The new skillpoint system in leviathan patch

whaa…lol! dangg :sweat_smile:

@Devs cmon :man_facepalming:

In original XCom you don’t get to pick recruits. OK, so in Xenonauts you pros just pick recruits with the highest TUs, so they they can move at 65% of the speed of the guy you are replacing (still can’t hit the broad side of a barn and will be mind controlled by a goldfish).

In Xenonauts yes, but in PP no? And where are TF more useful?

A low percentage that you have arbitrarily decided on to make a point? No, I understand it perfectly.

Is it too hard for you to understand that recruits in PP can be upgraded before they are fielded to compensate for their low stats/lack of skills, and that this makes them comparatively more effective than recruits in XCom and Xenonauts equipped with 3rd tier weapons?

I have to ask: are you even playing PP at the moment, or are your comments based on you vicariously experiencing the game as it currently is through this forum?

About FXcom: It can be - it is meant to be, I would argue - to be played on ironman mode, something that is not possible neither with the original XCom, or Xenonauts for that matter, so I would say it deals with loss pretty well.

In FXcom, critically wounded are soldiers that rolled a lucky number to avoid death, and you were the one who started talking about this

You’re arguing that in other titles rookies are not as useful as trained soldiers, but neither they are in PP. @BoredEngineer point (and mine in other topics) is, that in other titles they are not as useless as they are in PP. I would even say they’re useful, and high reaction rookie with strong weapon can be as useful as trained soldier. Smoke here and there, and I can do mid-late game mission with well equiped rookies only.

Also you’re ignoring the fact rookies in other games aren’t equal. You can check their stats and dismiss those with low bravery, terrible accuracy or snail-like TUs.

Woot? You can bulk hire them, and keep those promising only.

That’s a serious manure. I double dare you, post a video of you doing late game mission in PP with well equiped rookies and I’ll post a video of me doing late game mission in original XCom with well equiped rookies. Let’s see which of us will struggle to kill enemies.

Edit: In Xenonauts rookies with a shield, tiered pistol and utility grenades (smoke, flash) are one of the most useful things for entire game.

Why are you being so dense? Are you making a point that loosing soldiers in old X-Com or Xenonauts is worse than in PP? If not then why are you even posting all this?

This was my point:

Why the hell do you need to drag on a discussion about some tangential comparison to other game in a reply addresses to someone specifically?
Don’t be surprised if I ignore you in the feature as I’m really tired reading about how you “feel” about other games.

In Xenonauts it’s a value calculated by devs. Adios.

They have some stats that are higher and some that are lower, so you can pick your poison, while a soldier after “x” missions has all their stats maxed out, and losing him or her is a big blow, no less than losing a level 7 in PP.

I don’t do videos, and I don’t do late missions with rookies in PP, or any of the XComs for that matter. Why would I send rookies on late missions in PP when there are training facilities? I use rookies in all those games only when I have to. But when I do have to use rookies in PP for whatever reason they are not so terrible, basically as bad as those as in any of the XCom.

If you do want to make a video of yourself doing late missions with rookies in the original XCom or Xenonauts, don’t forget to do it on a mission with plenty of mind controllers. And no save scumming.

And I’m pretty tired of reading your insights into a game that you are not actually playing. Because if you are, I can’t understand how you can simultaneously play it and hate absolutely every single aspect about it, no matter how big, or small.

So long!

What’s your point here? I’m saying, you can hire a rookie that is able to reliably hit the target and has decent amount of TUs. PPs recruits are equaly close to worthless. Maybe don’t rely so much on maxed out soldiers if you’re so worried and loosing them feels like a huge blow? Grab a new recruit and move on. Thats what you can do in Xenonauts and other games. In PP its more like reload the game or do one of tedious things @BoredEngineer pointed out.

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BoredEngineer

This was in the game in early builds. You had limited amount of turns to stabilize someone so they don’t bleed out. No idea why this was removed.

Feel free to vote:
https://feedback.phoenixpoint.info/feedback/p/add-bleed-out-system-to-the-game-1

In my opinion this is a “must have” feature

I also think that the new skillpoint system is much better than the previous one. With the bleed out system or similar, the loss of a “20 mission” soldier could be prevented.

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I think it makes little sense to put the problem into perspective by comparing it to other games. Players have a problem with the new skill system and it doesn’t help them much if it isn’t any better in other games.
Let’s try to find something that most can be happy with instead of arguing.

My own solution to deal with the existing skill gap will probably be to use the global PP skill points mainly for new rookies. The experienced soldiers continue to receive 10 SP after each mission to keep pushing them, even after level 7, so it is not absolutely necessary to ‘waste’ these global points on them. So my thoughts at this point …
Overall, however, far too few global points could accumulate to adequately compensate for larger losses. You don’t get that much per mission (in my experience 4-10 / mission and a total of about 400-500 at the end of the game incl. some from TCs per day).

