I have played for quite a bit, and I find both the supply and cost of recruits to be extremely brutal. One bad battle will cripple you for ages, because recruits are far and few between, and the hideous cost is ridiculous. Your only serious income is scavenging, which requires a team. If you lose one or more soldiers you are done.
Give us green boots in our own havens. Wet behind the ears yahoos who got the minimum basic training to hold a rifle the right way. With experience they can be trained to whatever class. Experienced boots and specialists in the other havens. But constantly saving every turn and reloading in case a soldier gets trashed or killed, not a fun thing when you have no reinforcements of any kind to use.
Not for free, of course, but certainly not at current costs.
And Haven defence! If you need mats you should not destroy the alien base too early, you can get a ton of tech, mats and food with the frequently attacks on havens. Like @Duskmare complains here: Havens attacked too frequently
You can easily get enough for 1 recruit on one base defence.
He does have a point though! It is WAY to expensive as you need the cash for other things so it is out of balance, recruits should be happy to join the cause for FREE! After all we are saving THEIR world toâŚ
While that is true, it still presents the same dilemma. Go in with a weakened group that you canât replenish without the resources you gain from the mission that you canât handle.
As for losing soldiers, yes of course if you kamikaze play they drop like flies. Thatâs not what Iâm talking about. Iâm talking about those times where things go wrong. Where the LZ is right in an ambush. When the building you are standing on collapses. When enemy firing takes out your main weapon so you have to build another and use another weapon type that fumbles unless a team mate is anywhere near the firing cone.
In short I am talking about Murphyâs law. What can go wrong will go wrong at the worst possible time.
You donât pay for the recruit, you pay for the items they use. We donât know about the balance for general cost in final game.
If you make it free, you could just get all free recruits to get free high tech weapons and armor. You wouldnât have to search the tech and manufact these items.
Make soldiers free if they just have some basic items or none otherwise they need to have some cost!
That can happen, you can have a bad turn with chirions wiping out 1-2 soldiers in first turn.
I know what you mean, but I donât want to feel like I can buy and build everything without any effort. You should always have some backups for those times. Built some spare weapons/ammo if you donât find some early, get 1-2 recruits and you have backup for those early game.
We still donât know all the changes and balances for the final release.
Of course I donât expect to build and buy everything in the first turn of the globe, hehe. And I would be happy to hire raw recruits with no gear. Gear can be salvaged. If an assault gets mangled just give his/her gear to a raw recruit and there you go. Thatâs part of the Xcom progression. In the beginning your boots got inferior gear and drop like flies. But you hang on and keep feeding the meatgrinder until you get better gear. Maybe the lucky ones are still around to use it. And you slowly turn the tide. Your losses are mostly experience and momentum.
We can add to that that everything is bloody resilient. Apart from worms and facehuggers it sometimes feels like you have to use a magazine per alien. That is, a mag spread over your troops. Enough shots to make a magazine. Not even the starter rifles in Xcom enemy unknown were that bad, unless you faced Mutons which happen after youâve had plenty of time to get laser weapons.
So, we go in with our starting five boots, one heavy with a single shot cannon that canât hit a barn if he/she is standing in it, a sniper that gets one shot per turn if he/she doesnât breathe too heavily, and three assaults with two shots per turn if they donât move. If you encounter the aliens one or maybe two at a time you can make it unless you get a bad turn and lose someone or they are rendered useless. Throw in a facehugger or two that are TOP PRIORITY TARGETS and itâs not happy times for your boots. Gods forbid your sniper gets facehugged cuz he/she is the only useable facehugger remover. Unless you want a burst of assaultrifle fire in the head of your own team mate while still trying to take out the regular aliens.
And where the hell are the base defenders? You go to help out and they are all gone for coffee and a smoke and you are facing a dozen aliens who are already in prime positions.
I realize that I come off as a whiny little brat here, but damn. Iâm playing on easy mode cuz I want to have fun, check out the research tree, mess around with equipment and get a feel for the game. Instead I feel like a very small nail watching a big big hammer coming every time I go on a mission.
Base defenders: âHey look, Phoenix Project is here to safe us, lets drop all weapons and run like chickens into the aliens!â
The diffuculties are not implemented in BB5 if I remember correct, every mode fells like easy.
You mean 1 burst?!? If you need 1 magazine for 1 facehugger, I get why you have problems with mats and ammo. If you canât hit them you need to get closer, the weapons have a effective range, after that the accuracy drops down. Or just use sniper helmet on assaults.
Just wondering, what will happen when, for example, you run out of resources? At first, you can scrap gear but then after that, what you do? So far thereâs no âspend time to get resourcesâ or ânon-cost solution/immortal gearâ mechanic and you need to fight your way through for resources which cost you something. Hope someone thought of that during geoscape designâŚ
I have similar thoughts but developers corrected that info. There is difference between difficulties, but it is subtle, and probably seen later on, in number of enemies
They are not implemented yet to defend their own bases during your missions (probably some AI issue).
