Some cover doesn't register as cover

Phoenix Point Bug Discussion
1

Quite annoying when there’s a rock that would be perfect for some half cover in an advantageous position but your soldiers refuse to crouch behind it because they don’t recognise it as low cover.

Could we just have a button that we can use to tell our soldiers to crouch?

This is like my 3rd or 4th bug report today. This is not a finished game… Best get fixing these bugs quickly or you won’t have many people sticking around for when you finally get the game to a release state. Honestly, should have delayed the launch to round out the rough edges rather than throwing it out on time unfinished.

5 Likes
2

Nothing to add, just confirming.

1 Like
3

I don’t think for one minute a bug like this will have people abandoning the game. Xcom1 and 2 still have similar bugs to this date. For instance, in Xcom-2 I would be standing in a open field standing face to face with a alien and the game would inform me I had no line of sight, aliens would shoot through solid walls etc:
I think this type of game is one if not the hardest type of game to make and de-bug, but Phoenix point has one thing going for it over the likes of Xcom1 and 2. It is more likely to receive fixes on a regular basis.

4

+1 to being able to crouch - If you can do that, then the game doesn’t even need to indicate cover, the player could just look at the map and see it for themselves.

It’d also be handy to be able to crouch in the open; to lower a soldier’s target profile, and also so that their team mate standing behind them can shoot over the top of their head.

4 Likes
5

Yeah, my thoughts exactly. It would be nice to be able to take advantage of cover more than a square away. Even when it’s working properly, having to be right next to the cover for your characters to crouch limits your options a bit. Especially with cover you’d rather be diagonally in line with.

6

I wasn’t just meaning this bug. The amount of serious bugs the game has right now will cause a lot of people to give up in frustration at launch. Launch is the most important time for a game to gather a player base and the more issues the game has the faster that initial player base dwindles.

It’s unfortunate that the bugs seem to have a stacking annoyance too. You can’t take cover behind certain low covers but high cover doesn’t let your soldiers lean out to shoot past it either. So the options for good cover are very limited at the moment.

Think I just found another too. Run out of posts for today though. (I get that that’s to avoid spam but it’s also pretty damn annoying.) Essentially the HP that’s supposed to be removed when you damage a limb, isn’t. Had an enemy with 250 hp. Did 240 (shotgun 30x8 cause enemy had 10 armour) to head, which was supposed to give an extra penalty of 10 hp. Enemy is still alive with 10 hp. At least the bleed will kill it.

7

Okey, so after getting my hands on the game and playing for a bit, I would advocate for having manual control over soldiers stance, rather then it being automated. I know I argued otherwise before, but I just don’t think cover works properly, as it is now.

Transfering FiraXCOM cover system into PP just didn’t work IMO. half-covers, and fullcovers should have certain expected behaviour - my soldier will stand when if full cover, with an ability to step sideways to shoot. In half-cover, he will crouch, and he will be able to shoot over it. Now, I am learning to use flexible AP to avoid those issues, but I feel like I am figuring out ways to bypass game’s major issues, rather then playing as intended.

The problem is inconsistency. There are plenty of objects which count as half-cover, but actually obfiscate view. There are fullcovers which for some reason don’t allow to step sideways. Why can’t I stand up and side step, when cover obscures view?

Doors are an abomination. Why don’t they stay closed/open? Why don’t they work as they did in FiraXCOMs?

I also notices some weird stuff - like an element which provided two full covers slots on a mission, on the next map spawned not quite alligned with the grid, making one full cover spot with limited view (but decent protection). Is it intended? Should items on the map fit with the grid?

Synedrion’s map are just a complete mess. It feels like assets were crafted without knowledge that the game is grid based. The curvey nature of the design just doesn’t play well with the gameplay. There are also those windows, which you, player can see through, but units for some reason can’t. Bunch of cover doesn’t register as cover, and those that does seem to got it wrong (why are trees halfcover?).

EDIT: I also spotted (and shoot at!) enemies clipping through the walls. So far it seemed to happen in Synedrion maps, with curves being to blame.

Playing with cover, is like fighting camera controls in early 3d Third-Person Platformers. Most of the gameplay revolves around fighting through broken systems. I feel they should have created ballistic system first, and then design around it. As it is, it feels like they took dicebased FiraXCOM design, and implimented ballistic system which just doesn’t play nice with it.

5 Likes
8

Yeah, the whole thing doesn’t feel very joined up tbh, it’s as if different people have been designing different systems, and those systems whilst they work in their own right, have run into some serious trouble when put together.

3 Likes