Really want to like this game but can't

Phoenix Point Game Feedback
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There are so many balance issues. For example, in all the hours I’ve played of the backer builds and the released game I’ve never come across a weapon upgrade. There have been alternative weapons at the same level as the starting weapons but never an upgrade. However, the enemies are getting more and more armour, gun upgrades and new deadly units. Not to mention they can have 30 odd units on a map compared to your maximum of 8 (but in reality 6, because you have to unlock and build the blimp and it can’t even do explorations).

Honestly, backer build 5 was better than the release version because at least with the overpowered Dash, Quick Aim and that consecutive kills give +2AP combo you could actually kill all 30 enemies in a single turn. Though, pretty sure even if they’d left the costs the same it would still be impossible because they seem to have buffed enemy health and armour so that even a point blank shotgun rarely one-shots.

Vehicles are just terrible. Never worth 3 slots because they’re not that powerful, have limited ammo and can’t traverse most of the maps I’ve tried them on.

The overworld is more fun but still has some issues. It’s a bit too random mostly. Quests can appear anywhere, which means if you’re unlucky like me then you get your first faction quests spawning on the other side of the world. Without any faction bases to jump between (because you’ve not completed the first quest to earn that yet) you have to map the way yourself using satellite up-links, which are exceptionally slow.
It’s also down to luck where and when you find other phoenix bases. Can really ruin a game if you just can’t find a second base.

Also bugs. So many bugs. Cover is useless because it doesn’t let you shoot past it. Crashes every now and again. Grenades going off as you select them.

All in all, Phoenix Point has the groundwork for a really enjoyable game. It’s just building a really crap, shabby game on top of it’s solid core mechanics.
To any devs that see this: Sorry for the harsh words, but you’ve got everything you need to make a good, fun game and it’s frustrating that you’ve failed to get the balance right. I get the feeling it’s down to a clash of artistic vision and game balance. Sure, you want the Pandora virus to feel like a never ending tide of enemies that seem unbeatable, but by swarming the player with far superior enemies they’re either going to think the game is being unfair and quit out of frustration or end up bored by the needlessly long missions where they’re forced to play it safe because a single volley could cost them their best soldier.

(Which is another point I missed above. Every mission is all or nothing. Losing an experience soldier sets you back very far, never mind something like a team wipe. Wouldn’t be that bad if the missions felt fair but when you’re having to fend off overwhelming numbers EVERY SINGLE TIME,it’s basically a matter of time until you lose some of your best guys. No-one in their right mind would play this RNG mess on Iron man mode.)

Anyway, really hoping to see some improvement. Also, maybe up the cap on posts users can create here. Found more than 5 bugs but can’t report the 6th because of the 5 post per day limit.

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You can use 2x 6 slot vehicle, put them in the same mission node, then launch the mission. You’ll then be able to select 8 soldier, from 2 dropships, for a mission, so not even need to unlock the slowloris of anu :slight_smile:

Mechanical Vehicles are meh, i must agree. YOu’ll have “biological” counterpart later on, that will alone wreck everything without even needing amo :')

On the main map (where time can flow) you have, on the top left, your mission objectives. One of them is ever the closest phoenix base aproximative location from your current ones :slight_smile: So you just have to drop an area scan on the designated region and explore the nodes that spawn for a guaranted base :slight_smile:

Haven’t personaly endured a single crash in a little more than 30 hours but i see a lot of people reporting them and i’m confident that the till will try to adress them soon :o

As of the covers, yup, it’s sometimes a real pain, but note it happen only with heavy weapons (like the canon or gatling) and it’s intended (it’s even oon the game loading tips :p) as the soldier have to keep the weapon low cause of his weight, the weapon is below the lower cover area. Heavy guns have to be shot from wall sides rather than behind mid cover ^^

Please note i’m not posting this in a “this game is perfect mood” it does have a lot of issues, but i just want to give some tips about what sound to be an issue for you that actualy have ingame solutions. (that are sometimes far to be evident, especialy the double dropship combo ^^)

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Thanks for your detailed reply offering advice. I appreciate it even though it doesn’t really help with most of my grievances.

Two vehicles is a lot to ask. Not only in the resource cost of building them but also in that you can’t have 2 separate teams on the move. Even then it’s still 8 vs 30, rather than 6 vs 30.

No idea about future vehicles. Lets hope I make it to that stage in the game before I give up out of frustration with all the terrible balance choices I come across and all the bugs that compound the already existing issues.

Didn’t realise there was a hint as to where to find the next phoenix base. That’s really helpful, glad they added that. That does help solve that issue.

