Thoughts about disabled body parts

Phoenix Point Game Feedback
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Lots of players hate the “mortar” Chirons (and rightfully so I think). The problem with them is that they often start bombing you as you’re not aware of their presence. So you are out in the open and now with a team of disabled guys that potentially can not even heal themselves because both arms are disabled.

I recently finished a game with New Jericho and used lots of heavies in full Anvil-2 armor. In the “protect Tobia West’s fortress” mission, I saw 1 such Chiron in the first turn so were on my guards but still in the open. During Pandoran turn, 3 others join in to bomb my squad (they didn’t even care about New Jericho defenders). So 4 “mortar” Chirons bombing my face, and the result was … my sniper was nearly dead and Technician needed to restore all his body parts. But that’s it, my heavies barely had a scratch (and I had forgot to put the “+20 armor” from technician).

All this story to bring this: Mortar Chirons don’t bring a tactical aspect to the game. The only thing they bring is that, from now on, my teams will wear heavy armor once the first lair happens. I can compensate the loss in speed, not losing arms during combat.

I made a suggestion on canny (https://phoenixpoint.canny.io/feedback/p/body-parts-health-should-be-linked-to-strength) to have the body parts health scale with strength.
What good is it to have 30 strength, 300 HP if you still have an arm with 70 HP and a grenade can render your soldier useless ?

This would give more value to the “strength” skill. Your survivability against mortar Chirons or grenades would be greater.

Currently, on legend, you start with 14 strength and have 70HP arms (factor 5x). It would make the easier difficulties easier since by using this factor you would start with soldiers having 20 strength and 100HP arms and potentially reaching 30 strength 150HP arms. (I’m not saying it should be this formula)

Arthrons do have body parts with more HP as they progress, why don’t we ?

The people that want to put skill points in willpower or speed can still do so, but will have to suffer the consequences when “mortar” Chirons start coming (like today). This could prevent builds with 20 willpower or 25 speed as it can be ruined by mortar Chirons completely disabling you. Stay at 19 willpower but add 2 strength, or 18 WP but +4 strength. Same for speed.

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Chiron bombard are my favorite enemies, Sirens follow closely. But yes this point is just non acceptable.

I think that design spirit is some unfair death can happen, a good other example is the total RNG Scylla with cannon, totally absurd.

But overall the game is very fair, sounds hinting where are enemies, sounds hinting type of enemies, ability to have some soldiers detecting enemies very far through los, ability to improve hearing range, spawning point clearly shown, more.

But for Chiron bombard despite they are a lot of fun, sometimes they can surprise and generate some absurd kill at first bombard, had recently a 160HP sniper, probably PP sniper armor set, killed in one bombard no explosive stuff around. I won’t mention the absurdity of those Chiron in Lairs, this is another problem.

The problem is sometimes I don’t use sounds, so I’m not sure, but I think there’s no clear sounds warning there’s a bombard Chiron in the map. Their sounds are same or too similar to other Chiron and you can’t just rush to top covers when a Chiron is on the map.

Second problem, perhaps more for Goo Chiron, but there should be some cases for bombard Chiron, it’s not just a matter of top cover, but also trajectory. So a roof or high obstacle guaranty nothing it depends of Chiron position. So even a clear sound warning a bombard Chiron is here won’t work that well or will have some weird cases.

In my opinion, previous version of the game was better, and a bombard Chiron was starting bombard only when detected, with one probable exception, Lairs.

For me it’s how it should work:

  • Chiron bombard only after they was detected once.
  • When detected, first turn is to prepare bombard at next turn, the point is to cover case you discover the Chiron only when most soldiers already played.
  • This is only for Chiron bombards, worms and goo need a different design tuning.

Totally disagree, the problem is you haven’t yet learn play and exploit top covers and obstacles breaking trajectories. Perhaps it helped me learn it faster to have play Phantom Doctrine with air bombard, even if far to be as developed and interesting than bombard in PP.

No link with Chiron bombard, there’s a too RNG aspect in parts disabled for soldiers. But that’s another topic.

So disabled parts was the topic, not bombard Chiron.

I don’t know, I think the problem is further, but perhaps such change you suggest would allow mitigate the problem, but this would be with soldiers boosted by a lot of global skill points, not sure it would help much.

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Bombards from outside of FoV would be fine if it was signaled first, somehow. Maybe for cases where Chiron doesn’t have direct line of sight and rely only on nearby pandoran awareness or last known position, he should fire “tracer” missile first, and next turn (if still without LoS to any of valid targets) bombard targeted area?

Kind of conditional preparation phase and bombardment signaling, but only for cases when Chiron doesn’t have targets in line of sight.

Tracer projectile could still be (single, weak) explosive, or large AoE pheromones that would make targets covered visible to Chiron regardless of LoS (no need for tracer for a few turns).

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Do you have some coherence ?

First set the context, then offer a solution. And the title of the thread isn’t “Chirons are horrible !!##!”.

I love those bombard Chirons. But if some missions have 4 of them, that means heavy armor for everybody. Because to kill them, you have to get out of your cover most of the time anyway.

Or you make a choice … do I want 2 additional strength that bring +10HP on body parts or this 20th will point ?

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Not sure how I feel about body parts HP gains from strength as it would affect also projectiles (and other types of damage). I am not fan of resolving problems with bullet sponges. Maybe explosive damage type resistance that would scale with strength?

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Imho with current state game have I prefer mortar Chirons to be charge first before they launch mortar. It gives a little bit room to breath for players, because mortar Chiron goes suck once player surrounded them or close to them.

