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Loel posted:What speciality ammos do people use? This is the first time Im trying them, and giving everyone AP ammo has been hilarious Rangers: Talon Gunslingers: Bluescreen or Dragon Snipers: AP rounds (no, gently caress YOU Shieldbearers) Specialists: Bluescreen, Dragon, or Viper Psi: Bluescreen or Tracer Grenadiers: Explosives (because Salvo) Also, I guess the game heard me bitching about getting only Blast Padding from the AWC because I've got 2 Rangers with Serial this run. Had a weird bug in my favor last night. Hacked and took control of an Advanced MEC that came in on a reinforcement drop and which also gave me control of the Advent Officer he landed with. And I had an Andromedon MC'd from a tower hack the turn prior. 
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Jul 13, 2016 18:50
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wuffles posted:Rangers: Talon poo poo I forgot about Talon. Talon owns. If I got Blast Padding from the AWC, I'd seriously consider putting them in a WAR Suit full time to get three armor on them. They'd be first in line when they start cranking out.
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Jul 13, 2016 18:53
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many johnnys posted:You might have to feed it a bit. I had difficulty hitting things too, so I used height (since it has springylegs / rocketboots) and finishing dudes with the rocket. If you have any other Heavy or Powered Weapons, you can equip them without doing anything special with the Spark. I foolishly keep using it like a MEC and that only gets it shot, cause it's a higher health rookie that can't take cover, so it's gonna take damage if you leave it where an enemy can see it. But you need to get into their sight to actually fire (and miss), so it's a pretty rubbish first impression, but it'll get better. So long as it doesn't loving die until then, sheesh.
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Jul 13, 2016 19:06
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Crosspeice posted:I foolishly keep using it like a MEC and that only gets it shot, cause it's a higher health rookie that can't take cover, so it's gonna take damage if you leave it where an enemy can see it. But you need to get into their sight to actually fire (and miss), so it's a pretty rubbish first impression, but it'll get better. So long as it doesn't loving die until then, sheesh. Early on, you need to lean on its unique abilities. The toughness helps, but to give it a real push you need rockets, of both the arm and boot variety. If you can single move into an elevated position, height bonus is a huge boon. Overdrive, shoot, explode something. Or the other way around, depending on the foe's cover situation. A maxed out human unit is still far and away better than a maxed out MEC. They are definitely the weakest unit in the game, but I still find them fun to play, and their abilities are stupid good. One of my best moments was on a VIP extraction mission. Enemies are active, the codex has already split, one of the codex copies has teleported into a building a ways behind me. Mec triggers overdrive, runs forward, blows up the building containing most enemy dudes, and since Bombard hits anywhere on the map he was able to tag the codex picking up the rear. My favorite MEC moment was on one of the stages split by a train. An incendiary bomb killed most of the Advent in one particular area, so the MEC just lept over the train right up to the last dude's face, surrounded by flames, and then hosed him down. It was the best! MECs are so cool!
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Jul 13, 2016 19:19
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many johnnys posted:
not for the armor, but for the fact that you can basically level an entire map
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Jul 13, 2016 20:45
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many johnnys posted:I like gas grenades if there are a bunch of Advent, otherwise I usually stick with regular Plasma Grenades. Acid used to be my favorite, but standard is much better at cover destruction. Just don't put the poison grenade on a grenadier because those things have a MASSIVE AOE that lingers and hinders you too. I learned my lesson on the first game: only give non-grenadiers acid grenades to throw. Otherwise you'll end up with a wall o' poison between you and the objective.
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Jul 13, 2016 21:35
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Alkydere posted:Just don't put the poison grenade on a grenadier because those things have a MASSIVE AOE that lingers and hinders you too. I learned my lesson on the first game: only give non-grenadiers acid grenades to throw. Otherwise you'll end up with a wall o' poison between you and the objective. Yeah poison lingers for a long rear end time and will gently caress your poo poo up (especially on timed missions) if you throw it in the wrong spot *edit* it's also useful for area denial to an extent because the enemy will *generally* not walk through it, so you can cut an enemy force off from blocking your way to an evac zone and stuff like that. MF_James fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Jul 13, 2016 |
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Jul 13, 2016 21:37
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Alkydere posted:Just don't put the poison grenade on a grenadier because those things have a MASSIVE AOE that lingers and hinders you too. I learned my lesson on the first game: only give non-grenadiers acid grenades to throw. Otherwise you'll end up with a wall o' poison between you and the objective. I love to do it, I love the massive AOE, it is my friend. You definitely have to choose the target carefully though.
