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The mission is looking good so far. I was hoping they'd try using the frost bomb on the codex and then discover that it does indeed prevent codex cloning, but they talked themselves out of it. I have some doubts they'll ever discover their weakness to flashbangs, blue screen rounds, or EMP grenades.
Dr Christmas fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Feb 20, 2019 |
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Feb 20, 2019 23:06
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Mr. Vile posted:You have completely overlooked an item you've had since the beginning that is incredibly powerful: The humble flashbang. There is at least another one the broken mimic beacon. So broken, it could have single handedly saved their bacon in the codex situation, if they had someone to throw it with. Of course in a blind LP there is no indication of what is good and what is bad aside from a generic description.
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Feb 20, 2019 23:21
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Natural 20 fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Feb 23, 2019 |
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Feb 21, 2019 00:00
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Should you give the skulljack to Shanty. He seems like he would be able to use it better.
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Feb 21, 2019 00:13
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MonsterEnvy posted:Should you give the skulljack to Shanty. He seems like he would be able to use it better. With what hacking ability?
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Feb 21, 2019 00:23
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GeneX posted:With what hacking ability? Forgot about that.
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Feb 21, 2019 00:25
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Notty posted:As someone who’s never played XCOM either and is following the LP along blindly, I’m curious what the more expert players think of Nat and Tea’s current overall situation. Psionics are awfully nice...but they have to build the drat Psi-Lab, assign a Rookie to it (preferably upgrade it and assign two) then they have to wait ages while the Psis train up to get enough powers to be game-breaking. A low ranked Psi with just a power or two has some utility. A Magus with ALL the powers can break the game over her knee. My fear is that they're talking themselves out of Psionics. They've put in the research, but the benefit for rushing Psionics will be lost if they don't put it into use as soon as possible! Worst of all worlds is to rush Psionics research and thus delay Tier II weapons and armor, but to then wait too long to build the Psi-Lab! Their antfarm building is sub-optimal too. They had bad luck there, because there wasn't an Exposed Power Coupling near the top of their farm, and there's nothing in the game to tell you that if you build a Generator on a Coupling you get a big boost of extra power. It's usually worth the effort to pick the nearest Coupling and build straight down to get to it ASAP, because one Coupling + Generator is enough to power two or three more rooms. Its something you don't realize if you haven't played XCOM:EU /EW, because Steam Vents in the old game worked similarly. As others have said, you can kick back the Avatar Project quite a bit. Indeed, a valid tactic is to wait until the progress bar maxes out. Then Bradford will give you a week or so to save the world. You can then hit a Black Site and knock the progress back by a couple of bars. Then ignore it until it fills again, and then hit the next facility, and so on. As long as you make sure to have at least one accessible facility at all times you can keep going like that nearly indefinitely. (And if you play with the War of the Chosen DLC there are even more options.) A lot of the strategic layer lessons from XCOM carried over with re-skins into XCOM2. In XCOM you needed to keep building satellites as fast as you could to keep increasing your income and to keep from losing the game. In XCOM2 that's re-skinned to Resistance Contacts. You need to keep making contact to get more supplies per month and to gain access to facilities that you can hit to keep the Avatar Project under control. Again, our boys here haven't played XCOM and don't have those lessons baked in, and thus are freaking out as those red bars fill in because they don't realize how to handle the problem. So yeah, for not having either XCOM or XCOM2 experience to draw on they're doing okay. They've made some mistakes but they aren't death spiraling nearly as much as they think they are.
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Feb 21, 2019 00:31
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Usually when watching your videos I constantly find myself yelling at the screen about what you should do. This episode you actually did it, so I just wanted to say your tactical game is really improving. I think they're really going to regret not noticing haywire is on cooldown, though
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Feb 21, 2019 00:52
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Bremen posted:Usually when watching your videos I constantly find myself yelling at the screen about what you should do. This episode you actually did it, so I just wanted to say your tactical game is really improving.
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Feb 21, 2019 01:58
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Bremen posted:I think they're really going to regret not noticing haywire is on cooldown, though Was thinking the same thing. It wouldn't be a huge deal, but combined with California being functionally useless for the rest of the turn, this might go bad.
