Campaign Struggle - What do I do first?

[Silly Clown]

Playing on Normal Diff - Normal Duration - Campaign

So my opening move is:
1. Scan starting mining base. 2/3 scans left
2. Build a crystal drill + refinery + science lab & beds.

This leaves me with like 15k money.
Then I move to the next mission day, use up all my remaining scans and find like 2-3 hordes on the campaign map.

I use the rest of the money to buy bullets and melee weapons, then hunt down a 40+ enemy wave.
I sent 4 guys the first time = dead
Then 8 guys = still died.

Thing is, this is really hard, and I dunno if my initial base can support sending 10+ soldiers to clear a wave with the cost of ammo + meds.

Like, the initial base only makes like 27 crystals per global map turn even though the base stats say I should be producing 380 materials (whatever that means.)
Crystal mine + refinery + a few barrels + 2 science benches = 380 resource income.


Let me know if my views are flawed, or short-sighted? And what you guys do to get past the first few days? Should I wait for one of the factions to send me a quest? Should I avoid hordes if possible?

[BEAR]

+1, Not sure where to start first either.

[kiloromeo]

+1

[shde2e]

I got a bit more at 1000 materials per turn by throwing more mines down, but it's definitely a slow start. I think that's the construction resource?
As far as I can tell most of your income for ammo etc is through requisition, which is based on reputation. So that should remain pretty consistent.

Stuff that helped me get going:
- Hordes are either ~12 units with liberal use of heavy weapons, or multiple deployments by retreating once they get on top of me. No idea if I can keep up ammo consumption, but it did help beat them without taking much damage.

- I retrained all my units, and gave them much more specialized stats. Agility for everyone, then 1 weapon skill and health/morale. This probably made them better at combat than if you just take their starting stats. Might bite me later if I need 10 people who can hacks things.

- The primary medic specialization lets you get real cheesy with healing. With a trauma kit a medic can heal up to 120 hp for free, repeatedly. I think it works with anti-status items too if the hp part of the item stays below 50%.

- Snipers seem to be ridiculously ammo-efficient, and I've only fought on open maps so far, so their minimum range was a non-issue. Also good against most enemy types.

[Jean-Luc]

Also on normal. Also found a horde, 49 enemies, right next to my starting base. This felt like it needed an all-in so I sent a max amount of 18 marines and cleared them out pretty easily.

HOWEVER!

Next thing, some mountain installation. Scan at ~58% says "no threat", recommended mission deployment 4-6 people, seems like a basic "starter mission". I didn't assume "no threat" meant there would literally be no enemies so I sent a full squad of 6 people, all the ones left that weren't sent against the horde.

Got swarmed on the surface by a mini-horde of a few dozen bugs many of which are tough variants that would've taken double the recommended amount of people to clear. So yeah, kinda ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. And that's just the "intro" part of the mission where you need to reach the elevator to get into the facility. Again, normal difficulty.

[Tchey]

What i do (normal/hard difficulty)

- scan for crystals
- build a base
- scan around +1 tile
- go to the ground where the threat is 1 skull
- send a 6 mercs squad, manually equipped and skilled, to match weapons and all
- try mot to die

My team :
- dedicated medic, with any gun
- sub medic, with any gun
- Heavy AoE (rocket etc),
- sniper,
- soldier kind with rifle,
- soldier kind with shotgun,

Have morale pills, bandages, to treat basic personal issue.
Stay together, but not in pack to avoid being hit by AoE spitters.

Go slow, don’t go too far from deployment position. First couple of turns are extremely deadly.

Die, retry, die, retry, learn. Die less.

[[CB] Pandasama]

Just started and have similar questions about base building, as there no tutorials or hints about it.

Playing on Hard, and my first mission is clearing of horde about 52 aliens of differents types with 6 soldiers. It's a miracle than they all still alive (I get extracted one heavy wounded), but this first fight give me a lot of thoughts about what weapons and equipments I need.

[Arasine]

Originally posted by Jean-Luc:

Also on normal. Also found a horde, 49 enemies, right next to my starting base. This felt like it needed an all-in so I sent a max amount of 18 marines and cleared them out pretty easily.

HOWEVER!