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Jul 13, 2016 21:44
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SCORCH THE EARTH
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Jul 13, 2016 21:49
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RBA Starblade posted:SCORCH THE EARTH incendiary bomb a bunch of fools, then run a mec into the center and use nova
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Jul 13, 2016 21:57
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... wow, okay. Never seen a pod inside the VIP prison room before.
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Jul 13, 2016 21:58
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Loel posted:... wow, okay. Never seen a pod inside the VIP prison room before. this can happen? lol, you mean behind the locked door to the room the VIP is in and is roughly 6 tiles large?
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Jul 13, 2016 22:21
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He was being interrogated and you showed up right on time.
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Jul 13, 2016 22:22
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wuffles posted:Rangers: Talon Definitely definitely use AP on any sniper that takes fan fire. I don't know why it took a gatekeeper putting 5 guys in hospital for week for me to figure that out. That pistol does dick against anything with more than one or two armor, but destroys anything unarmored. The rest don't matter all that much to me, but I'd probably not use blue screen on a specialist because then you can't lower hacking defense and hack on the same turn. I ended my last game with a ranger that got the aim-bonus-for-hunkering ability from the awc, then took the hunker-after-any-non-attacking-turn, gave him tracer rounds and a sick scope on the shotgun, and he could rapid fire for 95% plus on just about anything he could see. Just a can't miss 20-30 damage every turn by the end of the game. It felt like cheating a little bit. Anyway, just finished my first campaign after buying it on the steam sale. Random thoughts: Good game overall. Pretty harrowing in the early and middle parts of the game (playing on veteran). I took an extremely extended victory lap at the end, just farming super soldiers and weapon attachments, and it got really easy, even though loving Bradford would not shut up about that stupid tower. He must've told me for three or four months that the aliens were going to eliminate all humans on earth any second now. It'd be cool to just make the missions harder and harder and harder, and maybe gradually accelerate the construction of advent facilities and retaliations until you were forced to assault the tower or die. I didn't want to play with the DLC the first time, but the screen right before starting the campaign was really misleading. I didn't check the alien hunters box, so I wasn't expecting any alien ruler nasties, and I was kind of pissed when they show up. Turns out you have to check the box at the beginning and not do the missions to stop them from showing up. Stupid. The Viper King went down like a bitch, the Berserker Queen had some kind of AI bug and just sat there while I shot it to death. The Archon guy hosed me pretty hard in two missions before I finally got him in the third. Snake suit is ugly, but I finally figured out you can get rid of the stupid hood when you customize your soldiers, so that's something. Berserker suit is great for rangers to run around and gently caress poo poo up. The Archon suit seems a pretty overpowered. I put that thing on my squadsight sniper, and all of a sudden he was no problem to take on any timed evac mission (just Icarus jump to the evac zone at the end), and if I wanted a better spot for shooting from or setting up kill zone, just jump to wherever you need it and shoot; jumping takes no action points. Psionics are great. Definitely going for that a lot sooner next time. I think I'll try to honor system ironman next time, with DLCs enabled. I savescummed like a filthy casual on a few missions. I just hate to lose my soldiers, especially after I spend all that time dressing them up. Thanks to some savescumming, I only lost one mission. This loving gatekeeper ran over the terminal I was supposed to hack and destroyed it. Bullshit.
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Jul 13, 2016 22:23
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Well here's an interesting bug: killed a pod of a Viper an Advent Heavy, then had to Save and Exit to go do something. Reloaded the game and moved my team into position and on the Alien turn, the pod I had just killed came to life! The Viper bound up the soldier next to it and the Advent guy ran off, triggered my overwatch and died AGAIN. So I'll reload and maybe this time it won't happen again, but I was quite confused when my entire team were screaming saying they were being flanked by dead aliens. 
