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Not really, I think cover destruction is great. Not as the only ideal tactic, but as a variable avenue provided you have the munitions. The mainline of XCOM sort of leaned on it though because there isn't a particularly safe way to leave the enemy alive, therefore tactical movement is discouraged because the worst move you can possibly make is to not shoot & kill, and easy cover destruction then becomes to go to for ensuring you can actually shoot to kill with your entire team.
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Feb 20, 2017 22:23
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Reliable cover destruction is a necessity if you're relying on Aim to carry the day. High cover + tac sense + built in defense means no one but an aim stacking sharpshooter is going to have a chance to hit, so you need either autohit abilities, flanking or cover destruction to reliably remove enemies. Trying to move into flanking is incredibly dangerous thanks to the high density maps and yellow alert, and LW2 removed aiming angles, making flanking all or nothing, so that really just leaves autohit or cover destruction. Grenades can do both, which makes them the solution in most situations. Maybe if grenades were separated into 'does damage' and 'blows objects up reliably' that might be a good balance point? Another attempt at balance might be large AoE non-cover penetrating anti-personnel grenades and high damage/high cover destruction but low AoE HE grenades. I don't think the LW team could ever come up with that on their own though. And yes, I understand that shaped charges exist, but theyre a pretty poor tactical combat tool. Those are for creating your own doors in facilities.
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Feb 20, 2017 23:42
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Point is, cover destruction is still possible right now. You just can't rely on it with a single frag grenade is all.
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Feb 20, 2017 23:44
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I believe the LW2 philosophy on record about Aiming Angles removal was that because the AI couldn't benefit from it, it wasn't fair 
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Feb 20, 2017 23:49
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Not a Step posted:Reliable cover destruction is a necessity if you're relying on Aim to carry the day. High cover + tac sense + built in defense means no one but an aim stacking sharpshooter is going to have a chance to hit, so you need either autohit abilities, flanking or cover destruction to reliably remove enemies. Trying to move into flanking is incredibly dangerous thanks to the high density maps and yellow alert, and LW2 removed aiming angles, making flanking all or nothing, so that really just leaves autohit or cover destruction. Grenades can do both, which makes them the solution in most situations. Maybe if grenades were separated into 'does damage' and 'blows objects up reliably' that might be a good balance point? Another attempt at balance might be large AoE non-cover penetrating anti-personnel grenades and high damage/high cover destruction but low AoE HE grenades. I don't think the LW team could ever come up with that on their own though. I understand why that annoys people, but at the same time those are options that are now much more useful when cover destruction isn't almost universally the best option. You can still flank safely by using a shinobi to make sure you don't reveal anything, or you can overwatch and use flush to force the enemy to move, things like that. Or use an officer to focus fire and unload on it with a bunch of shots. Making cover destruction more random also gives other tactics the chance to shine. Additionally, cover destruction isn't limited to just grenades either. There's demolition and saturation fire on gunners, shredder guns if you use heavy weapons, and similar.
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Feb 20, 2017 23:51
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I'd probably go the frag AP vs high explosive route too. I'm just kicking around ideas but my main focus is to make movement a primary aspect of firefights, so there's more focussing on fixing, flanking and destroying targets using movement and fire for suppression/effect. Essentially take a leaf from modern US infantry tactics and then try to wrap a fun game around those concepts.
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Feb 20, 2017 23:52
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Apoplexy posted:Point is, cover destruction is still possible right now. You just can't rely on it with a single frag grenade is all. The way environmental damage works is that an infinite number of grenades won't destroy a 10 hp object. Grenades do 9 damage at dead center, damage doesn't stack. Bremen posted:Additionally, cover destruction isn't limited to just grenades either. There's demolition and saturation fire on gunners, shredder guns if you use heavy weapons, and similar. I find it really odd that the gunner has the best toolbox of any class. They excel at damage, *reliable* cover destruction, can do AoE damage, have an autohit, and a mass debuff. Weirdly they can even defend against some of the most irritating enemies in the game - Stunlancers. You could build a squad of just gunners and only miss Nix Panicus fucked around with this message at 02:47 on Feb 21, 2017 |
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Feb 21, 2017 00:58
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A strange thing that will cause XCOM 2 to crash I found out today: naming an array of soldier abilities EarnedAbilities in a game state. Like it can handle the array of soldier abilities itself, just naming it EarnedAbilities will be the thing to cause the game to lose its poo poo and CTD on start. On the plus side after fixing that, all I need to do is learn how to AI and I should have that Dark XCOM mod ready for a public release. EDIT: Aaand released. Still have iffiness on the Grenadier but I'm 99% sure I know what the issue with that is. Exposure fucked around with this message at 06:44 on Feb 21, 2017 |
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Feb 21, 2017 05:49
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Not a Step posted:The way environmental damage works is that an infinite number of grenades won't destroy a 10 hp object. Grenades do 9 damage at dead center, damage doesn't stack. + or - 20%.