As for the cover. Nah, it’s actually all weapons at the moment. In backer build 5 heavy weapons couldn’t aim above barriers because they were held waist height and that didn’t bother me at all because it made sense. Characters with heavy weapons would still lean out from cover though, as would the rest of your units. However, it seems they rarely do this now. Whether it’s heavy weapons, assault rifles, snipers or shotguns, my units will refuse to aim as though they were leaning out and instead face the wall they’re covered by. Basically means I have to stand in the open to shoot then use some action points to get back into cover afterwards. Mostly it’s a hassle when you can reach a good piece of cover but don’t have half an action point to spend moving out and back in for a shot. Or when you dash to a piece of cover and want to do two shots.
If you’re not getting that issue then consider yourself lucky, haha.

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I frequently have to “waste” an ap for moving in / out of cover and shoot even when soldier should do a little step on the corner “for free” yep, it’s anoying i must admit :’)

But i have never noticed issue with low covers (may probably be cause i almost never use them as i prefer a good and big and solid and full of opacity big wall xD) so it’s sad you experiencing it so much that it became an issue haha x)

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Yeah, I’ve actually started using low cover almost exclusively. It’s actually much better than high cover I think. For one, it doesn’t have the bug and your guys will shoot over it. For two, it causes your guys to crouch which is severely underrated when there are so many obstacles that aren’t considered ‘cover’ but will definitely cover you if you’re crouching. Especially if you can find low cover next to high cover, so that you can have both the crouch and the high cover. I find that most enemies can still hit you pretty easily when you’re in high cover just by moving around you slightly.

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Yep it depend of low cover, sometime it’s a good idea, i just don’t like the fact thei’re (most of the time) easier to destroy. They usualy protect from one or two shot then broke, and you end up with a soldier that wake up in the middle of nowhere with 4 ennemy aiming at him xD

Also, i may be wrong on this but i feel like when ennemy do break visual with you (behind a high cover) he tend to run at you, frequently depleting his ap and being left staring at you harmlessly. x)

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The AI is weird. It seems to behave pretty differently for everyone, haha. For me they seem to be deterred from shooting just because you’re in cover. Though they will still use grenades if they have them. I find high cover breaks pretty easily too though. There have been a lot of occasions where I’ve shot an enemy through a wall and only lost 1-2 bullets out of a 6 shot burst.

Honestly though, it’s pretty hard to avoid getting shot in the release version. In earlier versions you could safely take care of enemies and hide behind cover without getting destroyed but now every second enemy has return fire (deadly with the upgraded 50 damage per shot machine guns) and double the health pool so that they’re guaranteed to take a few hits.

Which reminds me of another thing. My soldiers, whenever they return fire, seem to aim for the most armoured part. Usually the torso. Like, the enemy is right in front of you, just shoot him in the head!

Would probably be a lot better if they let you aim your own return fire. Maybe within a limited cone so you can’t veer off and shoot someone that didn’t shoot at you, haha.

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Yep return fire had became a threat compared to baker build 3 to 5. You can relatively safely “disarm” the situation by cutting the crab arm that have the gatling in (a quick sniper shot do the trick most of the time).

Also, As long as you shoot from more than 50% of enemy detection range distance (+ / - your stealth soldier bonus), he won’t reply fire. So avoid shootgunning a gatling crab unless you’re certain to one shot him, but burst him from afar or snipe him and you’re all safe :stuck_out_tongue:

For soldier return fire i can’t agree more x) I, somehow, understant the fact we can’t control it manualy, it’s suposed to be like a reflex shot, not really a thinked - aimed shot. So the soldier aim at the bigger part, having the best chance to “hit” regardless the hit will do damage xD

Be rassured, this issue disapear once you unlock the armor penetrating gear xD

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Man, my other issue is that I don’t have enough snipers I think. I’ve got one on one team but you never recruit snipers. Might have to multi-class a guy into sniper for my other team too. Been trying to take out their arms but they’ve just gotten the 20 armour upgrade versions with 70 health. Unfortunately that means I can’t take them out with any assault rifles because even a shot where all 6 bullets land they still survive and return fire with their stupidly OP guns. Besides that the arms are really pretty thin targets too. Throw in a shield and a carapiece and yeah, you’re not going to be taking out any arms.

Honestly, I wouldn’t mind enemy return fire so much if they didn’t have OP guns. 50 a shot with 6 shots a burst AND with armour stripping!? It’s just stupid. If my soldiers had guns like that then I’d probably be able to coast through missions just dumb-firing at every enemy.

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haha yes, gatling are pretty op, while fun to use once you unlock them. I don’t know if it’s cause i love long range gameplay but i tend to have 2 sniper (either main or subclass) on every 8 unit squad, and that do the trick with a lot of tricky situation.

A sniper accurate shot costing 2 ap is enough to do 100 damage to a thing arm and the firing retickle is small enough to guarantee a shot on the arm.

