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Moola posted:The star wars mod that replaces advent with the Empire is pretty great The same with the one that replaces Advent with the Imperium of Man
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Dec 17, 2019 20:44
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lost boomers rule. poo poo getting entirely hosed up is awesome! more bang, more boom, more poo poo on fire! lotta fun-haters in here.
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Dec 17, 2019 21:10
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I've been playing a lot of XCOM2 - WOTC as of late after binging hard on it after release and a little more after WOTC released. Legacy Operations were a pleasant surprise that I enjoyed going through, and the rewards for beating them applying to mainline campaigns was a nice plus too. Since it seems like there's some stirrings of things to come next (Firaxis job postings and Jake Solomon's oblique references in his twitter bio), I wanted to see what people would want to see from a true sequel and share some of my thoughts on it as well. Just for background, I typically play Commander, am currently trying Impossible with the Bronzeman mod. I have all DLC and play with a few mods, mostly cosmetic with a few QoL mods that affect gameplay (Gotcha, Evac All, Less Overwatch Crashes, fair Lost Targeting). I don't really care for mods that significantly change the game in terms of new enemies, soldier classes, etc. Alien Rulers: cool idea, terrible execution and made obsolete with the introduction of the Chosen. I wouldn't be opposed to Ruler-class enemies being included in the future, but the "take a turn after each of your soldiers" idea sucks. The Rulers seem to wreck new player and only serve as an annoyance to players like me. I basically cheese them with reapers and squadsight snipers. It is fun seeing how many status effects you can pile on one enemy though! The Lost: Not sure if I want any sequel to include the Lost. Not especially challenging but Lost missions do put some interesting conditions on play - making you think hard about using explosives, which are typically my go-to "get out of a sticky situation" play. Chosen: I think these guys add a lot more to the game then they detract. While implementation isn't perfect, I think they're a net positive to the game and I would be cool with the inclusion of persistent nemesis-style enemies in the future. Basically I want to see these balanced so that so much of an Ironman campaign doesn't hang on whether the first Chosen you see is the Assassin or not. Faction soldiers: Awesome! The only issue I have is that they kind of get to be too powerful, but honestly the inclusion of one faction soldier for the starting squad is so nice and helps get Ironman runs off the ground. I only want SPARKs to get fleshed out and serve as a fourth kind of faction soldier. Covert Ops and resistance orders offer nice variety and a good way to train lower-ranked soldiers. Mission timers: This was a necessary change from XCOM 1 and once you're used to it, they don't really impact things as much as you'd think. The only timed mission where it seemed a little too tight is the "four turns to rescue a VIP from a Lost area" ones where it seems you need a quick soldier to double move all four starting turns to make it in time. The main thing I want in a sequel is more variety at the beginning and end of games. The game kind of has a flow where the first missions are so grueling because rookies and squaddies suck so much rear end. In Impossible Ironman, you basically need to Flawless the first two or three missions to not get dickstomped by the first Retaliation. Then you have the middle of the game, where you're racing the Avatar project and making hefty decisions on what you're prioritizing for tech and gear. I think this is the game's strongest point - you're forced to decide whether to rush T2 weapons, or armor, or Psionics. On the structure side, you have to decide whether you want the GTS, an Infirmary or maybe rush Psionics and balance that against some of the non-combat tech and structures you need to delay the Avatar project. Finally, you have what most call the victory lap: you've built up a healthy roster, have some squeeze room on the Avatar timer or neutralized it completely, and are kind of just milking it to get new fun toys to play with. A lot of people, myself included, tend to not actually finish campaigns once they've hit this point because you start to miss the challenge of the midgame. I wish the game moved some of the difficulty from the very beginning into the late game. I really liked the newest DLC for Battle Brothers because it added a multitude of different starts with different bonuses and penalties to shake up the stale early game meta that had been in place. I think it would be cool to have the campaign start with a Legacy Ops-style series of missions where you make a few decisions which then pop you into the campaign with a customized starting facility and some starting gear or soldiers. Basically, out of this whole thing, what I want to see more than anything is a divergence from "Gatecrasher" style opening, where every campaign opens with the same crew and mission and you're basically just gambling on your rookie subpar stats. What do you guys want to see added, removed, expanded, etc. from a potential XCOM 3? rideANDxORdie fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Dec 17, 2019 |
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Dec 17, 2019 21:13
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Dr. Stab posted:Meld is cool because there's a decision. You can choose to take things slow, but now there's an incentive not to. most people I saw play XCOM EU once meld was added basically just ignored it unless it was mega convenient to grab, and kept on overwatch creeping. it didn't actually succeed at changing how people played, which is why they changed to the stricter punishment for not keeping up in XCOM 2.
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Dec 17, 2019 21:13
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Almost every mission gives more than enough time to finish them with a turn or two to spare. Though the keyword there is "almost".
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Dec 17, 2019 21:30
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And in the cases where they don't, the correct and obvious choice is to book your squad to the evac and fail the mission. It's not a campaign ender and far better than losing multiple soldiers. It's interesting to me how people get so frustrated by the possibility that they won't win every mission with no long-term negative effects. If you're winning every mission without a challenge you're missing all the fun tension of xcom! Then on the rare missions that don't have a timer, it's a relief in a good way instead of being more of the same tedium of overwatch creeping. The timers are an extremely good addition and easily one of the best single changes from 1 to 2.
