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The specialist is supposed to be the tech/hacker guy so it's kind of weird that you don't have reliable options in this regard. Does your healing or attack for the drones have chances to fail? No because it would be stupid and add even more RNG to abilities which are supposed to reduce the luck factor. You can only build strategies around things that can be reliably used. The problem with hacking (haywire protocol) is that it's even more unreliable than shooting. It also isn't really an interesting choice to decide whether or not you should stun a robot for 2 turns with a 70 or 80% chance or take over a robot with just a 30 or 40% chance. You would never want to do the later in any serious situation due to the risks involved and thus it becomes kind of useless because you won't use it outside of very, very few cases where you have the time and pretty much no risk in doing it. The ability would be much better if it actually gave you real choices instead of depending on the RNG and provide a base line of usefulness. My idea for example would be that haywire protocol always provides at least one round of stun (even if you fail and of course no feedback effect) and the small and big successful hacks would either add 1-2 extra rounds of stun or 1-2 rounds to take over the unit. To balance it you could either increase the timer OR make it a once per mission ability that really is realiably powerfull and a real counter to mech units.
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Feb 11, 2016 18:15
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Segmentation Fault posted:You can haywire andromedon shells? Yes. I think it's a pretty easy hack too.
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Feb 11, 2016 18:16
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toasterwarrior posted:Haywire's stun lasts for like 3 turns or so, that's good poo poo. Just a note, the number that pops up when you stun is how many actions a unit is stunned for, not turns. So "Stunned 2" means a unit is stunned for both actions of one full turn. Anyone have a chart of the higher difficulty changes? Trying to decide which is best for my next campaign.
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Feb 11, 2016 18:16
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Fangz posted:Yes, it is really silly. Like, why pick on Haywire protocol? Why not moan that Suppression is less good than Dominate? Or Deadeye is less good than Dominate? Or insert-skill-there is less good than dominate? Uhh because both can do the same thing? Give you control of an enemy unit? Are you purposefully being obtuse that you can't understand why there's a direct comparison between a skill that can give you control of a biological enemy unit only, and a skill that can give you control of a mechanical unit only? Fangz posted:The thing to compare Haywire protocol to is Revival protocol, because that's what you're giving up to get it. Haywire is a nice bonus on a class that will be fully 1/4 of your army, with most of its upgrades plot critical (you *have* to get a Skulljack), or which give you significant other upsides than improving haywire chances. Sure you could compare them like that, if we were discussing which one I should pick on my Corporal as an upgrade, but we're not. We're comparing the two skills in the game that let you take control of an enemy unit. Fangz posted:It's absurd to compare it to a class that you'll most likely only get one soldier of, which needs you to redirect midgame investment, which has shitloads of other important things to be doing most turns, which steals XP points from the rest of the party if you eliminate enemies with it, which has Dominate as a random roll so you can't even guarantee getting it until waay into the late game. Since on my current Veteran playthrough I've done the entire thing with 1 specialist who is fully medic specced and as soon as I got a psi lab and two half decent psionics I've been running two of those, I think you may be being a bit narrow minded here. It was way way way easier for me to get a fully maxxed out psionic solider than a colonel specialist, because I got the former from training people and spending time, the latter had to survive like 20 missions or whatever. So talking about "mid game investment" is ridiculous, because getting a colonel specialist with maxxed out hacking skills takes just as much, if not more, effort then getting a maxxed out psi lab. Look, to get a maxed out specialist colonel you need at a minimum: * Typically 20-30 kills (and surviving, unless you just buy one which is possible in fairness) * Proving Grounds * Skulljack * Skullmining * Sectopod Autopsy * Gremlin III To get a maxed out Psi specialist that can dominate well, you need at a minimum: * A rookie * About 60 days of time * Sectoid Autopsy * Psi Lab * Gatekeeper Autopsy * Alien Psi Amp Yes you can argue the proving grounds and a skull jack is necessary for the story, so you would need to build them anyway, but that doesn't change the fact you still need them. On the other hand you can easily get a maxxed out psi trooper without them seeing a single mission, whereas to make it to colonel as a specialist you either need to buy them or manage to survive a ton of missions with them. Fangz posted:Are you seriously asking that every *skill* be as good as one of the best skill psi-troopers get? Again, not sure if you're being obtuse purposefully, but we are directly comparing two skills that let you take control of an enemy unit. One of which can only be used once per mission and lasts for the rest of the mission, and the other only lasts 3 turns but can be used multiple times per mission. One works on only biological opponents, the other works only on mechs. As I've shown above, both take relatively similar levels of investment and time to achieve the same levels. Before you try and say "But you get haywire at level 2 again" that's a dumb point to make because I trained a psi oprative and he got domination straight off the bat within 5 days too, sure he only had like a 40% chance of success even against poo poo units, but the entire point I am making is that's still "good" for haywire, and that's the starting basis for domination, which you can get with a rookie and 10 days of training time. I'm not saying it's disgusting that "heal protocol" isn't as good as domination, I'm not saying that "blast padding" should be as good as domination, I'm saying the two skills that let you take control of an enemy, one for biological enemies and one for mechanical enemies, should if fully maxxed out, have about the same chance of success. Fangz posted:The purpose of game balance is to have that Haywire skill be worth getting sometimes, that specialists are worth bringing sometimes, that haywire button is worth clicking in combat sometimes. It's not to make literally everything of the same value. Just try and not invest in specialists. Good luck. My entire current veteran campaign I've only got basically 1 specialist and he's fully medic specced, I've never bothered with the other side of the tree at all because what's the point? Much better to invest in psi troopers (who ignore armour totally), grenadiers that can shred armour, and WAR suits with experimental weapons that shred armour to take down mech units. The one class that is super useful against mech units in theory is actually worse than just blowing them up.
