Lol 
At point blank range - easy to kill. But the recoil and tossing of a single-shot sniper rifle is not a thing that can be ignored when shooting to empty the store.
I wrote this a few lines above 
But it depends on the aim depreciation we are talking about of course (removing 10% from effective range capped at 80%).
To be honest, I’m not thinking about realism (I think that PP doesn’t aim for that and that it’s a valid game design choice, one I actually like - I think of it as board game/miniatures with ballistics). So I’m only considering gameplay and making the smallest adjustments possible to it.
It’s clear that there is something wrong with RB at the moment as it allows to one-shot kill the biggest baddies at any distance.
The issue I see with this is that then snipers can’t use the perk at all, which I think goes against a core element of the gameplay of mixing the classes.
Incidentally, I find RB with pistols very useful and not too abusive, for example for shooting after using jetpack, just great in lairs.
I did use rage burst with the pistol once to kill a Triton. It was just the tip that made the scales go from losing multiple soldiers to saving everybody (it triggered panic in most of the enemies).
Real life sniper rifle have 5 or 10 bullets in their clips (with a few exception - from what I read). In order to take less height when they are prone (which doesn’t happen willingly in PP).
I think I will create a new poll topic for RB, with something like the following options:
The options as I see them are:
-
RB fine as it is now
-
RB should be available to automatic weapons only (heavy machine guns, assaults rifles and SMGs) and do a sweep, as it did in one of the previous Backer’s Builds (the player inputs the start point and the end point, which can be as near or as far as desired, and everything in between gets bullet sprayed)
-
Same as 2) but semiautomatic pistols can also do RB, in addition to AR, HMG and SMGs.
-
RB should be available for all the weapons it is currently avaliable, but in single shot weapons (sniper rifle, cannon) reduce the accuracy of each subsequent shot.
-
I propose a different solution!
One thing though: I’m thinking that perhaps for automatic weapons there should also be a reduction in accuracy for each subsequent burst, let’s say so that the second aiming reticle (where the sweep ends) is twice as big as the first. Again, I’m thinking more in terms of gameplay rather than realism: my fear is that without this the cannon and the sniper rifle will be simply replaced by the HMG.
Thoughts?
rage burst as it is now is way too cheap for what it provides…its 5 will, and 1-3 AP depending on the weapon used. provides at the very least 8AP worth of firepower depending on the weapon used and assuming you actually fire with a full magazine. for the pythagoras it will be 15X3=45!! AP worth of firepower. even at 40 pnts of damage per AP, the damage done is astronomical. The deceptor fires at 160!! damage per AP, even if you “only” get 15 AP’s worth of firepower out of the gun when using the current rageburst…its potential is even higher then the 15 round pythagoras.
note that the deceptor is currently a problem when acquired through the strongman perk on a assault/berzerker combo…as it makes for an insanely deadly “shotgun” when using the adrenaline+rapid clearance combo.it may be more vulnerable to armor…but its less vulnerable then shotguns due to its per-bullet shred damage…that increases somewhat if you get damage bonuses (the +30% damage bonus from strongman will increase deceptor shred per bullet from 2 to 3 on top of increasing damage per bullet from 40 to 52…resulting in ~624 dmg+36 shred/AP on the above combo this will kill most pandorans…including scylla and chiron in 3 or less bursts) this may seem completely irrelevant to the topic with regards to rage burst…but it is to show the potential of this specific automatic weapon…if allowed to be used with rage burst as it is now,big enemies would still be very dead, the weapon of choice would just be changed from the sniper to a chaingun
rage burst is a capstone skill, but the numbers are off the chart…meaning that it will have to be radically changed (along with a number of other capstone skills, and certain skill/class interactions) to fall in line. I would change it to something akin to a double tap, allowing you to fire a proficient direct fire weapon…twice at the AP cost of only 1 shot for 4WP. being on the heavy…this is still a considerable amount of firepower.
Yes, that is my concern as well, and to be honest I’m not sure that even a drop in accuracy with each burst would be enough, as it could still be used as a shotgun. It would be better than it is now, as at least it would require closing the distance, but still.
Perhaps double tap is not very enticing because of quickaim (which basically gives the same thing but earlier and better), but how about tripletap with a sweep, with no penalty to accuracy?
How about Rage Burst doing damage to the weapon fired from? Or even to the shooter? =)
Something like 50% integrity of the weapon and 25% HP of the soldier? Will it prevent from spaming this skill and make it a last resort action?
I agree, for example, integrity to decrease by 30HP. Instead of reducing the soldier’s HP, it’s enough to pick up his WP (concentration).
for level 7 is it 8WP?
