Very frequently guns get destroyed and the materials and time taken to replace them outweighs the income (from missions only).
Also when you recruit members from other factions I cannot see how to replace their damaged gear or build new ammo.
The manufacture & economy rates are out of balance - in my opinion.
Maybe I’m not far enough into the game to see it due to other bugs that keep forcing me to restart.
in order to manufacture faction equipment, you need the research for it from the faction. If you get to 50 reputation with a faction, you’ll get all the research projects that faction has completed
The problem with this logic (in the game) is that you ALREADY have the item in your hands when they come. So the logic would dictate you should not need to (invent/research) the item twice! If it comes with the recruit you should get it, end of! They would not send their man into this without the right tools! OR at the very least if you can recruit him/her then you should not have to wait till you have 50 rep to research it, your already working with them, simple logic…
I (kinda) get your logic, but in game terms this then becomes a ‘cheap’ way of gaining new tech without researching it. Want a Synedrion sniper rifle? Hire a Synedrion Sniper. Also, just because your new recruit has a Gauss weapon, doesn’t mean you have the knowledge-base to reverse-engineer it immediately. You need to get the specs and tolerances from the NJ engineers to stop a prototype blowing up in your face.
Personally, I’m ok with the system as it is - I’m much more uncomfortable with new recruits being willing to raid their old faction immediately than I am with them holding tech I can’t access. But if it’s a Thing, there are 2 obvious solutions to it:
People greatly underestimate just how important the Technical Data Package is for a firearm. The specifications and, critically, the tolerances can make or break a gun. Not having the tolerances for measurements means that sometimes you literally cannot recreate something.
(This is why you see so few recreations of certain guns despite a forgery being worth hundreds of thousands of dollars despite being a couple hundred dollars in materials and labour, amongst other things.)
Improper tolerances can also cost lives in war. During WW1, the Canadian Expeditionary Forces were issued two types of .303 British ammo, one from the Canadian supplier, one from a British one. The CEF’s Ross Rifles were spec’d and toleranced for the Canadian Ammo. The British Ammo jammed and failed in the Ross Rifles but not the British Lee-Enfields. The Lee-Enfield was designed to handle much greater off-spec and out-of-tolerance ammo.
The Canadian supplier made the ammo to the specs and tolerances that .303 British round specified in the TDP. The British supplier didn’t. The Canadian supplier made bullets for a living. The British supplier made cars, I think.
a soldier often shows up to assignments with a load of gear from the armory he was assigned and trained to use. But out in the field he would have no clue how to build it , on assignment even if someone he was working for/ with was given his gear they would also not be able to just look at it and be able to start manufacturing it .
The ammo thing maybe i could see since ammo is more generic , but in this game the faction use different types of ammo , at least the syn do with their energy weapons and no amount of reverse engineering is going to give anyone the ability to make a guy just from possessing one without massive amount of research - even then more likely to get tons wrong even from reverse engineering something so in game that would mean the research would have to take 10x longer then them providing it to use at 50% or for us to research from what they already know.
knowing how to use an item your provided with and know how to make more of weapons or even the special ammo for it are worlds apart .
No, you get the item, not the knowledge.
It would be fairer to:
a) Have a tech research boost since you have the item
b) It enables you to start your own research, as in old Xcom
I don’t mind so much that you cannot manufacture their gear. What the big problem for me is, Why can I not hire people from MY organization? Why do I have to wait for standings with these other factions, and then spend a crazy amount of mats to hire them? Why is my base only set up for soldiers? Where is my support staff? my Scientists? my Engineers? My living space seems to only have room for my soldiers… this makes no sense at all. I should have a full staff of everyone else, to do everything else!
To be frank, that’s true in all of these games.
True, in XCOM2, you get avatars for the scientists & Engineers on your ship, but in reality they’re just abstractions. All support staff in these games are simply numbers assigned to help you equip and maintain your combat teams, which are the only fully realised characters in the game.
