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Wild Hunt is 'the chosen appear constantly' so not that big of a deal for this campaign considering we've only met one of them e: ooh nevermind we just met sniperman. He's really easy lol. In terms of difficulty I'd probably rank them (guy we haven't seen yet) > assassin > sniper Grapplejack fucked around with this message at 18:30 on Apr 30, 2020 |
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Apr 30, 2020 18:26
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EMP grenades and bombs also decrease hack defense stats if if that's your thing. Good call on the Hunt the Hunter covert action, you can just stick that new order in the slot you'll unlock and enjoy ez black market forever.
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Apr 30, 2020 18:32
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reignofevil posted:Never buying EMP grenades, which when upgraded to EMP bombs and paired with a grenadier with the two-grenades promotion and biggest booms are THE hard counter to all specter shenanigans and also neutralize the two most powerful non-boss units in the game I don't think this needs to be spoiled. And hey, my thread, so if I hosed it up that's on me! I hate devoting a grenadier slot to something that's not useful against a significant portion of the game's enemies. I use grenadiers for cover destruction and splash damage. There aren't enough useful small items (imo) to go on the OTHER classes, so I tend to go for bluescreen rounds instead of EMP grenades/bombs. I could be convinced I'm wrong, though! I usually carry 2 of SPARK/grenadier in a squad, and the game (and some of my poor play) has seen fit to make that not feasible and we're still doing ok. So it's not as if I have all the answers.
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Apr 30, 2020 19:03
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Loving the primo Reaper bullshit, FG. Keep it coming! And this is where Sharpshooters start to become useful. Megane didn't get Face Off, which is a rather tasty Sharpshooter skill. Once your pistoleers get that and Bluescreen rounds, mechanical enemies lose some of their threat. High aim, range bonuses, damage bonuses and free actions leads to dead Advent MECs. Of course, Bluescreens on grenadiers are good, too. FairGame posted:I hate devoting a grenadier slot to something that's not useful against a significant portion of the game's enemies. I use grenadiers for cover destruction and splash damage. There aren't enough useful small items (imo) to go on the OTHER classes, so I tend to go for bluescreen rounds instead of EMP grenades/bombs. I could be convinced I'm wrong, though! I usually carry 2 of SPARK/grenadier in a squad, and the game (and some of my poor play) has seen fit to make that not feasible and we're still doing ok. So it's not as if I have all the answers. I agree with you about the natural role of the Grenadier - they set up the turn by destroying cover and the quicker, more accurate troops clean up. Grenadiers just can't get the high aim values to make them purely cannon-focused. Are you planning to put your Grenadiers in the EXO or WAR suits for added fun? Or will it cost you an item slot?
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Apr 30, 2020 20:49
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I tend to prefer AP rounds over bluescreen for general use, that does involve rolling on the ammo lottery though... The damage due to the armor bypass tends to come out roughly the same and the bonus damage on mechanicals. They tend to be my go to on my sniper or pistolier.
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Apr 30, 2020 22:49
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Most of the various ammo types are good with pistoleers though you'll probably just end up using AP rounds since they're always useful. Venom rounds are probably the closest to being super useful because of the aim malus, I think.
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Apr 30, 2020 22:57
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FairGame posted:I don't think this needs to be spoiled. And hey, my thread, so if I hosed it up that's on me! EMP bombs are more useful late-game, when you also have The shadow chamber so you can see if the enemies in a mission warrant giving up a more generally useful grenade for it.
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May 1, 2020 01:00
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I just noticed Sugar Addict is a genius! You're getting great luck with the combat intelligence on your special troops. Edit: lol at the minor dramatic irony of you saying the aliens ignore cars exploding out of nowhere, ha ha, is that just normal for them, but then later on a truck that no one was near explodes for no apparent reason. I don't think ADVENT has an automotive safety division, and now every car in the world is a future Ford Pinto. Last Edit: I downloaded a mod to allow SPARKs to use the training center, for the sole reason of getting ROBOT PUNCH despite its clear inferiority to Rainmaker as a promotion. And to be honest, it's not as fun or useful as the MEC Kinetic Strike from EW, but... still. Robot punch. Akratic Method fucked around with this message at 01:47 on May 1, 2020 |
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May 1, 2020 01:22
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Akratic Method posted:I just noticed Sugar Addict is a genius! You're getting great luck with the combat intelligence on your special troops. Yeah, no kidding. I literally didn't know a heroic unit could be anything but Standard. I've never seen it.
