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Flashbangs technically can turn off some ability like psi powers, but then so does just using Verge or Zephyr to stun the guy. Ceasefire's gives a mostly consistent -1 action, except that just means they stand in place and reload + shoot you, big whoop. The actually good grenades come later. For breach grenades, holotargetting is king imo.
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May 4, 2020 14:43
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Cease fire's (breach edition) stop you from getting shot at during the breach, i thought? Failing that i'd probably just prefer smokes, getting into the room undamaged is the priority, after that its an exercise in spending as many turns as you can before they do.
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May 4, 2020 15:11
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Godmother > Alpha Strike > Teamup Terminal > Scattershot > Terminal Motile > Patchwork > move to crowd > Serial The whole room's already dead lmao Little weird that the Codex isn't a robotic enemy in CS as far as Patchwork cares though. e: Aw you can't subdue them either; they just die
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May 4, 2020 15:17
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Yeah ceasefire breach bombs can straight up turn 8 aggressive enemies at a point to 2 or 3. At least in my experience. The most damage I ate was in one person per breach point missions. Coincidentally very final encounter is exactly like that which made me restart once to figure out how to even approach. Kinda forgot that cover rush exists as a mechanic at that point lol.
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May 4, 2020 15:21
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So today I learned that Blueblood's Ever Vigilant is triggered by Shelter's Relocate. Considering I went for the Distortion bonus for Shelter, that means that I get a free 50 defense and an overwatch on Blueblood. Fun combo, considering Blueblood is basically a killing machine.
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May 4, 2020 15:28
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Just procced execute on the Archon ruler on the first attack. Goddamn the improved weapon mod resistance order is busted.
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May 4, 2020 16:06
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Natural 20 posted:Ahahaha Grenade man gets 2 charges of Motile inducer?
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May 4, 2020 17:34
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As many other fun bugs as the game has, I'm wondering if the sacred coil finale mission for doing them as the first investigation is actually supposed to be the one that plays if you do them last. I've been going through in a different order on my second playthrough, and I've noticed that the other final missions feel more balanced to match up the order you're doing them in. I've been saving coil for last, so I haven't done it quite yet, but I understand that it gives you the overseer and the boss in different rooms, which sounds a ton easier than a packed room with the boss and constant reinforcement waves and an overseer spawning right in the middle of it.
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May 4, 2020 17:38
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BobTheJanitor posted:As many other fun bugs as the game has, I'm wondering if the sacred coil finale mission for doing them as the first investigation is actually supposed to be the one that plays if you do them last. I've been going through in a different order on my second playthrough, and I've noticed that the other final missions feel more balanced to match up the order you're doing them in. I've been saving coil for last, so I haven't done it quite yet, but I understand that it gives you the overseer and the boss in different rooms, which sounds a ton easier than a packed room with the boss and constant reinforcement waves and an overseer spawning right in the middle of it. The way it plays out makes it clear it's working as intended (the first map if you do them third is the final map for the investigation if you do it first) You just scale up in power a lot more than the game seems to expect you to. But the other Sacred Coil Maps have some rough gimmicks that would be hell if you couldn't just trivialize them and the first map keeps it's reinforcement gimmick.
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May 4, 2020 17:43
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It's seriously bullshit that viper tongue pulls cause overwatch to trigger on your guy. It's already a disaster!
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May 4, 2020 17:43
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you just have to tongue them first so you can double-team them before they get their shots off
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May 4, 2020 17:45
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I have to say that I'm really surprised that the game is different on subsequent playthroughs. I mean it's not radically different of course but it's pretty neat. I'm midway through my second run and probably going to do a third one just to see how everything is different.
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May 4, 2020 17:46
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Vasudus posted:I have to say that I'm really surprised that the game is different on subsequent playthroughs. I mean it's not radically different of course but it's pretty neat. I'm midway through my second run and probably going to do a third one just to see how everything is different. Yeah. Earlier someone was talking about a Progeny plot with an Archon and I don't remember that happening when I did the Progeny investigation first?
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May 4, 2020 18:21
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Vasudus posted:I have to say that I'm really surprised that the game is different on subsequent playthroughs. I mean it's not radically different of course but it's pretty neat. I'm midway through my second run and probably going to do a third one just to see how everything is different. Yeah it has variety for each faction depending on the ordering, like you said it's not huge, but it's enough to keep replays interesting. I think there's even an achievement tied to doing all the factions as first, second, and third investigations, which needs three playthroughs.
