Ima fighting hard not to post here, to the batcave! 
If you had played X-Com 3: Apocallypse you have probably found some familiar elements in Phoenix Point. I am absolutely in love with both games. To be honest, they both look sort of unfinished at the moment. Though in case of Phoenix Point there is hope 
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PP reminds me of apocalypse and aftershock, I really liked both games and I don’t have a problem that PP has some of the elements in it (apart from the original, have any of the ones after really been 100% original…).
To me though, PP is trying to do a lot of things. For example soldiers and bases.
PP is trying to give you the feeling of being in charge of a word spanning organisation (multiple bases) with the manpower to go with it (each base can be manned with soldiers and you will need quit a few).
It’s also trying to make us bother about our soldiers, spending skill points, career and random skills (always a buzz to get that skills that makes a good combo possible, the infiltrator-heavy with the sniper specialization).
They both sound good until you realize that it’s a lot to keep track of and at the moment it is a real pain to organise all this. The soldier screen is useless once you have a lot of soldiers as it’s juts a big list (granted, ordered per base).
To keep track and organise a lot of potentially unique soldiers needs a UI that can manage the job. At the moment I don’t think can, at least not efficiently.
A big list can work for certain situations, for example if all you have to do it click ‘transfer to’ and the transfer is taken case of with no more input from the player. For other things a base based list of transport based list would be nice.
Also, why cannot I not reload vehicle weapons…??
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What’s funny is how contrasting some of these threads are.
Person A) This is ridiculously hard, takes way too much to do anything all my stuff dies so fast compared to the enemy.
Person B) This is ridiculously easy, I can end most maps on the first turn. No enemy turn, not even really a game. Why not give me an “I Win Button” and just skip to the end?
I think Person A can learn a lot from Person B, and that Person B has a good point.
This game has 10x more strategy in it than Xcom2. Unlike Xcom2, we’re not using artificial systems like cover and percentages to determine everything. The game doesn’t revolve around ensuring 100% or close to. Cover doesn’t reduce percent or increase percent. No, this is a game where you have to consider what can be seen from any position, and position yourself strategically to control your enemies’ behavior to your advantage. Sometimes objects are on the map that distract them, or causing you to race against time - forcing a mixture of strategies simultaneously (or cheese). Lure your enemies into traps by baiting them into a building, then entering that building with a shotgun and cleaning it out. Or throwing grenades from behind a wall so that Return Fire doesn’t hit you, then moving back to your position and entering overwatch since you’re not restricted to simply two actions per turn.
Can’t kill an enemy? Can you blow off his arm and will THAT prevent him from shooting you? Yes? Do that then.
Not just standing at cover points in overwatch cones.
This game is so much better … in my opinion. I mean the UI is kind of garbage and there’s some unfinished content and more confusing oversights that plagues this game, but I still think it’s far better. Maybe all of the years playing Xcom 2 really burned me out, but there is now zero desire to go back to that game even with this one’s flaws.
That would be so overpowered and unnecessary. 50% of the time the vehicle doesn’t even fire the 4th shot at any particularly juicy targets and by that turn the missions already coming to an end. On the harder missions it’s better to not take a vehicle. I think it’s good they have their purpose in small missions and lack of usefulness in hard missions, so you can split your troops into multiple aircraft+vehicles to tackle a variety of easy raids/defenses/scavenging missions early on before recalling them to group together to do a nest/lair.
Edit: Turns out Scarabs are pretty useful in Nests, Lairs and Citadels as well… these things are amazing distractions and 100% expendable. Had one Scarab and 1 turret waste about 6 of the enemies’ turns distracting an entire half of the map in a Lair while my 4-man team moved down the other half towards the Spawnery. Had another Scarab bait the Scylla out from behind the throne in the Citadel so I could kill it without worry by turn two. Had a Scarab race a small team equipped with pistols and a cannon through a nest. Vehicles are amazing in this game.
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I feel the game was rushed. It feels not done. Balance is a key issue IMHO. Not hard really but the bullet sponge effect is there.
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I think it’d be fine if restricted to needing a technician to do it. It’d make vehicle supported small teams much more viable.
Oh it’s already viable. I use 4 Scarabs on 4 teams throughout the campaign on Legend difficulty each time. Favorite thing in the game. There’s been a few times where I’ve run out of ammo and either just retreated it because it wasn’t needed anymore or just continued to use it as a troop transport for drive-by’s. 90% of the missions I continue to use it for, but never on the harder story missions or lairs/nests unless absolutely necessary.