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May 1, 2020 01:30
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According to at least one XCOM wiki out there, Disoriented status does prevent Mutons from using their Counter ability.
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May 1, 2020 01:41
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Robert Deadford posted:Loving the primo Reaper bullshit, FG. Keep it coming! You lose an item slot when equipping a heavy armor suit, but at the same time you gain a (single-shot) heavy weapon, which can benefit from some of the grenade-based skills. And since grenadiers can only equip two grenades (+1 use on the grenade-only slot making it 3 grenades per mission) that can be a very beneficial tradeoff. For deleting heavily armored enemies, nothing beats acid grenade + salvo + shredder + rupture + volatile mix, before having your ranger rapidfire it. Also I've noticed a few times that FairGame likes to panic about enemies wandering into a firefight and taking a cheap shot on a flanked soldier, but I think that only happens if they activate from idle/patrol state by detecting a concealed/shadowed soldier. At least I've never seen the "Spotted FLANKED enemy!" message any time other than losing stealth. Or it could be a joke I'm missing? silentsnack fucked around with this message at 07:50 on May 1, 2020 |
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May 1, 2020 07:42
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silentsnack posted:
I mean, if you're concealed then they'll only be able to see you if you don't have cover from them. So they only see you if they walk into a flanking position or you aren't in cover. But once you aren't concealed, it goes back to the X-COM 1 method of 'a pod activates the moment you get vision on it' and since they get a free move (or rarely, Overwatch) when activating, if you activate late into your turn they can get their free move, then move again on their action, and then fire, all before you can do a single thing about them.
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May 1, 2020 08:26
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Gothsheep posted:I mean, if you're concealed then they'll only be able to see you if you don't have cover from them. So they only see you if they walk into a flanking position or you aren't in cover. But once you aren't concealed, it goes back to the X-COM 1 method of 'a pod activates the moment you get vision on it' and since they get a free move (or rarely, Overwatch) when activating, if you activate late into your turn they can get their free move, then move again on their action, and then fire, all before you can do a single thing about them. Yup, with a few relatively rare exceptions (burrowed chryssalids, etc) the normal sequence of actions means aliens don't get to attack before you've had at least some chance to react to them. And the anti-beaglerush-maneuver mechanic was named as such because it was designed to counter an egregiously cheesy tactic favored by a youtube/streamer nerd who was semi-internet-infamous for his cheesy tactics... aforementioned tactic was [intentionally cause your concealed soldiers to be discovered so as to trigger mass overwatch(concealment) and effectively get 2 risk-free turns to curbstomp the first pod of every mission] So (unless I'm wrong in my analysis of how that mechanic works!) what I'm suggesting is that once you've broken squad-wide concealment, the only units at risk of a surprise attack are phantom/shadow scouts.
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May 1, 2020 10:32
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Sounds about right, though I swear to god I am the loving king of activating pods with my last movement. If there is one square on the map where I can put a guy so he will see through two windows and a doorway to spot an enemy on the other side of a building when I thought I was safe, I will find it with the last guy I move every single time.
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May 1, 2020 10:48
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May 1, 2020 14:40
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BTW, if you have revival protocol on a specialist you can get the downed guy up and it makes things easier and faster.
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May 1, 2020 17:45
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I like the Hunter. I like how he's the only Chosen who seems to have figured out sarcasm, and his snarky comments are usually pretty funny.
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May 1, 2020 18:16
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Junpei posted:I like the Hunter. I like how he's the only Chosen who seems to have figured out sarcasm, and his snarky comments are usually pretty funny. Yeah this guy is way more fun to be around than the assassin
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May 1, 2020 18:18
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Ouch, Fear of Missed Shots on a Sharpshooter sounds like a recipe for disaster.
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May 1, 2020 18:36
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Junpei posted:I like the Hunter. I like how he's the only Chosen who seems to have figured out sarcasm, and his snarky comments are usually pretty funny. They might've put too much human DNA in him.
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May 1, 2020 21:22
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Xelkelvos posted:They might've put too much human DNA in him. Maybe he watched too many old Saturday morning cartoons?
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May 1, 2020 21:44
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He seems nice, he shot that dasher for you.
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May 1, 2020 21:56
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megane posted:He seems nice, he shot that dasher for you. Interestingly, he does not seem to get Headshot free actions. Between that and the ability name Hunter Rifle Shot appearing, I get the impression that it isn’t actually his “normal attack”. I guess maybe the pistol shot is? But I’ve never seen him use that.
