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Combat Protocol has saved my rear end a couple times in the couple hours I've played. It's seriously a great skill.
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Feb 5, 2016 05:49
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 14:20 |
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poptart_fairy posted:So assuming decent play on the battlescape, how long can you postpone the Avatar Project for? Or does it snowball to an extent that it's literally impossible to do anything but slow your defeat? So, each Avatar building starts off being worth one pip on the timer. You can see it next to each building, and also next to the indicator in the ocean. Any Avatar building, including the ocean indicator, will provide additional pips over time, advancing the doomsday clock. Doing story advancement stuff will just remove pips. Also, destroying a building will reduce the pips by the number of pips it's providing, so technically it's somewhat advantageous to let a building get to at least two pips before you take it down. More bang for your mission, risk, and time bucks. You can keep it at bay for a long time, but there's no way that I've found to remove pip advancement on the main indicator in the ocean, so there's a hard limit that will catch up to you eventually. Also, a note on the skulljacking. When they ask you to skulljack things, be careful. When they ask you to keep skulljacking other things, HOLY poo poo be careful.
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Feb 6, 2016 23:48
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Tae posted:So does researching specific items also count as story advancement? I think you get story advancement for completing specific objectives. So far, I've just gotten them from skulljacking objectives, of which I think there are just two, but I haven't done the special missions you get from the resulting research and stuff. Oh! I forgot dark events. There's a dark event that just advances the doom clock, so keep an eye out for that if you want to stretch for time.
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Feb 6, 2016 23:53
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Ravenfood posted:What makes Faceless activate? They're doing it when I'm miles away. I've never had them activate unless one of my dudes was in range to attack or one time cause I used a battle-scanner to find it. My game keeps crashing on me, which is too bad. Setting the affinity higher via the task manager helped my performance a lot, but the game seems to crash reliably after a few hours of play. Probably a memory leak, I'd guess.
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Feb 6, 2016 23:56
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Tae posted:So if I just severely delay that proving grounds requirement, I'll stop the doom clock? No. I think the clock starts after the first month regardless of what you do. Completing some objectives will remove pips from the clock, slowing it down.
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Feb 6, 2016 23:59
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Ravenfood posted:Yeah, they're activating when there are plenty of enemies left too. I was fighting 3 mutons and a civ just turned into one from max move distance and swiped me. That's normal. If there's somebody within movement range to attack on the alien phase, they shift and attack. It'd be weirder if they shifted without being able to hit you. Tae posted:No, i meant starting up Proving grounds when the screen goes red. I have no idea what this means. Like, trying to glitch the game when the Avatar Project first prompts by going to the Proving Grounds on your ship? I've started over a couple times, and every time the Avatar Project timer shows up shortly after the first supply drop shows up, so right after the first month. Nothing the player does triggers it to show up. bobtheconqueror fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Feb 7, 2016 |
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Feb 7, 2016 00:07
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Got to the final mission, or maybe the last mission before a BIG TWIST I don't know about. Game crashed while loading, though. Pretty fun on Veteran. You don't quite steamroll things as easily once you get higher techs like in the first game. Everything, including your guys, gets high enough HP pools that it's difficult to one shot or get one shot, but that also makes it more difficult to avoid injuries, cause you can't reliably wipe out every squad in one round. Andromedons and Sectopods in particular are just sacs of HP, and they don't tend to travel alone, so focusing them down means leaving lil' dudes to hit you for some damage. Sectopods are awesome. They upgrade Advent troops to keep them relevant, and new alien types are nasty. Stun Lancers seem to be the heaviest hitting things in the game, sometimes doing 14 damage with a single stab, although I've never let a Sectopod live long enough to fire its big cannon. Looks like they don't upgrade aliens, though, so Pectoids and Vipers become kinda pushovers. Really just pectoids. Vipers are just squishy enough that you can one shot them, unless they dodge. Stealth Rangers are amazing. Something might be borked with Shotguns, cause I've got a stealth ranger with a superior scoped shotty, and her chance to hit is frequently 100% at much longer range than it should be. I kinda like Demolitions Grenadiers better than the cannon guys, mostly for the double flashbangs with huge aoes that do damage. I've actually had really good luck with a Sniper Sharpshooter, using it a lot like XCOM 1, but with a stealthy spotter. Also, killzone is nuts, and serial is great with an auto-loader. I take both a Medic and Hacking Specialist. The medic is great for healing late game, since the fights seem to last longer, and the overwatch stuff they get is good. The hacker is basically a psion, just making GBS threads all over xenos with damage and hacks. One of the spotlight tower hacks is basically giving your entire squad an extra turn. What the hell. Actual Psions are weird. Dominate is really cheesy. Works great on muton variants and advent. Not so well on the higher level organic/mechanical guys, like Archons. Dominating a Stun Lancer and having him destroy his friends is really cathartic. Note on performance, disabling LightEnvironmentShadows in BaseEngine.ini, which is in the XCOM2/Engine/Config folder, basically solved all my performance issues, barring crashing due to presumably a memory leak bug. Complex games like his always have those at launch. Load times are still a bit long, but I get a solid framerate. bobtheconqueror fucked around with this message at 08:38 on Feb 7, 2016 |
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Feb 7, 2016 08:23
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Strong Sauce posted:so what does playing the blacksite trigger? It's one of the two plot advancement paths. The other being skulljacking.
