Combat

Tactical Combat

The biggest difference in gameplay between Phoenix Point and similar games is that Phoenix Point is quick.

1) By the end of the first turn of each mission you should usually know where most of the enemies are, perhaps kill a couple of them. Exception night missions You can also do a "First Turn Strike" (FTS), i.e. put out of action (kill, or cripple) most of the enemies on the first turn (see First Turn Strike).

2) Maintaining an enemy engaged for more than one turn is usually a bad idea. Once you are shooting at the enemy and the enemy is shooting at you, one of you is going to die very soon. You must either kill, disable or disengage. The most common mistake is putting your soldier behind what looks like a solid cover, taking a couple of shots at an enemy within range, and ending the turn while your soldier remains within the range of an uncrippled enemy.

3) Missions are usually over in a few turns (with First Turn Striking, sometimes in 1 or 2. But even without FTS it usually doesn't take more than 5 turns). However, in the rare longer missions, that can last 10 or more turns, it's important to understand that strategic decisions are made each turn. For example, Lairs (a type of Pandoran base) take place on larger maps, with infinite enemy spawning and architecture that creates choke points. On these missions you may be tempted to take a wait and see approach, because enemies take a while to reach your troops, but of course you shouldn't. Bottom line: don't waste turns in Phoenix Point. Overwhelm or disengage. Stalemate = you lose.

Now, on to some basic concepts/mechanics in Phoenix Point:

Action Points (APs)

In Phoenix Point all characters have, under normal circumstances, 4 action points each turn

(see the following exceptions: Tired, Exhausted, Paralyze Damage, Dazed, Panicked and War Cry as situations in which available APs are reduced, and Onslaught and Rapid Clearance where they are increased).

They can be used to move, shoot, or use abilities or skills. Different weapons, abilities and skills have different AP costs. For example, it costs 3 APs to shoot a sniper rifle (SR) but only 1 AP to shoot a pistol. There is no prescribed order in which actions have to be taken (that is, you can move and shoot, or shoot and move, and shoot or move again afterwards, if you have the APs) and continuous movement is allowed (that is, you can spend part of your AP to move, then use the remainder to move some more, or even take a shot, or use a skill, and then spent the remainder of the AP to move).

Will Points (WPs)

All characters start with some WPs that are used to power skills and abilities. They also decrease when a teammate (or an ally) dies, certain body parts are disabled (normally head), or due to receiving viral damage, or a psychic attack.

They can be recovered by giving up one whole turn (Recover action: spend 4APs to receive WPs equal to half of current max WPs), killing enemies (depending on enemy, from 2 to 10 WPs), opening crates found on the battlefield (5WPs), one of the Phoenix Point operatives reaching specially designated locations on the map (these are marked in white and will give a certain number of WPs to each operative, regardless of where they are) missing pic, or through certain skills of other squaddies ( Inspire and Radiant Hope).

If the WPs of a character would be reduced below 0, she/he/it will Panic and the next turn after the Panic will automatically use the Recover action, thus losing 2 full turns.

Shooting in Phoenix Point

In Phoenix Point the trajectory of each projectile (bullet, pellet, etc.) is individually calculated independently of other projectiles fired from the same weapon. If it hits something, be it the targeted enemy, another enemy, a friendly, or a piece of scenery it will do (or fail to do, depending on armor/strength of the scenery material) the damage per projectile of the weapon. For example, the ARES assault rifle fires 6 projectiles that do 30 damage each (shown as 6 x 30). If the 6 projectiles hit an unarmored target, it will receive 180 points of damage that will be subtracted from its HPs.

To understand fully what happens we need to look at several different elements like accuracy, body parts, and armor, but for now the most important is to realize that there are real (though not very realistic - firearms buffs beware!) ballistics and there is no RNG (random) element in the damage calculation of direct fire weapons (explosives and melee work somewhat differently).

This means that with enough accuracy a shot can be guaranteed to kill, or cripple an enemy, without any random chance that it will miss, or that it will hit but not do enough damage. What's more, the game will tell you when a shot is certain to kill a target (that's the flashing red skull & crossbones next to the enemy's HP bar) missing pic.

Accuracy

Each weapon has an inherent accuracy depending on its effective range, defined as the range at which the weapon is likely to hit a human-sized target 50% of the time. The range is calculated in tiles. So, a weapon with an effective range of 20, will hit a human at a distance of 20 tiles 50% of the time.