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Yes, but the problem described is more about effects of explosive damage on body parts rather than Chiron bombardment itself. There are few other explosive damage sources, like ie. crabby grenade launcher volleys so the issue remains. There are no other ways to counter or mitigate explosive damage than heavy armour, and using h.armour makes live or die difference. Bombardment, being Chiron or grenades spam, renders your soldier useless (or dead) or unscratched, there’s hardly something in between. Chirons fault here is it can do this outside of FoV more often than not, so you don’t have a chance to react (hence my first answer).

Strength gives you more HP overall but it doesn’t affect limbs HP so even if you go full strength and survive the bombardment your limbs as as fragile as min. Strength sniper. What’s the point of having more HP in terms of explosive damage if you end up as limbless zombie anyway?

The more I think about it, the more I agree with you @pantolomin. Rising strength you’re bullet sponging the soldier anyway, the HP gain is just not reflected on body parts like it should be.

2 Likes
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Little bit off topic… There should be decoys in the form of grenade in inventory which can be used by every soldier class. This decoy should last until destroyed. Similar to infiltrator’s decoy but instead of WP and AP usage it should be produceable item. I think it would mitigate chiron problem to some level.

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I think this a great idea.

And this is a very good point. With this and with making melee weapon damage scale with strength, it would really help to make strength a worthy investment.

1 Like
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I had proposed that some time ago. But my proposal was not only for Chirons but any long range big area of effect weapons (Scarab, Fury, Thor). You decide where you want to “shoot” and the actual “shot” happens only on next turn. Of course, the enemy doesn’t know where your shot will go, he only sees where you are facing (if he sees you). Didn’t seem to have big fans around.

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:sweat_smile: actually that’s great idea. Did you post the idea in canny? let me know if you already create so I can give my support for it, thanks.

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Yes I did: https://phoenixpoint.canny.io/feedback/p/body-parts-health-should-be-linked-to-strength

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I mean the one your purposed for long range AoE type :smiley:, let me know if you create it.

Anyways as for mortar Chiron maybe lowering their damage is much safer than hassling around of player stats - attribute values. I think one simple change it may change entire chain parameter for the sake of balance and takes more time consuming *just a thought I didn’t do an exact info nor collect all the data and do research to calculate them all.

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This one, no. It wasn’t very popular here so I didn’t even try.

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Yes your comment was valid for first Chiron bombard and you wrote:

Plain wrong, clearly you don’t know play them.

I don’t have comment on this aspect, I find it complex. For STR boost as a solution I felt this solution through attributes was a bit limitative, but ok at least it could be a first aspect.

It wouldn’t really solve the parts damages issues which is the core problem, bombard/grenades just make it more frequent.

Currently I suspect most players don’t use much heavier helms, allow fix the problem through HP would break a possible mechanism/balance/trade off through heavier helm positive and negative.

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Yes I do. Good old Anvil armor and they are like kitten. Well, don’t let them shoot too much either, they shred so it could start to be effective after a few shots.

And thanks for pointing the obvious. Like I never thought about this. You’re a great strategist.

Are you just there trying to pick up fights, because it’s a recurring theme in lots of your messages on this forum. No one knows how to play. Even those who finished the game multiple times with all factions, some in legendary mode.

You do find buildings that resist in some havens. And then some that don’t (and of course there were two of them so the first destroys the roof and the second destroys you).
Lairs don’t have cover for all your troops (and if you face two you can’t protect on two fronts)
Citadel anyone ? Where are you, cover ? COVER ? I don’t rage burst with a sniper rifle so it lasts more than 2 rounds.

4 Likes
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Good suggestion regarding strength increasing HPs on body parts. Strength does need to have more relevance within the game, I’ve upvoted.

I’m not so keen on Chrions having to spend a turn preparing to fire mortars, I think it’d be too easy to either take cover and/or taken them down before they fired. I think I’d only like to see this if they later evolved to not need to spend that turn.

The other solution I can suggest, and it’s a solution for many things within the game imho, is to increase map sizes. This would allow for more options to spread out, and lead to a greater possibility of spotting an enemy that fires mortars whilst still being outside of that enemy’s firing range.

3 Likes
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Cool but don’t write again that they add no tactical value when it’s quite the reverse, and even more, it’s rare mechanism and uncommon tactics. I cumulate cases that aren’t proof because they are combats not test, showing no move don’t attract their fire. The exact rules are still not fully clear. The point is it’s a mix of top cover with complex designs, high obstacles, trajectories, care on splash/nearby damages, target priority, sometimes get a los to kill, sometimes disable bombing with war cry or paralyze, all of that when fighting a groudpof enemies. Its no way trivial and no way just about not bother and endure bombard and kill asap.

You sarcasm is a void from someone who wrote they add no tactical value.

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Tactical error, you position an attractive target close to those roof, nearby or splash damages generate the problem, put more care, and trajectories can screw up a roof protection, and many top protection have a nasty complex design, put a soldier under a roof hole is the typical example of error that will generate what you quote.

EDIT: In scavenging mission this can be very tricky, as containers can be the target nearby a roof protection. Well sometimes even this extra complexity can be managed, sometimes it’s perhaps very hard, more a point of improvement of procedural generation of scavenging mission.

EDIT2: Bombard targeting doesn’t follow the same logic than for goo and worms, they are more strict, which open more ways to manage it. Bombard with Goo logic would be unplayable but it’s not working like that.

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Firstly it’s only for Chiron bombard, not all Chiron.

Otherwise lairs show that map size change nothing. Spread out doesn’t stop bombard. Systematically spread widely a team (in case there’s a Bombard Chiron) on a large map will generate many dangers, some more problematic than in case there’s a Chiron bombard. And worse it will generate boredom repetitions.

I don’t see any improvement in what you suggest. Even if yes have a turn prepare looks basic. But play with top covers is no way simple so I don’t see much the problem. I’d say give more armor and HP to Chiron bombard to compensate.