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May 1, 2020 22:41
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I'm kind of surprised you didn't go for the psionics rush. it's not as good as it could be but it's still a pretty sizable cut off a long research project.
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May 1, 2020 22:47
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Akratic Method posted:Interestingly, he does not seem to get Headshot free actions. Between that and the ability name Hunter Rifle Shot appearing, I get the impression that it isn’t actually his “normal attack”. I guess maybe the pistol shot is? But I’ve never seen him use that. It may actually be unique to XCOM's side, as XCOM's attacks are changed to "Headshot" when targetting Lost. It might be that the altered version of attack is what gives the free action.
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May 2, 2020 02:52
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Omnicrom posted:It may actually be unique to XCOM's side, as XCOM's attacks are changed to "Headshot" when targetting Lost. It might be that the altered version of attack is what gives the free action. Advent get the Headshot bonus, we've seen them do it. Hunter's the first time we've seen a Chosen attack a lost. I think Akratic Method is wondering whether the Hunter actually has an action that would give him a Headshot, or if his rifle shot is his main action (as it pops up a blurb as all non-standard actions do) e: also xcom's attacks aren't changed, Headshot is a bonus given after the shot. Kill a Lost in one shot = Headshot = no action taken. Nothing we saw from the Hunter gave that bonus but he might have other things stored away, or it doesn't count for Chosen, I don't know eating only apples fucked around with this message at 02:59 on May 2, 2020 |
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May 2, 2020 02:55
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W.T. Fits posted:Ouch, Fear of Missed Shots on a Sharpshooter sounds like a recipe for disaster. Just you wait until I develop Fear of Negative Traits, Fear of Chances To Hit Below 100%, or something else I actually wonder if the chosen hunter's dialogue trigger rates were accidentally set too high during development but got left there because it leads to so many hilarious situations. Like here, he spends ages boasting about how awesome he is at shooting things, turns around to snipe a lost just to prove it to us, then we all bugger off without paying any heed to it. Poor guy.
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May 2, 2020 04:33
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Either way, watching the Hunter get completely distracted from his mission by killing Lost and only remembering why he was actually there when it was too late to stop them was pretty funny. You also got a really rough draw on his weakness being hits from higher ground, considering his standard MO is to grapple to the highest point in the map and snipe from there. I sense a lot of grenades blowing up the floor underneath his feet in his future.
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May 2, 2020 04:51
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silentsnack posted:So (unless I'm wrong in my analysis of how that mechanic works!) what I'm suggesting is that once you've broken squad-wide concealment, the only units at risk of a surprise attack are phantom/shadow scouts. Gothsheep posted:Sounds about right If, for example, you're in a room, setting up to breach a door, and an enemy pod walks through the other door (super awkward for everyone, fortunately two out of three died to mass overwatch) they might decide to take potshots at your flanked units instead of running to cover. This is to keep someone with a Reaper or Phantom Ranger from using the visibility indicator to run revealed units up to the last tile before visibility and setting overwatch to get a free round of shooting (unless they can find cover while doing it, or use a sharpshooter to spring the trap.) It rarely comes up, because most Xcom players are loathe to leave their units out of cover for any reason. Grapplejack posted:I'm kind of surprised you didn't go for the psionics rush. it's not as good as it could be but it's still a pretty sizable cut off a long research project.
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May 2, 2020 06:49
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The Hunter, while not nearly as annoying to fight as the Assassin, is still high up there on the "Xcom-BS" scale. Depending on his traits, he can be a real nightmare to deal with - such as one with Templar weakness, but Melee immunity and Shadowstep. I got that once. This Hunter's pretty high up there in the BS department too.Xelkelvos posted:They might've put too much human DNA in him. If you read the Archive dossier on him, it heavily implies he used to be a Reaper. I think there was a comic or something about it. That's probably the most disturbing thing about him, to be honest. He's the most outwardly "human" of the group, but also probably the most sadistic. Humans (or at least, mostly-human-psionic-supermen) are the real monsters, I guess? NeverHelm fucked around with this message at 09:01 on May 2, 2020 |
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May 2, 2020 08:58
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NeverHelm posted:The Hunter, while not nearly as annoying to fight as the Assassin, is still high up there on the "Xcom-BS" scale. Depending on his traits, he can be a real nightmare to deal with - such as one with Templar weakness, but Melee immunity and Shadowstep. I got that once. This Hunter's pretty high up there in the BS department too. Wow, I honestly thought the game would not let two directly contradicting traits to happen on a Chosen. Specifically the Immune to Melee/Vulnerable to Templars, one. I did get a Chosen that was Immune to Melee/Vulnerable to Close Range though, which was annoying. But at least I always had the shotgun option. As for the Chosen personalities, the Hunter is definitely the most awful personality-wise. He's sarcastic and cracks wise, talks back to the others and even mouths off to the Elders, so I initially thought I'd like him the best, but as you get to know him I quickly decide he was the biggest gently caress of them all. I only ever felt the Assassin was dangerous, and that's just because you were nearly guaranteed to take a hit from her in her opening attack because of her stupid movement range and stealth. On the other hand, I've only played this game on Normal difficulty, so it's entirely possible the other two ramp up significantly as the difficulty does. Still, if it'd been the Assassin and not the Hunter who showed up, I'm not sure you could have gotten out of this mission.