Little tips if that can help;
Time “stop” when you zoom for firing. If enemy have a position that don’t fit you, zoom out for returning in sky view, and you’ll notice enemy return to his idle animation. Sometime (especialy for crabmen) the arm that have the gatling move up and down as they breath, and frequently pass up the shield. Just have to time good the zoom to have a better angle at it. Work for every ennemy but especialy usefull for crabs and destroying the cameleon back ona guy that face you (as is idle animation sometime make him crouch and expose his back :p)

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Hmm, yeah. Should get a couple more snipers. Honestly, I think I have some units that are already half sniper because I like the quick aim skill. So I just need to build a couple more sniper rifles.

Oh yeah, I know that trick. It’s pretty useful but you have to be careful because time doesn’t fully stop, just slows down a whole load. I think once you start firing it actually goes a little faster too. Been a few times where I selected an unmissable shot (outer circle completely covers target) but then it’s missed every round or half the rounds because the enemy has moved slightly or their ‘getting hit’ animation causes them to move out the way.

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yep this ennemy moving at the shooting moment happen to me too from time to time. It seeeeeem the faster you do the zoom - aim - shot thing, the less they move, but it may just be a false idea :o2:

And yep, while it’s less true later on, on the early game the big damage output of a sniper ammo is really life saving as it’s, with canon, the only weapon able to go “through” armor with some damage.

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Laser sniper rifle I unlock was a straight up upgrade: with better damage, accuracy, ammo capacity. Unless I am missing something.

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Yeah, you’re right. I realised this too. It seems the laser stuff is basically just a slightly more accurate version of the base gear. I’ve been using it pretty much exclusively because of that.

Came across my first Scylla though… 40-80 armour on every part with HP over 1250. No idea how I’m supposed to beat that… I’ve got nothing that can penetrate or shred armour yet. I mean, I’ve got some grenades and a heavy gatling that ‘shreds’. Except it only shreds 2 per shot. So it’s essentially useless because of it’s massive accuracy penalties. Maybe I could use it if it had the accuracy of a sniper rifle and I could select a part to remove armour from.

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Yep, working around armor is hard on the earliest stage. Their is like a “shell curve” as i call it, where the game goes from "all is fine, ennemy have between 0 - 10 armor per part to a part of two with 40, then a big jump and sudendly, tadam, all ennemy have 30 armor at minimum and you end up being fuc*ed up if you only use assault rifle doing 30 damage for exemple.

You have a lot of way to remove armor even on early game but some are more efficient than other.

1- Canon, but it’s about 10 armor per hit so yeah? not ultra efficient.
2- Explosives (grenades, grenade launchers) Far more uneven as it may wreck 20 armor to a single part or 1 - 2 point to severall, making it “less” effective at armor shreding.
3- Perks, while not “so” early game, but technicaly doesn’t require particular gear, among them,
A - sniper (yep, them again, sorry) at level 6 have a perk doing that when a sniper destroy a part, it wipe the armor of it in the process, opening the ennemy flesh to the rest of the team.
B - all soldier classes have a chance to have a bonus doing 1 shred damage per pellet that hit, making it very “ok” with a shotgun for exemple. (it’s not a class specific perk and only have a chance to proc, so not an effective way to rely on)
4- Melee. Having an anu that drop a melee weapon (or better, an anu melee soldier) is ok on early, they have a -50 armor per hit perk that can help a lot. And their two “starter” weapons are cool. A melee weapon doing 100 armor ignoring 80 armor, and shreding 50 using the perk. While his sidearm is usualy a one handed gun doing 100 damage at close range.
5- New jericho weaponry. Every of them. You can (should) recruit one or steal them, or attack them, whatever, for unlocking their gear. In an objective of pure killing spree, jericho are the guys to have on your side. Most (if not all) their weapons are about igoring armor (perforations stat), up to 50 for some weapons, making you able to “almost ignore” this aprt of gameplay for a while while you grind for better stuff.

As a bonus info for high hp ennemy,

Their is a not evident mechanic on some ennemies, that is the hp removal from a disabled limb;

2019-12-06 14_58_02-Phoenix Point
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On top of the ennemy max life (1 on screen)

When you aim a part, you have the part HP (2 on screen), nothing new here.

But on the part disabling effect, you sometime have a “hp removal when destroyed” that is an additional hp removal.

on the screen i shot with a weapon doing 5 x 20 damage (and ignoring 20 armor so let’s say the part doesn’t have armor for the example).
So i should do 100 damage if i hit the part with all shots. But the -40 hp removal in 3rd bubble is a bonus.

As the part have 60 hp by itself, it will be destroyed when taking 100 damage, and thberefor aply this -40 in addition to the ennemy life.