Still not clear, right? Where are the hit chances expressed as a percentage?

There aren't any. Usually you can manually aim the weapon using the free aiming mode. In the free aming mode you use an aiming reticle, which is a small circle inside a big circle. The small circle is one quarter of the size of the big circle. Each projectile fired from the weapon will hit somewhere inside the big circle and there is a 50% chance that a projectile will land inside the small circle.

This means that gaps in body parts can result in misses. So if you target an Arthon's grenade launcher arm, for instance, it is entirely possible for the bullet to pass through the gaps in the tendons and miss completely, especially if it’s a one-shot weapon.

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The aiming reticle is static. It doesn't change when you move it around or zoom in/out. As your soldier approaches the target the chances to hit it increase, as she/he moves away, they decrease. The increase/decrease in accuracy (i.e. the portion of the target covered by the aiming reticle) is linear.

In addition to the inherent accuracy of the weapon, the soldier who wields it can buff it through skills/perks, armor, or augmentations (mutations or bionics). Firing the weapon using certain skills also reduces its accuracy. Increasing or reducing accuracy means that the aiming reticle gets smaller, or bigger by the % of the increase or decrease.

For example, a soldier with Marksman will see the accuracy increased by 30% (provided there are no enemies within 10 tiles), which means that the aiming reticle will be reduced in size by 30%. Conversely, a soldier firing a weapon after activating Adrenaline Rush will have accuracy decreased by 50%, which means the aiming reticle will grow 50% in size.

Another way of looking at it is that each weapon comes with an aiming reticle of a certain size. For example, a sniper rifle (SR) has a smaller reticle, a heavy weapon (HW) a much bigger reticle, and an assault rifle (AR) is somewhere between the two, and then that the size of the reticle will vary depending on the perks, skills, armor, and augmentations of the soldier.

The big takeaways from this are that the closer you are to a target the more likely you are to hit it and that a heavy weapon (HW) can be as accurate as a sniper rifle (SR) with the right accuracy modifiers derived from skills, perks, armor, and augmentations.

The biggest chance to hit is around the border of inner circle

Full explanation here

Free aim vs snapshot

Though free aiming is very cool and often allows to make the better shot, the auto-target or snapshot mode has its advantages. In free aim you aim at the space where the target is, not at the target itself.

Many enemies are still moving while you take the shot (particularly Tritons, which tend to bob and weave). It is possible for the enemy to move out of the bullet path. It’s often more noticeable with burst shots, because enemies can also flinch to being hit.

Explanation:

"While it may not be an ideal solution, it’s an abstract representation of a moving target. While the game is played in a You Go, I Go format, in reality the enemy wouldn’t be moving all of their soldiers and firing and then standing still while the player moved all of theirs.

In most games like these, it is presumed or implied that a “turn” (a full round for the player and AI) consists of a certain amount of time, and that all action is happening at approximately the same time.

We did several experiments (particularly with the free aiming system), with freezing the animation (which just didn’t look right), slowing the animation down (which is what we do now) and having the animation run at full speed (which made the free aiming more like playing an FPS).

We decided to settle on the slow motion as a compromise - but the fact that enemies do still move and flinch is taken as “you’re firing at a moving target”.

This was also done mechanically to give the “snap shot” (as in, the shot without manual aiming) more utility.

Manual aiming was originally a Sniper special ability back in the prototype, but backers liked the idea of the free aim so much, they wanted it as a mechanic available for use by all classes.

This comes with some design decisions: Do you limit its use? If so, how? Do you make an aimed shot cost more AP? Do you make it cost WP? And if so, do you need to have the WP to even go into the free-aim mode.

One thing we were very aware of is the potential for free-aiming to slow down the pace of the game. When the player takes every shot in free-aim mode, searching for the sweet spot, how do you make it so the snap shot still has value?

In the case of Phoenix Point, the snap shot tracks the centre of the target. You can see this on enemies that move a lot, as the crosshair will stay on them.

It becomes really obvious with something that has a long burst, like the NJ Heavy MG. In free-aim, the soldier will continue to fire at the same point in space, even if the enemy ragdolls out of the way (useful if you want to continue shooting at something behind it). But, with the snap shot, the soldier will track and continue to fire at the target even as it moves."