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May 4, 2020 18:26
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Psykmoe posted:Yeah. Earlier someone was talking about a Progeny plot with an Archon and I don't remember that happening when I did the Progeny investigation first? I didn't see anything about a plot around them when I fought them second, they just had Archons, no questions raised about it
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May 4, 2020 18:27
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WhiteHowler posted:No. Improvised Explosives doesn't refresh the Motile Inducer, sadly. Just tested it in a two-encounter mission. He gets two charges with his final training, which adds one use for each equipped item.
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May 4, 2020 18:30
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I think each faction has five different "leads" - one will be the intro mission, two will be set leads you follow, and then you get a choice between the last two. so first time around I found out about Sacred Coil when I busted them at the android factory, then I investigated the ADVENT bunker, then the abandoned gene clinic, then I chose to follow up on the andromedans. in this current playthrough, the ADVENT bunker was the intro, then I had to investigate the rogue andromedans, then there was a break-in at the android factory HQ, and now I've chosen to look at the connection to the Fade disease but the missions themselves will be different too depending on when/how you get the lead. first time around the andromedans staged a terror attack at a night market, this time around I stopped them poisoning the water supply (and the night market was a map for a Gray Phoenix mission) it's a lot of effort they didn't have to make
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May 4, 2020 18:48
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It's clearly something they were starting to think about in 2 with random resistance orders, dark events, continent bonuses, chosen bonuses, research breakthroughs, etc. Moving it more into the narrative is good though and hopefully they take it even further in 3.
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May 4, 2020 19:00
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Fintilgin posted:It's clearly something they were starting to think about in 2 with random resistance orders, dark events, continent bonuses, chosen bonuses, research breakthroughs, etc. Moving it more into the narrative is good though and hopefully they take it even further in 3. I'd be happier with that if it was more specific to the narrative and had less effect on gameplay. WotC maybe tried to randomize a bit too much. Getting a bonus like hot-swappable PCS and weapon mods as your first continent bonus, vs getting it as your last resistance order that shows up before the finale is a bit too swingy, perhaps. Similarly to some of the strength/weakness selections the Chosen could roll. (weak vs templars, immune to melee  ) Or maybe you make it a function of difficulty, where you contain the RNG to a specific selection of abilities if you're on easy/medium/hard and then impossible is just a free for all and you deal with what you get (or even tweak that to be more likely to give you fewer advantages). But it would be pretty neat if the story would play out in a different order each time, and just adjust the difficulty to match. I've played through WotC a lot of times, and those story beats start to get repetitive. I can practically sing along at this point. Oh no, is that warehouse full of bodies? Does it look like a refinery to you, Shen? Oh, what's in that vial? I bet it's not radioactive. Should we grab it? And so on.
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May 4, 2020 20:28
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Jackhammer posted:He gets two charges with his final training, which adds one use for each equipped item. What the heck!! Time to start my blueblood claymore playthrough
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May 4, 2020 20:33
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Apparently there's one more XCOMlike that just came out called TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children and while it looks like, well, XCOM with Persona 5-ish anime characters the reviews on Steam seem quite positive. It came to my attention via this /r/games review and it kinda made me want to play it. Has anyone else here tried it?
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May 4, 2020 22:27
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Megazver posted:Apparently there's one more XCOMlike that just came out called TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children and while it looks like, well, XCOM with Persona 5-ish anime characters the reviews on Steam seem quite positive. It came to my attention via this /r/games review and it kinda made me want to play it. I've been keeping an eye on it, but from the screenshots it looks like another case of going with the cheapest possible translation option, and I can't stand that. In a game's story it's mostly just frustrating, but if it extends to ability descriptions, especially on a fiddly tactical game, that can just ruin it entirely. That, and it just feels so incredibly lazy. Let's just slap all the dialogue in google translate and call it a day. All that said, if anyone's tried it and wants to post a trip report, I'd love to hear that I'm just overreacting to a few badly chosen screenshots.
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May 4, 2020 22:38
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TheParadigm posted:I was watching christopher odd's lets play,a nd it looks really polished. Worth looking at, I think, not sure about lol full price. I would love a Mario Rabbids Kingdom Battle sequel.
