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It looks like Long War Studios just released a giant pack of new enemies, including the return of Drones and Sectoid Commanders, more Muton variants, and a Chryssalid Hive Queen. Other than the new ADVENT soldiers using the XCOM grenade launcher and cannon models, they all look absolutely fantastic.
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Aug 5, 2016 18:42
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Oh heck. I like the idea of an uptick in monster variety and difficulty, but LW has a reputation for being crazy hard, so I' may wait until I start a new game to try that out.
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Aug 5, 2016 19:08
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Backhand posted:To be fair, it was hilarious listening to Vahlen's audio log in the Nest which basically just goes " The first time I played Enemy Unknown I was fully expecting her to defect to the aliens' side at some point.
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Aug 5, 2016 19:23
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Holy poo poo, without sane people around to keep me in check I make REALLY AWFUL decisions!"
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Oh no, the mod actually overwrites the Muton Centurion mod, this is going to make my current playthrough interesting.
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Aug 5, 2016 20:10
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Honestly from looking at the source code and ini files, they seem...ok? (Which I mean makes sense; These are supposed to be modular, it would be kinda be complete bullshit if they made it so these required the Perk Pack to effectively fight) Like if you've been using A Better Advent + some of the standalone enemy mods you're probably not going experience a significant change in gameplay. If you haven't though, then yes prepare for a lot more  moments.edit: Oh wait, LWS added drones in their pack. hello darkness my old friend edit2: Actually on second thought I'll even go one step farther and say A Better Advent has the more interesting enemies that actually shake up what you do. Like the new enemies definitely look cool, but they feel like a retread of Long War where it's just doing what the base game does on the tactical side but up to eleven, whereas ABA has a component of enemies that do non-vanilla things when spotted, when hurt, or even having non-standard mdoes of attacking in general, which makes for far more interesting experiences IMO. Though that said, this is definitely a case where "¿Porque no los dos?" applies. 
Exposure fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Aug 5, 2016 |
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Aug 5, 2016 20:28
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Is there a mod that lets you randomize outfits for people in the character pool? I got a whole bunch of goons in my pool from when the game launched, and I'm sorry guys, but some of you need a fresh look and I'd rather not have to dress you all myself.
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Aug 6, 2016 00:31
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RBA Starblade posted:I still love that all of Tygan's research notes and audio clips regarding them can be summed up as "why". Tygan's reaction to the Viper King is basically "Huh, well this has some interesting abilities. I can totally see why this got out of Vahlen's control. Who could expect cryo-powers?" His reaction to the Muton Queen and Archon King are more "WHY, VAHLEN? JUST, WHY?"
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Aug 6, 2016 00:48
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I prefer A Better Advent because I support the little guys. 
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Aug 6, 2016 00:59
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Speedball posted:Clearly they're saving her for the Enemy Within version of XCOM 2 or something. She'll show up in the X-COM 2/Civilization: Beyond Earth crossover expansion at the helm of an INTEGR Aquilon. An Aquilon is this thing:  The weird dude on the left is the standard foot soldier if you're going the route that has you building Aquilons.
