I don’t find a whole lot of areas of Phoenix Point to be “over powered” or unbalanced to a point where it’s unplayable, but when it comes to Lair missions, one enemy in particular is driving me frickin insane. I can deal with nonstop respawns. I can deal with multiple sirens on a map at once. But what I cannot deal with is the acid artillery Chirons.
Their perception is unmatched, and they can somehow spot you and your whole crew from across the map, in fog of war, and completely out of line of sight. There is little to no cover at all, if you spread out too much you will find yourself mind controlled all over the place, and the Chiron has near perfect aim. All of this is not even to mention the shear damage output of the mortar. It destroys your limbs, your weapons, and causes extensive damage-per-turn that will wipe half your team in one turn.
I am honestly at a point where if I see a mortar Chiron in a lair I just reload to geoscape and try again.
The trick with those ones, is leave everyone at the starting zone except for your heavy(s). Only send them in via a combo of dashing and jet pack use. Though even that does not work 100% of the time due to mind control, but I’ve found it to be the most successful strategy overall.
Or at least get the heavy to jetpack over the destructable barriers, then have them blast an open path open. THEN rush everyone else in. With enough will power saved up on the rest of the squad you’ll have at least a few guys in range in roughly 2 turns depending on Lair layout.
My man, that’s not an answer to this glaringly unbalanced problem. Jet packing your way across the lair, or stealthing your way with an assassin, are cheese methods we have to resort to because of stupid shit like mortar chirons that have no business having that kind of perception or accuracy.
I get what you’re saying though. Yea, there are ways to cheese through it, but that’s not how I want to play a tactical turn based game. I sincerely hope the devs are paying super close attention to these details that need reworking.
Oh for sure definitely. You should not have to cheese something to win. But when the game is at the state that it’s at currently, just listing the ways that a victory can be had quickly.
I’d also like to add that with the random nature of spawns and layout, it’s impossible to determine what kind of lair you’re dealing with. Most of the time, jetpacking across to whichever corner you believe the spawnery to be ends up with your heavies mind controlled in one turn by the same Siren, or two sirens. You may also have a terror sentinel standing right in your way. And all of this is for naught if you get right up to the spawnery and THEN a Chiron says Oh! Hey guys. You didn’t know I was here, and I can’t SEE you, but have some mortar! And three of your troops die before you can kill the spawnery.
I do tend to see a mortar Chiron and restart the mission (if I cannot get to it within a turn or two safely) they are really not enjoyable. I love the ones that shoot worms at you, and I’ve never really had an issue with the goo ones either, just the mortars. Their damage is much too high. It would be better if they were napalm or something similar…
You can certainly deal with a Lair without cheesing your way through (but then again, I don’t consider stealthing it, as cheese, since that’s a well established mechanic in the game)
It’s a race against time. Since the enemies are infinite. You only need to succeed at getting one fighter to the spawnery. Even late game, an assault rifle is enough to destroy it (it has an unarmoured underbelly, that reduces its health by 500 (out of 600). 2-3 bursts (or an Anu shotgun) and it’s dead, mission finished.
I made a designated strike-team to deal with them. The missions are usually pretty short for me
l think you are talking about the explosive bomb abdomen chiron,l have a problem with those too in the late game too ,l really hate those unfair enemy mechanics in this game,it is making me to must play unfair too in order to finish the game
l wrote a forum too,because l was so frustrated by it
Yeah, the explosion Chirons are priority one targets to kill. My way is to find them with stealth, if possible then put some poison from crossbow with remaining action points. Or give him some extra points with Rally Squad from others. When discovered by infiltrator, then sniper teams come to play. With some mark of death, or other bonuses, I usually put chirons down within few sniper shots. Or catch him with berzerker, boosted speed from frenzy priest and some suffered damage + dash. They can be dealt imho pretty fast if you are smart enough.
I would not say above is cheese tactic. It is what it is. Stay tuned, composed, patiently discover hardest enemies and put them down. My preferable weapons are sniper rifles with virophage. Combo infiltrator + sniper rifle lvl7 put chiron down in two shots.
If you want some cheese tac you can go for heavy with sniper rifle and rage burst. That´s the tac I use against Queens. One round, one down.
do lair with only stealthy guys with shotguns (you forget about Chirons)
jet pack + dash + war cry to disallow mortar from functioning (really risky, but valid if you will manage to deal with spawnery in 2 turns)
just rage snipe over whole map with few snipers (you need few snipers at once)
you can use more niche tactic:
use paralyzing sniper rifle with your sniper (you don’t need great firepower, you don’t need to get close to chirons, and you still make Chiron inoperative)
The big problem comes when you have no idea that it is there because you have no line of sight on it. And suddenly …
Like one that spawned in a lair. Fortunately for me when it happened it was the goo one. But, had it been mortar, some of my soldiers would have had a hard time.
If I know it is there, I try all I can to create a line of sight by exploding some terrain if possible and/or laying low not alerting anybody before I can shoot it. Then rage-burst, cause this thing has to die.
Don´t forget that the range of explosion chirons is not unlimited. If discovered by forward stealth infiltrator while rest of squad members are at the start line, they won´t be able to shoot at them.
Quite frankly, they (until now) never managed to take a shot at my troops. I was always able to kill them before they would fire. And the messages on the forum comforted me into never letting this ever happen.
But, after yesterday’s “stealthy” goo Chiron, I might become a bit paranoid. If one spawns on a lair I’m suddenly in trouble if I don’t have vision on the spawning point.
yup on the last mission i played it 2 times and there’s a frigging huge wall in front of the spawning zone and somewhat 2 bomber behind hit get use to past the wall and hit all my entire party no death but not a single character able to use even a pen weapons, limbs you name it all gone. just 2 invisible utterly snipy fat bastards
To respond to the aforementioned tactics, some of these are valid tactics, many of them are cheese tactics that you would employ only after you learned there is a mortar chiron on the map. That means that you’ve explored out, discovered it, then likely hit restart so that you could employ said tactics.
Some of these tactics also rely on units and abilities you get toward late game, level 7+. I started this thread after a rage-quit Lair mission encountered in the very early game. Phoenix Point’s RNG-reliability for map and mission build is devastating sometimes at earlier levels. It’s not well balanced, and the answer is basically “ignore the Lair until you can handle it later on”. Well, okay, but now you’re telling us to ignore the enemy and deal with the constant haven defense missions, which will likely also be overwhelming at that level.
And again, this “wait until you’re stronger” tactic also means you tried the mission, failed, and then reloaded due to getting wrecked by a mortar.
Too much of Phoenix Point as it is now relies on the player going, “WELP…eff this…restart” until you find a method to defeat the overbearing enemy.
Most of this, of course, is coming from an early game standpoint. When I took on the mission this post is about, I had no stealth, no level 7 abilities, no berserkers, and only one heavy.
I did end up beating it, however, by jet packing across the map on the right side while trailing behind with a few troops and just hoping I didn’t get mortared.
So this night I had one of those that really shot all across the lair (40 is really far).
The biggest problem for me is that I wasn’t expecting it because there was no Pandoran in sight of the soldiers that got hit.
I did have an assault that was in view. He was on his way to kill the spawnery. He was very well protected behind a high tower so the Chiron didn’t target him.
But the other soldiers were far, had killed everybody around, and moved after that. The Chiron couldn’t possibly know they were in this spot.
I have some suspicion too, a possibility is an enemy seeing you that you can’t see, but it shouldn’t last much more than one turn. There’s perhaps a bug in fog of war management or sounds spreading management.
It’s baloney.
weapons, limbs you name it all gone. just 2 invisible utterly snipy fat bastards