Maybe the Idea from @Konradius described here in post #2 (The new skillpoint system in leviathan patch) could be one solution, even better if it is optional.
Of course, only as long as you not got to much global SP per lost soldier …

Another solution could be to buff the TCs to gain a bit more global SP, currently they give you 1-2 per day or so(?).

@walan: Also nice and in my opinion a must have :+1:

But that won’t help fresh recruits in the mid-end game, the ‘old boys’ will continue to be disproportionately stronger.
The ‘A-Team dilemma’ remains. For me personally not that big problem, but somewhat undesirable in terms of game design. Over the time you have to split your squads into different regions and so need more or less constantly new recruits and on top of that the fatigue system.
For me, all that with the newest TC-‘nerf’ seems not play well together.

Another couple ways in which the new skill system hurts is:

a) it discourages using vehicles even more since vehicles don’t gain exp
b) it encourages/forces you into getting an 8 man team squad asap to squeeze the most skillpoints and therefore power out of missions.

Suggestion: revert the skillups back to 50 per skillup for everyone, but the team doing missions gets bonus skillpoints. This way the main team tops out stronger than training facility only squads, while allowing the training facility squads to not feel so terribly out of place (yikes at 20 skillups per level).

Let me try a different approach:

PP is both stat and skill based. It’s true that at least currently you have to go to a haven to recruit, though in practice I think most players keep “stables”, as you need to field several teams anyway. So when you see an interesting candidate (based on their class) in your travels, you recruit them. To compensate for their low stats and lack of skills you can build TFs. You also have a common skills points pool, stat modifying gear and augmentations. In theory, you could field a rookie with maxed out stats (if you had access to the right gear, augmentations and/or a vast SP pool).

Sure, skills are very important in PP (though IMO not so as to make soldiers without them useless). But that’s why you have TFs. You lose soldiers in a squad, get replacements from the stables and hire new recruits to get them trained.

And what I love about PP is that the replacement will be different. I’m not replacing the maxed out Tom with Bob the recruit, in the hopes that one day, after 20, 30 or 40 missions Bob will be exactly like Tom used to be. This is what I hate about losing soldiers in XComs - it’s a total loss of progress.

In PP, by contrast, I might replace my deceased fast melee berserker with an armored jetpacking bashing heavy, and fulfilling the same (melee) role they will play very differently.

Losing soldiers in PP is an opportunity to try something new.

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One of the things I have appreciated about this site, and the folks that post here, was that the postings, with a few exceptions, were always respectful, and folks responded to arguments rather than personalities…

I understand the frustration, as most of us sense there is a game here if we could just find it… but I do hope the site remains one of cerebral, as opposed to emotive, interaction…

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There is a chance that “reanimation” is occupied by the developers in the DLC, for example with loss of limb for mutation or augmentation. Though …

That’s fair. Most of previous games doesn’t have any diversity in form of class system and anyone can replace anyone. I like unique traits as it makes soldier rooster much less boring and soulless.

That’s just a way of how you play, not a game design decision. You don’t have to replace 40 missions Tom with 40 missions Bob, as 5 missions Jake is doing just fine. You don’t care how will he look like after another 35 missions unless you intentionally go for Alpha Squad of Terminators.

That’s very subjective. I’ve lost countless number of soldiers and I’ve never had a feeling that I’ve lost progress. XCom/Xenonauts soldiers are expendable, easily recruitable, useful since the very first day they arrive. They may get better and earn experience, but that’s just added value to the solid foundations. There is not much of a need to train them 20, 30 or 40 missions so they have perfect accuracy on a range of half of the map to be useful. You can do it to cheese through missions and shot everything appears on the screen, but that’s just by no means the only way to play the game. There’s no threat in the game that forces you to treat 40 missions soldier as non-expendable-must-have-replace-asap. So yeah, you may experience of total loss of progress in case you play like this, but that’s on you.

I don’t understand why this game is designed with such emphasis on soldiers. In Firaxis XCom it’s kind of clear, they want you to customize their looks, maybe load some community profiles and have some background for them, a sort of light RPG layer with added potential of selling you customizations. So it’s a design decision motivated by some other factors.
But in a game that does nothing like that and doesn’t even try to be an RPG it just feels misplaced.
Why not do it differently? Leave stats and random proficiencies per solder but move all abilities into a “commander” interface. Replace willpower by a nano-charges and now abilities come from some high tech command brain interface. Instead of unlocking abilities by level you unlock them by research. Instead of managing them per soldier you manage them for the whole team currently on the battle. This way loss of individual soldiers will be less frustrating and progress is moved by the progress of the whole organization rather than level of small group of soldiers.