Full discussion here

Damage

All characters in Phoenix Point have hit points (HPs) depending on their Strength attribute (10 HPs for each point of Strength). When a character's HP reaches 0, he/she/it dies. In addition, all characters have different body parts, and each body part has a certain number of HPs and may be protected by a certain amount of armor. The damage done to a body part also reduces the total number of HPs of the character. Once the HPs of the body part is reduced to 0, the character is crippled in some way, suffering some negative effects, and starts bleeding (losing 10 HPs per turn per each disabled part - or more for some Pandorans, until healed).

Two important things to bear in mind:

- the total HPs are not distributed among the different body parts - the body part HPs don't scale with Strength, so it's as easy to cripple a character with high Strength as it is to cripple a character with low Strength.

All humans have 60 HPs in the head and arms, 80 in legs and 100 in torso

- even once a body part is disabled, its HPs reduced to 0, further damage to that body part will continue to reduce the total number of HPs of the character.

Each direct fire weapon projectile does a fixed amount of damage minus the armor covering the body part diminished by the piercing strength of the projectile and, depending on the weapon, may shred a fixed amount of that armor, the shredding being applied after the damage is calculated.

Some examples:

An ARES assault rifle does 30 damage, has 0 piercing, shreds 1 armor per projectile and fires 6 projectiles per shot. Bob shoots at Tom and 3 projectiles hit the target: two in the torso, and one in the head. The body armor Tom is wearing has 20 armor, and the helmet 18. Tom received 30 - (20) + 30 - (20 - 1) = 21 damage to the torso and lost 2 points of armor for that body part, and 30 - (18)=12 damage to the head, losing 1 point of armor for that body part.

Alice then shoots Tom with the Assault Weapons Piranha armor piercing assault rifle that does 40 damage per projectile, has 15 piercing strength and shoots 4 projectiles. Two of them hit Tom in one of the legs that have 30 armor. Tom receives 2(40 - (30 - 15)) = 50 damage to the leg, but he did not lose any armor points.

Finally, Clive shoots Tom with a Firebird sniper rifle that does 110 damage per projectile, has no armor penetration and doesn’t shred armor. It hits Tom on the left arm, that has 20 armor, doing 110-20 = 90 damage, which are subtracted from the total HPs remaining. The arm has 60 HPs, so it is disabled. Disabling an arm also reduces a human character’s max HPs by 10 (which means that this health cannot be recovered by healing during the mission*). Tom is now bleeding and can’t use any two-handed weapons, but he did not lose any armor points.

*Sometimes disabling a body part can result in a reduction of the total HP pool: if the body part reduces the max HP more than its own HPs, which is the case with some big enemies. Also with blast damage, as explosions damage all the limbs affected by the blast, thus often disabling several limbs at the same time.

Disabling body parts is also useful when paralysing enemies, because max HPs/10 = Strength of the character, thus reducing max HPs also reduces Strength, and to paralyse a character you need to inflict paralysis damage equal to or higher than the character's Strength

The damage per projectile can be increased through various skills and perks so that armor becomes less relevant (e.g. an assault rifle with a 100% buff to damage will do 60 points of damage per projectile, easily overcoming all but the hardiest of armors).

So, what does all this mean?

1) To do damage most of the time you need to do something about the armor

Weapons with armor penetration (like the Piranha) or high damage per projectile (like the sniper rifles) can overcome the armor, but they don't remove it. Weapons that shred armor (cannon, heavy machine gun) have poor inherent accuracy, but they destroy armor making the target vulnerable to high damage dealing weapons with low damage per projectile (assault rifles and shotguns).

Most enemies, including the most well armored Arthons and Tritons, have body parts with 20 armor or less, making them vulnerable to assault rifles and shotguns provided you get close enough to the target to reliably hit the body part with a full burst.

Explosives are also very effective at shredding armor, because the shredding damage is applied to every body part hit by tthe blast.

With sufficient buffs to damage output, assault rifles and shotguns can overcome armor by brute force.