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Feb 21, 2019 02:30
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Keraf has plasma grenades because the "plasma grenades" project you did in the proving ground makes all regular grenades into plasma grenades (which are functionally the same but with better numbers, as opposed to the weird experimental sorts that have additional effects) No one will ever have regular frag grenades again unless you go out of your way to downgrade them from their default. VV: Ah! Forgot about that. Thanks Akratic Method fucked around with this message at 07:22 on Feb 21, 2019 |
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Feb 21, 2019 05:11
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Akratic Method posted:Keraf has plasma grenades because the "plasma grenades" project you did in the proving ground makes all regular grenades into plasma grenades (which are functionally the same but with better numbers, as opposed to the weird experimental sorts that have additional effects) No one will ever have regular frag grenades again unless you go out of your way to downgrade them from their default.
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Feb 21, 2019 07:19
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Commander Keene posted:It helps that there's no death march counting down over their heads. I'm with Nat20 on this; I'd personally prefer the game without a hard turn limit on nearly every mission. I feel like giving exp bonuses or something for speed and efficiency would have been a better way to encourage players to keep moving. Full disclosure, I immediately installed the mod that starts the countdown only when your squad is revealed. 
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Feb 21, 2019 07:24
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It's fun to see the progression of "this unit is complete bullshit, it's totally unbalanced and ruins the game" to killing one on the ambush turn in the next mission once you get a handle on its tricks.
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Feb 21, 2019 07:44
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Commander Keene posted:I feel like giving exp bonuses or something for speed and efficiency would have been a better way to encourage players to keep moving. Enemy Within (the expansion for XCOM 1) tried this. It had the timed Meld canisters scattered around missions, which literally locked away all the new fun toys of the expansion. You had to get to those in time to have access to the cool robot soldiers and mutant gene mans. It didn't really work. The risk of losing experienced soldiers is just too high to warrant taking risks for bonuses, even really shiny ones. Losing a lot of good soldiers is the primary way of losing the game. Unless you make the bonuses pivotal to winning the campaign, I don't think it's going to be enough. Now I'm not going to tell anyone they're wrong for disliking the timers. They're a very heavy handed solution, they're explained poorly, and just feel bad. Losing missions to the timer usually has a very negligible effect, though. Getting a squad killed running after them is the real threat. That leads me to the main complaint I have about the tactical missions: the missions where you don't have the ability to create an evac zone and retreat. These types of missions are a massive death trap that the game doesn't signal nearly strongly enough. When the evac ability is there, it's possible to take calculated risks and cut your losses if it all goes pear shaped. It's a good test of skill and tactical foresight, to have to recognize a losing situation early enough to be able to pull out. Taking away the evac means that you just have to eat whatever hilarious cascade failure the game has in store for you this time. That is something I'd say is just unfair. The Avatar Project timer discussion also made an interesting thought occur. All the games in the series, including the classic ones, really want to sell you this idea of fighting a losing battle against an almost insurmountable alien force. They tell you that the enemy is gearing up to something, and time is short. In all of the games, however, the exact opposite is true. The strategy layer of every XCOM game is geared in the player's favor, and as long as the player doesn't implode in the tactical fights, the games will almost inevitably hand them a space marine murder squad that the aliens cannot challenge. It's the aliens that will lose in the long run, and have to resort to silly tricks to win, like an early base assault in the classic game, or convincing you that attempting to defend snakeman terror missions is a sound idea.
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Feb 21, 2019 08:36
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I really like the timers, as the overwatch crawl was incredibly boring and repetitive. I will admit I also like WotC's addition of variation to the timers.
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Feb 21, 2019 10:19
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tarbrush posted:I really like the timers, as the overwatch crawl was incredibly boring and repetitive. I will admit I also like WotC's addition of variation to the timers. I also side with liking the timers. I played the first game heavily though and without timers it literally makes the most sense to just crawl across the map a tile or two at a time and then overwatch the whole squad. In the world of game design, if you give players the ability to perform 1% better by abandoning everything fun, they will do it and then complain about how boring the game is. At the same time, I totally understand why others don't like them and how they greatly limit the strategies you can employ, even beyond the overwatch creep.
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Feb 21, 2019 10:58
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They should be friendlier with the turns. Just having it be “when revealed the timer starts”
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Feb 21, 2019 11:03
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I do like that there are timers most of the time to keep you pressing forward, but it's also real nice to get a break once in a while. So personally I'm a fan of how they've balanced it that way... except for that scenario already mentioned where you got timers + fixed evac zone/ forced retreat, those are the ABSOLUTE WORST
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Feb 21, 2019 11:23
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Bifauxnen posted:I do like that there are timers most of the time to keep you pressing forward, but it's also real nice to get a break once in a while. So personally I'm a fan of how they've balanced it that way... I literally just lost a Major Sniper by falling short 3 squares :/
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Feb 21, 2019 11:31
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Bifauxnen posted:I do like that there are timers most of the time to keep you pressing forward, but it's also real nice to get a break once in a while. So personally I'm a fan of how they've balanced it that way... I got one of those following a dark event which reduced the timer. The gently caress am I going to do with 4 turns  I barley had enough time to sprint to the evac site and I had to run through 2 pods in overwatch and a turret.
