Dash is still too much | Voters

Dash is still too much

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SpiteAndMalice

It's good that dash has had an AP cost associated with it. But a 75% boost to distance for a single dash is still too much, allowing units to travel virtually the full map in a single turn. I'd suggest a drop to 50% and/or make the dash ability be only allowed once per turn.

January 26, 2020

Vit Barta

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Phoenix Point v. Cthulhu 1.6 - 30/07/2020
Dash - Movement range reduced from 75% to 50%. Limited to 2 uses per turn.
Will Point cost lowered from 4 WP tp 3 WP

Voland

I think the best solution is to cap the total distance that a soldier can run in a turn regardless of speed, dash use, or frenzy. It’s the only way to make sure. Visually it could be represented as a redline when selecting the soldier. It could be made dependant on the average of the soldiers characteristics corrected by stamina, or just a hard cap so that the soldier can’t run more than approximately half the length of an ordinary map.
The advantage of this approach is
no more running around the map at close to relativistic speeds,
instead of stacking as many buffs to speed as possible, the player has a choice as to how to achieve maximum mobility. Invest in speed? Use specialized gear? Frenzy? Or use dash? Capping the effects of buffs gives more tactical options.
gameplay doesn’t change significantly for players who are not using dash exploitively.
Nerfing dash further, e.g. back to 50% distance, will not solve the issue, because it appears as a result of stacking different buffs together, as most other OP holes in PP. 
In other words, even reducing the distance granted by dash to 50%, with top speed, optimal gear and frenzy the soldier will still be way too fast. At the same time it will make dash less useful for ordinary, non exploitive gameplay styles.

Chris Connors

While I can agree on having the amount of dash significantly reduced per use, the AP cost now associated with it absolutely ruins it for me. There is no longer any dash and fire once and save up for overwatch when reaching your destination, unless you're either shooting with a pee-shooter on the 'fire once' or retaliating with one on the overwatch. 4 AP gets burnt up soon enough already without taking all the decent Willpower Skills and suddenly dropping AP charges on them. I would prefer a redux all the way down to 30 or 40% of dash than the 75% boost and one AP cost. I'd even prefer only being able to use Dash once or twice per turn to the 1 AP cost. Everything doesn't need an AP price tag.

SpiteAndMalice

Chris Connors: Everything does need an AP cost as AP = time. Without an AP cost Dash (or any other skill for that matter) takes place instantly, a unit isn't dashing in that situation, they're literally teleporting to a new position.

MRI chalk

Chris Connors: There is still dash, fire, dash, which is tactically extremely useful. Being able to overwatch on top of all that -- with the same soldier -- is perhaps a bit much to ask.

Clayton Cross

SpiteAndMalice: I disagree, AP is game cost mechanic and so is will power. In the case of dash without an AP the idea is that they were able to mentally push themselves over what they can normally do in that time. Anyone who has ever done a long distance race and pushed for the finish line gets this. To address the OPs concern, I would make Dash 2 wp, 0 AP, and once per turn. Basically, your buying 1 AP worth of movement by pushing your self mentally. Where your AP = time gets silly is in multiple uses of dash, because its no longer pushing them past there limits for a moment, its pushing past the physical limits of time and space. More importantly it promotes bad play in new players who will empty there will stranding their assaults alone preventing help from the squad, and with 0 will so they panic. This makes them easily killed. So I understand your complaint but its because they stretched it too far. It left pushing mentally to get a little more from the same time (A free AP) for a dash to running across the whole map. The heart of the ability is and should be being able to "push" for an extra 1AP that can be used for movement only.