Melee weapons do enough damage to overcome armor. (see melee)

There are also skills that allow to easily shred armor, and then there are special weapons (fire, poison, acid and paralysis)

In conclusion, there is a lot of freedom in how to deal with opponents' armor in Phoenix Point, especially once you start using accuracy and damage buffs. (Remember: a cannon, which shreds armor like it was paper, can be made extremely accurate with the right armor/perks/augmentations, and even without accuracy buffs, accuracy is all about the distance to the target, so running up to a target and shooting them at close range with a cannon, or an HMG is always a sure way to get rid of that pesky armor, if not kill the target outright).

However, deal with the armor you must.

Shooting with assault rifles, or shotguns at an armored target is pointless unless you can get close enough to accurately target some exposed body part, or your soldier has some serious damage buffs.

2) Sometimes crippling an enemy is as good as killing it. Enemies need both hands to shoot two-handed weapons. Enemies nasty abilities often need specific body parts to work. Disabling heads makes enemies lose a lot of WPs, which can be used to break the enemy's morale

Cover

Because of real ballistics, in PP cover only works if it’s actually in the way of the projectiles and doesn’t get destroyed by them. If some part, even if very small, of a character is exposed (e.g. because the attack comes at an angle) and the attacker is close enough to accurately target it, the cover will not do any good.

There are two kinds of cover in PP, high and low. The difference between them is that, in addition to the character behind low cover being partially exposed by definition, a character in low cover will kneel (so that he/she/it is partially exposed, - normally head and shoulders in case of humans) and will fire without changing position, while a character in high cover (whether real or nominal) will step to the side to fire, being completely exposed in the process.

The reason why it matters is that if an enemy is on Overwatch covering that corner, stepping to the side to take a shot (whether at that enemy or another) can mean entering a world of pain. Similarly, if the enemy is an Arthron (crab) with a machine gun, or a human with the Return Fire skill (assault LVL3 passive skill, shoot back at enemy that attacks the character provided the enemy is within LOS and half the perception range of the character), the return fire from the enemy will activate (if the enemy is still capable of shooting) before the soldier returns to cover.

However, shooting from low cover doesn’t activate overwatch and partially protects from return fire. The disadvantage is that any return fire will probably hit the soldier in the head, which usually has less armor than the rest of the body. Still, the head makes for a smaller target and it’s more likely that the return fire will miss the partially covered soldier.

So one way to think of it is that low cover is better for attacking (from it) and high cover is better for defending.

However, in practice

an enemy won’t go on a overwatch if there is a PP soldier in low cover within range - it will shoot at the soldier instead; and

if you are shooting at an enemy with the return fire skill better just make sure it can’t shoot you back (because after your shot it’s gonna be dead, crippled, or you are more than half its perception range away, or undetected - for infiltrators)

I have been referring here to “high” cover as opposed to “full” cover. That is because high cover is not necesarily full, or solid cover. The shield icon might show a position being protected by high cover, indicating that the soldier will step to the side to fire at an enemy, but the cover might be of poor quality, e.g. not large enough to actually cover the whole body, or be of very weak material (glass, trees). Or it might be an explosive barrel.

Useful tips:

One of the big mistakes of XCOM-style players is thinking that you have to shelter at the corner of a building to be able to shoot from it, and that this gives you full cover. Neither is true. But Squaddies can make use of properly full cover in this game, in a way that they can’t in any other game of this type. Simply stand one step back from the corner of the rock or building you are sheltering behind, so that nothing can see you! If it can’t see you, the only thing it can fire at you is indirect explosives, and if you hug the wall tightly enough and far enough back that will probably overshoot.

Because of the AP system in this game, sheltering one step back behind a wall doesn’t stop you shooting from it. You simply step up to the corner, take your shot, then step back again! You will be fully exposed (as explained earlier) when you take your shot, but other than that, you are completely covered as long as nothing has LoS on you.

Another little trick once you have stepped back is to pull out your shotgun, or other short-range damage-dealer and train it in Overwatch on the corner you have just vacated - now anything coming round that corner is gonna be in for a very nasty surprise!

Note that heavy weapons, because they are held at waist length, cannot be shot behind low cover at high angles.

Takeaways: don’t assume that a nice shield icon means good, full cover, and most importantly, don’t overestimate the importance of cover. Which brings us to the next point - positioning.

Coming from Firaxis XComs and its clones, one has the “must be in cover” syndrome. Staying out in the open means flanked (so very high chance to hit and score a critical), means death. Just find anything and get behind it. A flower pot, a rubbish bin… This largely dictates positioning priorities in these games: stay in cover, try to flank, avoid being flanked.

