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Fintilgin posted:Got all the way to the roof on ironman with t1 weapons and armor with no casualties. Didn't even realize you could turn off the gas until wiping out all the turrets and several rounds of robots.
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Jun 16, 2017 08:49
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Psycho Landlord posted:Was this at night? Because during the day, you can see Reapers from farther away then they can move (unless they're ambushing out of buildings) and if it's at night, you can use flares to see Reapers from farther away than they can move. I've found that most people who get their squads Reaper'd had it happen because they either didn't use all of the abilities at their disposal in night maps or didn't check their corners, most of the time. Couple pages ago (this thread moves quick) but reaper AI hides behind corners so you even have issues with fighting them on farms. I'd be A-ok with modding them out of the game because the rest of the game is solid, I just hate having to creep forward slowly at a hedge, throw shittons of knockout gas and have the fucker come careening around the corner, through all the gas/shots and still kill rookie johnson that I only brought along with me to bait out reapers. Just, eh. Effort.
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Jun 16, 2017 09:14
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I never had a problem with Reapers, they tend to bumble out into the open often enough in my games  loving Androns though, god drat. Just attacked my first alien outpost in this campaign and of course it was populated by those shambling fucks. Long story short, no more Ironman for me.
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Jun 16, 2017 09:22
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Same, I always dreaded Androns way more than Reapers. Reapers are easy to bait and pretty much just require making sure your scout spins in a circle and isn't standing next to any doors or corners, then they bumble out and get picked off. Androns walk out, take fire from your entire assault team, give no shits, walk through all your cover and destroy it, and then shotgun your heavy weapons guy. gently caress Androns.
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Jun 16, 2017 09:31
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I always liked fighting Androns. My lmg dudes in particular ripped through them just fine.
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Jun 16, 2017 10:54
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Malachite_Dragon posted:The SPARK outright tells you about the secondary life support controls, though. Yeah, I just didn't catch that somehow. Felt foolish.
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Jun 16, 2017 14:51
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You'd think the spark immunity to poison wouldn't come up much but vipers don't know about it. I had a bunch of moments in my campaign where vipers tried barfing poison on the robots, essentially throwing away their turn.
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Jun 16, 2017 16:39
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Fired up vanilla XCom 2 again for the first time in forever. I'm terrible at both these remakes but love them. Honestly I never beat any of the old games but loved TFTD and Apocalypse is one of my favorite games. Made it to about June this time, did Last Gift really early on and did well for not knowing the hell I was about to go through. After that's though, poo poo just spiraled. Before I was always stuck at the first black site mission. This time I beat it, though I lost "Julian" and my favorite German sniper imported from my last game was carried out bleeding. Was fighting surrounded on all sides in the building (tried sneaking), and it was loving epic. Good practice, but poo poo spiraled down from there. Finally learning all the nuances of the geoscape and better tactics. I was caught by the UFO soon after and I don't think I will survive this anyway. 
