game.
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Soā¦ actually going back on topicā¦
I mostly agree with what you say.
The game is best until somewhere mid-game.
A lot has to do with character progression and the flood of SPs.
I have to say at this point I actually prefer the previous system. Yes, yes the TFs were giving more Exps than combat and that was wrong, but the (soft) cap made for more interesting builds where you actually had to think about what skills and stats to invest in.
(As I have said a few times elsewhere I would like number of SPs given per mission to be inversely proportional to the number of missions, so that at first you get more SPs and then eventually much, much, much less, and 30 SPs per level instead of 20, to make recruits that go through TFs slightly better).
I prefer a faster, soft capped progression to a slower one, so that you can get powerful soldiers fairly quickly, but they are never too powerful and where soldiers are all different, built for different roles. Right now (playing on Legendary, mid February in game time, allied with all factions) all my veterans look very similar: all have 20 in speed, 12+ in WP and 20+ in STR and a lot of skills they donāt really need for their rolesā¦
IMO, 300SPs is the sweet spot for a soft cap, just as it was in the previous system. After that SP acquisition should slow to a crawl (2-3 SPs per mission?) and if the players really want to improve their characters they should dip into the common SPs pool.
There is another thing about character progression that I have been thinking about and thatās the role that augmentations play in it. I think ideally they should be shortcuts to more powerful low level troops, which makes sense given that they appear around mid game.
Finally, I think there should be an option to recruit higher level recruits from havens, and raw recruits from bases, though I would make both options contingent on diplomacy (that is, raw recruits in small numbers would be available unless at war with the faction/haven and higher level recruits only if in good standing with the faction).
The point is to have different paths obtain the necessary human resources, so you could spend time with the TFs training raw recruits, ābuyā experiencied troops taking advantage of good diplomatic relations, use augmentations to quickly turn raw recruits into better troops, or take them on missions to give them combat experience, probably alongside veteran troops (as Iām sure many players are doing now).
EDIT: As to geoscape, I wish that diplomacy & base/resource management were much closer integrated in a single system, either as I suggest here Diplomacy and base management overhaul proposal, or something else along those lines. It just seems a pity that all the things to make for a more engaging system are there (the havens with their districts, leaders, population, etc.) but itās not really used for much.
For combat Iām really excited to see what will happen with the new Panda evolution/researchā¦
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Good point with previous ones leading to it.