That being said, as for the Technician turret control, its so you can move and fire on the same turn I’m pretty sure. I’ve never done that yet so I’m not too sure how powerful it can be when properly utilized, but as it is I think the Scarab at least is pretty powerful as a multi-tool. The Armadillo is decent for late game troop transporting, once enemies begin fielding weapons that would destroy the Scarab if it continued to try to field that role (and I imagine it works well with a Technician remote controlling it for a drive-in-and-out kill here or there), and the Aspida… I don’t know how to make use of the Aspida to be honest. It’s a distraction if anything with how fast it can move, and the occasional deadly paralyze I guess. I’ve only used it a few times and need to play with it more.
I couldn’t figure out the Aspida during BB runs either.
The Armadillo is a better cannon fodder, more mobile, weaker attacks but more and suiting better to technician skill. For sure RF needs be managed. But it is better scout, and better moving wall.
Mutog need a serious rework, they heal too slowly, they don’t worth the 3 slots, not even 2, the only Mutog vaguely useful is the one you buy, none of those you build. Only usage is worms eater, scout move and back, weak moving wall with unclear los blocking. Also it’s cheap to get more Mutogs so have them die is minor, but the slow healing and number of slots make it unacceptable.
The point of vehicle is to setup faster more teams, but later it’s more to setup faster double planes teams. But it’s objectively not that good to have a lot of teams because of global skill points. So they can help setup faster a short amount of team, and then become pointless but for some mission types and with two planes. They do a good job for Havens, Nests, Scavenging if Scavenging wasn’t sort of pointless, most special missions, Ambush.
I found an incredibly frustrating mid-game point where my weaponry was utterly inadequate - the Pandorans had armoured up like crazy, but I hadn’t been able to unlock the advanced NJ / Syn weaponry. There’s at least one comment from me on these forums expressing my extreme frustration when I hit this point. But once I persevered (i.e. sat around whilst the Pandorans trashed loads of havens) and got the advanced stuff, it all went back to manageable.
I certainly think the fact that Pandoran HP, damage and armour just ramps up to enhance difficulty is a little disappointing, but then it’s what most other games out there do as well so no particular reason to criticise.
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I think there is good reason to criticise. This game was sold on the premise that Pandoran evolution was somehow superior to the standard ‘make the baddies tougher’ difficulty curve of these games - but instead we got the worst kind of ‘make the baddies tougher’ in the box - no new enemies, no variety, just same old same old with more damage and HP.
See my comments on various other threads for more detail.
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I don’t see Agema comment about that but about difficulty management.
Otherwise your comment is rude, unfair for the reality of the game. What’s also used to increase difficulty:
- Skills, Archon are the most typical example, but Scylla have it too, and a bit Siren. It’s less obvious for Tritons that feel more like variations for the skills.
- Equipments and not just damages increase, this is true for crabs too, but even more for Tritons.
- Map size it seems, the smaller the harder, which is probably not a so good idea even if in general it’s an effective way to increase difficulty.
- Obviously amount of enemies at start and spawned in first turns, but it’s more a sort power sum of enemies increase.
- Jagged Aliance 1&2 have no new enemies, it’s all humans and still they are much better combats games than original xcom.
XCOM1 Vanilla wasn’t better just more obvious, I could be wrong but for me there are new enemies along campaign, here how I felt it, restricted to aliens, not factions:
- Crabs with only short range and shield.
- Crabs with pincer and grenades
- Tritons with pistol, smg and invisibility
- Tritons with pistol, smg and regen (a sort of mismatch, those with regen aren’t tougher to manage)
- Mindfraggers
- Young Sentinels
- Crabs with poison pincer and grenades
- Young Sentinels with eggs
- Eggs with fireworm
- Eggs with mifragger
- Crabs with AR and shield or grenade or pincer.
- Tritons with Shotgun (sort of mismatch, crabs even with lower AR are overall harder to manage)
- Sirens with Cry, control and arms attack
- Crabs with AR and poison, and grenade or pincer or shield.
- Sentinels and eggs
- Chiron with fireworm
- Chiron with poisonworm (a bit a mismatch, they aren’t more troubles that with fire).
- Chiron with worm and huge legs giving also AOE Attack or powerful close range attack (the mismatch * Chiron with acidworm (another mismatch, clearly because of a change from first update past release)
here is Chiron are too dangerous close range and then this is a bit transparent) - Chiron with Gelee
- Scylla without long range.
