I have several hours into the game, playing with the last patch applied.
While the game was fun, I came into the point where i can basery kill the pandorians. My weapos are weak and my soldiers armor the same.
I must have done something wrong or missed a step. I am in alliance with Synedrion and have the reasearch available and basically this is what Im using, Pythagoras SR and Deimus AR. But these are very weak for the pandorians now. I guess my best weapon is the hell canon
So I guess my question is, are there any better weapons and armor in the game and how do I get them?
Thx for your help , I may have to start a new game.
Most of the tech upgrades come from the factions. Improvements on the basic Phoenix Point gear but itās not a magic solution. The late game Phoenix stuff is the best you can get but itās expensive. Really tho, you can beat even armoured pandorans with basic weapons if you target them properly, its easy enough to disable an arm to remove a shield or a weapon or go for the headshot to remove will. Explosives also strip armour too.
The main thing that makes your soldiers more dangerous are the skills, those that come with the class usually improve mobility and give you more options but the other skills which give you bonus damage with certain weapons are really useful. If you can get an assault with the assault rifle specialisation plus the ārecklessā skill, thatās plus 40% damage per shot.
The most aggressive weapons tend to come from New Jericho. If you get to a 50% + relationship with them then they will share all their current weaponry and technology. But it isnāt always about that in this game. Try not to panic, disable the enemy as well as capture them. Itās important to experiment with this game without worrying about losing. Experience about what works well and doesnāt is important to understand in different situations.
Shotguns help a lot if you donāt have them yet. You need to do Triton autopsy I think (at least it used to work like that. Did play much after recent patch). Unlike FiraXCOM though, there is relatively little raise in power when it comes to weapons. Taking advantage of skills is key.
You can gain other faction weapons by allying with them (having high enough reputation and completing their faction quest so they share their research with you), steal their research (by raiding one of the havens with research facility in them) or reverse engineering their stuff if you happen to have spare copies (even if you have faction weapons you canāt produce ammo yourself without research so they will be of limited use).
Keep in mind that other factions have their own soldier classes. Berserker is really handy in shredding armor, though heās been nerfed.
So in other words. Aliens become more armored with time. You need to use weapons that shred armor. Then you finish them with all standard weapons (even those from game start). Pythagoras and Deimos from Synedrion are really accurate weapons, but they lack other bonuses. With Pythagoras you can precisely remove enemy body parts which are most dangerous (then you can ignore that enemy for some time) and with Deimos you can shoot back from afar.
You can shred armour with an Ares assault rifle, itāll just take a while. The Deceptor MG is also useful for that. Basically anything that fires lots of shots will take something like 1 - 3 armour away for every shot that hits. I think this depends on the damage of the shots, so thatās why Shotguns arenāt good for that job. The New Jericho penetrating weapons give you a trade off in that while you will do full damage, it doesnāt actually strip the armour away. Same thing with the Acid weapons. Yeah they melt armour but thereās a delay of at least a turn and sometimes you donāt want to let the Pandorans have that turn to attack you. Iām not an expert but so far, shredding armour comes as a secondary priority behind disabling potential attacks.
In my opinion, the strongest weapon lategame is melee. Lategame you run into the issue, that almost every enemy has returnfire, meaning if you attack an enemy, it will shoot back and this returnfire can critical hurt your soldier and even disable arms etc, making your soldier useless.
At midgame, you start thinking about your tactic to avoid being targeted by enemy and being damaged by enemy. For this, a scout (infiltrator) works best, so you know the positions of your enemy.
An APC is pretty good to for scouting and tanking. An APC may āstoreā up to 4 soldiers, so you can send 1 scout outside of APC and 4 soldiers inside the APC and bring them to a good position and use the APC as wall/blocker. Also you can use APC to bring soldier in melee range, an soldier has 2 AP after leaving the APC, meaning he can melee attack 1 or 2 (if melee cybernetic armor is usde) times. Depending of the used melee weapon, you can add Shock, Virus, Bleeding or Daze.
thank you all for your tips and suggestions. My understanding is that there are no new weapons/armor to develop after research (similar to xcom) but mostly depending on alliances with fractions to get them, correct?
Yeah thatās correct. Although Phoenix does use research from factions in its own research tree to make some weapons late in the game. The faction and diplomatic aspect of the game is one of the crucial mechanics so I think its ok the tech is tied into that as well.