SpiteAndMalice

Clayton Cross: According to the manual:
Combat.
The Phoenix combat turn is the time at which your units can perform actions. There is no required order by which units are given actions—a unit can do some action then switched to another unit, then selected back and made to perform its remaining actions. 
Once the all units of a side are out of AP, or the turn is ended manually, the turn of the next faction begins.
Action Points.
Action Points (AP) represent the amount of actions a unit can
perform during its turn. A unit normally begins a turn with 4 APs.
When the unit uses up all its APs it enters Standby mode and
cannot perform actions or be selected.
It's clear to me from that, that any unit performing any action must use APs in order to perform that action, and that APs are directly related to the time taken to perform that action, hence why shooting a pistol takes less AP than shooting a rifle - it's a quicker manoeuvre. On that basis no action that takes place during the player's turn should have a 0AP cost, unless there is as a very good reason why that action may be performed instantly. i.e. they have the ability to teleport. 
Regarding long distance running and 'willing' yourself to run faster, then yes a long distance runner may apply an element of will during the finishing straight of a race, but I'd hazard that that burst of speed has got a lot more to do with condition and training, than simply wanting to win, and even then it's a marginal increase in speed, you're not suddenly running faster than vehicles as is the case in PP.

Clayton Cross

SpiteAndMalice: If it uses an action point, it should be 1ap and 2 wp for 50% of movement, So your spending 2 WP for +25% movement on top of requiring that you move as part of the action. Which is not that bad. Or you do no ap and 2 wp for 25% movement for the same distance but more flexibility. I guess I could be okay with ether as long as its restricted to once per turn and they lower the will power cost appropriately. It was 50% for 4wp, now its 75% for 1 ap and 4 wp. It would be consistent to do eather of the +25% at wp and limit it to once per turn so assaults don't become the flash at level 2.

SpiteAndMalice

Clayton Cross: Between the two that you're suggesting I'm more for 1AP and 2WP for 50%. Please correct me if I'm wrong but I think we both have the same idea in wanting to see movement reduced, but we're coming at it from different angles. I'm fine with Dash (or any perk) also being once per turn, but I think there has to be an AP cost for skills that require a time frame to implement. Overall I like choice being present in games, being able to dash, shoot, and overwatch in a single turn is too much IMHO, I think if you dash, then the option to do some other action in that same turn must be traded off in order to allow it.

Clayton Cross

SpiteAndMalice: I think we agree on everything but the requirement for and action point. You can still dash, shoot twice, and over watch by multi-classing in to sniper. Dash, quick aim twice, and extreme focus. That is 4 AP. All your really doing by forcing the AP (in my opinion) is making sniper the optimal build so that shotgun assaults (assault-berserker) and grenadiers (assault-heavy) are used less. But they are not unusable, just more annoying to work around cover at just the right time.

SpiteAndMalice

Clayton Cross: Aye, let's leave it there then. Thanks for the enjoyable debate :-)

MRI chalk

I disagree. I just ran a campaign with the rework of dash, and loved it, and I wasn't able to do anything like running across the map in one turn. Now, some caveats:

I split assault points between will and speed
I didn't use Priests or stimpacks

If the problem here is that you can run across the map by using Priests or stimpacks, then I'd say rework those buffs. Otherwise, I don't see the issue.

Voland

MRI chalk: The speed caveat is the reason you haven't seen any issues with dash. You don't even need frenzy, just max out speed. And add armor with speed buffs for more. It gets quite absurd even before you throw in frenzy.

Djoles77

Imo no ap cost, 1 use per turn would be optimal.

Clayton Cross

Djoles77: Imo no ap cost, 1 use per turn, reduce it to 25-50% of movement and reduce wp cost to 2 will points. As it is right now, Quick Aim is 3wp and more flexible than dash. You can move 25% (1 ap) out to get and angle shoot twice and move back into cover with the same ap for 1 less willpower than dash, which doesn't allow you to used unspent movement. Want to move 50%? Quick aim twice, move a full 25% out and move a full 25% back behind a wall. To make Dash equal to quick aim but distinct, it needs to be ether 50% speed for 4wp, or 25% speed with 2 wp (so its cheaper). I like 2wp because that becomes about dashing a little bit further to get the angle for the shot, but doesn't cause assault to run so far away that the rest of the squad can't cover them (because you don't want to waste it for the cost lose of movement from not maxing it out) and it doesn't burn so much will power that they panic and/or are easily mind controlled as they lead the charge. This means rookie and veteran would get 4 short dashes instead of 2 over kill dashes. Hero and Legendary would get 3 short dashes instead of 1 over kill dash. It also means the assault/sniper using dash an quick aim could use them together to a very limited extent without it being broken.