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Jun 16, 2017 16:44
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Well, I've just about finished Spectrum Green, in that I've just completed the final shadow chamber autopsy and am about to hit up the final two missions. Some thoughts and a big ol'  y effortpost:*The pace feels absolutely bizarre and incoherent and untested. I'm at the endgame and have been on roughly as many missions as in a normal campaign, but the enemy scaling/pacing seems to be way slower, as if expecting a more LW mission density/schedule. I'm about to finish the game and I haven't run into a single andromedon, archon, or even muton. I ran into exactly one gatekeeper and two sectopods all three in missions where they're specifically supposed to show up, and maybe two vipers in the entire game. There are some cool genemod things you can unlock in the GTS that give squad-wide upgrades, but I didn't get a single one because they require 10 alien corpses each, and the most alien corpses I had by endgame was like, 6 chryssalids. Every mission is just specialized ADVENT troops and squads. *Research got hamstrung a lot. My lab was sitting idle a huge amount of the time. Enemies drop weapon fragments which you need in order to research new weapon tiers, but I feel like I was supposed to be getting way more than I actually was, because I constantly had to buy extras (at 10 supplies each) just to get to the next step. I'd get like 6-8 on a mission sometimes, but I ran into the same problem as I did with low corpses and low equipment, which was that most missions had low troops and the ones that had a lot were ones where you have to extract and thus don't get the loot. Elerium cores were also in high demand and I ran out frequently, because they're used for almost everything including high tier weapons. Then suddenly after the alien forge facility I had 11. *There are 6 weapon categories after ballistics -- two tiers each for plasma, laser, and magnetic. Each type has its strengths, while each tier is just a straight upgrade of those strengths. I went with lasers (which upgrade into beams) because they have infinite ammo, pierce several units of armor, and have a huge bonus to accuracy. Plasma gets +shredding but is inaccurate, and magnetic gets +damage but is twice as diminished by armor. Given that almost all enemies have armor now (some miniboss-type enemies have a ridiculous amount, like 8 or more), laser seems the obvious choice every time. Piercing, infinite ammo, and accuracy VS some really middling options, doesn't seem like much of a contest. I really got the impression they expected you to mix and match tech and weapons, so you could have one guy shredding like 7+ armor per shot with his heavy plasma cannon, and then your magnetic-shotgunner runs in and does like 40 damage on a crit or whatever on your now-unarmored foe. The problem is that each weapon tech/tree needs research, and they all need a bunch of fragments, so in my campaign I really only was able to get up one tree. Hell, by the time I had enough fragments to research my first post-ballistics weapons tech (lasers) I was immediately ready to upgrade straight into upgraded lasers (beams) so I just skipped tier 2 almost entirely. *The proving grounds allows you to break open enemy equipment 'packages' that you sometimes find as loot, but I held onto them for most of the game because it wasn't clear if they had another use. When I finally did dig in, the basic stuff only had stasis and padding vests, and the advanced stuff from special troop types (like the flame-specced PROMETHEUS) only had equipment those guys had already been dropping for me, so I ended up with like 4 dragon rounds and 10 nanoscale vests. *I did actually have fun building out the classes a bit, but a lot of the skills are still really overly situational or not at all on par with alternatives you could take at the time. I still ended up with more distinct variety than I'd expected, but it needs work. Bottom line: the mod has its heart in the right place but is in dire need of rebalancing in almost every category of its content. I'd be sitting around not researching anything and trying to get more fragments, I couldn't reliably produce armor until near the very endgame because it requires plates which need alloys to produce (and like fragments don't drop frequently enough), and I couldn't get the proving grounds projects I wanted. I don't understand what the alien/enemy progression is doing at all. I never got decent amounts of corpses or loot. I once ran into a sectopod that had like 80 health and 10 armor and the first time I hit it, it turned on a shield (on my turn) worth like 60 more health. I have no idea how I was supposed to take it on, but one shot later it was dead because my 5% repeater kicked in the world's most perfect execution. Skills aren't balanced, weapons aren't balanced (SMGs and shotguns are basically straight garbage), psi operatives aren't changed at all, alien distribution and missions don't seem to match up with research/production/genemod balance at all. Every step of the way I was wondering if I was doing something wrong, and to be honest, I'm still not sure. There's a lot of cool ideas here but none of them feel like they work together like they're supposed to. Vib Rib fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Jun 16, 2017 |
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Jun 16, 2017 18:33
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Internet Kraken posted:You'd think the spark immunity to poison wouldn't come up much but vipers don't know about it. I had a bunch of moments in my campaign where vipers tried barfing poison on the robots, essentially throwing away their turn. Viper AI just has no thought put into immunity at all, it in general does not track it. It will gladly spit the same Medkit carrying unit more than once if you let it.
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Jun 16, 2017 18:39
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Agree with all your points on SG. There's good ideas in there, but not nearly enough testing, tuning, and balancing.
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Jun 16, 2017 18:48
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Foglet posted:Nah, I don't think there were any pre-built tanks. Anyway, 12-year old me never got the concept of "base defensibility" and for the longest time kept basing the design of all the bases upon the default one, even when doing so was dumb as hell. Well the sequence of events are out of order for a start, the angel thing shows up at the end technically. But judging from the narration it's a friendly species there to help humanity
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Jun 16, 2017 18:54
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Yeah I'm kind of enjoying spectrum green but have some of the same complaints. I'm glad it's not just me being dumb.