That intrigued me to read whole post from @Vaulander and I need to comment things.
This is probably to improve testing algorithms in BB5. But you should be happy as our soldiers are also way more resilient than before. Crippled limbs happen less often, death is way less probable. And this was not scaled to enemy. They at the beginning are exactly the same resilient as in previous builds. With exception that they get upgraded body part later on. But then your soldiers are so experienced that it doesnât really matter.
You need to change the way you shoot at enemy. Probably you need to get closer or observe if there is no obstacle between your soldier and enemy. If highlighted circle on enemy is not enough for you then use free aiming mode to check for sure if shot has good chance to hit. If enemy doesnât fill inner circle and outer circle fall outside of enemy then donât shoot as you will probably miss (then yes you can waste whole magazine on one enemy). In most cases two shots should be enough to kill an enemy. So one magazine of assault rifle should be for at least 2 enemies.
There you had clear chance to do full damage with each shot and you had clear information what your odds are. Probably you didnât shot at enemies when UI told you that you have 30% chance to hit. In such cases you also could use whole magazine to kill an enemy (but there ammo was infinite).
Devs said that heavy accuracy will improve as there are too many players complaining about that. But you have three options. 1) get closer with your heavy and then he will one-shot almost any enemy or 2) change his gear to be more accurate (other class helmet or legs armor) or 3) use grenade launcher. In each of those cases heavy shines as really powerful soldier.
Iâm not sure what your point is, but snipers are really accurate and often can kill or cripple and render enemy inoperative with that one shot.
And those 2 shots are really powerful against starting enemies. Also think that without refering to skills in XCOM you often had only 1 shot per turn. Here in Phoenix Point, depending on weapon, you can have more of them. That is brilliant.
And you should encounter them one by one (or max 3 at a time). If you have more then you do something wrong (run too far forward or donât use cover?). Of course at the beginning. Later on you will spot 5 or more enemies at a time, but then your soldiers will easily deal with any number of enemies.
Just keep your guys close to each other and you wonât have a problem with them. Yes they are top priority target but really easy to get rid off.
All soldiers can easily dispatch âfacehuggerâ. Use Bash abiity on attached creature and you are fine without resorting to shots at your own guys.
First of all you should not run out of resources. Manage them wisely. Currently you have 4 sources of resources.
events on exploration sites give you free resources (not too much but they are practically for free), they are finite but should keep you running and enable you to explore more of the world
scavenge missions give you a lot of them if you will manage to defend crates (it requires some effort but usually give nice profit), they are finite source, but definitely give you nice boosts of resources at the beginning (and sometimes later on)
haven defence mission rewards - this is almost infinite source of resources if you will manage to have a team which will react really fast for each alien attack. Those haven leaders can be really generous and finance your progress, but it is sometimes difficult to keep costs low - you need to search for cheapest way of dealing with enemy.
scraping loot from all kind of missions - this is quite infinite (aliens will keep attacking) but not constant (can happen that there is no loot) source, but can sometimes give nice profits
Your role is to keep balance between incomes from those sources and expenditures for expansion on the globe (next area scans and next dropship with soldiers) and improving your arsenal (recruitment + building + research + manufacturing). Donât spend too much and you will probably be fine most of the time and you wonât run out of resources. BUT If you are low then wait for another alien attack on haven.
Thank you all for your comments. For clarification, I am talking about the Original Xcom, not the firaxis version. The one that started it all. If you havenât played it, do so. The graphics are well, dated, but the playability and fun is still top notch even though itâs very old.
As for Phoenix Point, from what I have seen so far it is an amazing game, and outclasses the Firaxis 'coms by several orders of magnitude. Trust me, I am going to play the living hell out of the finished version of PP. Even now as frustrated as I am I canât leave the BB5 alone. Gots to have another go. Gots to get the juicy weapon researches. Gots to see the classes. Gots to give it to the alien bastards good and hard. With your comments on firing I do realize that I fire at as far away as I can. Getting molested and cavity searched by big scary claws is not in my top ten list of fun experiences. But maybe itâs time to get up close and personal with Hellcannons and shotguns. Nothing says âHospitality is a Virtueâ like a shotgun blast to the face at point blank range.
I have played it. It started my adventure with tactical turn based games. I even own this game on some gaming platform to be able to play on modern PC, but I suppose I could not return to such old game. Well maybe if I had 2 months of free time then yes, but definitely not right now.
Then forget about what I have said about rifles.
Yes, shotgun is way more deadly than assault rifle, but you need to get really close. I prefer to do that with soldiers who can Dash out. Have fun.
Currently you have 4 sources of resources. 
I even own this game on some gaming platform to be able to play on modern PC, but I suppose I could not return to such old game. Well maybe if I had 2 months of free time then yes, but definitely not right now. 