Need More Enemy Per Mission (mostly Pandoran)

Phoenix Point Game Feedback
1

I play at hero diff and most of the missions got very few enemies. I use 6 to 7 men squads and most missions got less then 10 enemies.

At mid and late game, your soldiers start to fire and move much more. So if there is an enemy at LoS of your team, dies at next turn for sure. Most of them dies and others crippled. As you play much more better then AI and you catch them alone or they attack you alone, you can kill them easily.

Then the game becomes not so tactical. AI is sadly not so great at this game so they don’t make much plans, they don’t sneak, they don’t attack when they can… when they WCed, they just lose it totally even they still can harm you. I see some nice moves here and there but mostly meh…

So then the numbers becomes important. At ordinary missions like raiding, scavengering, tech stealing, sabotaging I see mostly few enemies and few of those few are dangerous. After you take time those some, then you just wait to win. For whole slow game, I reload my gun only 5 times maybe, not including Deceptor Rage Bursts… So this means there are not enough enemies.

Alien nests are good as they are already tight place. Citadel got very few enemies when it’s so huge and Lair’s got boss fights so it’s balanced.

Having 1 enemy support per 2 turns is very low… not necessary… not a thread… never… make it higher and limited… like 3 enemy per 2 turn for 3 times after you start mission so they can really support the enemies still standing. NO EVAC!!! Just send more enemies at less time. Make me think my tactic! Let me play the game rather then run out to evac and lose time more then I actually play.

Not related to this maybe but another big fail at enemy AI, they mostly don’t know how to cover. They can calculate LoS so somehow they can stop their turn when noone can shoot them but the problem is, I just can one step and still fire. Ay most of enemy turn, they go to a cover, a great one and then 1 step further to open ground. I ask “why??? I would not able to hit you behind that but now you are just open”…

If I can bring 7 soldiers, I expect much more footsoldiers from enemy… We still need a mid enemy just a bit little then Siren… probably a Crabman from TFTD. I don’t want 5 siren or 4 chiron per mission but much more from the little ones.

You can just make vehicles take 2 place rather then 3, so I can bring 1 vehicle and 5 soldiers against more enemies. Even you can make free vehicle slot per plain if you can give us more enemies.

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Have you tried Legendary? I just finished a legendary playthrough and never once did I think “this is too easy . . . I need more enemies”.

Legendary is brutally difficult.

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I don’t want brutal. If you change a difficult, it rises everything. I just talked about enemy numbers.

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This is old history. Mostly in the past the complaint was better evolution of Pandorans and not hoards of them coming at you. If you are new to this game then you won’t have seen the earlier versions when exact this happened. Perhaps a higher level is the better solution. Having said that, I believe that balancing is a onward going development for the devs.

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Even the enemy comes with great mutations, it’s up to kill the arm or weapon. So numbers are more important.

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Playing on Veteran I have been enjoying game more then ever before. I am yet to reach final abilities though - leveling and SP gain seems slower then before. I fear for my second squad - Sirens and Chirons are appearing, together with some really deadly Arthrons and Tritons and they have little to no battle experience.

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Sirens are nerfed and therefore much less dangerous than at release (it was a bit unfair before). Chirons are now practically pure worm throwers since Cthulhu. Haven’t seen any bombs or acid since the patch. At Arthrons (like @drages said) you just shoot their arm off or even easier: bomb them away (they stand mostly totally open in the field). The only remaining serious danger is the sniper Tritron because a) he is mostly far away AND stays there and b) he has the second best weapon type in the game.

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As Ementrude has already stated, the addition of more enemies used to be how the Dynamic Difficulty changed throughout the game. But this ended up leading to one of two different outcomes for players.

  1. players abused certain combinations of duel classed abilities and absolutely mopped the floor with pandorans… completely negating their number advantage. Or…
  2. players experienced a seemingly unfair difficulty spike where the number of enemies felt almost ridiculously overtuned. And would for the mist part struggle to keep up with the games DD.

So snapshots current solution is to lower overall enemy numbers but have the difficult change their progression to become stronger overtime. Which having experienced both styles… I much prefer the current solution. Now I feel the ai should be the next target for change!

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Great explanation, I also agree with this. If you go back to the backer builds, you also found large clusters of enemies at that time. I remember turning around in a nest tunnel and finding about 10 or more clustered tritons and a few arthrons… it was real fun using the GL but it didn’t kill them, thus it was also when I found out about the assault’s terminator tactic using rapid clearance :slight_smile:

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Exactly… another consequence of the higher enemy count was that it was easy to put the pandoran’s in a never ending panic spiral! Speaking of rapid clearance, which was the main culprit of achieving such feats.

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I can’t kill any enemy with a single shotgun hit anymore, how will RC work until this patch? I don’t understand. I only use this skill for worms.

