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Welp, long enforced holiday for me. Nice, not into baseball so haven't heard of him. Still cool and a cool name.
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Apr 16, 2020 17:43
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ONE point off that +20 lmao also I never use the sword on rangers, ever. 90% fuckin sucks. seeing you go for it was wild considering how averse you are normally to risky plays like that Grapplejack fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Apr 16, 2020 |
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Apr 16, 2020 17:48
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So what do those effects that got picked up at the end do? "Fear of Panic" and "Cautious"
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Apr 16, 2020 18:07
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Grapplejack posted:ONE point off that +20 lmao Well I mean you can pick up a promotion that ups it to 100% and gives you an extra two damage on top. On classic this means pretty much one hit kills on any sectoids.
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Apr 16, 2020 18:11
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Xelkelvos posted:So what do those effects that got picked up at the end do? "Fear of Panic" and "Cautious" Great question! So...soldiers develop maluses if bad things happen in combat (they go into combat tired, their willpower dips a TON, they get beat up badly or see an ally get wrecked). Some of these are random (like cautious). Some of them are tied to the bad thing (watching an ally get eaten by Lost might result in developing "Fear of the Lost".) For "Fear of X" maluses (robots, sectoids, the lost, the chosen, fire, etc.), the FIRST time in a mission that soldier sees the met condition, s/he will panic and lose their turn. There's also fun ones like "fear of missed shots" so you get to watch your missed 95% be much worse than just a single missed shot. Then there are the generic ones like "cautious" and "compulsive reloader". Most of those are just "after the soldier's first action, there's an X% chance on ALL turns that s/he will hunker down, or use their last action on a reload." Because they can appear more than once on a mission, they're very annoying, but they're generally not as debilitating as the one-time PANIC in the "fear" tree. Once we develop an infirmary, we can send a single soldier at a time to clear his/her maluses, 10 days per malus.
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Apr 16, 2020 18:45
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reignofevil posted:Well I mean you can pick up a promotion that ups it to 100% and gives you an extra two damage on top. On classic this means pretty much one hit kills on any sectoids. Yep, I generally make sure most of my rangers go this particular route.
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Apr 16, 2020 18:50
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FairGame posted:Great question! So far, the only thing WotC has added that seems neat is the new classes. The rest of this stuff, sheesh.
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Apr 16, 2020 18:59
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Yeah, the new classes are neat but the chosen are gigantic pains in the rear end, the mental maluses are bad, bonds are weird, and it turns off the storylines for the other two DLCs.
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Apr 16, 2020 19:03
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I think the mental maluses are good tbh, since they do what long war wanted to do with the forced medbay after being tired. You can still use the units but it's a risk and the penalty for mistakes while taking that risk are escalated.
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Apr 16, 2020 19:22
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I love the maluses, but I always mentally assign personalities to my soldiers and get emotionally attached
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Apr 16, 2020 19:24
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If we weren't leaning so heavy on our templar for some of these missions we wouldn't be in nearly so deep with these mental conditions. Now as best I can tell we're gonna have to pick and send some rookies out without much equipment or backup to cover for them. Not a spot I envy to be honest. Personally I tend to send an entire squad of rookies out (on whatever version of that lost mission we got a couple videos ago that the game serves me up) so I can fill up on promotions before we get into situations like this where there's a good chance we're gonna be forced to take on the Assassin again but with our Templar out due to exhaustion.
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Apr 16, 2020 19:25
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I also think that playing on Legendary is a cruel joke played upon us by an angry God. Classic is good and fun and legendary is just... it's just awful.
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Apr 16, 2020 19:30
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Yeah, the neurosis penalties suck to have, but to be honest you never really deal with them much. They’re simple to remove, later you can see what enemy types are present to avoid phobias, and just having other troops makes it possible to leave the really messed-up home. I find the annoyance outweighed by preferring to have a reason to run more than six different soldiers. Also the chosen seem a lot less unfair on difficulties other than Legendary! They scale pretty appropriately: on the easy level they’re speed bumps, and it’s only up here on the difficulty that’s supposed to be punishing where they’re truly scary. And minus some unfortunate luck FairGame could have won that mission. but when you see the Hunter’s behavior at this difficulty, you’ll probably hate WOTC all over again
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Apr 16, 2020 19:35
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Megane is such a ridiculous force to recon with, and having played vanilla XCom2 I feel like the game wasn't re-balanced around them. The way this game plays out long term, will you be able to field a faction unit on almost every mission? Also, in a very early version of XCom2 a specialist's rover could reveal the squad if the enemies sighted it. Was that ever fixed?
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Apr 16, 2020 20:05
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Chuu posted:Also, in a very early version of XCom2 a specialist's rover could reveal the squad if the enemies sighted it. Was that ever fixed? As far as I'm aware (haven't played much WOTC but this is how it was in vanilla), you can use the gremlin to check out the hacking bonuses from the towers without breaking concealment, but if you hack, it breaks it.
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Apr 16, 2020 20:26
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eating only apples posted:I love the maluses, but I always mentally assign personalities to my soldiers and get emotionally attached The whole concept of the neuroses and mental health bar makes me wonder if Firaxis wasn't consciously trying to ape Darkest Dungeon.