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Aug 6, 2016 01:02
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Dogen posted:The ending of that is kind of unsatisfying, where they're like "well she's still out there somewhere!" I was kind of hoping they would find her being slowly digested in he berserker queen as part of the autopsy. Who do you think the Ethereals are warning you about not being ready for in the final mission. Also: Running with the LW mods and Grimy's has become completely preposterous. Late-game, I can have my shinobi with a superior death's hand sword, a light frame SMG, Icarus armor, and a Speed PCS just press the reaper button and mash Fleche until everyone's high fiving back on the skyranger. Bumping up squad sizes just makes him angrier and hungrier for blood. Why the gently caress would Death's Hand even make it into a playtest? Why would you make something that makes Reaper MORE powerful as it goes on
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Aug 6, 2016 01:33
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I wouldn't make the mistake of thinking ANY mods are balanced right now without having to do some effort yourself or having 'house rules'. You don't make 6-8 classes with 3 abilities a piece and genuinely playtest the lot of it for balance against campaigns that last 20-40 hours. There is literally not enough time in the day for that to be exhaustively playtested by a small group of testers/developers. It's better to think of the Perk Pack more like a 'wouldn't it be cool' / here's how you do this (for modders)' pack. edit: to be fair, on paper something that makes Reaper better is clearly abusable, but then, it fits the 'wouldn't it be cool' impetus. Balance is not the aim, and really seems like a pipe dream when everyone seems to focussing on interoperating nicely with other mods, therefore you can't really do anything too drastic to control balance. Maluco Marinero fucked around with this message at 01:48 on Aug 6, 2016 |
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Aug 6, 2016 01:46
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I was thinking about this yesterday, what I'd really love to see in a mod is some reason to take your better soldiers out of rotation. Maybe they can be stationed at radio beacons to increase income or increase the frequency of guerilla actions. Just something for my max-level and accidentally-OP dudes to do while I train up other recruits. I'm hoping this is something added by EW2 and that there's a mechanic for "getting the team back together" for a big story mission, complete with manly handshake cutscenes 
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Aug 6, 2016 02:17
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Doomsayer posted:I was thinking about this yesterday, what I'd really love to see in a mod is some reason to take your better soldiers out of rotation. Maybe they can be stationed at radio beacons to increase income or increase the frequency of guerilla actions. Just something for my max-level and accidentally-OP dudes to do while I train up other recruits. I just saw something like that today, but it works by negative enforcement: Your dudes get more "notoriety" the more they keep going into the field without a break, and the higher the notoriety, the more aware enemies are about how dangerous they are. I think the first increment just increases detection range during the stealth phase, but it goes all the way up to bringing in extra reinforcements because ADVENT's all "oh poo poo it's those guys!" I remember one comment on the workshop page saying he got over 40 kills from reinforcements in one mission from all the notoriety. marshmallow creep fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Aug 6, 2016 |
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Aug 6, 2016 02:50
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Ahah, so then that thing with your party members appearing on billboards becomes more than cosmetic then. Someone with high Notoriety has a bigger detection radius. Which you could ignore if you're just gong to go in hot anyway, that way the game mechanic wouldn't be TOO obnoxious.
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Aug 6, 2016 03:04
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Lotish posted:I just saw something like that today, but it works by negative enforcement: Your dudes get more "notoriety" the more they keep going into the field without a break, and the higher the notoriety, the more aware enemies are about how dangerous they are. I think the first increment just increases detection range during the stealth phase, but it goes all the way up to bringing in extra reinforcements because ADVENT's all "oh poo poo it's those guys!" I remember one comment on the workshop page saying he got over 40 kills from reinforcements in one mission from all the notoriety. That's actually a really cool concept if done well.
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Aug 6, 2016 03:26
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It's by the same guy who did Squad Cohesion, incidentally. Here's the link. It even can be tweaked in game to set the thresholds for different notoriety tiers. One way to get a lot of notoriety is to kill civilians. If you're in a bring-it-on kind of mood, you know what to do. Peak notoriety essentially turns all pods active at once you are detected; looking again it doesn't seem that it calls in reinforcements ad nauseum by default, so the comment I mentioned might have had a weird interaction with something else. marshmallow creep fucked around with this message at 03:55 on Aug 6, 2016 |
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Aug 6, 2016 03:49
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Lotish posted:It's by the same guy who did Squad Cohesion, incidentally. Here's the link. It even can be tweaked in game to set the thresholds for different notoriety tiers. Probably A Better Advent since that has enemies that'll try to call down reinforcements up to three times once activated.
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Aug 6, 2016 04:11
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Spiderfist Island posted:It looks like Long War Studios just released a giant pack of new enemies, including the return of Drones and Sectoid Commanders, more Muton variants, and a Chryssalid Hive Queen. Other than the new ADVENT soldiers using the XCOM grenade launcher and cannon models, they all look absolutely fantastic. Disappointing after A Better Advent. The only thing this brings to the table is new sectoid art, new muton art and the drone. If you wanted recolours with new abilities ABA has 3x as many with more interesting abilities.