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Feb 11, 2016 18:17
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Christ, you're a moron.
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Feb 11, 2016 18:21
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While I think Dominate is unquestionably the better skill, I think its a mistake to assume there needs to be parity between the two for mechanical and biological enemies. Things like Combat Protocol, Discharge, Bluescreen Rounds, EMP Grenades make me feel like the game assumes two different approaches for the two types. Though, I do kind of think Haywire is garbage and never used it over any number of the other things that stomp robots.
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Feb 11, 2016 18:21
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CapnAndy posted:I'm starting to get deeply annoyed at how this game doesn't track armor health and human health separately like the first one did. My dudes are in Warden armor, some measly 3 damage gets through, and they come home gravely wounded and need two weeks off? Come the gently caress on. The old system where you didn't get hurt unless you managed to burn through all the armor health was better and made more sense; it simply should not be exactly as worrisome to get shot when you're in power armor as it was when you were in kevlar. That was a Long War feature iirc.
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Feb 11, 2016 18:24
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^ I think the base XCOM: EU worked like that but didn't indicate it on the UI and Long War just added the UI change that lets you see which part of your health is armor and which part is normal health. I think. It's been a while.CapnAndy posted:I'm starting to get deeply annoyed at how this game doesn't track armor health and human health separately like the first one did. My dudes are in Warden armor, some measly 3 damage gets through, and they come home gravely wounded and need two weeks off? Come the gently caress on. The old system where you didn't get hurt unless you managed to burn through all the armor health was better and made more sense; it simply should not be exactly as worrisome to get shot when you're in power armor as it was when you were in kevlar. I wonder if they went with a system assuming that your armor can never fully protect you from a shot this time. When a shot hits you, your armor lessens the damage, but doesn't absorb it fully. But if that's what they're going for, they should still adjust the thresholds for being gravely wounded. If you have 15 health, 3 damage should not be a grave wound. It's just silly. Charles Get-Out posted:While I think Dominate is unquestionably the better skill, I think its a mistake to assume there needs to be parity between the two for mechanical and biological enemies. Things like Combat Protocol, Discharge, Bluescreen Rounds, EMP Grenades make me feel like the game assumes two different approaches for the two types. Though, I do kind of think Haywire is garbage and never used it over any number of the other things that stomp robots. I agree with this. Total parity is clearly not the goal, given the other tools available for dealing with mechanical enemies. I also think that if there's a problem with Haywire Protocol, it isn't the skill itself--it's the hacking system overall.
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Feb 11, 2016 18:26
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The point of haywire protocol is to be used to gain a quick advantage against really dangerous enemies and then to destroy them, while the point of domination is to control exactly one unit per deployment and hope it doesn't get murdered the first turn you grab it.
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Feb 11, 2016 18:31
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You guys seriously complain how you cannot consistently take over certain end-game enemies?
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Feb 11, 2016 18:31
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I think the thing with Haywire Protocol is that some people see the chance to control the mechanical unit and figure that's the whole point of the skill, or the fact that the possibility is there means it's "Mechanical Dominate." But it has a stun, too. If I had to guess, the stun is the main feature of the skill. The potential to take control is a high risk/high reward thing that you can do if you have a high hacking skill. It's not the core of the skill.
