The FNIX bases are an interesting but odd addition to the game. Making space for this feature, the devs needed to clear up some areas and prohibit enemies from spawning in the vicinity even if there is no base at all. Before the introduction of this feature, the area especially around Littorp was always full of machines, but now it’s deserted. I think machines should be able to roam the area of an base if there is no base.
My first encounter with one of those maxed out bases was confusing. What do I do? Shoot at everything that moves and destroy the white, purple and red thingies. No explanation what either of those does, just shoot at it. A char who would speak occassionally could enlighten the player a bit.
At the beginning the player is being bombarded with machines and more machines, while the further you progress the easier it gets, the less machines are spawned. This is a bit of symbolic for the game. The game itself is at it’s hardest at the beginning and the further you progress, the better weapons you get (esp. with the exp. weapons), the easier the game becomes (in general).
Then you need to find the shield generators (red thingies). This means basically doing some minecrafty digging through walls. I like the randomly generated design but why are there rooms literally without a door? One room was stacked full with runners and hunters because after all those spawns they couldn’t get out. In addition the spawn mechanic is a bit… clunky. Machines can spawn out of thin air right in front (or the back) of the player. This should be made less “in your face”. Let all the machines spawn inside a room (or at least out of sight, at a certain distance of the player) and then move towards the player. In addition get rid of the “box falling from mid air”-animation. I am inclined to accept this mechanic a bit with harvesters since there is no real mechanic that makes the hunter being deployed by harvesters available. But the FNIX bases could use a more elegant solution like described above.
I think the difficulty fighting the machines in those bases should increase when destroying more and more shield generators instead of the decrease in the actual implementation. Make it standard to have the amount of machines like when there are only 2 shield generators left and increase it to the level the player gets greeted at the beginning at the moment. This should be more consistent of FNIX acknowledging the danger the player is posing.
At the moment it feels like just to destroy the 2 - 3 shield generators as fast as possible to get the easy life, fighting the rest while FNIX just twiddles it’s thumbs.
After destroying a second maxed out base I was curious what would happen if I claim one of those bases… well it was converted into another home base. Please no! Instead of a somewhat “natural” combat flow, now I would fight machines in waves in the difficulty which I chose. This is just not GZ.