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May 2, 2020 09:16
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Dead Reckoning posted:Not quite: the trigger for the suicidal stand and shoot, 'stead of scurry, is a soldier being not in cover from the perspective of the activated enemy unit. Weird. Like I said I'm willing to admit being wrong about a vague hypothesis, but in 200+ hours of xcom2 I should have been proven wrong enough times to force me to revisit my assumptions. Unless there's some other confounding factor like whether it only counts the first soldier the aliens 'see' when they activate on their turn, and/or if non-stealthed units have a lower chance of provoking the attack. Gothsheep posted:Wow, I honestly thought the game would not let two directly contradicting traits to happen on a Chosen. Specifically the Immune to Melee/Vulnerable to Templars, one. I did get a Chosen that was Immune to Melee/Vulnerable to Close Range though, which was annoying. But at least I always had the shotgun option. Even better is having a "weak to melee" chosen get the "immune to melee" perk from training. silentsnack fucked around with this message at 09:21 on May 2, 2020 |
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May 2, 2020 09:17
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For all their crazy stunts, lone Chosen are fairly non-threatening. They often waste their turns doing things like summoning Advent meatshields or the Hunter's Tracking shot, which really just forces you to move (which you would usually do anyway most of the time). It's when they attack along with something else dangerous like a group of Mutons or ADVENT lancers that they become problematic, since you can't use use the full force of your superior action economy to beat them up. This mission in particular is a very good example of this, since there are essentially numberless meatshields stopping you from devoting precious actions to fighting the Chosen. Fortunately they make him waste actions too - If not for that, I'd say at least one soldier would not have gotten back on board Firebrand this time. NeverHelm fucked around with this message at 10:05 on May 2, 2020 |
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May 2, 2020 10:01
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NeverHelm posted:For all their crazy stunts, lone Chosen are fairly non-threatening. They often waste their turns doing things like summoning Advent meatshields or the Hunter's Tracking shot, which really just forces you to move (which you would usually do anyway most of the time). It's when they attack along with something else dangerous like a group of Mutons or ADVENT lancers that they become problematic, since you can't use use the full force of your superior action economy to beat them up. That's one of the reasons why the Assassin is easily the most dangerous of the three. They have two phases to them: Pre-activation and post-activation. Pre-activation each has their own thing that they'll sit around doing. With the Hunter, it's those Tracking shots that can pierce walls but all you have to do is...move, so they're really easy to avoid. The unrevealed one does an unrevealed thing. But the Assassin spends her pre-activation time charging you in stealth, which means she'll attack you on her terms instead of letting you decide when to start the fight proper.
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May 2, 2020 10:11
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Is it ever explained what ADVENT stands for, or at least why it is always written in all caps?
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May 2, 2020 11:01
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Aliens Doing Very Evil Nasty Things
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May 2, 2020 13:52
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I know it destroys performance on PS4 but, still, they really nailed the feeling of being overwhelmed by the Lost.
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May 2, 2020 13:57
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Crazy Achmed posted:Is it ever explained what ADVENT stands for, or at least why it is always written in all caps? Nah, it's like that random dude who lives in (and possibly owns?) your home base in Final Fantasy 8, NORG. 
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May 2, 2020 15:11
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Wow, I didn't see you even begin research on curved bullets yet, FairGame! https://i.imgur.com/ZoFE8bW.mp4 (nice shot, munin)
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May 2, 2020 15:29
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FairGame posted:Nah, it's like that random dude who lives in (and possibly owns?) your home base in Final Fantasy 8, NORG. NORG financed Cid's Garden project so yeah, co-owner. 
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May 2, 2020 16:58
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