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Feb 7, 2016 08:40
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So, I just finished my first game. The last mission is actually pretty tough, even on Veteran. They make you, as in the commander, the volunteer, and you get some sick nasty psionic powers plus an extra soldier, but then you have to kill three things exactly like you while dealing with constant waves of enemies. This is after rolling through three or four big rooms with sectopods and poo poo. It's a lot like the first one in that it's a big exposition dump, but you can't one shot the final boss, plus there's three of them. I managed to get most researches done. Never got the alien psi amp cause I only killed the one gatekeeper. Never got the research for a tier 3 grenade launcher. Does anybody know where that comes from? Also, my favorite character turned out to be my hardass stealth ranger that I took to calling a shotgun wizard. Shotguns seem to be much better at range than I expected. bobtheconqueror fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Feb 7, 2016 |
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Feb 7, 2016 19:00
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Captain Oblivious posted:I'd also like to know this. Is there even such a thing or is there only the one grenade launcher upgrade? Everything else had three tiers so Looking in the weapon files, it looks like there's just stats for the two grenade launchers, so I'm going to assume there just isn't a tier 3 one, which is kind of weird, but whatevs. Edit: Also really wish Advent would drop Elerium Cores. I mean, the other loot is real good too, but I need cores to feed my proving ground addiction. bobtheconqueror fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Feb 7, 2016 |
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Feb 7, 2016 19:30
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BigRed0427 posted:Asking for a spoiler here. What is the Avatar Project? As in, what is the alien's end game? There's a little bit of ambiguity about their actual end game, but the Avatar Project seems to be the ethereal's attempt at curing a degenerative tissue issue their bodies have. Humans have really good psionic potential and sturdy bodies, so the idea seems to be genetically engineering incredibly powerful psionic humans by merging ethereal and human DNA, and then putting their consciousness inside the thing. You fight some in the late stages of the game, but they're unfinished ones brought out to stop XCOM. The presumption is that a complete Avatar would be far too powerful to stop, hence the game over. Also, there's apparently a Big Jaws to the ethereal's Jaws, but that seemed more like xpac or sequal tie in stuff.
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Feb 7, 2016 19:40
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Fat Samurai posted:Just found my first Sectopod... by hacking a tower and taking control of it. These things are way less threatening when I can march them to my squad and make them stay there and take it. Should have a wreck to autopsy after the mission. My first Sectopod was behind a house. I found it with my concealed scout, then shot it in the face with my sniper from across the map. Sectopod proceeded to walk through the house to engage my troops on the other side. They're a lot more intimading looking than the first game. And noisy as hell. You'll know there's one on the map well before you see it.