- Tritons with Sniper
- Chiron with Gelee with damages
- Tritons with fog
- Scylla with Gelee
- Scylla with Gelee with damages
- Crabs with AR 50
- Sirens with cry, control and torso attack or agile
- Chiron with lower bombard
- Chiron with plain bombard
- Scylla with fog
- Scylla with cannon
- Final boss
I’ll skip variations as:
- Lower shied that can be break and go through with one cannon shot, and shield that won’t break so easily.
- Variations around crabs carapace,
- Crabs with RF or not.
- Variations around weapons variations inside weapon categories for Tritons.
- Scylla/Chiron/Crabs armors variations.
- HP parts variations
Also as the game certainly try a bit to adapt not just increase difficulty, the order is approximate.
The point is also variations themselves that are listed above involve different managements, or at least can.
I don’t remind XCOM1 vanilla, so for XCOM1 final: Berserker, Chryssalid, Cyberdisc, Drone, Ethereal, Heavy Floater, Muton, Muton Elite, Outsider, Sectoid, Sectoid Commander, Sectopod, Thin Man, Zombie.
PP: 34 different enemies and many other variations from parts, some skills, some equipments, armors, HP.
XCOM1: 14.
I can admit that sometimes dev intent is probably different than the real achievement, then:
- Chiron with worms are more or less the same, -2
- Chirons with Gelee and Gelee with damages are a bit the same, -1
- All sentinels are similar and eggs or not and their type doesn’t matter enough, -4
- Scylla with gelee and gelee with damages are a bit the same, -1
- Chiron with lower bombards and bombards are a bit the same, -1
It’s still:
PP: 24
XCOM1: 14
PP - XCOM1: 1-0 set and match.
But most players complain because there isn’t enough graphics variations, but then again there’s even less with Jagged Alliance 1&2. I remind a time north american was laughing at French players because they was graphicwhore but now it’s mostly all players that are like French players.
I’d say just play the game and XCOM1, PP has very obviously quite more combats variations than XCOM1, despite probably less maps. I did long campaigns with both, was exhausted and had to do the final in XCOM1, in PP campaign was much longer and still hade fun combats feeling different even few before to do final.
EDIT:
For me the game needs a bit of one more alien type more or less in ranges of Sirens but totally different, and one more between Scylla and Chirons. But a DLC could improve that. For adaptive tactical, I didn’t knew it when I pledged, but I would have kept my expectations very low on that knowing how hard tactical design is.
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Yeah, I’d expected Pandorans to evolve from one form to another, not just come wholesale onto the map with different load-outs.
If it were human opponents I wouldn’t consider a guy with a shotgun to be a different unique opponent than a guy with a rifle. The mutations in PP - It’s just recycling assets to give the illusion of more variety whilst in reality providing less.
I dislike especially that all creatures of a given type will appear with exactly the same kit rather than combined arms.
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If so then you don’t play well such combats games, obviously you never played Jagged Alliance series, nor Silent Storm series, nor Vigilentes, I don’t remind but there’s more.
I prefer new XCOM approach on that matter, but it’s a lot more work on 3D at least, hardly more on AI. And no PP didn’t choose a full XCOM approach but partially JA too.
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PP actually turned me onto XCOM 2, and I’d agree XCOM 2 is tons more fun, not even in the same league. I couldn’t even keep playing PP out of sheer boredom. I don’t mean this to offend the developers (even though I do feel a bit scammed) as I do love some of the concepts of PP. They need to collab with Firaxis for XCOM 3 or something. XCOM with PP targeting would be too good!
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Strictly speaking JA2 had more than 1 type of enemies. It had humans, tanks, tigers and alien bugs from the cave =)
I also hope developers would add several more types of enemies to Phoenix Point. And perhaps some more interesting mutations to the existing types as well. It shouldn’t be very hard given all the existing game mechanics. Maybe some flying enemies or jumping with jetpack-like mechanics?
Forgot about those alien bugs! But it’s a lot like JA for the fact that the enemies just blindly swarm you without any strategy.
Unless they are Tritons with sniper rifles and mist abilities. Those will put up a mist smoke and will be shooting you from that mist.
Or unless they are Mindfraggers. Those will try to flank you avoiding overwatch zones and hiding behind objects.
Or unless they are Sirens. Those will get close, mind control your soldier and then hide from sight.
Or unless they are Chirons. Those will be moving in search for good positions for artillery strikes and use AoE stomp attack if you get close.
As for the Worms and Arthrones - those are going to blindly storm you without any strategy. Poor AI indeed 
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It looks like the latest update (right now) addressed some of this. I haven’t played in awhile. I’m gonna give it a go today. Are there any good guides anywhere?
Thanks
To draw that as a conclusion is just utterly bizarre.