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Notes about the weapon options that popped up in Shen's workshop: Those are the special weapons designed to fight the Alien Rulers. Having disabled the mission you just get them for free. On who can use what...The weapons are class locked. Only Rangers can use the Axe, only Sharpshooters can use the Pistol. Rangers and Specialists and eventually <REDACTED> can use the Bolt Caster. Anyone can use the Frost Bomb but since its just a fancy grenade it's best used by a Grenadier for the extended range.
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Jan 19, 2019 19:18
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That Italian Guy posted:Almost correct yeah: they have unlocked an item that needs to be fabricated, but it's something you can equip (like grenades or medkits) instead of a new type of armor. Speaking of which, remember to bring your drat medkit! 
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Jan 22, 2019 05:25
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The red number in the Retaliation Mission wasn't an enemy counter, it was how many dead civilians you had. Green was saved, red was dead, white was still in play. As far as what to do next, grab the Supplies, gear up, then hit the Towers.
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Jan 26, 2019 01:46
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TheKirbs posted:Do you plan to go for next tier weapons or armor first? Barring an infusion of Alien Alloys it'll have to be Magnetic Weapons since Plated Armors is currently unavailable to them.
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Jan 30, 2019 01:34
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The thing about the Medic path is that it pays off better once you get better armor and can usually survive one or two shots. Getting a heal in, especially on a Ranger (who has to be danger close to be effective), can literally be a life-saver. And while right now your guys and gals are low enough level that the're easily replaced when killed, down the line you'll want to keep your leveled up people alive.
jng2058 fucked around with this message at 04:01 on Jan 31, 2019 |
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Jan 31, 2019 03:49
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GeneX posted:Yeah, but on the other hand, Nat wants psykers and he wants them now. And he's not wrong. The sooner you get a Psi-chamber, the sooner you can start marinating some Psi-ops. A full on Magus with all powers is game-breaking, regardless of what armor and weapon techs you've gotten to.
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Feb 5, 2019 05:40
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StoryTime posted:Yeah, turns out Codexes loving kill people. You still got a win here, and that means you don't need to do that skulljack move again! But he's gonna want to. Skullmining not only lets you execute one Advent Trooper-type guy per battle, but it also gives a bonus to Hacking to whomever's carrying a Skulljack such that you'll want a Skulljack on any Specialist who goes into a mission once you get advanced aror and can carry more than one object.
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Feb 16, 2019 05:51
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Counterpoint: I voted Deadeye because a properly placed Sniper will almost never get to use Lightning Hands because she'll never be in pistol range of anything, where-as once you start stacking accuracy buffs on her she'll be able to use Deadeye pretty often to great effect. Especially in this game, with Magnetic Weapons nowhere in sight and if you've got Mutons on the board you're going to be seeing Berzerkers soon and you'll really want as much damage as possible when Big Mama comes stomping into play. Making a Gunslinger spec'ed character, particularly with Shadowkeeper available, is fine, but I almost never get Lightning Hands into use on a proper Sniper.
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Feb 17, 2019 07:37
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So yeah, crawling forward and overwatching over every step is a very effective tactic. So effective, in fact, that after everyone used it all the time for every mission in XCOM, XCOM2 added the timers on most missions so that every mission didn't take an hour and a half!
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Feb 19, 2019 06:16
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Notty posted:As someone who’s never played XCOM either and is following the LP along blindly, I’m curious what the more expert players think of Nat and Tea’s current overall situation. Psionics are awfully nice...but they have to build the drat Psi-Lab, assign a Rookie to it (preferably upgrade it and assign two) then they have to wait ages while the Psis train up to get enough powers to be game-breaking. A low ranked Psi with just a power or two has some utility. A Magus with ALL the powers can break the game over her knee. My fear is that they're talking themselves out of Psionics. They've put in the research, but the benefit for rushing Psionics will be lost if they don't put it into use as soon as possible! Worst of all worlds is to rush Psionics research and thus delay Tier II weapons and armor, but to then wait too long to build the Psi-Lab! Their antfarm building is sub-optimal too. They had bad luck there, because there wasn't an Exposed Power Coupling near the top of their farm, and there's nothing in the game to tell you that if you build a Generator on a Coupling you get a big boost of extra power. It's usually worth the effort to pick the nearest Coupling and build straight down to get to it ASAP, because one Coupling + Generator is enough to power two or three more rooms. Its something you don't realize if you haven't played XCOM:EU /EW, because Steam Vents in the old game worked similarly. As others have said, you can kick back the Avatar Project quite a bit. Indeed, a valid tactic is to wait until the progress bar maxes out. Then Bradford will give you a week or so to save the world. You can then hit a Black Site and knock the progress back by a couple of bars. Then ignore it until it fills again, and then hit the next facility, and so on. As long as you make sure to have at least one accessible facility at all times you can keep going like that nearly indefinitely. (And if you play with the War of the Chosen DLC there are even more options.) A lot of the strategic layer lessons from XCOM carried over with re-skins into XCOM2. In XCOM you needed to keep building satellites as fast as you could to keep increasing your income and to keep from losing the game. In XCOM2 that's re-skinned to Resistance Contacts. You need to keep making contact to get more supplies per month and to gain access to facilities that you can hit to keep the Avatar Project under control. Again, our boys here haven't played XCOM and don't have those lessons baked in, and thus are freaking out as those red bars fill in because they don't realize how to handle the problem. So yeah, for not having either XCOM or XCOM2 experience to draw on they're doing okay. They've made some mistakes but they aren't death spiraling nearly as much as they think they are.