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Jul 13, 2016 22:40
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MF_James posted:this can happen? lol, you mean behind the locked door to the room the VIP is in and is roughly 6 tiles large? 2 andromodens, a viper, 2 advent. So I killed them okay, got everyone on the roof to wait for the chopper. The next advent spawn was across the map, so I lined up all 12 of my guys with overwatches on the fence, was pretty pleased with how the mission was going. Then: Surprise double pod spawn on the roof. Okay, I do overwatches and wait. Spawn includes sectopod. I wait for overwatches to go off, which they don't. (Im in concealment again) Then, sectopod doesnt move, instead opening fire and taking two of my guys from full health to bleeding out, and starting a panic spiral. Yeah, no That's dumb as hell.
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Jul 13, 2016 22:44
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Loel posted:2 andromodens, a viper, 2 advent. oh sounds like you have a bunch of mods, I'm (fairly) vanilla and have like 4-5 mods, nothing that changes squad size or enemies.
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Jul 13, 2016 22:47
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  The Viper King appearing in this mission resulted in 1 killed, 2 captured, no VIP, losing East Africa and giving me a Force Understrength. Next Legendary campaign I do, I'll tackle the Nest mission when I have Mag and Pred, cause you cannot fight the Rulers with Ballistics and Kevlar, they will just destroy you. Still gonna do the Tower mission as early as I can, otherwise the Sparks fall behind and don't help much against Berserkers and Mutons and MECs.
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Jul 13, 2016 23:19
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Crosspeice posted:
Yeah, I did Tower with magnetic and Viper King with LW lasers.  Lot more fun that way.
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Jul 13, 2016 23:43
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swimgus posted:Definitely definitely use AP on any sniper that takes fan fire. I don't know why it took a gatekeeper putting 5 guys in hospital for week for me to figure that out. That pistol does dick against anything with more than one or two armor, but destroys anything unarmored. I used to think this, but it's wrong. AP pierces 5 armor. Bluescreen round add 5 damage to attacks against machines. At worst, they are exactly the same. If you shred some armor before your pistol shooter starts firing, bluescreen is strictly better. Also, you don't need to spend elerium cores and work with the RNG to generate bluescreen, you can just buy them. This applies to sectopods as well. Next time you want to bring AP, try bluescreen instead. You will be pleasantly surprised.
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Jul 13, 2016 23:58
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Bluescreen rounds also ignore shields, if a shield bearer did his thing. It doesn't destroy the shield, it bypasses it and harms the enemy directly. Any enemy, mechanical or organic alike. EMP is good too - does about a dozen damage, ignores armor, and rolls to disable the enemy for two turns. It's more situational than bluescreen though. Mechs only of course.
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Jul 14, 2016 00:04
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Yesterday (or the night before) I finally got caught by the hunter UFO. I have plasma and warden armor and all that, so I am essentially in the end-game... fighting a full alien force as they try to get into the Avenger at this stage in the game is horrible. So many Advent MECs with their across-the-map missile launchers decimated practically all of the cover, while so many stun lancers meant I basically couldn't hold off overwatch trapping enemies. Just as things were starting to pull up, the berserker queen showed up and because of the AI on that map she charged towards the Avenger instead of wreaking havoc on the Advent and other aliens, since she appeared behind them. It was brutal but in the end I won, killed the berserker queen, and only had mild injuries. Again, a grenadier with Salvo and acid + incendiary bombs (and a SPARK with gas grenades) was able to wall off sections of the map or force enemies to kill themselves in the hazards.
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Jul 14, 2016 00:09
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many johnnys posted:I used to think this, but it's wrong. Agreed. Only reason I like AP on a Sniper (blue screen all day on a Gunslinger) is to kill Shieldbearers before they can shield. It helps on other armored targets but it's the most efficient way to kill Shieldbearers who typically hang toward the back in decent cover. They have the highest armor/hp ratio in the game and are basically designed to suck up your action points to deal with them before more dangerous aliens. A sniper with AP rounds and a plasma rifle can 1 shot them with good reliability.
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Jul 14, 2016 00:21
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Archon King shows up for the first time, and Execute knocks him out in my first actual attack against him. He never landed a hit because my first action was to suppress him to reduce his aim and then he never moved as I positioned everyone else.
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Jul 14, 2016 00:35
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You can in fact respec Sparks in the AWC, and rainmaker plasma caster Sparks are hilarious.
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Jul 14, 2016 00:42
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Do Talon rounds do much though given how Hit/Crit rolls are one and the same (without modding)?