1AP - 4 bullets (for the period of time of one shot of a pistol)
3AP - 6 shots for bulky weapons
Yes, there is a problem, because you need to show the initial and final dispersion of bullets in advance when aiming. I represent this in 3 circles and the third (color and largest) shows the final spread.
The game can be tough and easy, it all depends on RNG, how the enemy is placed on the map, and what enemies are placed.
I’ve rerolled missions before and had drastically different results, one where it was a hilariously easy joke, then suddenly rerolled and it was a nightmare requiring 20 reloads to get it figured out and beating the RNG gods.
Some people from what I’ve read have had the misfortune of every mission being stupid easy, while others have had all missions being insanely hard (like 5 sirens spawning next to you!)
That’s not true. The Sniper/Heavy would still be able to use RB, they just wouldn’t be able to use a Sniper Rifle to, as you so accurately put it ‘one-shot kill the biggest baddie at any distance’, which is clearly utterly broken.
Instead, they would have to equip an auto-weapon that could use it.
Which is fine for me, as the offset is inaccuracy. I know you can buff up the accuracy of your Heavy - especially if you multi-class with a Sniper, but the game-breaking aspect of Sniper RB as it currently stands is the ability to eg. target the tiny portion of the Scylla peeking over cover on the other side of the board on Turn 1 of a Citadel mission and effectively take her down with 1 shot. Game over, and all you’ve done is activate 1 man, once.
What I meant is that semiautomatic pistols should also be allowed to RB, so that a weapon with which snipers are proficient could also benefit from the perk.
However, since then I have been checking in game and currently RB with pistols is devastating, very accurate and cheap in APs. It’s basically almost as bad as sniper RB.
I think the problem is that with enough buffs to accuracy (from the sniper class) you can still target a tiny part of a Scylla to one shot kill it with a HMG.
So there either has to be substantial accuracy decay during the RB, which would not prevent it from being used as a one-shot kill shotgun in any case (which, granted, is not too bad), or the damage output has to be reduced, the obvious approach there being reducing the number of bullets fired (say, a triple tap).
I don’t think that damage to weapon or soldier is a solution, because RB would still be the optimal choice for one shot killing the biggest baddies.
Agreed - kinda.
TBH, I don’t really care what the fix is, as long as it prevents the ludicrous situation we have at the moment where someone with RB can end a mission on Turn 1, Move 1. Where’s the game in that?
How about just limit how many shots you can put out in a burst? 4-6 would already be pretty deadly.
1 Like
Yea, I suppose so.
The reason I’m so ambivalent is I liked RB the way it used to be. It felt right. It played to the theme and did something that you saw in the movies about bughunting squaddies.
So I like the fact that it empties the magazine, because it feels good and it also inflicts an in-game ammo cost for what is - let’s face it - a ludicrously OP Skill.
Given that it’s supposed to simulate a Heavy going apeshit and swinging his gun around wildly while keeping his finger on the trigger, I wonder if there’s a way for the devs to simply turn off all aiming buffs when you activate the skill - so that it’s always a wild series of shots with a crap aiming reticle no matter when you do it.
I think it’s WP cost should also be prohibitive, given just what a game-breaker it is - like 1 WP per burst left in the clip, and you can only do it if you have the Will (ie the chutzpah) to blast away for that long.
So yea, now that you’ve made me think about it, I clearly do care how the fix is implemented, but my bottom line is that this - along with the associated balancing of the Big Nasties - should be on the top of the dev’s post-Christmas fix-list.
Funnily enough, there is a new mod on Nexus that caps rage burst to 4 shots/bursts (https://www.nexusmods.com/phoenixpoint/mods/33).
It also adds shredding to damage blocked by armor.
Agreed, it’s basically an exploit at the moment. I’m sure the devs are aware of it and have some thoughts on how to fix it. However, I think it’s not so easy for them to address balance issues because of the complexity of the design - the free mixing of different classes without any gating.
BTW, this design philosophy means that probably the devs will not want to limit RB to AWs and keep it available to all direct fire weapons and that they will be reluctant to keep the accuracy buffs out of it.
I would then argue for sweep, substantial accuracy decay and/or reduction of bullets fired, and higher WP requirements, and maybe +1 AP cost.
My bottom line: sweep has to be [back] in.
It’s pretty obvious fix when you think about it. I’d scale the burst according to the weapon, thought. Sniper rifle and AR or pistol are not equal for spraying lead.
I suggested equivalent of 12AP expended which would give you 4-12 shots depending on weapon, I’m not sure how much work it’d be to pull the AP cost of the gun thought.
1 Like