I got the second build by reusing the download link from my first email.
I’m really liking the new units so far. The zappy punch of the technician had me using him as more of a melee beater than a support unit. I saved his turret for when the queen showed up as well as the second one I found in a box. Turns out they were rather effective against the two weenies the queen spawned with. I do wish the Technician had the ability to run and punch in the same action. I found him moving faster when I was shooting stuff.
The Armadillo was a monster in it’s own right. I drove the thing up forward into the center of the map while taking shots at whatever enemies were revealed. Roughly half of those shots missed and the ones that hit didn’t really do that much damage. The crabs did a few points of damage to it, but thanks to the heavy armor the Armadillo just laughed it off.
The part that made it a monster was when the queen showed up. I did the standard tactic of waiting for her to advance a turn or two and then peppering her with rockets and grenades. On a whim I decided to try the ram ability and it stopped the queen dead in her tracks. She never even tried to attack it oddly enough.
With the roadblock jammed in her throat the squad peppered her for piddly damage while the Armadillo gnawed her ankles off like she owed it money.
The only downside I had with the Armadillo was that it ran out of ammo and I had nothing to reload it with. Most of the damage done to it was by my own explosions due to targeting the queen. I would gladly give up a unit’s activation to ram this thing into more crabs.
Maybe I just got lucky on this playthrough, but not only did nobody die, I never had to use the new healing/repair ability.
One final thing of note: Not only is the Armadillo tough, but driving around and ramming stuff into a fine paste was actually fun. I laughed hard enough to wake up my wife when the Armadillo rammed through a massive boulder and smeared the last crab. Just as the screen faded away the Armadillo hit the edge of the screen so it looked like a hit and run.
I’m a bit envious: I just “finished” my first run on a random map and it was a complete failure. It took several turns to notice that the Armadillo was present on th map, just on the other side of where I spawned, and with 5-6 crabmen in between. Most of them were the horrible Tank variation (shield and sniping machine gun). In my first turn I decided to scavange the hangar next to the spawn with my sniper and tried to disable the arm of the tank crab I found inside. It ended up with the sniper losing 3-4 health in total because it was a hybridized crab resulting in the superpotion of two crabs (and the damage at the arm was split between the two crabs). During the alien turn a machine gun sniper killed my sniper from the ther side of the map. The rest of the game was essentialy the heavy on the center alone that destroyed 2 or 3 crabs while getting the fire of every crab around (no damage taken, I think the armour system works in a strange way),and the other two in the hanger triying to kill 2 or 3 crabs while getting disabled limb at every crab return fire (thank you tecnician! you are a blessing from heaven!).
And then came the Queen. More or less a few squares away from spawn and right next to the hangar. In 2-3 turns the Heavy got hit by a granade, lost a few armour and died shortly after, the queen charged the hangar, destroyed the turret and killed the other two soldiers. The End
Extremely well to be honest: the turret is useful and quite effective, it also aggroes enemy fire to the point that the Queen preferred to kill the turret instead of the technician that was a few steps away. The healing ability is extremely effective and infinite, but not really straightforward to use for the first time (I tried to used it on the assault and took me three turns to get it right). And you can heal yourself even with damaged limbs. The gun is quite good and requires only 1 TU, meaning you can fire 4 times in a turn if necessary. It has return fire, a d it uses different ammo (it’s the same PDW that you can arm the turret with).
Just tried my first play through and it feels like they toughened the queen up a fair bit. Ran the APC out of ammo and didn’t know what to do with it after that - there’s a ram ability?? Finished off the crab men and during this the queen arrived but sat on the side of the map for a good few turns before stomping onto the scene proper. Just before that I lost the technician guy to a melee crabman, which my sniper then took out in overwatch at very close range. I’d deployed a turret near the entrance of the map which was quite good against the queen’s little henchmen, but proved to be useless against the queen herself. She ignored the turret, ignored the APC which was parked almost in the way and finished the team off one by one, one every turn. Grenades didn’t seem to do anything much to the queen and the sniper rifle didn’t either. Heavy assault dude seems to be very slow at moving in this build. I guess the next game I play will be better because it took me two attempts to do the mission on the first backer build.
I found the Technician to be incredibly powerful - he outshone every other unit in my squad on both playthrus. His turrets, however, are of very limited use. Used well, it gives warning that a crabman has come up behind you, or can put some withering support fire down when your Technician is all alone, out of range for melee, and can’t do enough with his gun to put an alien down in one round. But against shields, the queen, or even a particularly beefy crab man, it appears to be only marginally better than three shots with a pistol.
Armor on the Queen this Evolution is BEASTLY. My armadillo’s guns (no reloads???) couldn’t touch it - when my heavy shot at a soft spot she seemed to crouch/cover with more heavily armored limbs nearly negating every shot after the first, and my sniper could no longer disable a limb in just two shots. That left mr. Grenade, because his gun was worthless.
Oh, aqnd I had problems getting out of the Armadillo after I crashed it into a wall and disabled the front. Perhaps that’s intentional?
Can the turret’s gun still be un-deployed like the update mentioned or is that not yet implemented this early?
I also have to say that brawling the queen with the APC is satisfying as Hell. It oddly reminds me of a Rocky Balboa match where you’re both swinging for the fences on each other.
I tried the turret and couldn’t fire it. It had clear LoS on the enemy and could take reaction fire at it, I just couldn’t shoot it myself. Is this intended behavior?
Also, I don’t think having it shot down should make your guys lose willpower. It’s a mere consumable. It’s as silly as having your troops panicking when a mind controlled alien is shot down by his former friends.
Aide from this, this build is completely imbalanced by the arrival of the Armadillo, which is absurdly powerful for the current scenario. It’s fine though, as the goal of this build is to showcase it, not to be balanced
Yeah I’m sure next build will rape us with the new enemies, plus perhaps even a surprise from the Queen. This would be the build I’d have new people to this genre try out.
Speaking of the Queen. Is this a new appearance for her (as in, we didn’t like the old model and redid her) or an actual example of how mutations (in this case, more armor) can affect aliens visually?
I am a Xcom Follower since the 90th. I am really looking forward to see the phoenix point Game.
I tested the new build . Some thoughts about it:
firaxis Xcom WOTC the latest build so far I played over 4700 h. The Firefight ( my game is heavily modded with timer deactivated ) is more intense, the accuracy / distance are far better than in the new build of phoenix point. For me there is still not the right “feeling” of a firefight. You still can hit across the map. In the first build every shot hit. Now it is reduced in the new build. But still no match compared to the feeling of the firefights of WOTC.
Compare a firefight with the actual build and WOTC. But its only the second build … I will wait to see how it developes…
Second with the vehicle. I tried to use to shoot at the cover. Did no harm to the cover, where a crab man hid behind. I expected a destruction of the cover with such a big gun… And what about the enviroment damage when you crash trough a fuel tank ? no harm, it just crumbled to pieces. I tried to shoot a fuel tank. not possible. Remember the tactic in WOTC, shooting at a fueltank has severe results
By the way, did anyone have troubles with the soldier movements? Yesterday evening I had some problems with the Heavy and the sniper, where when I moved them at the edge of the blue line and then shoot, I didn’t have enough TU to use the weapon. With the heavy it happened with both the missile launcher and the machine gun.
And I manage to get the Armadillo stuck inside debris (I think?): I charged a tower to take it down, but the Arm got stuck at the base of the tower. I managed to free it only by ramming someting else (the queen, on the opposite direction).
Yes! Yes, I did. Thank you. So I’m not crazy or fat fingered. Happened to me with the heavy. Once. So I did not think it was a bug. Still bothered me though.