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Feb 21, 2019 11:51
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TheKirbs posted:I got one of those following a dark event which reduced the timer. 
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Feb 21, 2019 12:48
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Affi posted:They should be friendlier with the turns. Just having it be “when revealed the timer starts” Like I said, I had no qualms in getting the mod that does this right off the bat. It also makes more sense to me that the aliens would only start purging their data or whatever after detecting an incursion.
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Feb 21, 2019 15:33
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Mordja posted:Like I said, I had no qualms in getting the mod that does this right off the bat. It also makes more sense to me that the aliens would only start purging their data or whatever after detecting an incursion.
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Feb 21, 2019 22:43
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Feb 23, 2019 00:10
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Dead Reckoning posted:TBF, it is kind of weird that you start undetected after fast-roping into the area out of a VTOL assault ship with the XCOM logo on the side. Little known fact: "XCOM" is also the name of a half-hour delivery pizza joint.
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Feb 23, 2019 00:42
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The roof didn't fall on them, they were standing next to an explosive object. The turret died because you blew the ground out from under it tho. E: and now that Ella's promoted to nickname rank, a friendly reminder that I listed a preferred one. I think I did, unless I forgot and that's why she hasn't had one from the start. Anyway, "Cinders". Bruceski fucked around with this message at 00:55 on Feb 23, 2019 |
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Feb 23, 2019 00:42
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Is anyone else extremely depressed that these guys are doing better on a blind run than I do in most of my games? No? Me neither, I swear.
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Feb 23, 2019 02:19
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Give Keraf suppression, btw I feel like him always doing 2 damage means that a damaging debuff is better than a setup move
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Feb 23, 2019 04:19
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Yes also change my nickname to Kerath please I have many regrets.
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Feb 23, 2019 04:58
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Both Demolition and Suppression are pretty good, IMHO, but suppression can be a bit trickier to use well. So Demolition gets my vote, it might be best to experiment with more complicated tactics on a non-blind/ironman run.
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Feb 23, 2019 05:18
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sniper4625 posted:Yes also change my nickname to Kerath please I have many regrets. make emi's nickname "archer" if you're doing editing, ty
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Feb 23, 2019 05:48
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I cannot abide this rampant violence against turret-chan. 
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Feb 23, 2019 07:18
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Demolition is redundant: grenadiers already have multiple ways of stripping cover. It also does not work on non-destructible cover, which makes it even more situational. I vote Suppression: being able to throw a -50 on the aim of a flanking enemy can be the difference between life and death.
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Feb 23, 2019 08:22
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Gonna throw my hat in for Suppression as well.
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Feb 23, 2019 08:53
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Suppression is what you need to get. Demolition just does what your grenades already do. And eventually you'll be able to both grenade and shoot on the same turn with a grenadier. Suppression saves lives.
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Feb 23, 2019 10:00
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This is one of those non-choices. Like people said, grenades are what you use to remove cover. Suppression is always useful if there's a live alien in sight after everyone else had a go. It's an excellent fallback plan if you can't get everything in sight killed outright. Suppression is also one of the few abilities that work really well against enemies in indestructible hard cover. Also I believe suppression somehow counts as a hit, so it will break overwatch and a bunch of other alien abilities, like mind control. It can't miss either, so that's double good.
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Feb 23, 2019 10:39
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Also deadeye vs lightning hands. Deadeye is good too! I won’t even spoil this; deadeye is better on maps that haven’t got a time limit. It is also better on snipers that have a few other perks that will appear later on. The height advantage one in particular
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Feb 23, 2019 10:52
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I'd like deadeye more if it did more damage. It's great in that 1 in 10 situation where you've got the spare accuracy and the extra damage will make a difference, but the ability of LH to do damage out of sequence is just so consistently useful.
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Feb 23, 2019 12:15
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Also, Deadeye having a "small" aim penalty (as per the description) is a bald-faced lie, because -25 is not god drat small.
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Feb 23, 2019 13:12
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