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May 4, 2020 22:46
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Anyone have a bug(?) where one squad member went down but a different one got the scar? Terminal bit it, but now Godmother has a scar. She was also wounded but made it out. Maybe Terminal just got very luck and Godmother was very unlucky?
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May 4, 2020 22:54
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How does the Mobility stat translate to movement? Folks have anywhere from 9 to 12 (discounting scars) but they can't move that far on the map. Am I just bad at counting?
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May 4, 2020 23:22
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Chimera Squad has made me want to replay WOTC, but I'm kind of sick of sewer maps and poo poo. Does anyone have a mod that makes the older maps show up more often? It always felt like the new stuff had a stupidly high chance to come up.
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May 4, 2020 23:23
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Bruceski posted:How does the Mobility stat translate to movement? Folks have anywhere from 9 to 12 (discounting scars) but they can't move that far on the map. Am I just bad at counting? It includes dashing, perhaps?
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May 4, 2020 23:28
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Hats Wouldnt Fly posted:Chimera Squad has made me want to replay WOTC, but I'm kind of sick of sewer maps and poo poo. Does anyone have a mod that makes the older maps show up more often? It always felt like the new stuff had a stupidly high chance to come up. May not help entirely, but there are some pretty good map packs on the workshop. A lot more variety in the mix and you might just naturally end up with fewer sewers. (didn't mean to make a weird rhyme at the end but I'm keeping it) I've had missions that take place in a residential neighborhood, or weird alien control rooms, or in a lost city but during bright daylight, or around some sort of huge water treatment facility. Kind of guessing on what that last one was, but it was a bunch of catwalks over a huge whirlpool that looks pretty neat. There's tons of variety. Only downside is the occasional advent security tower floating in the air, and very rarely a map might just have a bit missing so there's a chunk of void in the middle. Can't walk through it, but you can still shoot over it.
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May 5, 2020 00:10
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Going back and replaying WotC after Chimera Squad and I'm going to hate on it for a minute. The first thing that strikes me about WotC and XCOM 2 in general is how the strategy layer is completely incapable of leaving you alone for twenty seconds, constantly shoving alerts and prompts and alarms and dramatic stings in your face over and over and over. The tactical layer has it's own problems, in that creeping around the map looking for pods is fine for the first 20 missions and agonizing after that, and you're still going to accidentally spot an alien's elbow reflected off a mirror three blocks away and get owned anyway. Chimera Squad respects my goddamn time, no mind controlling fuckwads kiting me through an excruciating hour long chase sequence across a map three times the size it needs to be. There's got to be a balance to strike for XCOM 3. I also want to compare it to XCOM 1 because the tone of 2 is completely wrong and boring. XCOM 1 is a 50s science horror b-movie set in the near future and populated entirely by 90s action figures; there's a chunky, grainy, tongue-in-cheek quality to it that's both silly and tense. The tone makes it easier to brush off sudden, gruesome death, even if it's self-inflicted. I also like that the enemies in the first game are incredibly diverse both in appearance and in mechanical function, even in the early game. XCOM 2, on the other hand, takes itself just a bit too seriously for me, and the darker, grittier tone doesn't work. I can't have a game about high-speed black ops guerrilla operators who regularly fail to hit objects 5 feet away. The enemy types are also a bit boring for at least the first half or so, mostly just variations on "guy with gun in armor", or sectoid that's now hot. I will say though that this is where WotC repairs some of the damage; having the chosen show up mid mission to ham it up and chew scenery is great, and the three resistance factions have some real flavor to them that was lacking in vanilla.
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May 5, 2020 01:55
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Reading that post made me realize what I don’t quite like about gears. I’ve only played the first couple missions and while the mechanics are ok the setting is just boring. I might care more if I played all of the gears games but even then it lacks that special kind of hammy xcom style. Same with phoenix point but that was at least adjacent but it took itself too seriously. Chimera squad is great in setting i just wish it wouldn’t soft lock constantly and let me really get into it for a couple hours.