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Feb 11, 2016 18:33
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The only issue I have with Domination is that a gatekeeper should probably not be so easy to dominate, it should probably be a 60-70% like controlling a sectopod.
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Feb 11, 2016 18:33
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Yeah, it's more likely that Dominate is overpowered than that Haywire Protocol is underpowered.
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Feb 11, 2016 18:35
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Yeah, the Control is generally the thing you turn to when you are basically looking at a squad wipe anyway, then suddenly you start looking in your entire toolset for any small chance of turning the situation around. Or yeah, you use it speculatively when it's safe (for example, when your squad is across the map from a turret, say, and you want visibility). Dominate is a tool for you to have an alien buddy on every map scouting ahead for you. EDIT: But even if they both did literally the exact same thing, as long as you pick it sometimes there no problem balancewise, because sometimes you'll have a specialist around to do healing or whatever and your psi-operative will already have used his dominate. Fangz fucked around with this message at 18:43 on Feb 11, 2016 |
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Feb 11, 2016 18:37
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(no spoilers here). I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere. I'm in the final part of the final battle and my screen is corrupting, like garbage textures. Rainbow colours, etc. I checked my GPU temp and it's fine. It's not a hot day, I don't see this on other games, I haven't seen this on xcom 2 before, and my CPU and GPU are high end and not overclocked, and I'm running on medium graphics. Anyone else seen this? My drivers are up to date. I'm going to try reloading and see if that fixes it  cpu: i7-4770k gpu: nvidia 770
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Feb 11, 2016 18:39
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Harrow posted:I think the thing with Haywire Protocol is that some people see the chance to control the mechanical unit and figure that's the whole point of the skill, or the fact that the possibility is there means it's "Mechanical Dominate." But it has a stun, too. If I had to guess, the stun is the main feature of the skill. The potential to take control is a high risk/high reward thing that you can do if you have a high hacking skill. It's not the core of the skill. Makes sense, it's more like a better version of Stasis then, considering the stun still has a >90% chance usually and you can continue to blow the thing up.
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Feb 11, 2016 18:39
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dyzzy posted:Yes, this is what blew up my first campaign (ironman). Don't think there's a known solution as of yet.
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Feb 11, 2016 18:43
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The best part of Haywire is getting the enemy to waste their time shooting at a Heavy MEC or Sectopod instead of shooting you, which gives you more opportunity to push up and get poo poo done. Ideally you're using MCed/hacked enemies as mimic beacons that can take more hits and last more than one turn.
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Feb 11, 2016 18:45
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Just treat hacking like an attack. You have a good chance to get the lesser reward, a low chance to get the high reward. You don't pick, you just roll and get what you get. Like a hacking crit. Failure should have no penalty, or at the least a minor penalty since you can hack AND do a normal attack in your turn.
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Feb 11, 2016 18:46
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GOONS ARE MEAN
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Elliotw2 posted:The only issue I have with Domination is that a gatekeeper should probably not be so easy to dominate, it should probably be a 60-70% like controlling a sectopod. redreader posted:(no spoilers here). I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere. I'm in the final part of the final battle and my screen is corrupting, like garbage textures. Rainbow colours, etc. I checked my GPU temp and it's fine. It's not a hot day, I don't see this on other games, I haven't seen this on xcom 2 before, and my CPU and GPU are high end and not overclocked, and I'm running on medium graphics. Anyone else seen this? My drivers are up to date. I'm going to try reloading and see if that fixes it It's not a hardware problem.
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Feb 11, 2016 18:46
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The thing about the sequal thats starting to bug me is that someone on the design team is a disciple of the random number god. You want to hack? Better get that +20 bonus if it ever shows up. You wanna have a dragon round sniper? Hope that proving grounds gives you the right bullets and the aliens dropped enough slot machine tokens to fund the effort. Are you getting enough engineers to get the ship up and running? What continent set bonus are on the map and where did you even start? Across the 3 games I played so far the region connection's seemed to have shifted, Why is my ability to contact South America from Mexico randomized?
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Feb 11, 2016 18:47
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Caidin posted:What continent set bonus are on the map and where did you even start? My starting continent bonus this campaign is Rookies cost 10 supplies instead of 25. A continent bonus that might save you, what, 150-200 supplies at the absolute maximum over the course of a campaign?