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Apr 16, 2020 20:26
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Chuu posted:Megane is such a ridiculous force to recon with, and having played vanilla XCom2 I feel like the game wasn't re-balanced around them. The way this game plays out long term, will you be able to field a faction unit on almost every mission? Given that there are Covert Ops that let you recruit additional faction heroes, you could get two of each and send one on every mission. Templars are cool and they can get ridiculous later on if they draw the right XCom skills in their skill tree. Fortress is really good on them, but safe to say there are better skills *cough* Bladestorm *cough*. Just wait until we get to the other faction heroes. Skirmishers I find hard to use well, but they are mobile and have some lovely skill synergy. Reapers have one skill in particular that acts as a "gently caress You" button to every single enemy in the game and we won't get to see it for a long time. When we do, though, it'll be beautiful. So has the game been rebalanced around the faction heroes? Probably not. It hasn't been balanced around the Chosen that much either.
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Apr 16, 2020 21:04
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Skirmishers are incredibly good but you have to be willing to use them. They're troops for players who play extremely aggressively, because they can yeet themselves and enemies around the map easily, not to mention their abilities that let them gently caress with turn orders.
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Apr 16, 2020 21:16
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Grapplejack posted:Skirmishers are incredibly good but you have to be willing to use them. They're troops for players who play extremely aggressively, because they can yeet themselves and enemies around the map easily, not to mention their abilities that let them gently caress with turn orders. Compared to the others, Skirmishers are the most soldiery of the other faction hero units. They get more flexibility in shooting and grenading where they can do the offensive action first and then do something else rather than it ending the turn. Their secondary is more consistent than the Ranger's secondary, but it has special tricks with it that include moving enemies to you or moving to enemies and doing Ranger-like things with it in melee striking enemies that have suddenly entered your range. By Captain, they can do the thing which gives a squadmate an extra action. They're ostensibly comparable to a Grenadier but trading damage for mobility. Compare this to the Reaper who takes the stealth preference of the Ranger but gives them a weapon loadout more associated with espionage (a sniper rife and a settable explosive) or the Templar which takes the close combat preference of the Ranger and mixes it a little with some Psionic tricks. The Specialist more or less remains in a league of their own though
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Apr 16, 2020 22:49
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The key to skirmishers is really the key to all of Xcom since we still don't actually have proper procedural map generation, memorizing the maps and playing so often that you know roughly which corner the enemy will be standing in even if you don't know precisely which squares.
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Apr 16, 2020 23:46
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I absolutely would have taken the time to kill that turret, since you got corpses for that mission. On my last playthrough, I literally never got a turret wreck, because all the missions where I killed one were missions I had to evac from. Grapplejack posted:Skirmishers are incredibly good but you have to be willing to use them. They're troops for players who play extremely aggressively, because they can yeet themselves and enemies around the map easily, not to mention their abilities that let them gently caress with turn orders. In the early game and very late game, guaranteed damage is a big deal. When your corporals are maxing out at 75%-80% accuracy in early missions, the appeal of the Templar's ability to hit every time you need her to is obvious. Same with the Reaper's "phantom Ranger, but better" setup. Early Skirmishers don't really do anything amazing. Their ammo capacity and damage aren't that great for a unit whose early selling point is, "can shoot twice a turn." Justice isn't quite accurate enough to count on, and Wrath comes at a point where pulling yourself to an enemy is still an incredibly risky play. IMO, they hit escape velocity at Captain, but a lot of other units you're more comfortable with by that point also get key abilities at Lieutenant/Captain, and your faction soldiers are competing with robots and Psi Operatives for the 5- and 6-slots. That said, the more I played with them the more fun they got. Wrath your way over to an enemy. Smack them with the ripjack. Zap a mechanical unit with lash for free. Yank another enemy to you with Justice. Smack them with the ripjack too. Now both enemies get bladestorm'd on their action. That's a lot of work from one soldier (if everything connects.)
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Apr 17, 2020 00:13
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Dead Reckoning posted:I absolutely would have taken the time to kill that turret, since you got corpses for that mission. On my last playthrough, I literally never got a turret wreck, because all the missions where I killed one were missions I had to evac from. And if everything does and there's still a bonus action you can use (from some source or another), there's an upgrade that gives you bonus mobility for every kill you make that can let you just zoidberg out of the hot zone and/or Grapple your way into cover like Batman.
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Apr 17, 2020 00:20
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I was never really enamored with any of the Skirmisher "get a bonus to X per kill" abilities, because they just don't have the oomph to reliably get kills every turn like a Ranger or Sharpshooter or Templar and still have actions left over.
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Apr 17, 2020 00:47
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Dead Reckoning posted:I was never really enamored with any of the Skirmisher "get a bonus to X per kill" abilities, because they just don't have the oomph to reliably get kills every turn like a Ranger or Sharpshooter or Templar and still have actions left over.
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Apr 17, 2020 00:50
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Xelkelvos posted:there's an upgrade that gives you bonus mobility for every kill you make This ability meshes hilariously with the Lost. Not usefully since it gets so absurd, but hilariously.
