Not sure if it is intentional or not, but the stun effect from the Technician seems to be a bit overpowered (is the stun effect supposed to be guaranteed, or is there only supposed to be a chance of stunning?). In my first real attempt at Fort Freiheit, when all else seemed lost and all other units were killed, I charged the queen with my technician just to see what the melee attack looked like and realized I was able to stun lock her completely for the remainder of the fight.
She was approximately half dead when I started my stun locking efforts, and over the next half dozen (or more) rounds I was able to keep melee attacking once per round, resulting in no retaliation from her whatsoever and a fairly easy victory from what was, up until that point, a mission destined for failure.
I also wanted to say that I just found Phoenix Point today and immediately had to purchase it despite the early access state. So excited about this game and I can’t believe it’s been flying under my radar all this time. If my feedback here has already been mentioned elsewhere, please accept my apologies (I tried to search first). Thanks!
Oh, Thanks Julian, was wondering what actualy triggered that stun or if it was guaranted. Still look impressively powered as with his damage it can disable all crabemen encountered in the current build and basicaly stunlock them to death.
A really ammo efficient weapon on top of this :’)
Of course, stunlocking the queen is arguably a bit too powerfull, but stunlocking normal crabmen certainly is not.
I have to say, i really LOVE technicians melee attack, because they are high risk high reward. I mean it’s difficult to get to a crabmen with still 50% actionpoints left over (so you can actually stun him) AND not stand in the open to be shot by everyone else. Yet if i manage to actually do it i feel rewarded for it by beeing able to deal high accuracy&damage attacks AND save ammo!
I am not sure i like that it’s an autostun solely based on max HP. I think i’d prefer it if it was an autostun based on CURRENT HP, and also dealt damage to willpower. That way you could make a queen/boss panic if you made her loose alot of willpower in the turns before by killing some fellow crabmen.
Oh, but above that i think EVERYONE should have at least some way of dealing melee damage, even if it’s weak. Nothing worse than having solders with no ammo feeling completely defenseless.
I will leave this thread for other opinions just to say again, I didn’t like EW idea of stunning linked to health down only, so I dislike it here also.
I believe as it was, it should be based on how much “morale” it has left (which here could be WP) and with how strong stunners he is hit. This was quite possible in Xcom/TFD where you could stun lower enemies with single stun hit immediately and larger with few blaster or rod hits. Each one wasn’t a failure, but increase to a ending stun. I find this mechanics - like drugging or exhausting someone, far more fairer. Either you want a kill or a stun.
I am saying all this because on EW influenced mechanics with stronger weapons it becomes fairly hard and random to have enemies left with enough HP to be stun, and bleeding mechanics will make it worse.
there seems to be a bit of a misunderstanding here.
This way I’ve been reading this is, if you do more than 20% of the target’s max HP in damage in an attack, you can stun if the attack also has the stun ability. So with a 10 HP crabman, if you do 3 damage to it with the stun melee, it’ll get stunned. With an 80 HP queen you’d need to do 17 damage.
It wouldn’t matter if these were the first HP taken away, or all but the last HP, so long as the 20% threshold is met.
Exactly, actual HP doesn’t matter. For crabmen technician attack is really overwhelming, for queen it’s tickles. Even is she is heavily wounded than still tickles shouldn’t stun her.
The EW stun mechanics was that any value below 20% HP is good enough for stun, whereby lower then it (just one 1-2 HP left as example) increases the stun chance.
But, original mechanics separates the STUNNING from KILLING alien, and I believe its better, fairer and more challenging, as same would apply to our soldiers (yes, they should also try to get us alive).
Mind that original Xcom mechanics is (some of the details here:
To knock any unit unconscious, its Stun damage (a gray bar superimposed on Health) has to equal or exceed its current Health (the red bar).
LOWERING HP HELPED BUT WAS NOT REQUIREMENT A shortcut to unconsciousness is to have friends lightly wound the alien to reduce its health (eg with a few pistol rounds) before or after hitting it with your stun weapon. Tricky but it can save your life.
** SETTING ENEMY UNITS ON FIRE HELPED** - Setting an alien on fire can make capturing it slightly easier. It lowers their health and firing accuracy each turn they BBQ, making them safer to approach and easier to stun. - ARMOUR WAS REDUCING FACTOR TO IT - How much stun is applied with the Stun Rod relies on the armor rating on the target. Too much armor and the Stun Rod is rendered useless.
** BLEEDING WOULD COUNTER HELP** - Stun Bombs never cause Fatal Wounds. One less thing to worry about. However, if a soldier already had a fatal wound, they will continue to lose health while unconscious, and can even die.
** IT WOULD BECOME HARDER TO STUN NOT ONLY BY HP** - On the hardest difficulty level, Superhuman, sectopods require direct hits and have a fair chance of completely shrugging off the damage. This means that you no longer have the ability to wipe out multiple sectopods with a single stun bomb
STUN BOMBS IN LAUNCHER WOULD USED JUST TO STUN - Stun Bombs do not damage the terrain at hand or destroy objects on the ground