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Aug 6, 2016 07:52
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Carecat posted:Disappointing after A Better Advent. The only thing this brings to the table is new sectoid art, new muton art and the drone. If you wanted recolours with new abilities ABA has 3x as many with more interesting abilities. If ABA isn't defunct I can see the mod dev incorporating the LW stuff. Plus I'm totally fine with having both active, because it makes every pod unique. Until I leave them the same burning pile of radioactive slag as I do every other pod anyway 
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Aug 6, 2016 09:53
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Locke Dunnegan posted:If ABA isn't defunct I can see the mod dev incorporating the LW stuff. Plus I'm totally fine with having both active, because it makes every pod unique. Until I leave them the same burning pile of radioactive slag as I do every other pod anyway His supplemental other-mod-enemy compatibility mod has already been updated to support the new enemies.
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Aug 6, 2016 11:48
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Does the Hive Queen operate on Ruler rules?
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Aug 6, 2016 14:14
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ZearothK posted:Does the Hive Queen operate on Ruler rules? It's a normal enemy, there's no mod-added rulers as far as I know. (Honestly I might just take a whack at that just to provide a working example for the enemy mod makers)
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Aug 6, 2016 19:14
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Shame it isn't, I'd like to have another Ruler to face, dealing with them was the most interesting part of my third playthrough. Let us know when your ruler happens!
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Aug 6, 2016 20:00
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Exposure posted:It's a normal enemy, there's no mod-added rulers as far as I know. Please do, I would love to see ruler types of each race just to keep the entire game on your toes.
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Aug 6, 2016 23:36
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Annointed posted:Please do, I would love to see ruler types of each race just to keep the entire game on your toes. A stun lancer king? An 8 foot stun lancer with 100hp zapping soldiers each turn? I'm down for that. Stasis really takes the fight out of the Archon King. He did his devastate so I hit him with stasis before it landed. The rockets didn't come down until the start of the enemy turn when stasis wore off. I had plenty of time to move my guys out of the way. I also had the Berserker Queen pop up near an objective while I was just a few tiles out of sight. She smashed 2 ADVENT pods over 7 turns then wandered into my overwatch. It was a nice change from getting my face punched in.
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Aug 7, 2016 01:33
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This game is so much better than EW. I tried playing it for a bit at launch but it never really clicked; either there's been a lot of patching fixing things or I'm making smarter research picks but I'm keeping pace with the difficulty enough to enjoy that every enemy has its own little gimmick. Downed two terror missions so far so I'm thinking time to get wrecked by the blacksite and DLC.
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Aug 7, 2016 01:55
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I loved the hell out of the first game but I finally found some time to try finishing XCom2 and the internet is correct, the final mission is ridiculous and un-fun and after trying for several hours I no longer have any desire to finish the last mission. Great job, development team. The length and the difficulty spike and the number of enemies is idiotic.
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Aug 7, 2016 16:34
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Doobie Keebler posted:A stun lancer king? An 8 foot stun lancer with 100hp zapping soldiers each turn? I'm down for that. Gatekeeper King, a literal Death Star that encompasses half of the map.
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Aug 7, 2016 16:43
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Exposure posted:If the Geoscape is running like a slideshow you almost certainly have mods that have conflicting overrides (or need to force refresh the .ini files in the USER/Documents/My Games/XCOM2/Config folder), use the Alternative Mod Launcher to figure out which ones are conflicting. Couple of days late but thanks for the recommendation. I'm still playing on minimum settings but at least the geoscape is running smoother now.
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Aug 7, 2016 17:50
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FistEnergy posted:I loved the hell out of the first game but I finally found some time to try finishing XCom2 and the internet is correct, the final mission is ridiculous and un-fun and after trying for several hours I no longer have any desire to finish the last mission. Great job, development team. The length and the difficulty spike and the number of enemies is idiotic. I haven't gotten here yet in XCOM 2 but isn't this basically the criticisms for the EW final mission?