In PP there are no critical hits so getting shot in the foot while in full cover and getting shot in the foot in the open is exactly the same thing. When it comes to positioning, what matters most in PP is line of sight (LOS) and distance. If you are far enough and the enemy doesn’t have long range weapons (sniper rifles, Synedrion assault rifles), you are good even if out in the open. If the enemy has sniper rifles and LOS on you, any cover offers limited protection.

My advice: examine the map to find positions from which you have good LOS on the enemies and from which the enemies have bad LOS on you. Your best bet are multistory buildings with windows. Take cover behind walls next to windows allowing you to shoot at the enemies below while they can’t shoot at you. Bear in mind that this does not mean that your soldiers are now perfectly safe. Enemies have explosives, both long and short range, and psychic attack abilities (notably mindcontrol), none of which require LOS.

Also, on many missions you can’t just wait for the enemies to attack you, because they have to destroy some mcguffin (like crates, civilians, equipment) or because there is an infinite number of them and you need to destroy some mcguffin (notably in the Pandoran bases).

Detection

When do you spot enemies and when do they spot you?

Detection is determined by the perception stat of the observer and the stealth stat of the observed. The perception stat is expressed in tiles and the stealth stat as a percentage (which can also be negative, meaning the observed is easier to detect), the stealth reducing the perception range vis a vis the observed.

So, if Bob has a perception of 35 (base perception of all human characters), he will detect all enemies with =<0% stealth within his LOS within 35 tiles. He will also detect enemies further away if they have a negative stealth stat (which is usually derived from wearing heavy armor). For example, Bob will detect enemies 49 tiles away within LOS whose stealth is - 40%. Similarly, Bob will be detected by enemies depending on his stealth stat and the perception stat of his enemies. Bob will also alert enemies to his presence by shooting a non-silenced weapon.

You can calculate the range at which any enemy will detect one of your operatives: just check the perception stat of the enemy, adjust it with your opearative's stealth, and count the tiles. Not that I suggest doing it before making every move…

The big takeaway as to detection is that 1) you want a soldier with high stealth and high perception to do the scouting, and 2) you don’t want to take low chance shots that reveal your position to the enemy without doing much (if any) harm to them.

In the first missions this doesn’t matter all that much. For starters, you don’t have access to armor/skills that radically enhance stealth or perception. Also, enemies are easy to handle.

I advise against acquiring bad habits though, such as using your jetpack heavy as a scout. It’s true that the jetpack allows to cover more distance than any of your starting soldiers can run, that the best LOS is from higher ground and that the heavy armor is strong enough to withstand a lot of punishment. However, the heavy armor helmet has a penalty to perception, and the heavy body armor has a huge penalty to stealth. Good scouts they are not - but you might want to use them as baits. As I said, in the very early game it doesn’t matter, but past that your heavy scout/bait will be drawing a lot of deadly attention.

Melee

There are two kinds of melee attacks in Phoenix Point, a “bash” with any item and “strike” with a dedicated melee weapon.

Note that both skills benefit from the Close Quarters Specialist third-row skill (Proficiency and 20% damage buff with shotguns and melee weapons)

Striking with a dedicated melee weapon requires to be on an adjacent tile to the target and to be proficient in melee weapons (otherwise there is a 50% to 'fumble', i.e. fail to do the attack after spending the APs on it). All melee weapons cost 2APs to strike with (though in the Blood and Titanium DLC there is a bionic augmentation, Vengeance Torso that grants the combat matrix ability, which reduces the cost of using melee weapons by 1AP, to a minimum of 1AP).

Melee weapons can also be used to bash (which costs only 1AP) but for much less damage (because they only weight 2 units, see below why that matters)

There is no free aim, or body part targeting with melee attacks, which means that some RNG is involved because any body part can receive the hit and different body parts have different armor.

The big advantages of melee weapons are the high damage per strike, which guarantees easily overcoming the toughest armors, that they have some secondary useful property (like armor penetration, or inflicting paralysis, bleeding, or shock damage) and that they are all one-handed weapons (except the melee weapons in the Legacy of the Ancients DLC).