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May 5, 2020 02:53
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BobTheJanitor posted:I've been keeping an eye on it, but from the screenshots it looks like another case of going with the cheapest possible translation option, and I can't stand that. In a game's story it's mostly just frustrating, but if it extends to ability descriptions, especially on a fiddly tactical game, that can just ruin it entirely. That, and it just feels so incredibly lazy. Let's just slap all the dialogue in google translate and call it a day. I've played it in early access. I think they're actually translating it in-house or something because they seem very committed to taking translation feedback and fixing it. I haven't noticed any mistranslated skills, but you can definitely tell that it's a translation in the dialog. And there's a lot of dialog. As for the gameplay, I guess it plays sort of like XCOM, but it doesn't feel at all like XCOM because most characters and enemies are melee, so stuff like cover and overwatch don't come into play very often (although they always exist). What you do have is a ridiculous number of passive skills that get dropped like items from enemies or crafted using other skills as resources. Then you equip them on a big skill board where they can form set-bonuses with related skills and honestly I really enjoyed that part. For example, you might combine "chance on hit of causing bleed" with "extra hit rate against bleeding targets" and "reduce attack delay from hitting bleeding targets" to create a set bonuses that's "double damage on bleeding targets" or something like that. It was especially fun setting characters up to do stuff like dodge and counterattack everything, or to get a free action for every enemy you snipe from outside their sight range (giving you infinite free attacks), etc. The game seems to assume that you'll be grinding a lot, but I didn't and I still did fine so it's not that big a deal. Story-wise... the game is weird since basically you are playing as a police-adjacent group taking care of gang members causing trouble, but most of the actual plot happens on the side of the gangs (who are going through a whole bunch of gang war drama) so most cutscenes are about a bunch of faceless/masked criminals talking about all the stuff that's going on and then shouting "hey, it's the police!" at which point you suddenly take control of the police and beat up the guys who are actually driving the story. Well, that plus a bunch of flashbacks telling you about the characters' backstories which are almost irrelevant in the present day. Clarste fucked around with this message at 03:14 on May 5, 2020 |
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May 5, 2020 03:08
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BobTheJanitor posted:I've been keeping an eye on it, but from the screenshots it looks like another case of going with the cheapest possible translation option, and I can't stand that. In a game's story it's mostly just frustrating, but if it extends to ability descriptions, especially on a fiddly tactical game, that can just ruin it entirely. That, and it just feels so incredibly lazy. Let's just slap all the dialogue in google translate and call it a day. the translation is pretty bad, but it is masking a story that is equally bad. still, that's not what is important. troubleshooter is based on adding every single concept the creators could think of. this results in a huge number of enemies and a remarkably robust passive skill system. there are also bizarre inclusions like semi-randomized equipment like diablo, a mostly pointless monster capturing/raising system, a completely nonfunctional multiplayer hub, a terribly balanced reputation system, an area control menu which actively does not work with the format of the game, etc. the real downside is that there is nothing even remotely resembling balance anywhere in the game. and worst of all, the skill system is actively unpleasant to engage with. see, you get slots in various categories with point limits that you can use to equip various skills, and there are highly desirable set bonuses. that's fine, if a bit unnecessarily complex. the problem comes from where you obtain these skills. each one is a discrete item. they can't be shared, not even between different saved sets on the same character(!). as you level up a class, you unlock more and often better skills which can feed into more and better set bonuses. or rather, you unlock the ability to obtain that new skill. they don't give you a copy. there are a handful of skills you can get from doing unlisted in-game achievements, but mostly skills come from two sources- crafting and drops. generally, you craft the skills you want out of random skill drops. the crafting takes the form of hitting a point requirement from random skills as materials along with using one or more specific skills for higher tiers. in practice this means you start with junk drops, turn it into an intermediate skill which is a prerequisite for the better stuff, and then repeat that several times because the highest tier skills require a great deal of specific ingredients which all need specific ingredients and so on. you do not get enough random drops to make this simple, which means grinding. the menu is also actively hostile toward this endeavor. extended rants about a system i hate aside, there's also the combat. the game is very slow to give you party members, likely because it was in early access for so long and they repeatedly stuck the new characters in at the end of the content. conversely, the game is built around huge maps with tons of enemies running around. so, the solution to this was large numbers of npc allies you can either manually control or set to various routines. in other words, the only way the combat can work at all early game is by giving you lots of meat shields to soak up damage. there's also a huge focus on defensive stats, so that you can block or evade the massive numbers of enemies who will absolutely get to attack you. cover is largely irrelevant because there are so many enemies most of the time, many of them melee. overwatch (an optional equippable skill for the two characters with guns only) is likewise pretty pointless. it's not xcom, but they tossed in a few things from xcom without thinking about it or trying to make them work. oddly enough, despite everything this game does wrong the basic tactical gameplay is quite good once you actually get more than two party members. there's a fun game here, covered in complete bullshit.
