Earlier I was inching my squad through the map, had a guy in full cover, only missing one HP. A crabman appeared at the edge of his visibility, and in the same turn shot a grenade that destroyed his cover, disabled his torso, left arm, left leg, weapon, and caused bleeding. The soldier bled out at the start of the next turn.
I don’t know how I feel about that. Are grenades supposed to be that lethal? Is that just the nature of the beast in Phoenix Point? Can I expect many soldiers to die like that on a mission, and if we fail the mission because of a string of such deaths, will my campaign be crippled?
I’m just not sure how I feel about being able to damage weapons and cripple limbs so easily. Even though it goes both ways, I’m not convinced it’s going to make the game more exciting to play. Disabling limbs/weapons is one of those things where it’s the smart way to play, but it’s not as engaging, and definitely not as fun when it happens to your own soldiers. For a game that seems to focus heavily on combat, I just wonder what it’s going to do to levels of satisfaction if half the participating soldiers/mutants are turned into useless torsos, or if all I’m ever doing is aiming for arms, legs, and weapons instead of killer head shots.
Can limbs be healed on mission? Will we be able to carry soldiers to safety? If weapons get destroyed, will there be soldier abilities to repair weapons on the fly, or is the only solution finding an extra gun in a crate? I’m worried that the limb/weapon destruction is going to bog the game down.
I wanna close with some things you’ve absolutely nailed so far, in my opinion: The soundtrack. Level design. Horror atmosphere (including mutant noises). Sound effects (was on the fence with the gun sounds but I love them). Guns and armor look badass. I’m also super excited to see the full game with all the planned features incorporated!
Find topic about game vs realism or something like that. There is huge discussion about crippled limbs, weapon destruction, headshots, armour penetration etc. I think that developers have their own vision for all of that and we just need to wait for next build to actually see whats on their minds.
And my comment. You were extremely unlucky with that grenade. My soldiers usually loose 2 points of armor, 3 hp and maybe have something crippled (or not).
Lets hope that bleeding system will change a bit to give a player (and mutants) chance to react. We could use medkit and maybe some of them (maybe bosses like queen) could just reduce and eventually stop bleeding in 2 or 3 turns.
It will be possible to heal crippled body parts with technician class, which maybe will be introduced in next build.
And lets hope that weapons will be only damaged and not destroyed completely (at least not with regular ballistic fire).
Yeah. I don’t hate the system by any means. It’s a breath of fresh air from Xcom. But it definitely needs work, maybe some toning down, and some methods for managing limbs and damaged/broken weapons.
Yeah. that’s discussed in the above-mentioned topic. I wouldn’t worry about Aplha values for now though, as this can and will be tweaked. The discussion is more about the general logic of limb damage.
One thing I don’t think we discussed is weapon damage though? Is it meant to be permanent, just for the mission, “needs to be repaired at base and will take X days”?
It doesn’t matter much for basic weapons, but once you progress up the tech tree and start manufacturing stuff, getting your brand new prototype uber weapon blown off your hand could hurt!
I think a way it might be able to work is that when, say, a high tech plasma gun gets destroyed, it should drop maybe 75% of its components that can still be used, which would be added to the mission salvage etc. This would mean that guns don’t get totally destroyed but there is also not simply a “give it time and the gun magically appears again”. You might feel lucky that the main power core is not destroyed in one situation as they are expensive/rare, however you still would have equipment loss of some components needed to rebuild the gun again
Everyone hates having their own soldiers’ limbs crippled.
Myself, I think the current system could be kept as it is and made more manageable, simply by virtue of being able to choose everyone’s equipment loadouts. That way, I could make sure that everyone has a side-arm and a few grenades, thus making them still useful with one arm.
Also, there is supposed to be an upcoming “Technician” class who can fix up limbs in the battlefield. Presumably they use WW3-era tourniquets, painkillers, and medical braces.
EDIT: The ability to have one soldier throw one item to another, as in OG-COM, would also help matters - soldiers could swap ammo clips and grenades and so on from a distance.
For the record, Long War 1 has equipment damage and it’s manageable. It’s mostly an issue when you reach a new tier and haven’t had time to stock up on the new stuff, and for MEC suits, that are super expensive.
To be fair, the equipment damage in Long War 1 didn’t matter until after the mission was complete. You didn’t have guns getting destroyed in your soldiers’ hands mid-mission.
Ehmmm, yeah. Last time I checked grenades were very lethal.
Now, remember there are a lot of mechanics that haven’t been implemented yet. First, yeah, you will be able to fix limbs mid-mission. The technician is the one that does that, but it wasn’t finished by the time the demo launched and will probably be added in a future update. Guns? If your gun gets broken you will probably need to find another one, but I’m sure you’ll be able to bring back up guns in your APC or helicopter like in OG-XCOM.
Ok. I need to just keep in mind that this is Phoenix Point and not FiraXCOM. Different mechanics involved. I can’t wait to send a 16-man raid into enemy territory.
I think the main point is that you CAN bring 16 soldiers, not that you should. More soldiers means more difficulty being stealthy, higher likelihood of being revealed, and also that if the mission goes horribly wrong you’re less likely to have enough soldiers to continue. In addition, as they said, many variables will make taking 16 soldiers very difficult… Fatigue, damage, recovery, insanity, actual supply of available weapons and ammo. Do you have 60 clips worth of ammo to make sure every soldier has a strong supply of bullets? Do you have enough armor? Etc etc.
I think that developers have their own vision for all of that and we just need to wait for next build to actually see whats on their minds.
It’s going to epic.