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Jul 14, 2016 02:16
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many johnnys posted:I used to think this, but it's wrong. Gatekeepers are much worse for me than any mechanical unit, and I am pretty sure blue screen doesn't help with them. Or am I wrong about that? Edit: Google says blue screen ammo is good against gatekeepers. I just assumed it wasn't because combat protocol didn't do any bonus damage, and I couldn't hack them. drat. swimgus fucked around with this message at 02:23 on Jul 14, 2016 |
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Jul 14, 2016 02:19
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dud root posted:Do Talon rounds do much though given how Hit/Crit rolls are one and the same (without modding)? Heaps. Imagine with a laser sight, talon rounds and a flank, your ranger is now essentially guaranteed to crit near every time they hit. A high crit with a low hit chance just means the hit is guaranteed to crit with combined rolls.
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Jul 14, 2016 02:26
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swimgus posted:Gatekeepers are much worse for me than any mechanical unit, and I am pretty sure blue screen doesn't help with them. Or am I wrong about that? Gatekeepers are weird. If they're shelled up Bluescreen ammo still does double damage to 'em. Basically they're kinda both mechanical AND biological and are a giant edge-case of exceptions to the rules either side follows.
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Jul 14, 2016 02:38
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Maluco Marinero posted:Heaps. Imagine with a laser sight, talon rounds and a flank, your ranger is now essentially guaranteed to crit near every time they hit. A high crit with a low hit chance just means the hit is guaranteed to crit with combined rolls. But.. when flanking you're basically guaranteed to crit because the hit % is so high. Increasing crit% doesn't do anything in this case. The second example makes more sense with a low hit chance, but thats a shot I might not take anyway
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Jul 14, 2016 03:09
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Hoooly cow that was a weird bug. A unit with Implacable got hurt, so I moved her out of the way. Later in the turn, the specialist hacked a lamp post and we got the Squad Gains One Free Run'n'Gun perk. This somehow caused the girl who triggered implacable to start taking damage over and over until she just dropped dead before the gremlin had even returned to the specialist.
marshmallow creep fucked around with this message at 03:49 on Jul 14, 2016 |
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Jul 14, 2016 03:15
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How much does each scientist speed up research?
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Jul 14, 2016 03:17
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dud root posted:But.. when flanking you're basically guaranteed to crit because the hit % is so high. Increasing crit% doesn't do anything in this case. High hit chance != high crit chance? If you have 90% to hit and 45% to crit your crit probability is 50% IF you hit. Late game you want that to be more like 75% - 100% so the Ranger can get near guaranteed one shot kills.
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Jul 14, 2016 03:23
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Maluco Marinero posted:High hit chance != high crit chance? Sorry, yeah you're right. I've confused with the scenario when crit% >= hit%, which guarantees a crit. eg 50% hit 50% crit, is a guaranteed crit provided the shot is successful Re-reading your post thats exactly what you said
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Jul 14, 2016 03:34
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Lotish posted:Hoooly cow that was a weird bug. A unit with Implacable got hurt, so I moved her out of the way. Later in the turn, the specialist hacked a lamp post and we got the Squad Gains One Free Run'n'Gun perk. This somehow caused the girl who triggered implacable to start taking damage over and over until she just dropped dead before the gremlin had even returned to the specialist. if this is reproducable, record the bug because i would seriously add that to the op for how funny it sounds
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Jul 14, 2016 03:51
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The Rage suit's punch refreshing your actions if it lands a kill is amazing. So is the Icarus armor on a psi-op with null lance. I've basically won the game now, I could stop but where's the fun in that? Though, I'm just wasting time scanning at resistance HQ until I get enough intel to buy all the goodies at the penultimate mission.
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Jul 14, 2016 03:57
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I was not able to reproduce it, unfortunately.
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Jul 14, 2016 04:00
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Okay, with the perk pack I definitely need SOMETHING to boost difficulty, I'm sailing through this play through, taking out 3 large pods in 2 turns for ex. What's the consensus on Better Advent? Is there anything else good in that vein?
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Jul 14, 2016 05:06
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I really like having my SPARK use overdrive, punch an enemy, then double tap them with flanking shots, I haven't had any trouble keeping them alive so far due to how quickly I decimate pods.
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Jul 14, 2016 05:34
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Panfilo posted:How much does each scientist speed up research? 1/(number of scientists) as far as I can tell. The first 5 are great. Everyone after 7 isn't worth your time.
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Jul 14, 2016 05:49
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