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Feb 21, 2017 07:44
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Over twenty years of Xcom saying 'gently caress yea, blow that map the gently caress up so you can waste some aliens. It's a cool and good thing to do.' Then muthafucks gotta come along and act like they're reinventing the wheel, only this version is square and covered in poo.
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Feb 21, 2017 08:29
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Not a Step posted:Reliable cover destruction is a necessity if you're relying on Aim to carry the day. High cover + tac sense + built in defense means no one but an aim stacking sharpshooter is going to have a chance to hit, so you need either autohit abilities, flanking or cover destruction to reliably remove enemies.
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Feb 21, 2017 12:32
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Ugh I've got a whole bunch of mods that don't seem to want to stay active. The mods that allow 45 degree camera angles, colour coordinated ui buttons and numeric health display all seem to randomly work or not each time I load the game up. If I go through the effort of posting my list of installed mods is it likely people can advise me on which ones could be conflicting? Or am I best of just removing them bit by bit till I figure it out? I think everything was working until I got the mod that adds inventory and ammo slots, plus it's fix. I don't know why that mod would cause any issues though, it's supposedly just a simple ini edit that's in the game by default just not enabled. This is without long war btw. Edit: I've also got a wierd bug where on mission load out screen I can't click on make inventory items available or it takes me back to the geoscape map. Captain Hair fucked around with this message at 16:02 on Feb 21, 2017 |
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Feb 21, 2017 15:58
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I really want to love LW2, but I think I'm going to abandon it. The frustration factor is just a little too high. Hiding the avatar progress gauge, enemies that scale up way too fast, squad management / weapon mods / individual weapon builds are just a pain to keep track of even if they are a fun idea, Not Created Equal pretty routinely gives you soldiers that just plain suck and are useless as anything but Haven advisors, and missions that feel like they demand total perfection as the rule rather than the exception. I know I'm just bad and plenty of people are doing great, and there are an awful lot of things about the mod that I do like. But I could handle Commander difficulty in vanilla without much trouble and Legendary when I was on-point, and in LW2, Veteran routinely kicks my rear end.
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Feb 21, 2017 17:41
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i have generally found that too much of LW2's challenge comes from what feels like nonsense as well, friend
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Feb 21, 2017 17:43
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Modding LW2 makes it much much better. I like the "true concealment" one that only starts the timer upon breaking stealth, and various "easier LW2" mods. Also, you can turn "not created equally" off in the main Settings menu of the game.
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Feb 21, 2017 18:36
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Pyromancer posted:Rangers can stack up aim enough for sniper hits too, especially on second shots: locked on perk +10 on second shot, hyper-reactive pupils PCS +10 if you missed the first, walk fire +30 for reduced damage and 2 ammo. Assaults and sword shinobis can handle flanking and gunner has cover destruction and autohit. Relying on grenades and other limited charges for guaranteed damage is a trap, it was a trap in vanilla too but in LW you get bitten by it before the final mission. Ok, but for that ranger trick to work you need to not move during your turn on a soldier who doesnt have squadsight. Plus you're burning 3 ammo for a half damage hit. Things get 15+ hp in the late game. Moving forward into flanking almost always results in pulling more pods or getting yellow alert murdered by patrolling pods next turn. Relying on consumables isnt a trap. Its a solid option, you just have to not blow them all on the first pod. Just don't rely on grenadiers for cover destruction before MSgt. Sapper is a trap, gunners and technicals are your cover destruction classes.
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Feb 21, 2017 19:24
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I am really enjoying lw2 on veteran and am finding the early to early-mid game pretty easy, fwiw. My advice would be to not avoid skulljack and gremlin2. I am 100% hacking all drones and turrets and getting tons of rewards. it is pretty funny.