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Feb 11, 2016 18:49
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Jesus christ I got my first specialist with Guardian and her first overwatch she just unloaded 4 shots into a squad that wandered in and killed nearly half of them 
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Feb 11, 2016 18:51
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So, I can find the values for weapon mod stat increase values, but PCS stats seem to be nowhere to be found. Any idea where I should be looking? I wanted to know the ranges on them.
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Feb 11, 2016 18:51
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Wizard Styles posted:Is the Psi stat randomized or something? Even with all upgrades my Psi Op only had a ~60% chance to take over Gatekeepers. A little yeah. Base Psi should be close to 95 when done training and this is augmented a lot by your Psi tool. It probably also fluctuates on action by action seed like hacking. Caidin posted:The thing about the sequal thats starting to bug me is that someone on the design team is a disciple of the random number god. You want to hack? Better get that +20 bonus if it ever shows up. You wanna have a dragon round sniper? Hope that proving grounds gives you the right bullets and the aliens dropped enough slot machine tokens to fund the effort. Are you getting enough engineers to get the ship up and running? What continent set bonus are on the map and where did you even start? This is a good thing in my opinion, it's to help replay-ability and preserve that sense of Working With Whatever Crap You Have (tm). The only thing that fucks it up is how you can ride the Avatar timer so easily.
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Feb 11, 2016 18:51
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Caidin posted:You wanna have a dragon round sniper? Hope that proving grounds gives you the right bullets and the aliens dropped enough slot machine tokens to fund the effort. No, game, I don't need a tenth laser sight, but you know what, I'd really love to maybe build a W.A.R. or Wraith suit before I finish the campaign.
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Feb 11, 2016 18:51
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Wizard Styles posted:I had some environmental graphics in that level flicker constantly especially once the environments were damaged. I think another poster (LibbyM?) had similar problems. In the opening cutscene where your avatar walks in and sees the big projector screen thing my game didn't render that part at all. I had to look it up later on youtube to see what was supposed to be going on there Wizard Styles posted:Holy poo poo don't get me started on Elerium Cores/loot drops. Man I've never been lacking on those. They're like half of what I pick up
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Feb 11, 2016 18:52
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Fangz posted:Yeah, the Control is generally the thing you turn to when you are basically looking at a squad wipe anyway, then suddenly you start looking in your entire toolset for any small chance of turning the situation around. Or yeah, you use it speculatively when it's safe (for example, when your squad is across the map from a turret, say, and you want visibility). This is what happened to me the first time I met Andromedons. I had its buddies safely locked down, then I killed the Andromedon. Except I didn't because apparently you have to kill them twice! I had a Haywire Protocol and a Meme Beacon still available, so I figured I'd try for control first, and if that failed then the Beacon would get me out of trouble. Except it didn't fail and I had an incredibly tanky unit that couldn't do poo poo for damage, but took a ton of pressure off of me.
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Feb 11, 2016 18:52
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Caidin posted:The thing about the sequal thats starting to bug me is that someone on the design team is a disciple of the random number god. You want to hack? Better get that +20 bonus if it ever shows up. You wanna have a dragon round sniper? Hope that proving grounds gives you the right bullets and the aliens dropped enough slot machine tokens to fund the effort. Are you getting enough engineers to get the ship up and running? What continent set bonus are on the map and where did you even start? For me that is the best change, the randomized loot and experimental items mean you get a different game every time, which wasn't so for EU/EW. There's less of a set strategy when you can randomly get really good items or be deficient in some areas.
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Feb 11, 2016 18:53
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Caidin posted:The thing about the sequal thats starting to bug me is that someone on the design team is a disciple of the random number god. You want to hack? Better get that +20 bonus if it ever shows up. You wanna have a dragon round sniper? Hope that proving grounds gives you the right bullets and the aliens dropped enough slot machine tokens to fund the effort. Are you getting enough engineers to get the ship up and running? What continent set bonus are on the map and where did you even start? Game design tip - the more random elements there are, the less it matters. The point is that while an individual roll is dicey, it all averages out overall. Don't get that +20 hacking? Maybe you'll get lucky elsewhere with dragon rounds or a serial ranger. Miss out on engineers? Maybe you'll get the continent bonus that makes this trivial. The game gives you lots of mechanics to deal with this variance. For example, you can respec into out of haywire protocol depending on whether you get the +20 hack or not. If proving ground doesn't give you what you want, you can directly buy stuff from the black market or the build item screen. This is all different ways of redirecting being lucky in one area to cover being screwed in another. You'd have to be REALLY UNLUCKY to be screwed in every single area. If you get ten laser sights, sell that stuff for money.