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Dec 17, 2019 23:42
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Frankly I'm coming more around to Beaglrush's ideal sort of game where you get into longer, protracted gun fights. I'd like there to be more focus on creating those kind of situations though I understand why that isn't the case. My problem with Xcom 2 nowadays is I feel like it kind of tricks you into thinking you're playing well when really all you're doing is is preventing the enemy from doing anything ever. It gets boring. I wanna see all these cool aliens actually do stuff without requiring me to actively be playing terribly. I'm tired of either being able to OHKO everything or completely disable them with stuns.
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Dec 17, 2019 23:56
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you cant really do protracted gun fights in xcom because all of the enemies are disposable and will do stupid poo poo to attrition you which feels just as if not even more gamey than the system they put into xcom 2 to try and encourage people to stop overwatch crawling. ooo but they're MIND CONTROLLED by the elders and so it's not gamey for the enemies to suicide flank you to wound one of your soldiers! yeah, no thanks. i understand it's a matter of preference but i don't like the framing like one is ~verisimilitude breaking~ and the other is just like, more realistic man.
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Dec 18, 2019 02:31
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If you put on yellow alert (so if they walk into you they'll potentially shoot you regardless of whether your soldier is flanked or not) then it all feels a lot less gamey, incidentally. It also encourages you to push forward and activate pods on your turn instead of divining where they are and setting up one tile short.
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Dec 18, 2019 02:57
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you can do some pretty simple ini edits to make the AI value cover instead of suicide flanking you. You can also set their preferred engagement range so the will keep falling back rather than letting you flank them; you can even increase how likely they are to retreat to another pod, or how many loses will cause them to attempt this.
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Dec 18, 2019 03:42
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Hey is there a Phantom Doctrine thread? Thought I'd ask in the XCOM 2 thread because they are practically the same game except PD is set in 1982 and there are no aliens.
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Dec 18, 2019 04:11
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Yeah there are ways you can make it work. I'm not saying vanilla Xcom 1/2 are bad by any means, I played each game for 350+ hours each and honestly could still play vanilla and enjoy it probably. I just think for me personally, I'd rather have a longer and more tactical experience with more range for variance. But its a fine line to walk because I think a lot of stuff Long War does is just straight up not fun.
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Dec 18, 2019 04:12
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rideANDxORdie posted:.
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Dec 18, 2019 04:17
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Arglebargle III posted:Hey is there a Phantom Doctrine thread? Thought I'd ask in the XCOM 2 thread because they are practically the same game except PD is set in 1982 and there are no aliens. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3865558
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Dec 18, 2019 04:41
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upgunned shitpost posted:lost boomers rule. poo poo getting entirely hosed up is awesome! more bang, more boom, more poo poo on fire! Lost to Empire mod Deathcinerators are a better coded more interesting version, change my mind  Really what I want from an XCom 3 is mostly something I've been looking into modding into XCOM 2 which is a hero unit limit and more choices. But that's just choice paralysis waiting to happen and I get others not wanting that.
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Dec 18, 2019 04:47
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upgunned shitpost posted:lost boomers rule. poo poo getting entirely hosed up is awesome! more bang, more boom, more poo poo on fire!  Preach it, brother!
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Dec 18, 2019 05:04
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Taffer posted:And in the cases where they don't, the correct and obvious choice is to book your squad to the evac and fail the mission. It's not a campaign ender and far better than losing multiple soldiers. Yep! The big thing I learned playing through Legendary Almost Ironman is that the game is actually way, way more lenient than you think it is and you really have to try hard to gently caress up to the point of no return.
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Dec 18, 2019 05:20
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Yeah, the team behind the new xcom games is really good about making you feel like you're always on the edge of defeat even though youre in no danger whatsoever. Like in xcom 1. So long as you dont just ignore satellites and panic there is pretty much zero chance of a formal game over on anything short of impossible. It is a really hard game to lose.
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Dec 18, 2019 05:35
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upgunned shitpost posted:lost boomers rule. poo poo getting entirely hosed up is awesome! more bang, more boom, more poo poo on fire!  This and timers are both good and cool. Learn to fail a mission now and then, nerds.
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Dec 18, 2019 06:32
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I don't care enough to start a campaign just to test it, but if you're gonna add exploding enemies to xcom post-WOTC the deciding factor of whether they're cool is if you can Remote Start them just for the sheer absurdity of it.
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Dec 18, 2019 06:41
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silentsnack posted:I don't care enough to start a campaign just to test it, but if you're gonna add exploding enemies to xcom post-WOTC the deciding factor of whether they're cool is if you can Remote Start them just for the sheer absurdity of it. This is an amazing idea, and kind of makes me want to figure out how to use the mod toolkit to do it.
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Dec 18, 2019 07:02
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Its dead simple to delete out Lost Boomers from ABA anyways. Just delete the ini that changes Lost Pod codes and they'll never spawn. Its in its own uniquely labelled one.