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Apr 17, 2020 01:10
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Xelkelvos posted:That's true. It takes something like Hair trigger and a lot of luck just to get an extra action in general, but to do it reliably is a big pull. If you feed a kill to a Skirmisher with hair trigger, they get +2 move and a 15% chance of an additional action. If you feed a kill to a soldier with Serial or Reaper they get a guaranteed extra action, and the classes that can get that without cross-class skills both hit harder than the Skirmisher, so those extra shots count more. If you feed a kill to a Ranger with Bladestorm, Implacable, and Untouchable, easily the best use of skill points in WotC they basically get a whole extra turn. Don't get me wrong, the Skirmisher can still get some amazing synergies using soldier bonds and other things, but it requires structuring and is much more situational than other classes. IMO, they should have just given Colonel Skirmishers an always-on version of Serial. It still wouldn't be OP: all of their high-damage abilities have cool downs or per-mission limits, and their guns have less damage and mag capacity than other classes, meaning more actions spent reloading. Or at least, no more OP than Dominate or Banish + repeater + expanded mags + aim PCS giving Reapers a "60% chance to delete one enemy unit of your choice per mission" button.
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Apr 17, 2020 01:43
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A skirmishers' best abilities are gated behind needing to be used on a humanoid enemy, which I thought really sucked until I remembered that the final battle happens to be decided by how fast you can murder three humanoid enemies who happen to be gigantic dicks about teleporting around after you land a hit on them
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Apr 17, 2020 02:03
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I just had the most incredible mission and I can’t wait to share it.
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Apr 17, 2020 04:11
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FairGame posted:I just had the most incredible mission and I can’t wait to share it. I need my fix.
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Apr 17, 2020 05:00
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Y'all got any more of them missions? *scratch, scratch*
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Apr 17, 2020 05:13
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"Incredible" can mean a couple of things 
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Apr 17, 2020 05:18
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Wait, so there was no recovery from the mind control and we got to take our actions without having to wait for the next turn? That's uncharacteristically not-dickish of the game. Are the mission timers reduced on this difficulty? It seems like if you didn't literally bee-line it to the objective, you fail the objective. If we'd taken cover and got into a firefight rather than being able to alpha-strike most of the enemies, I don't see how we could have got there in time.
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Apr 17, 2020 12:52
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Crazy Achmed posted:It seems like if you didn't literally bee-line it to the objective, you fail the objective. This is correct and was my major criticism of Xcom 2, however War of the Chosen offers several attractive options for mitigating this problem that we can pursue later if we wish.
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Apr 17, 2020 13:00
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Apr 17, 2020 17:59
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reignofevil posted:This is correct and was my major criticism of Xcom 2, however War of the Chosen offers several attractive options for mitigating this problem that we can pursue later if we wish. This is why I only did one play-through on XCom 2. It just wasn't fun for me to always fight the clock. I've heard though that the mod that starts the countdown from the time you're revealed instead of the time you land is a nice balance though, and I believe it's one of the most popular XCom2 mods. XCom2 LW just looks unfun with the timer.
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Apr 17, 2020 18:00
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Yeah, having a Reaper with claymores and remote start on a High Explosives sitrep is a blast. You do lose a lot of loot if you blow up the convoy though. Chuu posted:This is why I only did one play-through on XCom 2. It just wasn't fun for me to always fight the clock. I've heard though that the mod that starts the countdown from the time you're revealed instead of the time you land is a nice balance though, and I believe it's one of the most popular XCom2 mods. I don't think the mod that gives you the resistance order automatically is unfair or gamebreaking: bypassing enemy patrols to preserve the clock is a tradeoff, because it greatly increases your odds of getting flanked or having multiple pods active at once when you are revealed.
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Apr 17, 2020 18:25
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Chuu posted:This is why I only did one play-through on XCom 2. It just wasn't fun for me to always fight the clock. I've heard though that the mod that starts the countdown from the time you're revealed instead of the time you land is a nice balance though, and I believe it's one of the most popular XCom2 mods. This. The timer feels very at odds with the stealth mechanic. The stealth mechanic would seem to reward you for being patient, moving carefully, and setting up the perfect ambush, but the clock forces you to rush.
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Apr 17, 2020 18:29
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The reason Firaxis added the timers in the first place was to counteract the boring optimal strategy of XCOM 1 of slowly moving forward, using Overwatch every turn. I don't think it worked well, but I can see what they were going for.
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Apr 17, 2020 18:40
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FairGame posted:Explosions abound! I loved it when Bradford warned you to be careful not to destroy the objective after it had already gotten involved. I loved it even more when Deadford used the mystical powers of his Tactical Underpants to hit that overwatch shot. I'm a little uncomfortable at exactly how naked you made my character. Feel free to add a beard. I do wonder whether you can still be running round with your arse hanging out and get the benefit of later armours. The prospect of Power Underpants is an intruiging one.
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Apr 17, 2020 18:42
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Everyone should be thinking of alternate nicknames for you character
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Apr 17, 2020 18:47
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