Note that the Neurazer doesn’t require melee proficiency and costs 1AP to use, but for all other intents and purposes acts like a dedicated melee weapon. Most importantly, to inflict paralysis damage it has to be used to Strike an enemy, not Bash it.

Bashing with an item an adjacent enemy is always available, provided that the soldier’s arms have not been disabled (for items requiring 2 arms to operate, both arms are needed to bash with the item) and always costs 1 AP.

The damage of the attack is calculated by multiplying the weight of the item used for bashing by the strength of the character doing it. So a soldier with 15 Strength wielding an Assault Rifle that weighs 3 units will do 3*15=45 damage with the bash.

The item that is used for bashing can also suffer damage [if anyone can shed a light on how the damage to the weapon is calculated, it would be much appreciated; in my experience, it seems to be more likely and higher as the damage to the target from the bash is higher], so brittle weapons like sniper rifles make for poor candidates despite having considerable weight.

(Weapons that get damaged in combat will be automatically repaired after the battle, but not so the weapons that were destroyed).

Because bash scales with strength, it can actually do as much as damage as a melee weapon (for example, Marduk's Fist) but for half the APs. A character with 32 Strength (that can be achieved with max Strength and the resourceful third-row skill wielding a heavy weapon (e.g. Deceptor Hel 2 Cannon, Goliath GL2 - all of which weigh 5 units) will do 32 * 5 = 160. This is a 100% increase in damage per AP, but really anything above 80 damage (that is, with Strength of 17 or more) would seem to make bash preferable to melee.

There are a few caveats, however:

Melee weapons are one-handed while bashing with a heavy weapon requires both hands. This doesn’t seem very important… Until your heavy has one arm disabled.

Bashing can damage the weapon, and at very high Strength the damage seems to be significantly higher (I have seen up to 42 damage to the weapon from a single bash from a character with 32 Strength), which means that with very high Strength you might get no more than 4 bashes in before the weapon breaks (for example, Deceptor and Hel 2 Cannon each have 150 HPs).

Even though the damage per AP is important, when it comes to melee weapons remember that their big advantage over other weapons is the high damage per strike. A basic ARES does more damage than a Marduk's Fist (180 vs 160) for the same 2 APs (and over distance, too!). However, ARES fires in a burst and each shot does only 30 damage, which means that whereas against a target with 50 armor, the ARES will do 0 damage, a Marduk's Fist will do 110 damage. Similarly, even though 2 bashes of 90 damage each add to 180 pts of damage, against a target with 50 armor they would only do 80 in total.

For bash to compete with melee in damage, a serious investment in Strength is required. (This is not too big of an issue currently, as you will have more than enough SPs to completely max out the stats of your veterans by late game, especially on the easier difficulty levels)

If you have the Blood and Titanium DLC, you can augment your soldiers with the melee bionic torso, which reduces the cost of melee attacks by 1AP.

Conclusion: The big advantage of bash is that it costs 1 AP and that with high enough Strength it can do as much as damage as a dedicated melee attack that costs 2 AP. This makes it ideal for Heavies (who have the Brawler skill, LVL2 Passive Heavy Skill, adds 50% damage to bash and melee attacks), that can jetpack to an enemy and club it (which is the best thing they can usually do after jetpacking anyway). It is also very useful for other builds, to take care of worms and mindfraggers. However, a dedicated melee fighter can be devastating, especially when considering all the buffs available to melee and that they don’t need to care about accuracy.

About weapons

Weapons have the following stats:

Damage: the damage to HPs dealt with each attack (see Damage for detailed explanation)

Piercing: how many points of armor each attack ignores (see Damage for detailed explanation)

Effective Range: the range in tiles at which the weapon is likely to hit a human sized target 50% of the time (see Accuracy for detailed explanation). Note that for melee weapons this is always 1

Burst: how many projectiles the weapon shoots with each attack

Action Points: cost in APs of using the weapon

Special: some weapons do special damage (see here for a complete list of all the different kinds)

Ammo capacity: how many attacks can be made with the weapon before it needs reloading

Weight: how much the weapon weights (in unspecified units) - this is relevant for the carrying capacity of the operative and for bash damage (see Melee)

HPs: how many HPs the weapon has; a weapon can receive damage from attacks by enemies, or bashing, and if reaches 0 it is destroyed (weapons are automatically repaired after each batlle).