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Feb 11, 2016 18:53
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sighnoceros posted:Just treat hacking like an attack. You have a good chance to get the lesser reward, a low chance to get the high reward. You don't pick, you just roll and get what you get. Like a hacking crit. Failure should have no penalty, or at the least a minor penalty since you can hack AND do a normal attack in your turn. This is a lot better than how it currently works. As it stands I just ignore hacking unless the mission's almost over and I can spare the time. Otherwise it's either a hindrance at best or a good way to completely gently caress myself at worst. quote:The game gives you lots of mechanics to deal with this variance. For example, you can respec into out of haywire protocol depending on whether you get the +20 hack or not. I've never even seen it as a possibility.
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Feb 11, 2016 18:53
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Working my way through Veteran Ironman (after beating Veteran with only a little bit of savescumming while I was learning). Had an Avenger Defense mission last night that was brutal--the device I had to destroy was behind a building so my plan to use a concealment ranger and squadsight snipers to deal with it didn't work. Turned into a slog and a slaughterfest. I ended up killing ~48 enemies, lost two soldiers (my best hacker specialist and I think a squaddie grenadier), with a whole bunch of injuries. One of my soldiers only made it back because he was physically carried by another soldier back to the ramp.  And then of course the next mission was a complete poo poo-fest of a VIP rescue where my two highest-ranked grenadiers gave their lives for the VIP and the rest of the squad. Well, one of them gave his life. The other one I'm pretty sure got captured, so hopefully I can go rescue him at some point. Still, I rushed magnetic weapons, I've been getting some really great skills for levelups from the AWC I rushed early, I'm about to have my first EXO suit (after this next Retaliation mission), and I've now got Predator armor and I've been sticking to my new method of not having an A-team. As long as I'm careful I think I can pull this off. This playthrough is harder, not just because I can't savescum, but I've been getting some nastier enemies early on and the rate of missions seems higher than it used to be either.
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Feb 11, 2016 18:55
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RBA Starblade posted:I've never even seen it as a possibility. In my game I got a couple of it and my hackers ruled. I was totally screwed on PCS though. Literally the only PCS I ever got was two +2 HP ones. I also only got one basic scope. Just deal with it.
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Feb 11, 2016 18:57
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Fangz posted:In my game I got a couple of it and my hackers ruled. Yeah I just pretend it doesn't exist now, same with concealment (though in concealment's case that's because it's just easier to pull units and attack). PCS wise I mostly get +dodge, but I just got a +3 mobility that's going right on my blademaster. Though she already has +15 dodge in there. Hmm...
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Feb 11, 2016 18:59
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Feb 11, 2016 18:59
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Wizard Styles posted:Is the Psi stat randomized or something? Even with all upgrades my Psi Op only had a ~60% chance to take over Gatekeepers. I reloaded the save and it was fine. I finished the game on veteran! From now on I can play commander. Yaay the ending was cool 
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Feb 11, 2016 19:02
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Fangz posted:Christ, you're a moron. Good response. Maybe you're not being deliverately obtuse, maybe you're actually too stupid to see that there's a direct comparison between two classes that can be maxed out to let them take control of an enemy unit, but one maxes out at like 80-100% on everything and the other maxes out at like 50%. Or maybe you're one of the game designers, that's the only other reason I could see for you to so doggedly see there's no parallel between the two skills which is why you designed it that way.
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Feb 11, 2016 19:05
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I am going to start a new Commander run tonight with Mods (have not tried any yet). What are the current mods worth running?
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Feb 11, 2016 19:06
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dyzzy posted:Man I've never been lacking on those. They're like half of what I pick up
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Feb 11, 2016 19:10
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OwlFancier posted:For me that is the best change, the randomized loot and experimental items mean you get a different game every time, which wasn't so for EU/EW. There's less of a set strategy when you can randomly get really good items or be deficient in some areas. If the game wants this to be how people play, I think it needs more stuff overall, then. Right now it's less like "there are a bunch of cool things and here's the subset you get," and more like, "you get a bunch of cool things but with a couple of glaring holes." It hurts the perception of it. If there's just a small handful of things you can't get (compared to the total number of available cool things to get), it feels less like you're dealing with the hand you're dealt and more like you're missing vital things that you should have and everyone else has. It misses that pseudo-roguelike sweet spot. Each campaign in XCOM 2 is still going to end up with mostly the same tools eventually. The thing is, I like the idea that XCOM 2 is about playing the hand you're dealt, so I'd actually like more variety in what that could be.
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Feb 11, 2016 19:11
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