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Because the world’s gone to hell in a handcart and there’s nobody left in your organisation. The first briefing you get tells you that the base is being run by AI, and you’ll need to find more bases to put PP back together again.
The only source of manpower you’ve got is the other factions, if they’ll deal with you.
That’s what I was thinking as I started reading the thread. Makes sense that a prototype would help reduce your research time, but you’ll still need the blueprint.
So are you a band of random survivors who stumbled upon Phoenix base, or an awakened Phoenix cell?
I am not very familiar with the lore, but for some reason I thought our cell is dehibernating. If that was a case, it might be nice to have some limited amount “spare” soldiers whom we can awaken by investing a smaller amount of resources + time. Some bases might have a small supply of extra soldiers.
I would rather have an easier access to soldiers, and them have a higher chance of dying - I don’t think that was the intention though.
Less then 2 weeks left 
The initial briefing tells you that you are the last known active PP base. Your base has been kept ticking over by its internal AI, which has now woken you up for some unexplained reason, but you are the only personnel there and the base runs on automatic.
There may be other functioning PP bases out there, but the system has lost contact and you’ll have to go looking for them to put PP back together again.
That’s how you start.
The whole premise of the game is that you are a lone cell of survivors of some ultra-secret organisation who awake to find yourselves in a post-apocalyptic world that has collapsed. There will always be a tiny number of you, and your only chance of increasing those numbers is by finding other bases or persuading soldiers from neighbouring Havens to join your cause.
So easy access to soldiers was never on the cards in this game.
But then you’re actively saving the world, and other factions are floundering, so, if not at the start of the game then certainly later on, you should have potential recruits flooding to your door.
In the Old World, with instant communication woldwide, yes.
Not now. Not any more. We’re back to the Dark Ages, where it takes months for news to filter across the country and years for people to react to it. In your local area, you will earn some fame or notoriety as a Warlord, and start recruiting the local thugs as Hearth Companions, but most of them will be in it for what they can get - the price of recruits is a return to the Gift Giving culture of the post-Roman Saxons.
Most fighters already have a good life with firm roots in the local Havens. Why would they abandon that for a small bunch of Ronin who suddenly appear out of the blue and start throwing their weight around? Especially since the Haven Warlords are eyeing us suspiciously to see if we’re a threat or a potential ally.
We’re just picking up the thugs, the misfits and the idealists who don’t fit in.
Instead of 2. i would make it:
2. You need to go and trade to respective faction for ammo (and/or other stuff).
Thematically correct, but a complete pain in the ass in terms of gameplay. I already find trawiling the Havens for the right kind of recruit as tedious as the old ‘scan planets’ routine in Mass Effect - so much so that I’m about to post a Thread about it.
Personally, I’d rather sacrifice a fraction of theme for more streamlined gameplay.
Not really, we’ve got advanced weaponry and building materials, and we’ve got radar, it’s not altogether unlike that we’ve still got the means to communicate via satellite, but even without that people would just need to look up as we’re flying over them, or witness how effective we are when coming to the rescue of their haven.
At the start of the game this is true, but the game has a relationship system that can lead to us becoming actual allies with those Havens, at which point the number of available recruits should increase to reflect that allied status.
I agree with your second point - but that just means that the number of troops available in bases that we’re allied to should be a little more common. Even then, manpower remains at a premium. Until hey’re convinced that we are Earth’s last hope for salvation, no Warlord in that situation is ever going to willingly part with a soldier who wants to be there. We will only ever get the odd ones out.
As to your first point, it’s all about the means of communication and who controls it. I think we know what the answer to that is in the case of NJ and Anu. So Synedrion is the only Faction where you can make a case for news of this weird group of 8 called Phoenix Point spreading quickly enough through the population for what we’re doing to make a blind bit of difference to their attitude in the short timescale we are playing in.
But there are means of global communication. They are just not guaranteed to be delivered. Synedrion have some kind of intranet, NJ have long range radio, Disciples have… well their mutation.