Tactical combat

Phoenix Point Game Feedback
1

So given the other aspects of the game is lacking in deapth this is where things should SHINE.

The shooting is fantastic, manually aim is KING its awesome; I love it.
Your soilders stop moving when spotting an enemy, THANKs that is awesome.

However, thats it; nothing else…its just another tactical game but with way way way way less options and deapth.

All solders are the same, snipers rocks, heavy is slow and bad. Using various weapons/equpment isnt relevant or even possible.

For some reason my soilders do not reload their weapon when off mission, they should be fired! or atleast an officer should make sure they do that if entering a mission with a empty weapon once. what the hell?! are they supid?!

Action points not used, just end up in void; ok Im cool with that but still…might be a good idea to be able to save one.

Paralyzing enemys is annoying as hell as they “wake up” after a while…so realisic or not its just play annoying.

Maps are suppsedly be generated but are not very different.
Overwatch direction is a fantastic idea, but super annoying and time consuming to use.
When shooting pressing F and then what? need to use the mouse? or are they some shortcuts for the aim opion, if so what? and where do i find that out?`

The flow when commanding/moving is off, need to press buttons and move the mouse in a less then optimal way.

Should be like this
Move soilder A, Move soilder B, …
Then press O, O, O for overwatch and/or space if not have enough Action points.
But now I must manualy aim the over watch and press space two times for each dude, its really annoying and again takes to much time and is as said less then optimal.

So to sum the tactical combat up, its just another tactical game without depth and as the Strategic and Progress parts are non interesting; I dont see a point struggling throu battle after battle to get nothing.

1 Like
2

I think that overwatch should get an aiming penalty proportional to the overwatch cone’s diameter.
If players want a “press me” overwatch button they should get it and the enormous aim penalty that goes with it. Difficult to react accurately when you look everywhere. Also they won’t complain that their shotgun assault shoots at aliens moving 1 km away.

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Indeed, press O for overwatch and you do overwatch in the direction your looking, press P and you can do the way you do now with seleciton.
Problem as it is now that it takes to much time; and most people are used to a faster pace…it can easily be so you just press space, twice and ignore overwatch as its probably not needed at this postion and so on.

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My hope is that one will have to relearn many things from XCOM in order to do well in PP. Perhaps you rely on Overwatch too much? I wish they would reintroduce will cost for overwatch as it was in early builds. I don’t think that overwatch spam is a good thing.

Never had a chance to use it, so it’s possible that it’s more fiddly then it needs to be. If so, hopefully controls get improved before release. still, manual aiming cone was added for a reason, as XCOM style overwatch didn’t really pan out.

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They could perhaps introduce some sort of shortcut mechanism.
For each soldier you define the usual cone width and length that you want (or you assign it per weapon - function of effective distance).
So when you over-watch you simply show the direction rather than playing on the other parameters.
Should make it a bit quicker.

[repeating what I wrote above] The game could (kind of) force the players to have narrow cones by applying aim penalties the larger the cone.

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Issue with balancing. :slight_smile: That is why Snapshot is collecting data right now.

It is a bug not the planned feature.

No? Explained here:

Come on. Hit them once more or two and they should stay paralyzed for the rest of the battle. Or paralyze them at the end of the battle then you won’t have to think about them waking up. Stunned or mind controlled enemies also regain control after given time. This is typical mechanic, not the annoying one.

It is during development.

No no no. :slight_smile: People demanded that Overwatch should be controlled like it is currently. You probably have bad habit from Firaxis XCOM to spam overwatch.
They also demanded that each action should have confirmation before execution. But maybe this confirmation could be an option to switch in Game Settings.

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I don’t know how the cone controls now, but what I assumed:
Once you press overwatch button, you control direction and length of the cone with your mouse (a bit like aiming a grande works) and use mouse wheel to adjust width.

That should make applying overwatch quick and intuitive.

OP mention of putting automatically their party on overwatch at the end of turn, suggest having old habits which have little relevance in this game. As Pods aren’t a thing in PP catching unactivated enemies on overwatch isn’t as crucial.