Hands to use: if a weapon requires both hands, the character won't be able to use if one of his/her/its arms is disabled, and if it requires only one hand, if boths arms are disabled.

Some important concepts to bear in mind when discussing weapons in PX:

- Damage per second(DPS)/Damage per AP: this is damage per attack multiplied by burst divided by AP cost. This tells how efficient the weapon can be: the higher the DPS of a weapon, the more you are getting out of the APs spent on using it.

- Weapons with high damage per attack are those that can go through armor of any strength and inflict respectable amount of damage (generally, anything of 80 damage or more), and the opposite are considered weapons with low damage per attack/projectile (most notably shotguns - 35, and assault rifles, between 30 and 40).

- Long burst weapons are weapons that have a burst of at least 6 or more.

Weapons in PX tend to follow some rules (though there are exceptions and the rules themselves can be subverted by skills and perks):

- Weapons with high damage per attack/projectile are single shot (sniper rifles, Hel 2 Cannon, or have short bursts ( Destiny III, weapons with low damage have long bursts (most assault rifles, all shotguns and all heavy machine guns).

- Weapons with high ER have lower DPS: sniper rifles have the highest ER and the lowest DPS, assault rifles have medium ER and medium DPS, shotguns have lowest ER and highest DPS.

So the first conclusion seems simple enough: short range weapons do more damage. However, that is only really so when considering unarmored or lightly armored targets... When dealing with armored targets weapons with low damage projectiles seem to become ineffective and the sniper rifles reign supreme. But that's also only part of the story, because it doesn't take into account:

1) Synergies from different skills (more on that in the character development section, but the main principle is that the damage per projectile of long burst/low damage per projectile weapons can be increased with perks and skills to the point where they easily punch through any armor)

2) Benefits from combined tactics (using one operative to strip armor from enemies and another one to attack them)

3) The ambiguity of ER.

Here I will talk about the last one, because it's the most complex and it's directly related to PX opting for realistic ballistics vs die rolls.

So, as you already know, the only measure of accuracy in PX is Effective Range (ER) which is the range in tiles at which the weapon is likely to hit a human sized target 50% of the time.

But, what is a human sized target when you are dealing with enemies that are sometimes much smaller than humans and other times much, much bigger? And do you actually want to hit the target itself?

In reality, no. Or, at least, not usually past the early game. What you want is to hit specific body parts because they have the lowest armor (even the most well armored Arthrons and Tritons have body parts with 20 armor) or give some nasty ability to the enemy. These body parts can be huge (like a Scylla's abdomen) or very small (the thin Arthon's arm holding the shield or the Triton's weapon hands, mostly hidden behind his other pair of arms). Moreover, you are not only limited by the size of the target, but by the angle of attack and the obstacles between you.

So what happens in practice is that often to reliably land the shot you want, you have to engage the target at perhaps 20 tiles with a sniper rifle, and at that point you can also dash at it with a shotgun, and just kill it point blank, or engage it at a slightly longer range but different angle with an assault rifle.

What this comes down to is that comparing weapon classes among each other is as interesting as it is inconclusive. This is perhaps one of the biggest achievements of the game - that practically all weapons are useful depending on the play style, kind of like what happen with From Software games, and for similar reasons.

A few tips:

- When dealing with armored targets, assault rifles are intented to to be used to disable less armored limbs (20 or less) at some distance (5-12 tiles) and to chip away at armor, while shotguns are best at very close range (2 tiles or less).

- Hel 2 Cannon has a short ER (17) but it packs such a punch that it doesn't matter that much where it hits.

- Deceptor is mostly effective against large targets, like Chirons and Scyllas. Against medium sized-targets it has to be used at short range (8 tiles or less).

- Goliath 2 GL is excellent for stripping of armor from multiple targets simultaneously (when not disabling them outright) allowing a an effective use of high DPS weapons against them.

Armor - what is it good for?

Each piece of armor comes with an armor value and some bonus/malus to stats (accuracy, perception, speed, stealth).

The armor is very important in determining the role that the operative will have within the squad, because all soldiers, regardless of class and experience, have the same Accuracy (+0%), Perception (35) and Stealth (+0%).

Accuracy, Perception and Stealth mostly depend on the armor/augmentations (mutations and bionics, if you have the Blood and Titanium DLC, which work as permanent pieces of armor).