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Aug 7, 2016 18:22
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A Magical Lamp posted:I haven't gotten here yet in XCOM 2 but isn't this basically the criticisms for the EW final mission? Not at all. EW final mission is a victory lap, the final room in XCOM 2's final mission has endless spawns.
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Aug 7, 2016 18:36
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A Magical Lamp posted:I haven't gotten here yet in XCOM 2 but isn't this basically the criticisms for the EW final mission? The criticism I remember hearing about the final EW mission was the opposite - too few aliens, too easy, didn't give you the game-ending challenge you had been building your squad up for. ON the other hand I came to EW pretty late when the people still playing and talking about it were all really experienced, so I dunno how people reacted to it when it first came out.
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Aug 7, 2016 18:36
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In EW, the final mission, Operation Avenger, was a cakewalk. It was lengthy, but not taxing. A well-formed strike team plus a psychic trumpcard could overcome every obstacle in piecemeal fashion. XCOM 2's finale can be overwhelming, by contrast. With no time to regroup and re-organize, the battle can easily get out of hand.
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Aug 7, 2016 18:38
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And then if one or more of the avatars bug out and teleport where you can't find them or reach them, you could spend three hours just trying to track them down and dealing with the endless spawns the entire time, like I did.
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Aug 7, 2016 18:45
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Yeah I meant more in terms of length than difficulty. I definitely remember thinking Avenger went on way longer than it should have. But I shouldn't be talking about the final mission in XCOM 2 when I'm only a third through the game.
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Aug 7, 2016 18:50
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I liked the final mission and didn't have any problems 
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Aug 7, 2016 18:54
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So how am I supposed to repair a SPARK? Because I'm pretty sure a bug or one of my mods is interfering at this point. I have no option to "staff" the bot in "Engineering," which is what the internet tells me I'm supposed to do.
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Aug 7, 2016 18:54
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The final mission of XCOM 2 is such a change of pace compared to regular missions. It's a marathon. I still like it way better that the final mission of the first game. Unless I was going for an achievement I rarely felt the need to do it once I got to that point after the first few times. This time around I do just because its such a challenge.Lotish posted:So how am I supposed to repair a SPARK? Because I'm pretty sure a bug or one of my mods is interfering at this point. I have no option to "staff" the bot in "Engineering," which is what the internet tells me I'm supposed to do. Took me 2 games to find it. When you're at the base ant farm screen there should be a purple icon under the engineering room like you'd find for the AWS soldier slot. I couldn't find it anywhere else. Doobie Keebler fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Aug 7, 2016 |
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Aug 7, 2016 18:55
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It's automatic at default
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Aug 7, 2016 18:56
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I think the last mission is challenging for some people because it really punishes classes with limited resources (Grenadiers, Specialists) in a way the rest of the game doesn't. If you're the type to blitz through and alpha strike, which is a perfectly valid playstyle the rest of the game, and went all in on limited abilities you can be pretty screwed by the final mission since its such a marathon. If you instead built your dudes for passives and cooldown actives (Gunner Grenadier or Medic Specialist for instance) its really not much different than the rest of the game. Its why I'm really in favor of redoing some of the systems, especially in combination with the timers in most missions. Having everything be cooldown-based would help balance things out immensely and would curb things like the ridiculous alpha strikes you can pull off now. Like, let's say heavy weapons had a 10 turn cooldown. In any given normal mission you're still only using them once, but on grueling marathons you could use them more often instead of it being a waste. Ditto Grenades (Grenadiers could get changed perks to lower their cooldown) etc. I feel it also synergizes a lot with mission timers which helps prevent the degenerate 'creep around after every pod until all abilites are off cooldown' that lategame EW could turn into. As it is, Psi is already better and works on this system. And they could be balanced more by increasing their cooldowns as well. Zore fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Aug 7, 2016 |
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Aug 7, 2016 20:07
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