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Dec 18, 2019 07:26
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All this talk of having to massively overhaul the game in order to see enemies use actions (due to you pod-wiping in a single turn), guys... beta strike in right there, included in the base game. Removes soldiers getting one-hit-by-crit, lets pods quickly scale into superfat mode where you can't wipe them, but that's ok all since your guys are fat too and can take a hit. Play it.
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Dec 18, 2019 09:32
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Internet Kraken posted:Yeah there are ways you can make it work. I'm not saying vanilla Xcom 1/2 are bad by any means, I played each game for 350+ hours each and honestly could still play vanilla and enjoy it probably. I just think for me personally, I'd rather have a longer and more tactical experience with more range for variance. But its a fine line to walk because I think a lot of stuff Long War does is just straight up not fun. yeah same. I also want slower engagements where stuff like overwatch and suppression are mandatory Serephina posted:All this talk of having to massively overhaul the game in order to see enemies use actions (due to you pod-wiping in a single turn), guys... beta strike in right there, included in the base game. Removes soldiers getting one-hit-by-crit, lets pods quickly scale into superfat mode where you can't wipe them, but that's ok all since your guys are fat too and can take a hit. Play it. Beta strike owns
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Dec 18, 2019 15:12
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Beta strike fascinates me but I'm not sure I can process how it works with stuff like flanking, which I generally do as a finisher. To move in for a flank, crit hard, and have the enemy still standing means a lot of my high mobility units will end up endangered because I'm so used to playing that way.
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Dec 18, 2019 15:13
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You kinda have to whittle down the enemies health a bit, and then flank as a finisher that way. Or you have to try and pin an enemy down in some way (frost grenade, flash bang, stuns) and then flank. I find it makes skirmishers way more useful, as Justice is super helpful in positioning an enemy in sight of all your dudes, while also maintaining a safe position yourself.
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Dec 18, 2019 16:31
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Olive Branch posted:Unlike other missions this timed mission doesn't fail when it gets to zero. All it does is spawn a big group of lost that ignore the unactivated VIP and rush your squad. After every 3 or 4 turns a new wave spawns. Wow, I had no idea. Even though the timer is tight I've always been able to get someone there in four turns, usually they end up taking one or two hits from the lost and then we're good. These get even easier when you have a Specialist leveled up enough that you don't have to carry the optional escort out and can simply revival protocol them - all of a sudden the optional objective is giving you an extra gun instead of requiring you to lose one to carry them out.
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Dec 18, 2019 20:48
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the true secret to making lost escort missions easier is letting the idiot scientist or engineer you're saving chump some hits, they'll be fine
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Dec 18, 2019 21:15
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It is not as though it matters if they come back to base a bit bruised.
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Dec 19, 2019 05:08
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Hunt11 posted:It is not as though it matters if they come back to base a bit bruised.
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Dec 19, 2019 06:37
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Torchlighter posted:A whole lot of fun mods for classes and enemies. The celatids are super boring. They don't have any interesting attacks and visually are just floating kidneys. Plus they seem to have replaced the snakes in my game so now I can't get the better medkits (not much of a problem, the pharmacists got the healing covered). Gonna check that Raid stuff in my next playthough.
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Dec 19, 2019 07:46
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Celatids give you scimitars and turrets though
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Dec 19, 2019 12:27
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one annoyance with Celatids is that they love to do AoE attacks against civillians. Also celatid turrets are kinda op
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Dec 19, 2019 16:38
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Olive Branch posted:You'd think they would need days to recover when one of the Chosen sabotage attempts is to wound your engineers and scientists! I did have one of my engineers wounded and in the infirmary once, so either it was a bug I ran into, or it can happen occasionally.
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Dec 19, 2019 22:53
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I like the celatid enemy a lot, its got a good model and animations (I mean sure its just a floating blob of flesh but that's what it originally was). If it had unique sounds I could believe it was an official enemy. Didn't try any of the items you get from em but I'm never really concerned about those. But importantly its also not broken and feels like a good fit to the game. So many enemy mods add overtuned bullshit that feels totally unfair unless you are also running overtuned bullshit.
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Dec 20, 2019 00:25
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Light Gun Man posted:Celatids give you scimitars and turrets though I might be biased (read: salty) because of the whole kinda-sorta replaced vipers in my game. Does Christopher Odd post his character pool somewhere? The characters people send him look very fun. Vincent fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Dec 20, 2019 |
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Dec 20, 2019 05:26
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Anyone else's game eating up buttloads of RAM? I got 80 mods but I don't know if one of them is wilding out or if that is just an excessive amount.
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Dec 21, 2019 02:10
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AppleDan posted:I got 80 mods I think I found your problem.
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Dec 21, 2019 06:55
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AppleDan posted:Anyone else's game eating up buttloads of RAM? I got 80 mods but I don't know if one of them is wilding out or if that is just an excessive amount. Cosmetic mods are usually the culprit for excessive RAM use, but any mods can.
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Dec 21, 2019 07:01
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Serephina posted:I think I found your problem. yeah that's nowhere near enough mods
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Dec 21, 2019 07:33
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