The different armor pieces for head, body and legs can be combined in any way, and there is no penalty for using armors outside the class *(the one exception is the heavy body armor, as only Heavies can use the jet jump ability without a 50% chance to fumble - that after spending the APs and WPs on the skill it will not work).*

This means that if you want to turn your Heavy into a dedicated mid-range shooter you can replace his Heavy Armor with the Sniper Armor, or if you are willing to exchange the extra armor and jetpack for mobility, you can give him Assault Armor.

One key thing to understand about Phoenix Point character system is that classes do not dictate the role: the way you build and kit out your operatives determines who they are going to be. This is discussed in far more detail in the Character Development section.

However, there are synergies to be found in kitting out the operatives with the armor corresponding to their class. For example, sniper armor is very weak; you want to keep snipers as far away from the action as possible, so although you could give it to a Heavy to improve their accuracy with the Hel 2 Cannon, they would have to use it at mid-range, where they would be very exposed.

Combat in Phoenix Point is very lethal and armor offers limited protection, but it's far from useless. Often your operatives will die after receiving 2-3 attacks, and what armor gives you is that chance to survive 2 attacks instead of 1, or 3 instead of 2. And besides outright death, you have to worry about limbs. A soldier with a disabled arm is often out for good from the mission at hand, and the difference between an attack disabling the arm or not might be a few points of armor.

To give a few examples:

- A starting recruit on Legend (with 14 Strength) not wearing any armor will die from a single shot of NJ Sniper Rifle (it does 130 damage, so it will reduce global HPs to 10, and as it will also disable a body part it will cause bleeding of 10, which will apply at the start of the turn).

Wearing armor will not stop the operative from getting a body part disabled (in fact, even wearing the strongest armor can't prevent that) and get seriously injured, but it will prevent outright one-shot death.

- A blast Chiron projectile does 50 damage and 3 shred, so if two of these land on the same operative, he needs to be wearing armor with strength 22 or more to avoid getting one or both arms disabled, because HPs on each arm is 60, so with 22 armor the damage will be 50 - 22 + 50 - 19 = 59. This is where the extra 4 pts of armor of the NJ Assault Armor pay off (it has 24 armor vs 20 of the other assault armors).

- An armor of 30 or more (only Heavy Armors) will prevent an operative from receiving any damage from the Redeemer (the viral assault rifle, which has 10 piercing and does 20 damage and 5 [devastating] viral damage per projectile with a burst of 3), and the an armor of 40 (only New Jericho heavy body armor) will prevent any damage from a Hera pistol (which has 30 piercing, 10 damage and 7 paralysis damage).

When you look at the different armors in Phoenix Point you may notice that armor strength is traded for accuracy and speed at a fixed rate of 1 Speed = 2% accuracy = 2 pts in armor (at least for the assault armors of the Factions).

One common approach is to combine different armor pieces to achieve a particular set of stats (for example, to offset the penalties from one armor piece, like the heavy body armor). When doing this it's important to bear in mind that enemies tend to target the body part with the least armor: it doesn't make a lot of sense to look at the average armor the operative is wearing.

Better armor?

As with all research in Phoenix Point, technological progress when it comes to armors is *mostly* horizontal. PX starting armors can be considered as Tier 1 - they are outright worse then any of their faction counterparts, which can be considered as Tier 2.

Tier 3 armors would be the specialist Infiltrator, Technician and Priest sets.

The Priest armor set (body and legs) is simply not very good and is easily outperformed by any Tier 2 armor set, perhaps with the exception of the Berserker set, which is also unjustifiably bad.

The Technician helmet is the one straight upgrade I can think of when comparing it to Assault Armors - it has the highest armor rating (25) and grants +10 to Accuracy, with only a minor penalty to Stealth (-5%), easily making it the best helmet for the Assault class. It does cost a little bit more.

The Infiltrator set is all about... Infiltrators, as it prioritizes stealth over everything else, granting +50% in total, which with the basic class training amounts to +75% while undetected.

Finally, there are also plenty of Tier 0 armors, that raiders and other neutrals wear, and which may end up in your stores as you recruit them. These armors are outright worse than their PX counterparts, but sometimes you have no other choice and when it comes to armors something is better than nothing.