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Feb 21, 2017 19:29
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Civ VI announcement today so that means no XCOM announcement for what? At least a fortnight? A month? EXPANSION WHEN
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Feb 21, 2017 19:32
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Mandatory Assembly posted:Civ VI announcement today so that means no XCOM announcement for what? At least a fortnight? A month? never
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Feb 21, 2017 21:04
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So I have two regions liberated right now, but one of the adjacent regions (to both) has gone up to strength 11. Should I be worried about an impending invasion? I already went through one invasion mission and it was pure hell. I'm not sure how to mitigate it. I have two people in that region's haven; Psi soldier advisor with a recruit and an intel person. I had one in hiding for part of it, but that didn't seem to affect anything at all in terms of regional strength. Is there any way for me to preemptively deal with this?
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Feb 21, 2017 21:23
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Amish Ninja posted:So I have two regions liberated right now, but one of the adjacent regions (to both) has gone up to strength 11. Should I be worried about an impending invasion? I already went through one invasion mission and it was pure hell. I'm not sure how to mitigate it. I have two people in that region's haven; Psi soldier advisor with a recruit and an intel person. I had one in hiding for part of it, but that didn't seem to affect anything at all in terms of regional strength. Is there any way for me to preemptively deal with this? I believe that if you have people working intel in a liberated region they have a chance to detect the invasion before it launches (which makes it show up as a supply raid in the liberated region instead), but that's both chancy and means taking that region off the deliciously profitable liberated supply task.
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Feb 21, 2017 21:27
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Mandatory Assembly posted:Civ VI announcement today so that means no XCOM announcement for what? At least a fortnight? A month? Long War 2 WAS the expansion. 
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Feb 21, 2017 21:56
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Feb 21, 2017 22:22
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Bremen posted:I believe that if you have people working intel in a liberated region they have a chance to detect the invasion before it launches (which makes it show up as a supply raid in the liberated region instead), but that's both chancy and means taking that region off the deliciously profitable liberated supply task. If you have a few liberated regions, consider splitting them 7/6 on supplies/intel. The intel helps you catch invasions, and the passive intel generation hugely helps in the late game. Theres diminishing returns on researching datapads and data caches and you need intel to do Shadow Chamber projects and to contact story mission regions.
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Feb 21, 2017 23:14
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Mandatory Assembly posted:Civ VI announcement today so that means no XCOM announcement for what? At least a fortnight? A month? Either PAX East in March like EW or probably never .
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Feb 21, 2017 23:16
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Whole bunch of posts here what make me never want to try Long War 2. Why would I want to put my balls in a vice voluntarily?
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Feb 22, 2017 00:04
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Once you mod LW2 heavily it's fantastic. I have no idea what they were thinking with some of the choices in the mod itself, other than grognards gonna grog, but the bones of a really awesome approach to Xcom are in there.
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Feb 22, 2017 00:08
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Feb 22, 2017 00:10
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Malachite_Dragon posted:Whole bunch of posts here what make me never want to try Long War 2. Why would I want to put my balls in a vice voluntarily? About 80% of the complaints are from people who jumped straight into Ironman Impossible difficulty because they apparently can't live without their balls in a vice. Normal difficulty is slightly above Vanilla XCom 2 toughness. Commander is hard. Legendary is VERY VERY HARD and designed to push even their in-house playtesters to their absolute limits. Start out on a lower difficulty and it's fine. There's a similar kinda situation in the Doom mod scene where things tend to be balanced towards modern, more experienced players, so the higher difficulties are utterly ball-bustingly tough. And yet people insist on only playing on the highest settings AND without quicksaves, and then complain that it was too hard.
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Feb 22, 2017 00:13
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I beat impossible ironman in my last "vanilla" run (some mods, nothing crazy, hack plus and ABA). I'm having trouble on LW2 vet/ironman, I even stopped doing ironman because there's just random poo poo that pops up that can totally waste the 10+ hours you've sunk into the game with no warning. I AM getting better each run and I could (SHOULD) probably jump up to commander difficulty at this point and only get set back a little bit. It's loving tough, and I'm not sure I'll ever finish the game because I can already see the horrible grind coming after lasers/t2 armor.
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Feb 22, 2017 00:17
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The trade off between the great changes to the strat layer and classes is barely in the positive vs the lovely make it harder for no reason stuff that's in there. It's really fun but for how long it takes to get rolling, finding out you're hosed isn't pleasant. I might just roll on rookie to keep my blood pressure down because god drat.