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Feb 21, 2019 00:31
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I grant there's a lot of good to Suppression, but most of the time I'd rather kill an enemy than slow it's shooting. That said, there's a lot of ways to nuke or bypass cover, while Suppression is pretty close to unique, sharing a spot with what, Aid Protocol and Smoke Grenades? Both of which protect a defender rather than nerf an attacker the way Suppression does. And when you need Suppression, you really need it. Sectopods, ho! So in balance I agree with the majority for once. Take Supression.
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Feb 23, 2019 23:49
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Well as tragic as it is to lose anyone, especially our sixteenth and arguably greatest president, if you have to lose someone, that was the guy to lose. Rookies are expendable in every version of XCOM, from the '94 version on.
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Feb 26, 2019 01:08
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So yeah, take Threat Assessment.
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Mar 2, 2019 02:30
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I'm in the "Don't care how long the episodes go" camp. If they go long, they go long, no problem in my book.
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Mar 4, 2019 06:08
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So here's what happened with Severa on that early turn (spoilered for people who haven't seen the vid yet, Nat and Tea encouraged to read) Severa was on Concealed Overwatch, so she didn't shoot at first. The Stun Lancer moved around behind her and missed Ma with his lance. At that point the game re-checked LoS and Severa was revealed because the Lancer was now behind her cover...which, in turn, triggered her Overwatch which she used to murder the guy.
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Mar 12, 2019 00:38
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Notty posted:From my incredibly uninformed perspective, it seems that Nat is locked into the mindset that the only good defense is a good offense. From that perspective, things like the Mimic Beacon don’t seem appealing because it doesn’t directly aid you in killing the target, and both he and Tea seem loathe to allow the enemy to get a turn in the first place. From the sounds of the thread though, it seems like eventually they’ll run into something they can’t burn down in round or two of combat, so maybe then they’ll start looking at their defensive options? To be fair...in the early to mid-game they're correct. It IS better to kill your enemies than to have better defenses. It's all about the action economy. You want to have as many of your actions in play (hence the importance of squad size upgrades) and give your enemies as few actions as you can (which his also why the Frost Grenade is so OP). That's also why everyone hates the Alien Rulers...because they take the normal action economy and break it over their knee (or serpent lower body, or jet engine, as the case may be). It's also why its so important to try and face the enemy one pod at a time. If you can make sure every skirmish within a larger battle is 12 XCOM actions (squad of 6, 2 actions each) vs 6 ADVENT actions, then the fact that there are fifteen ADVENT total vs your six dudes doesn't matter as much. But as you correctly infer, we're rapidly approaching the point where there will be big enough enemies that killing them in one turn is difficult if not impossible. Especially if you don't have max level gear, which you almost certainly won't. Eventually, once everyone's a Colonel in power armor with plasma weapons, focusing down the really big poo poo (Andromedons, Gatekeepers, and especially Sectopods) quickly actually is possible. But with LTs, Caps, and maybe one Major with Magnetics? That's a tall order, and that's when purely defensive toys and skills like the Mimic Beacon really come into their own. jng2058 fucked around with this message at 22:24 on Mar 13, 2019 |
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Mar 13, 2019 22:20
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I gotta admit, it's pretty amusing to watch you guys logic out some of these things. ...even if you end up making the wrong choice because of a lack of relevant data. In this case Bladestorm is by far the better choice, because it lets you use forward placed Rangers to massacre Chryssalids, who are too fast and too dodgy to reliably take out with overwatch. But they don't know that since the death bugs haven't deigned to show themselves yet! It'll be fun seeing how that plays out down the line!
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Mar 14, 2019 00:55
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Mordja posted:Needs more scientists on that note, and visit the goddamn Black Market! Flying places barely takes any time, only scanning stuff does. Problem is, buying poo poo at the Market costs Intel and they're desperately low on that, certainly too low to by a new science geek right now.
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Mar 14, 2019 20:38
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Actually, that ADVENT Datapad is a relatively quick and easy way to score Intel, which you'll need for your next contact. After that Plated Armor is a decent next choice followed by Gauss Weaponry.