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It is.

Yes, after 5 missions Jake will be doing mostly alright. And so would any PP rookie (call her Jane) - she would be level 3, now with 110 SPs to spend.

Still, Jake after 5 missions will not be Tom, and Jane is not a level 7 soldier, and though a couple of Jakes & Janes in a squad is alright, you need more veteran troops as well.

My point is we can have subjective preferences for whatever reasons for one system over another, but this is not a case very one system is objectively superior to another, at least as far mitigating losses is concerned.

Which is why it’s pointless to imply that PP should deal with this in the same manner XComs do.

Let’s think about solutions within what the game actually is, instead of oh this is just so bad, it has to be redone from the ground up to work properly.

Because he doesn’t have to be. Like I’ve said, there is no threat in the game that requires 40 missions soldiers to handle. Maybe he’ll become Tom at some point, if he survives. If not, John will take his place. I repeat: if you built your success on a squad of terminators that don’t use utility much (because most of the time they don’t have to) then sure, it’s a huge hit if one of them dies. But if that’s how you play, it was your own decision to build a squad of non-expendable troops. What did you expect?

More experienced soldiers and veterans are nice, but you shouldn’t rely on 10, 15, 20+ mission soldiers. They are as killable as any other. I can do a mission just fine with squad of 5 missions soldiers and sometimes I have to do a mission with a fresh recruits. Sometimes I’ll wipe and mission is lost. Do I care? Nope. This is not a gamebreaking event like in PP, because you can recover without much effort.

The part you say “you need” is where you should write “I need”. That’s the aspect of the whole
balance and skill system I don’t like and I don’t agree with in PP. It implicates one and only one way of playing the game, where lvl 7 are the core of your rooster and you can’t live without them.

No one implies it should deal with the same manner, but there are already games that somehow solved (or not) this issue. This game is heavily inspired by other titles, so why shouldn’t we discuss and reconsider same inspirations on troops training and recruitment?

What’s wrong in making troops expendable by reducing the gap between rookie and experienced soldier and making recruitment much easier? It will still fit into game. If it can be exploited to cheat DDA, DDA should be rebalanced as well to take it into account.

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Fair enough, but why don’t you apply the same reasoning to yourself:

It may be a gamebreaking event for you, from which you can’t recover, because you choose to play in a certain way. Many players (myself included) have had multiple squad wipeouts. It’s not a gamebreaker by any means, because late game you have 20+ troopers.

Even if this was so, that you need lvl.7 skills to play the game, it still wouldn’t mean that there is only one way of playing as far as human resources management is concerned. Especially now (with the last changes) you should be able to see that PP is both skills and stats based. Another way of looking at it is that you can have the lvl 7 Jake and the Lvl.7 Tom.

Because “reducing the gap” is basically the same call to get rid of the skills based gameplay and make a different game, an argument that gets rehearsed over and over again following the exact same pattern.

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That doesn’t mean soldiers can die, that just means I can prepare in advance to take few casualties. If this somehow is a counter argument and soldiers can be expandable in PP, answer me, how do you recover from wipe after, let’s say, 10th mission? How do you recover late game if you lose all or most of those 20+ soldiers? How do you recover, at any point of the game, from a situation you have no more soldiers?

If the system is so coupled with skills that it doesn’t make sense to play soldiers without skills, and the only point of low level recruits is to babysit them in base so they train, why not make crucial skills an innate abilities they always have? Progression is non-existent in this game so why should we even care about numbers from 1 to 7. Make it 1-3 and give recruits the skills so they can actually be useful after early game at all.

Instead of tedious Training Facility babysitting, make TF spawn a soldier of desired base class lvl 1 with innate abilities, or lvl 3 if anything less make them useless. There are multiple ways how to tackle this issue, and I feel like you refuse to notice the issue in the first place.

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I don’t. But how often do you get squad wiped on the 10th mission, or anywhere in the early game? By most accounts PP has pretty gentle difficulty curve in the early game.

If I lost all of those 20+ soldiers it means I did something seriously wrong on the strategic level, like left the Pandorans to evolve too much. Whatever it is I can’t fix it by better recruits.

But it does. Like Jack from XCom before he does his 5 missions, skill-less rookies in PP are useful. They get less so in the late game by comparison with the more veteran troops, but they have same accuracy, can use the same weapons, armor, gear and augmentations.

Lol, where is the “tedious babysitting”? The only tedious part is that sometimes you have to transport the recruits to the right base.

BTW, I have suggested elsewhere that havens should provide raw classless recruits, along with other resources.

‘sigh’. And you base this assessment on what exactly?

You think I’m refusing to see an issue here, but it seems to me like you are only looking at PP in terms of what it is not.