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Feb 7, 2016 19:50
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oswald ownenstein posted:I get shot behind cover by flashbanged enemies all the time. I'm pretty sure they nerfed the poo poo out of the flashbang aim reduction and made it more about stopping special abilities or something Yeah. I basically always had my Demo Grenadier with double flashbangs, but more for stopping abilities than stopping bullets. I know it's the better outcome, but it's kind of frustrating when the Stun Lancer you just disoriented shoots one of your dudes. Been messing around more with a cannoneer gal, and it's pretty great, especially after stacking some aim buffs on her. I'm also thinking about doing a cross-ranger build that basically follows the right side, except skipping all the blade-related skills, as I tend to only use RULES OF NATURE to take out stragglers. Seems like it'd be pretty close to an XCOM EU assault, but with a lil' bit of early mission stealth and not quite lightning reflexes. Bruceski posted:I'm a little confused about concealment. Is it broken if you're in an eyeball space OR get flanked, or do you need to be flanked (or out in the open which is the same) in an eyeball space to be spotted, and can hynker down if they walk by the other side of a fence? Basically, concealment is broken if you're ever out of cover in the detection range, including being flanked. So, you can't cross their detection while moving. If they happen to wander up to you while in cover, you can't move to another spot without breaking concealment. Also, noisy things, like breaking glass or busting down doors, will auto-break concealment. As far as I know, hunkering down wouldn't stop you from being flanked if they path to a spot where they'd being flanking you otherwise. bobtheconqueror fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Feb 8, 2016 |
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Feb 8, 2016 06:16
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causticBeet posted:Turn him around, shoot up the place and cover my ranger to blast in with c4. Call for extraction , everyone gets out the turn after the hack ends and the mech can attack again. Sure maybe it would have been more efficient to just blast him when he was controlled but it felt so perfect to achieve the objective so smoothly and efficiently. My last facility run, I had my ranger in wraith armor, which has a neat walk through walls ability. So, I park my dudes on the outside of the building just opposite the objective. My wraith ranger activates his phasing, blue moves to the objective, activating a few pods, plants the X4, then moves back out through the wall to the evac spot where everyone else is waiting. I've hardly ever used the phasing before, but that was well worth the price. bobtheconqueror fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Feb 8, 2016 |
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Feb 8, 2016 06:24
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Been trying to mod things a bit, mostly to see what I can fiddle with just through .ini files, and I've hit a weird snag. I've got a mod set up to change a bunch of starting values and costs in DefualtGameData, which is pretty easy to do, but one of them I can't get to stick. Specifically, I'm trying to make it so projects don't cost Elerium Cores. I figured out how to do this in the game files, there's a line in there, ProvingGroundCostScalars=(ItemTemplateName="EleriumCore", Scalar=1.0, Difficulty=0), that multiplies the cost by the Scalar value for whichever difficulty. Setting the Scalar to 0.0 makes it so they don't cost cores, although it's weird cause it's still listed in the game as costing 0 cores, and you still need 1 to have the project enabled, but doing it doesn't use up the core, so it works fine. The weird part is that, when I modify that value in the mod file, XcomGameData, instead of the internal game file, that specific change doesn't stick, and I honestly have no idea why, cause other changes in the same file work fine, like adjusting scalars for time. As far as I can tell, it seems like adjusting prices in a mod GameData file has no effect, while the same adjustments in the internal GameData file do. Any less novice mod wizards have any ideas? Alternatively, will I need to actually download the 66 gigs of mod tools if I want to just change the values more manual-like, rather than using a scaling multiplier? I haven't found any records for tech tree or projects in the ini files that would let me just alter the pricing directly.
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Feb 8, 2016 20:13
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khy posted:I have a question. I think you've got a bug. My colonel medic had 4 charges on the Gremlin after getting the extra medkit skill. Harrow posted:1. Can the Avatar Project be delayed indefinitely? Or is there some sort of "baseline" timer that isn't affected by facility or blacksite missions? There's a hard limit, but there's also a lot of wiggle room to delay. pips get added to facilities and the fortress in the ocean. Destroying facilities will remove pips based on how many that facility has produced. The fortress pips can only be removed by plot advancement. Also, looking at the ini files, it seems like there might be an acceleration effect. As the number of facilities increases, pips show up more quickly, threatening to snowball. So, if you want to keep up on things and delay as long as possible, take down facilities as they pop up. The blacksite story mission that pops up doesn't count as a facility in that it won't accumulate pips over time, but it might for the acceleration thing. Also, neat tidbit. Legend difficulty actually gives you a number of breaks on the doom clock compared to Commander, but that's because pretty much every other time mechanic in the strategy layer is doubled or tripled, so a legend run is basically a marathon run as well. Space Skeleton posted:The skulljack stuff says you can sometimes get the locations of more alien facilities by skulljacking. Does completing those facilities remove avatar progress? I have not gotten any through that yet so I'm not even sure it's a real thing or if the tooltips are lying. E: Nvm, see below VVVV bobtheconqueror fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Feb 8, 2016 |
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Feb 8, 2016 22:02
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Pipski posted:I have questions about the weapon-disabling ability that these irritating-as-piss teleporting, cloning, glowing guys have. First off, does it also disable the skulljack, or is something else doing that? Second, if I leave the fucker alive (for now) will there still be an explosion the next turn, or does the explosion only happen after they're dead? Anyone know? It's a delayed explosion that happens the next alien turn, regardless of the Codex being alive or not. The weapon disabling effect just forces you to reload your primary weapon, so it doesn't stop any secondary abilities. Still, leave the area so you don't get blown up.
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Feb 8, 2016 22:08
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 14:20 |
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I like midnight suns quite a bit. It is very quip heavy early on but does eventually find some footing that isn't one liners, and the gameplay is neat and fun. However, if you're looking for XCOM look elsewhere. The card game elements and predictable nature of the game makes it diverge hard from the XCOM model. The strategy layer has some similarities in terms of resource collection and menus, but there's zero time pressure and I'd compare it more to Persona.
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Nov 28, 2023 13:26
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