Actually doing 140 damage to the enemy total life. (well, theoricaly doing 100 damage and reducing his max hp by 40 but all in all it’s the same).

While it’s not much on this triton, some big hp ennemies have part that have an incredible amount of hp removal.

Some nest enemy for exemple, can have 1000 hp with a part having 300 hp on it and removing 500 max hp when distroyed, effectively doing 800 damage at the cost of 300 “real” burst.

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It is about Mutogs from Disciples. :slight_smile:

And those should be enough unless Scylla has ranged weapons. :slight_smile: 12x2 shred is 24 armor shred in one burst (from random body parts but still quite lot). Grenades also help taking 3 armor from many parts simultaneously (so at least 12 in one blast). And of course sniper and cannon should do damage to Scylla. It is lowered by 50 or 60 armor so each attack will do only like 50 to 130 damage but still you can beat her down in like 7 turns.

Tips from @Lemdoran are useful when you have more tech on your side. :slight_smile:

Be aware that it is not so useful info. You remove max HP from overall pool not from current HP. So let say that enemy has 200 HP max, his arm has 50 HP and disabling it removes 40 HP from general pool. You shoot at him in his arm doing 4x20=80 damage. His HP drops from 200 do 120. Arm has 0 HP and is disabled and his max HP change from 200 to 160. So he is 120/160 HP monster instead of 120/200. You have not done 40 damage more. :slight_smile: This information is only useful when HP granted to main pool is higher than HP of body part. But it is rarely the case.

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Hehe yep, thanks to clarify it, english isn’t even easy to write for me , it’s my 4th language xD
It’s definetly usefull on big enemy yes, while not on the one i showed in example but as i’m at work i just loaded a quick mission save for showing purpose, not looking for a nest enemy for exemple, where it will be more impactant :stuck_out_tongue: the big nutshell you have in base destruciton for exemple, is a cool target to experiment it but i’m pretty sure op isn’t there yet so i prefered not to spoil too much :p)

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… Beat it down in 7 turns? Are my guys suppose to be able to survive getting shot by twin blasters for 7 turns? I can assure you that they’ve had even less development in terms of armour and health than in weapons.
Not only that but the fact that armour makes all but 2 classes useless is terrible. Especially when the majority of teams are made up of assault soldiers.
Plus, you’d have to be at point blank range for the gatling heavy gun to do any decent armour shredding, and even then it’s still not worth getting in close. Grenades are trash. Do they still cost 40 materials per grenade to make? They’re definitely not worth that. They’re barely even worth the inventory space and added weight in the first place.

I mean, this is the kind of game where you can’t afford to lose soldiers. Yet it puts you up against overwhelming enemies like the scylla without any kind of weapon upgrades or shredding capabilities.

Honestly, I think I’m going to give up on this game. At least until there are some more DLCs out. I keep getting frustrated by the terrible design choices and it prevents it from being fun to play. It’s even worse that I can’t even bring up all my issues as feedback because there’s a limit to the amount of posts you can make per day. It’s only 5! I’ve already posted 5 yesterday and today because there are so many issues.

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What you mean by 5 post limit? 5 threads or 5 posts? If former then describe 2 issues in 1 thread. :slight_smile: Btw do you really need to create next threads, instead of writing in existing ones? I suppose that someone already mentioned something that bothers you.

With blasters it is whole different story. :wink: Then you need more advanced weapons from New Jericho and Phoenix Project. You need paralyze her and War Cry her. :slight_smile: The best shotgun and acid handgun from Disciples also can come in handy.

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5 threads. Surprisingly I’ve not been seeing posts about the issues I’ve been experiencing. Not any recent ones anyway. I don’t really want them mixed up with threads about past backer builds either since they might just get written off as past problems.

And yet the first one I’ve found has blasters. Maybe I’ll be able to deal with it later. Maybe I’ll not be able to help any settlements and my standing with the factions won’t improve meaning I can’t get their research peacefully, meaning I can’t fight the things that are preventing me from getting the weapons I need to fight the things!
It’s bad design. It’s unfair to the player and it undermines all the good systems and gameplay this game would otherwise have.

It’s not just scylla’s either. It’s all the minions that show up with them. Pretty sure that map I was on had a siren and a chiron as well.

Oh, and chirons have started getting straight up mortars rather than the delayed worm versions. So now they can just wipe my team from across the map. BALANCE!
Ugh, I’m honestly so frustrated with this game. I really, really want to like it, but the balance is just terrible. It doesn’t even come down to it just being a difficult game, because it gives you problems you can’t have the solution to yet.

I also feel like it’s reasonable to be annoyed with the developers for messing up the balance. I mean, they’ve had an open beta with all the different backer builds since the game was announced. It’s not like they didn’t have time to gather feedback and fix the balance.

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