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My message was just that making the cone longer and larger by using the mouse and CTRL+wheel may be too long for lots of people. Mostly when you basically always use approximately the same length (depending on weapon).
So making the cone longer could be done by pressing CTRL.

By default you would have an “appropriate” length and width so just have to worry about the direction which can be done very quickly.
But by pressing CTRL, you could change the length and width and take a bit more time.

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The thing that overwatch needs is the possibility to zoom out further when you’re using it.

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+1 I totally agree with you.

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Still no. :slight_smile: Why soldier would be able to shot 5 times instead of standard 4 times? Because he took more deep breath of air? He should not bend the time.

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I agree that you shouldn’t be able to carry action points, but maybe you could get an “aimed shot” bonus if your first action of the following turn is to shoot.

That extra breath of air would come in handy then :wink:

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Fully agree, having 5 AP instead of 4 is a big advantage: it means QM for a sniper just once and fire twice, it means move BB and double grenade instead of having to remain still, means moving a blue move, and for an assault is a long move, and fire twice without spending WP

14

That is more likely to accept, but I suppose that would be good in system without skills and different shot modes like in old X-COM. Here we have skills for all such actions, and giving bonus to any soldier because he did less previously is not something that I would take lightly. :wink:

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Look the various details on the specifics on how combat should or shouldnt work; its not my main point even tho I gave some examples in that area.

What the key is here, again in my opinion is the quality of life improvements; removing/improving those things that makes the battle smother and less annoying.

So that a turn instead of needing: tons of clicks/actions/mouse movements and such for each person; When i could achive the same with lets say half.

Again example time: Stop when you get spotted, its fantastic! No need to move your character forward one step at the time.

As someone stated earlier some of this could be settings, pre-sets or such so that those that really want to can do so if they care; but for me it would be good enough to just press space once when Im done with one character; could even have a undo last action (if that action is end that dudes action)

And that normaly overwatch is a x degree cone, the way the dude is looking but if you want to change it you can.

So that the flow of the battle is faster and well honestly less stuff that isnt really needed.

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In xcom you can steady weapon in your turn, using an action of the two and getting an aiming bonus the next. I think it could be implemented also in PP

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You mean Long War. As a mechanic, I don’t believe it would benefit PP - Steady aim work is LW because: taking a shot is a roulette: you win or you loose, and boosting your odds is the main combat mechanic, be it by erasing enemy bonuses or boosting yours. In addition pod mechanics encouraged slow crowd full of overwatch - something that base game didn’t intend but long war embraced. Therefore a useful ability to boost your aim while there is nothing else to do was made.

PP systems don’t have those issues.

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XCOM is LW Vanilla is for casual players
I’m all but a top player but after playing it a couple hundreds hours i finished my II campaign and tought to be a good player. Then i installed LW and discovered that i was a N00b after having my arse delivered on a silver platter in the first couple months

Moving slowly and doing OW traps is the only way to go even in vanilla if you play Ironman Impossible, the game is forgiving compared to LW, but if you cannot have losses you have to move slowly and take all slight advantages you can. In LW i never tought for a second to try ironman.

In PP the game ATM encourages mass bombing and banzai attacks with the assaults; snipers, the top player in vanilla XCOM is powerful in the open, food maps are his reign, but becomes useless in slums map, assaults and berserkers are the gods, heavies start slowly because they have the cannon thats useless, but once you get the launcher, cross train with assaults, get BB and the unload the cannon skill i dont remember the name, become overpowered

19

I have learned a trick to the heavy unit, don’t try to zoom in, when I 1st started playing it that’s all I did and then one day I by accident just hit fire and he nailed the alien, so I tried it again and sure enough he didn’t miss, they’re not as useless as I 1st thought but even using this tactic they can still miss every once in awhile but no where near as bad as before.

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And again, UFO subject, which indicates you have no idea what this game is about. Stop being a troll.