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Most enemies have a lightly armoured spot on their bodies somewhere, so you just run up close and shotgun blast it. If you also add the +25% for the close quarters perk or the +20% from Reckless, most things die in one hit. If not, then you can have another soldier shoot them once to soften them up first.

I might be wrong, though, since I haven’t tried it in the current patch – I refuse to use the skill any more just on principle. :stuck_out_tongue:

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So nerf the RC with a limit like 3 kills and nerf pandoras panic. Now we can have more enemies.

Pandoran are hive based creatures they should not panic unless you did not do directly on them.

Three are already few enemies and when you kill some others get panicked. It gets easier and easier.

I did not say put 20 enemy into nest, nest are tight placed so it’s good as it is. But lair is huge and its nearly empty.

I still think we need some more.

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I don’t know, I’m seeing arthrons with 28 (!!!) WP. That may be already to help stop mass panic BUT… it also made mind control really difficult.

In my previous playthroughs I didn’t get to use priests much, this is the first time. I’ve been able to mind control maybe 2 times and now enemies have so much WP that even my priest with 18 will never seems to be able to use it. I didn’t try inducing panic but the result would be the same, not being able to use it. I know there are mechanics to reduce WP (viral weapons, psychic scream if you got the head, some enemies lose WP from disabling parts) but that’s 2 of the first priest skills that just become useless, or require cooperation to use from other soldiers, most of the time, while other classes have hugely useful first skills. It’s also the only active skill priests have until lvl 7.

So tying this to the topic, I think that upping enemy WP as a mechanic to hold mass panic is a bad choice, unless you more experienced guys show me otherwise. If the reason for it is indeed this, then I would prefer another option like @drages mentioned, nerfing RC and/or some limit to panic as in each death on the same turn has diminishing WP loss. First friendly killed leads to 100% WP loss for that type, second leads to 60%, third to 20%, and then none (just an example, numbers would’ve to be tuned).

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This should be more an exception than a rule, most Artrhons I see (early February) still have very low WP. Maybe a highly evolved Arthron?

And I hope you don’t expect to MC a highly evolved enemy right of the start of a mission?

I don’t see this as a problem, this should be the norm for all things we do with our squads. (Edit: I know it isn’t true at all but i think it should)

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Yeah it was, full HA arthron, high damage MG, shield, the whole shenanigans. To be fair I don’t use MC much because I was experimenting Heavy/Priest with this guy and guess what, he’s the one always lagging behind, even with 20 speed and the speed cyber legs, but heavy PX torso for the jetpack and mounted weapons (I got none b/c I’m having a hard time allying to NJ), and frenzy head. Nonetheless, I’ve been seeing mostly this type of arthron. Tritons still come less armored, usually with a few armored limbs but not all.

It won’t ever be, as most initial action skills from other classes are powerful and require no cooperation from other soldiers. Assaults, Heavies, Snipers, Infiltrators, Technicians, Berserkers… I think the priest is the only one in this situation.

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I think this comparison is not fair. At the end this level 1 skill from the Priest can not only take out one enemy in one go with the cost of 1 AP, at the same time you get one fighter more on your side. No other level 1 skill is able to do something similar. But sure, you need an enemy with lower WP as your priest.
What I will say is, MC is strong, but often not when you meet the enemies at the first time in a mission, except they are low WP right from the start. Kill some enemies and then you can MC almost anything that’s left over.

Edit: Oh, and of course, invest in WP is pretty important. A mix with a Heavy is probably not the best way to go :wink:

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You’re right, although it may be lost if you lose WP too, so you may be locked out of using other abilities while MC’ing.

Seems not too and that’s why I wanted to test it out. I imagined I could at least jet jump into range and MC an enemy in this build, even if I lost 2 WP for jet jumping. My backup plan was to use him as a grenadier, using the first AP in the mission for frenzy, scouting out for enemies with other soldiers, and he would still probably be able to launch a grenade in the same turn. That’s working alright, but the MC part isn’t. Usually when I finally can MC an enemy I can also kill him as I’m close and with heavy weapons, and the only instances where I preferred MC’ing were in ambushes where I had few soldiers (4).

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Oh HECK YASS! Even if it’s a Mod like for XCOM-2 that let’s you choose; Normal, Plus 1.5 to 3 times more enemies. That’d be a pretty awesome game changer and challenge increase across the board.

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Yep, that’s true. You are playing on Legend, right?

And yes, the buff was done to prevent mass panic…

I used to play quite a bit with single class Priests because of the MC and inspire Panic abilities, but I haven’t tried them since Danforth, IIRC.

I imagine that with the WP buff their utility must have decreased substantially…

On the other hand, even before Danforth my strategy was always to disable the target’s head, then cast MC.

Edit: btw, there was a time when Heavy + Priest was a TB, back when mind crush didn’t cost any APs. You would jetpack into a bunch of enemies and spam it until they were all dead :slightly_smiling_face: