How long into the game before you dont get blown away by encounters?
Or is it just my skills are lacking?
It was like, what, maybe 6-8 hours, maybe a bit later?
The turning point for me, where the game went from "sweating on every encounter" to "I got this (most of the time)" was when I had places I could buy ships of my choice from, so could essentially choose my "class", and when I could more reliably access specific-ish weapon types to outfit those ships (though you're always responding to what drops).
Definitely in my experience the Heavy ship classes - Gunship (tank warrior), Vindicator (necromancer), Bomber (long-range nuker) - are simply easier to play than the Light ones by a lot, and slightly easier than the Medium ones, because they don't rely as much on frantic manuevering to survive.
Personally I've been playing an insane amount of
Cyber Knights: Flashpoint, which I highly recommend:
It's a procedural tactics game vaguely along XCOM lines but with significantly more RPG elements and character development, and most importantly, a significant stealth/heist focus, and a cyberpunk setting (of the more "nanotech" kind). Took me a few hours to "get it", and restarted once I did (develop your base aggressively and think about which contacts you're working with!). If you like tactical games with management elements like XCOM or Jagged Alliance, frankly, you'll probably love it.
Also it's by
Trese Brothers who have always done incredible post-launch support and clearly still are doing that! They're planning to add four more classes to the nine (technically eleven, but the Cyber Knight and Face are special) they already have over the next year or so (!!!) as well as a ton of other content.
Speaking of classes, the ones they have are pretty cool, and you can pick two of them pretty freely (most require some kind of cyberware installation, though not all).
The main character is a Cyber Knight, which is a sort of "commander/buffer" class of a pretty powerful kind, there's one Face (a kind of Fixer who doesn't do combat/missions/hacking, but rather management stuff) and the ones the rest of the characters can be are:
Vanguard - Despite the name, this is basically the traditional "Rogue", a very speedy stealth-oriented class which also has cool holographic illusions and debuffs.
Agent EX - The other "stealth"-oriented class, this takes a "Wizard stealth" approach with stuff like zones of silence, fire-and-forget spreading security device shutdowns, what is effectively Blink (i.e. a short-range teleport), and so on. I did find the SMG-oriented side of their tree a bit disappointing compared to other weapon-specialised trees, I hope it gets revised at some point.
Soldier - A very solidly designed class focused on fully-auto weapons, overwatch, explosives, and being tough! I pretty much bring one on every mission, because sometimes you just need to drop a lot of enemies real fast!
Sniper - It's what it sounds like and is one of the better-designed "sniper" classes I've come across in tactical RPGs - also very satisfying to use with high-powered revolvers!
Hacker - The decker/netrunner, and obviously required for missions involving that. The hacking system is good (imho) requires you to keep paying attention, but also doesn't take forever or detract from the gameplay general (unusual in a hacking system!). Some stealth utility too - I have two different Hackers, one I use for "pure hacks" (which are a mission type where you just hack and nothing else, very quick!) and another I use when they need to hack on-site, who is more focused on shutting down security systems and keeping them shut down and so on.
Cybersword - A very powerful powersword-oriented class with a lot of dashes and invulnerability/force fields.
Warmachine - The cyberweapon-focused class - you can sort of specialize in cybermelee, laser eyes, or this chest-mounted blast thing I haven't really tried. Very effective in certain situations, I have mine built like basically a very fast-moving and quiet berserker.
Gunslinger - Pistol/revolver specialist with some interesting semi-stealth and debuff-oriented stuff. I haven't used them a ton because revolvers can't be silenced but I just multiclassed my Agent EX into it so we shall see how they are with normal pistols (which can be silenced). Have an ability called "Gun Kata" so surely can't be bad!
Scourge - "Shotgun necromancer" is how I think of them but they don't raise the dead (though they do have Corpse Explosion), but rather have a lot of cool land mine/aerial denial/area CC/poison abilities as well as a couple of weird stealth tricks (using nanites to delete bodies is a particularly good trick!).
The four they're adding are a guy who controls drones, one who controls packs of cyber-hounds (!!!) an assassin and a "Wireghost" which I presume will be a different take on Hacker the same way Agent EX is a different take on stealther.
The classes are kind of surprisingly well-balanced, because none of them is perfect by itself and whatever multiclass combo you take, you're going to wish for stuff from other classes too. Like, Soldier-Sniper (or vice-versa) is a very good combo for shooty-shooty (and some missions are pure combat), but lacks CC or ways to defeat security devices.
In general it's just a very involved game with a lot more depth than initially appears, I'd say, and many double-digit hours in I'm seeing new mission types, enemies, etc. - plus I haven't even met drones yet despite them clearly being a serious threat from the skill trees referring to them a lot!
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