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May 5, 2020 03:09
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Riatsala posted:Going back and replaying WotC after Chimera Squad and I'm going to hate on it for a minute. I agree with all of this. The other big 1-step-back part of WoTC for me is The Lost. Even for zombies, they're a pretty generic take, and in spite of Firaxis making concessions like moving them in blocks and allowing you to shoot several in a turn, they're still a tedious time sponge that doesn't belong in a turn-based game. Having explosions spawn hordes should have also been limited to occasional missions (ideally ones where you don't have to kill everything) as an added twist/challenge, rather than a guarantee that any mission with Lost is going to require you to shoot 20-40 extra enemies who pose almost no threat one at a time in order to leave.
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May 5, 2020 03:11
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Both XCOM 1 and 2 suffer greatly being solved games and that the correct way to play then is really slow and boring. They're both much more compelling when you haven't figured out how to cheese the pod mechanics yet. X-COM is similarly solved, but the correct way to play them is absurd. It doesn't stop being fun when your not getting spooked by sectoids in barns
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May 5, 2020 03:21
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Riatsala posted:Going back and replaying WotC after Chimera Squad and I'm going to hate on it for a minute. I both like and hate this aspect of the game because it feels like dealing with a real crisis you can't dictate the tempo of.
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May 5, 2020 03:37
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Definitely the biggest yet smallest thing you could do for the X2 strategy layer is just extend how long a "month" is. Pretty much everything event wise is tied to a calendar that tries spreading out stuff across a month, but the catch is that a "month" in XCOM 2 is...21 days. Like just add seven to 10 more days to that and everything would be way more bearable since there would be actual zones of deadtime before mini avalanches of stuff started happening. I definitely appreciate what Jake and Firaxis wanted out of the experience, but I do miss having periods of tense calm even if EU/EW could sometimes be on the opposite end where nothing happens for a solid week - which is where stuff like the scanning sites can kick in, as a fix for that specific issue. Exposure fucked around with this message at 03:52 on May 5, 2020 |
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May 5, 2020 03:50
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is chimera squad using all the same assets from xcom2?
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May 5, 2020 04:10
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I don't know if it's a bug or not, but it seems like explosive stacking might not work in this game the way it did in XCOM2. I used to always do the thing where my reaper would put a claymore on an unsuspecting pod and then my grenadier would grenade it for the double explosion, dealing massive damage. But I just had claymore throw a shrapnel bomb on an andromedon, and then hit it with a plasma grenade, and "4 damage" popped up twice, but it only actually took 4 damage. I guess maybe it might add both damages before shredding the 2 armor, so it would be 2+2, but that seems pretty lame for a double explosive attack. Also, I took the Claymore's rupture perk, which also should have factored in here, but I have no idea how much extra damage rupture actually does in this game, it doesn't say so anywhere, as far as I can tell it might just be a trash perk... I love how they've continued the XCOM tradition of giving the player as little useful information as possible, or just having in game descriptions that are completely misleading or outright wrong lol
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May 5, 2020 04:23
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It's possible that the claymore didn't do damage because they don't deal damage through cover. This could have been in spite of the targeting highlight saying that it would. I don't know what the exact numbers are on rupture but it's quite good on bigger targets
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May 5, 2020 04:35
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dyzzy posted:It's possible that the claymore didn't do damage because they don't deal damage through cover. This could have been in spite of the targeting highlight saying that it would. It was an andromedon though, they don't use cover, plus I threw both explosvies pretty much right on top of it, so I really don't think cover had anything to do with it How does the shrapnel cover thing work anyway? Does the bomb basically have to be in flanking position relative to the enemy? It's another thing where they really messed up on the UI, because the enemies always seem to flash red as long as they're in the radius bubble, even when they're well behind cover
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May 5, 2020 04:56
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