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Jun 16, 2017 19:08
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It feels like with the way fragments and corpses are doled out (and possibly alien progression too, given how long it takes new non-ADVENT enemies to show up), you're almost expected to have a really LW-length campaign. But no other aspect of the mod seems to support that idea -- not research/tech trees, not XP balance, not income. I had finished almost all research up to and including Elerium by the time I even had enough for lasers, and my A-tem squad was almost all max rank by the time I ran into my first viper.
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Jun 16, 2017 19:14
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I tried spectrum green but it gave me an Advant mec with 14 health and 4 armor during Gate Crasher, which prompted me to uninstall it immediately. I'm glad I nope'd right outta that mess.
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Jun 16, 2017 19:16
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gently caress Spectrum Green
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Jun 16, 2017 19:54
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I also wish they made it obvious that you're upgrading existing weapon tech, not just making new ones. Took me a while to get off standard lasers because why use anything else?
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Jun 16, 2017 20:06
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That Guy Bob posted:I tried spectrum green but it gave me an Advant mec with 14 health and 4 armor during Gate Crasher, which prompted me to uninstall it immediately. I'm glad I nope'd right outta that mess. Probably meant to reproduce the moment from those early trailers where the squad gets attacked by a Berserker in the tutorial and has to retreat, to show you just how outclassed you still are and give you a chance to survive an encounter with such an overpowering enemy. ... I didn't say it was a GOOD idea, but that was probably the thought.
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Jun 16, 2017 21:01
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On Classic, when' s a good time to do Shen's Last Gift? I just picked the game back up for the first time since back before the DLC came out. Tried the mission once during the second month and ended up getting wrecked by the Sectopod due to not having any armor shredding and not realizing that the sectopod itself could be hacked. Should I level up an anti-robot specialist first?
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Jun 16, 2017 21:47
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I like a lot about spectrum green, but the main thing that's going to make me uninstall it is the resource starvation and advent CONSTANTLY calling in reinforcements.
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Jun 16, 2017 21:49
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Eschatos posted:On Classic, when' s a good time to do Shen's Last Gift? I just picked the game back up for the first time since back before the DLC came out. Tried the mission once during the second month and ended up getting wrecked by the Sectopod due to not having any armor shredding and not realizing that the sectopod itself could be hacked. Should I level up an anti-robot specialist first? Shen can take care of the majority of the robot-busting wither super-Specialist skillset. However having a second around doesn't hurt. A Grenadier with shredder ain't bad either. The real hint though is to wait until you have magnetic weapons, at which point the armored enemies become less of a deal because you can punch past their armor to their reduced HP.
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Jun 16, 2017 21:53
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OK, just made it to the first terror mission on Normal. Am I supposed to have had researched better armor and weapons by this point? Because these Crysallids and zombies are kicking my rear end. Should I start over? Is is also possible to save all civilians? They seem to be dying on turn 2. (Fun fact: My save file says "Game 25". I only reached this point once but lost that save")
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Jun 16, 2017 23:02
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Civilians are your shield.  It's possible to research better weapons/armour by that point, but you need to know what's coming to do so - as well as a pinch of luck. For your first terror mission it's best to just pucker up and try to make the best of a bad situation.
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Jun 16, 2017 23:03
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I don't remember Chrysallids showing up for the first terror mission in EW but it's been a hot minute since I've played it
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Jun 16, 2017 23:05
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I hope Big Sky makes a return, but he's upgraded his Skyranger into an unholy AC-130 mashup so I can poo poo explosives all over the map like those MECs and Archons.
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Jun 16, 2017 23:11
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He went MIA shortly after the Commander was captured.  But man, reinstalled XCOM2 and the performance really dragged - it's so miserable and has improved even the slightest bit. Even with that aside though I find myself going back to Enemy Within; something about it just feels better to me.
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Jun 16, 2017 23:12
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Bolow posted:I don't remember Chrysallids showing up for the first terror mission in EW but it's been a hot minute since I've played it They do. They're in the cutscene, too.