Next thing, some mountain installation. Scan at ~58% says "no threat", recommended mission deployment 4-6 people, seems like a basic "starter mission". I didn't assume "no threat" meant there would literally be no enemies so I sent a full squad of 6 people, all the ones left that weren't sent against the horde.

Got swarmed on the surface by a mini-horde of a few dozen bugs many of which are tough variants that would've taken double the recommended amount of people to clear. So yeah, kinda ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. And that's just the "intro" part of the mission where you need to reach the elevator to get into the facility. Again, normal difficulty.

That is the easiest part of that mission.. Second stage is tough but the extraction at the end ...

[Kittenbait]

My start with the campaign has not been happy. I am not sure it is well balanced. I've played through the proc gen missions plenty and thought I knew what I was doing so decided to go into the campaign on hard difficulty.

I set up a base and started mining. All peaceful for a few turns, then a horde of ~40 approached and from that point there was a new horde hitting the base every turn. Next batch ~80 aliens. Then ~200 aliens (!). Then 40 aliens. Turn after that, 120 aliens have arrived. The cost of replacing ammo and other consumables after the horde of 200 was so high it blew all my requisition credit reserves (about 5-6 turns income) plus some crafting resources. The 40 aliens after again cleared out that turn's income so I was still on empty. I took one look at the 120 horde, thought to myself "nope", and quit.

Amongst other things, I'm not sure the weapons are well balanced. I appreciate you can't be using elite equipment on all your squaddies at the start, but... Shotguns seem pretty useless. Any hand weapon below the energy blade is a waste of time. The bulleteer SMG is probably the standout, particularly with all the ammo variety. Sniper rifles allow you to pack a punch without breaking the bank in ammo. A lot of the other weapons seem either ineffectual or too expensive (ammo costs) for the effect they offer.

[kiloromeo]

Having no expirience with the Defend The Base concept, but have noticed, that you can "buy"/build some ammo-crates for base resources when you set up the base. Does this not help in any way?

Also - not saying it is the right answer, but if you saw the horde of say 200 approching, could you not "just" have nuked it?

Maybe we have to locate the nest they spawn from and take it out? Prob an insane mission ...

Just thoughts ....

[Nodo]

Originally posted by Tchey:

What i do (normal/hard difficulty)
My team :
- dedicated medic, with any gun
- sub medic, with any gun
- Heavy AoE (rocket etc),
- sniper,
- soldier kind with rifle,
- soldier kind with shotgun,

Are shotguns actually useful? They feel way underpowered to me, especially since they don't have good armor penetration. Even a handgun feels more useful.

Energy Rifles are great, they're definitely the most powerful of the starter weapons.

Snipers are good if you need to conserve ammo or save money, very good bang for your buck. Anyone who does not have an energy rifle on my team is given a sniper.

Having a medic with primary specialist in healing is pretty much mandatory unless you want to take ungodly amounts of poison medicine on a mission. Being able to heal using a medpack without using it up saves so much resources.

Get a turret. They're amazing. Better than a minigun heavy weapon specialist. Better yet, get two turrets, set them up at the beginning of a mission and watch them shred.

When tackling a mission I usually just set my team up in the corner and put everyone on overwatch and let the aliens come to me. When I see a big clump I'll use my grenade launcher, but otherwise I just clear out the enemies near me and ranged attackers and overwatch again. Works very well on any mission without a time limit. The true benefit overwatch is that it ignores weapon attack patterns. Usually energy rifles can only fire in straight lines, but when you use overwatch with them they can fire on any enemy in the overwatch cone.

[JimmysTheBestCop]

Originally posted by Nodo:

Originally posted by Tchey:

What i do (normal/hard difficulty)
My team :
- dedicated medic, with any gun
- sub medic, with any gun
- Heavy AoE (rocket etc),
- sniper,
- soldier kind with rifle,
- soldier kind with shotgun,

Are shotguns actually useful? They feel way underpowered to me, especially since they don't have good armor penetration. Even a handgun feels more useful.

Energy Rifles are great, they're definitely the most powerful of the starter weapons.

Snipers are good if you need to conserve ammo or save money, very good bang for your buck. Anyone who does not have an energy rifle on my team is given a sniper.