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Feb 22, 2017 00:40
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Dominic White posted:About 80% of the complaints are from people who jumped straight into Ironman Impossible difficulty because they apparently can't live without their balls in a vice.
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Feb 22, 2017 01:38
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Malachite_Dragon posted:Whole bunch of posts here what make me never want to try Long War 2. Why would I want to put my balls in a vice voluntarily? As usual on the internet, the complainers are the noisy ones. Plenty of people in this thread have mentioned loving LW2, but they usually just make a post about it and stop. Also, as mentioned, LW2 also has difficulty modes. It's only as hard or as easy as you want it to be.
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Feb 22, 2017 01:43
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Oh christ, here we go. 
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Feb 22, 2017 02:07
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Games journalists wouldn't praise it so much if it was hard as ppl make out
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Feb 22, 2017 02:11
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TomViolence posted:Oh christ, here we go. Yeah, look. I don't really want to get into it right now, but if you can't see the difference between an amount of difficulty, and the nature of the difficulty, the discussion is not worth having. Most complaints are about the nature of the difficulty offered, the style of challenges presented to the player. Acknowledge that if you want to discuss in good faith.
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Feb 22, 2017 02:15
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If you dived in on anything more than Veteran LW2 without getting accustomed to how it is now, you might have bitten off too much without knowing how things work now. Had to restart a couple of times when the decisions I made wound up not working but the most recent playthrough has me ahead on the ball. Been keeping Avatar progress at one and two because you really should escalate faster than Advent grows. LW2 has some irritating bugs (prisoners being spawned inside a sink) that will probably be fixed but it is a solid overall product. Forget doing every mission, maybe even consider withdrawing if it turns out unworkable, downgrade to SMGs to move faster when stealthed in the city. You will get hit, forget the "solved" style of strategy where you can simply win without the RNG throwing some curveballs at you. This really is a lot meatier than Vanilla and I like it. I even lose sometimes. You can also mod the game to your leisure and whine about design decisions when they blow up your pre-existing strategies. That's a totally valid viewpoint but probably shouldn't be considered consensus about the mod as a whole. Grognan fucked around with this message at 03:04 on Feb 22, 2017 |
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Feb 22, 2017 02:54
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The thing about the mod is that even if you  there's enough obfuscatory bullshit laid on that you don't even know you're doing well or badly until several months have passed. I'm alternating between enjoying it and tearing my hair out because the game just pulls the rug out from under me every so often going "NO LOL gently caress U FOR TRYING" and not really offering much in the way of feedback on what I did wrong. There are issues with its design beyond just the departure from vanilla's somewhat gimped difficulty curve and that's a problem that's existed with long war since the mod's first incarnation.
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Feb 22, 2017 03:08
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Also, turn on red fog if you want the tactical game to be way easier but still tactically demanding.
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Feb 22, 2017 03:09
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TomViolence posted:The thing about the mod is that even if you A couple rules of thumb that seem to work really well for me for the resistance management. You want to spread as far and fast as possible before advent gets spooked enough. Do not rely on supplies from territories until they are liberated, have too many people on the other two jobs, or really have nothing better to do. Local operations are constrained by intel, so recruit your rear end off in places until you can stack the intel job with max people when you want to go for the liberation chain. Recruit your rear end off and have soldiers advising every haven, you aren't getting poo poo for supplies especially because faceless are everywhere. Once you have a lot of local resistance in a low strength area, Intel and scan there to knock out the Liberation chain. When you get past the second mission, Advent gets wind and will stack max legions in that area to secure it. Consider boosting intel in surrounding areas to catch and destroy Advent Legions while they move around. Black Market is your go-to for making cash. Elerium cores are 20 credits, 40 if they want them. By not using explosives you are banking your tech and infrastructure. Infiltrate, infiltrate, and infiltrate to make things manageable tactically and accept that sometimes it is better to go to another low strength region to score some wins over there. Jabor posted:Also, turn on red fog if you want the tactical game to be way easier but still tactically demanding. Like LW1 I think red fog will gently caress you on large missions because you will not have enough rockets and grenades to not get hit. Especially when pods are twice your size or by happenstance stick together. Getting hit will happen and you need to bring enough medkits to keep health up. Dealing with poo poo accuracy sounds like hell to me there.
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Feb 22, 2017 03:28
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