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Jun 16, 2017 23:44
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That Guy Bob posted:I tried spectrum green but it gave me an Advant mec with 14 health and 4 armor during Gate Crasher, which prompted me to uninstall it immediately. I'm glad I nope'd right outta that mess. I'm pretty sure the intention there is you take good cover and hit it 14 times for 1 damage each. One of SG's gimmicks is that Gatecrasher ends with a miniboss that gives you a leg up on one aspect of research. A lot of the ideas in the mod sounded interesting, shame to hear that it's poorly balanced on the strategy layer.
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Jun 17, 2017 00:40
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Jabor posted:I'm pretty sure the intention there is you take good cover and hit it 14 times for 1 damage each. One of SG's gimmicks is that Gatecrasher ends with a miniboss that gives you a leg up on one aspect of research. Most of the big conversion mods for Xcom 2 are like that. Just a collection of really interesting ideas that are not executed well. Makes me wish it was easier to just use parts of mods. Also more things need to mesh with Grimy's Loot Mod better. I find it hard playing without it anymore.
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Jun 17, 2017 00:58
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poptart_fairy posted:But man, reinstalled XCOM2 and the performance really dragged - it's so miserable and has improved even the slightest bit. Even with that aside though I find myself going back to Enemy Within; something about it just feels better to me. Backhand posted:Probably meant to reproduce the moment from those early trailers where the squad gets attacked by a Berserker in the tutorial and has to retreat, to show you just how outclassed you still are and give you a chance to survive an encounter with such an overpowering enemy. Jabor posted:I'm pretty sure the intention there is you take good cover and hit it 14 times for 1 damage each. One of SG's gimmicks is that Gatecrasher ends with a miniboss that gives you a leg up on one aspect of research.
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Jun 17, 2017 01:04
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LordNat posted:Most of the big conversion mods for Xcom 2 are like that. Just a collection of really interesting ideas that are not executed well. Makes me wish it was easier to just use parts of mods. I'm trying to avoid that if I can, by separating whatever elements I can rather than bundling the whole lot into a single mod, so I can focus on each individual chunk being polished and standalone. Makes it honestly easier to maintain code quality anyway, but the benefit is you get happy accidents like Extract Corpses taking off because it plays really well with LW2 for people who don't like the research starvation of evaccing all the time. Doing stuff that's a bit more wrecking ball right now, like removing all the enemy tiers in favour of singular unit types that all have a place on the battlefield and may have incremental upgrades in the form of Dark Events or just regional bonusses or something. Sort of like the idea that Spectrum has to make weapons compete for space in your armament rather than just straight upgrades, but hopefully with the roles a bit more defined so you can't just power through with an upper tier of something.
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Jun 17, 2017 01:22
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OK, I finally got a death that I am willing to accept. It was during the fishing village mission. Sacrificed a sniper to lure the Chrysalid onslaught while the others ran to safety. RIP Cpl. Ernst Krause.
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Jun 17, 2017 02:16
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I am here to say after 720 pages that the only thing I miss is a proper UFO spotting event and exploring crashsites. But that is about the only thing...aside from 7 level structures that you just dot with high explosives and say "gently caress it."
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Jun 17, 2017 02:58
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Ugh. The wait until August 29th is gonna be sooo loooong.
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Jun 17, 2017 03:32
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One thing I kinda miss from waaaay back when is the little tiny 1 alien saucer. Obviously it wouldn't make any sense for xcom 2 but it really helped make it feel like the aliens had more goals than just world domination. Ditto to the saucers full of cow bits.
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Jun 17, 2017 03:48
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Alkydere posted:Ugh. The wait until August 29th is gonna be sooo loooong. Just make lots of character pool entries
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Jun 17, 2017 06:25
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It doesn't feel right to make characters from scratch. I feel like a soldier has to prove themselves in battle to earn their way into the pool.
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Jun 17, 2017 06:27
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I name them after people I know then I inform them of how they died and who on the team let them down.
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Jun 17, 2017 06:49
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I really should remake that one submission I did for the Goon Squad pack
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Jun 17, 2017 06:55
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How many SA classics would work for XCOM? Reginald P Linux and Officer Cop. Lowtax in his American flag boxing gear. drat now I want voicepacks.
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Jun 17, 2017 07:06
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