Having a medic with primary specialist in healing is pretty much mandatory unless you want to take ungodly amounts of poison medicine on a mission. Being able to heal using a medpack without using it up saves so much resources.

Get a turret. They're amazing. Better than a minigun heavy weapon specialist. Better yet, get two turrets, set them up at the beginning of a mission and watch them shred.

When tackling a mission I usually just set my team up in the corner and put everyone on overwatch and let the aliens come to me. When I see a big clump I'll use my grenade launcher, but otherwise I just clear out the enemies near me and ranged attackers and overwatch again. Works very well on any mission without a time limit. The true benefit overwatch is that it ignores weapon attack patterns. Usually energy rifles can only fire in straight lines, but when you use overwatch with them they can fire on any enemy in the overwatch cone.

This is kinda my problem with the game 80% of the mission just feels like permanent overwatch with sniper or single shot weapons.

Reminds me of when Jagged Alliance 3 first launched an it was so unbalanced most weapons were just trash besides single shot.

Sure yiu could have used other weapons but it wasn't effecient or effective so would just make the map longer snd not really more tactical.

It needed a bunch weapon/DMG bance passes. I did love JA3 but it was rough at start.

Ja3 had the same problem of worthless melee while the last time I played Phoenix Point you could have 2 melee characters basically clear an entire map. Near unlimited movement and 1 hit kills of everything.

Hell I think 2 or 3 of them could destroy the big 10 story super alien spider looking things in 1 turn.

They did have some balance passes and I know turret engineers also became super effecient where they could throw 8 turrets each or something and just kill the entire map.

USC at least early game or for new players I would just give everyone a sniper type of weapon. The rest appear pointless or inefficient

[Tchey]

Originally posted by Nodo:

Are shotguns actually useful? They feel way underpowered to me, especially since they don't have good armor penetration. Even a handgun feels more useful..

One of my most effective weapons i’d say. Adjacent double barrel shot from the least armored face, is devastating. Plus if you manage to combo with frozen/shattered or fire/acid, with armor piercing or acid ammo, it’s a great tool of destruction. My mercs without weapon specialization, like my medic, often have shotgun and they do great.

Though, i almost never use the "cone" at range, very situational. Most often i shot in melee range so there is no spread, and damage and hit are great then.

[becephalus]

I built one base, first turn I did 18 guy attack on facility, went fine.

Each turn after that I have attacked a horde.

About turn 5 I expanded my base, the local production is ~7000 now.

I always send 6 more guys than it recommends. So if it says 12 I send 18, and if it says 6 I send 12. Maybe that won't work in the end. So far materials haven't been and issue, but they could become so. We will see.

As for fighting, if not using the sniper generally big advantage for being adjacent when you shoot. Especially against armored guys.

I also use nades liberally, but gun nades and hand nades.

[Kittenbait]

Originally posted by Nodo:

Originally posted by Tchey:

What i do (normal/hard difficulty)
My team :
- dedicated medic, with any gun
- sub medic, with any gun
- Heavy AoE (rocket etc),
- sniper,
- soldier kind with rifle,
- soldier kind with shotgun,

I usually run per squad:
1) Hvy weapons - minigun (later nuclear hand cannon when available) and 'nade launcher
2) Blocker - shield, armour, helmet, weapon (for when you really need to tank)
3) Electrotechnics expert - assault rifle / SMG
4) Dedicated medic - assault rifle / SMG
5) Rifleman - energy rifle
6) Sniper - sniper rifle (mercury ignition ammo)

There will be at least one party member with backup capabilities (3+ skill) for biochem and electrics. I max agility and relevant weapon skill on all. The blocker needs high endurance and mental conditioning, for everyone else those skills (esp. mental conditioning) aren't so important.

I haven't checked out some higher level weaponry much (e.g. scorcher, bio rifle). I haven't been that excited by freezing and shattering, but I like setting aliens on fire and then hosing them down with acid ammo.

[filb3301]

I'll just going to derp in here and say that Kittenbait is going in a right direction. There are many ways to fit teams for missions that will work just fine for campaigns.
Don't worry too much about following a specific loadout mentioned!