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Mar 16, 2019 01:52
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GeneX posted:Y'all realize Nat has a link to a poll where you can vote instead of posting them itc with your votes not counting, right? Sure, but that only lets you vote on the very next choice, and doesn't let you explain why. Explaining here allows us to give input on the next choices after that, which may or may not be voted on (probably won't, in fact), and let's us comment on why all you people jumping on Plated Armor in the poll are being inefficient. Because if you grab the Intel from the Datapad first you can start making Resistance Contact while waiting for Armor to get researched. By the time you've made contact and are ready for another Facility run, you'll have your Armor researched, the next Supply Drop will have hit and you can afford to BUY the armor and you're good to go. Probably be ready to rock in like 14-15 days, including the time it takes to pick up the Supplies. There is a chance the Intel in the Pad ain't enough to make Contact immediately, but that's a gamble no matter which research path you take. Doing Armor first means you're waiting, what, 9-10 researching days for the armor, 3-4 researching days for the Datapad, 5-6 days after that for the Contact itself? Call it 17-20 days or so. Much slower, and we've all seen how much Nat enjoys being time efficient, haven't we? And yes, I know the extra week spent going Armor first probably won't matter much if at all in the overall arc of the game....but Nat and Tea have established a very time efficient play style with regards to the Strategic layer of the game, so I feel it incumbent upon us, the audience, to support that play style when we can...which in this case means grabbing the Datapad first. We've just had a Guerrilla Op, so another won't pop for awhile, so the main risk you're taking if you do the Datapad first is that the next Retaliation Raid will hit before you finish researching Armor...but since you have to wait for the Supply Drop to be able to buy the new suits in any event, it's not that big an added risk. Okay, yes, you could mitigate those factors maybe by going on a pure Intel run at HQ and selling more poo poo to the Market, reducing your need for the Pad and the Drop, but then you aren't grabbing the Weapons Cache and are losing out on Alloys and Elerium that will start becoming more useful as time goes on. I was already cringing when they sold off some Alloys and Elerium at the last Black Market visit because I know they're creating bottlenecks for themselves later on when the good poo poo gets expensive in those resources. tl;dr - Going Datapad first lets you save time by making the next Contact at the same time as you're researching Plated Armor. jng2058 fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Mar 16, 2019 |
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Mar 16, 2019 17:02
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GeneX posted:I mean Yeah, why would we want to have interesting discussions about what's going on when we can just press a button on a poll and walk away? You're right, your way is indeed the more time efficient one. 
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Mar 16, 2019 19:43
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GeneX posted:dude, my entire point is that the posts saying "seconded" or "thirded" do not actually add to the thread beyond spam, there's nothing particularly interesting or discussion-worthy about them But...but I like it when people agree with me! Okay, fine, my apologies, I was perhaps being a touch oversensitive. Still say that doing the Datapad first is the better idea, though. 
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Mar 16, 2019 20:28
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You can play with the colors, the game auto changed Pete's color scheme to the Viper King default, but you can change them back or to whatever you like. I find all black looks pretty decent.  Also I can't believe they've dodged Chryssalids for so long! I was sure they'd have been death bugged by now!
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Mar 19, 2019 04:49
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Natural 20 posted:Added! Cloud Potato posted:Oh, that Shanty Pete! Yeah we need the "None of the Above" option on the poll!
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Mar 23, 2019 01:21
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For the record, I'm also voting Save for Armor!
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Mar 23, 2019 03:33
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So now Nat and Tea know why we all pushed to get the new armor....the extra HP is nice, sure, but the extra item slots? Those are a way better investment than anything in the GTS short of Squad size upgrades!
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Mar 27, 2019 03:03
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It's amusing to see Nat and Tea go through what we all did with our first X(-)Com...the inverse difficulty curve. The games are usually balls crushingly hard to start with but get progressively easier, especially if you play well (which our boys mostly have so far), as your technology and character ranks accelerate faster than the increasing alien difficulty, especially on Normal difficulty. That said, it'll be fun seeing them deal with an Archon who gets to actually DO something rather than just freeze and die, to say nothing of the Chryssalids and Sectopods to come! This is probably one of my favorite Let's Plays ever! 
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Mar 28, 2019 18:38
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Re: Hacking. Remember that the Skulljack boosts your hacking. Even with Emi sidelined, giving the 'jack to Ella would have helped her on the hacks she was doing this mission. Annoying McAnnoying is Central Officer Bradford.
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Mar 30, 2019 00:47
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SatansOnion posted:Ella uses her rifle to send aliens to the Ever After. +1
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Mar 31, 2019 01:07
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Speaking of Dark Events, I love that the Vigilance Dark Event activated, the enemy packs got the extended detection range, and it was so ineffectual that Nat and Tea didn't even notice it go into effect!
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Apr 2, 2019 03:23
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Bremen posted:"Do they just drop everything and prioritize the mimic beacon?" "No, that would be way too broken." I actually quit using the Beacon and Frost Bomb both because it makes the game too easy. Granted I just play on Commander most of the time, and would probably re-instate them if I ever felt the desire to go Legend, but still, those two items and a good Reaper from WotC in the hands of an experienced player really break the difficulty curve to bits.
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Apr 2, 2019 04:00
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Bremen posted:Reaper is basically serial that works with the sword. But the bonus with that is that since you're moving around swording people you don't have to worry about missing, so the progressive damage loss makes up for the fact that it would otherwise pretty much never end. Oh piffle, they aren't playing badly. They may not be playing optimally, but based on the information they have they're doing quite well. They've grasped the essential tactical lessons about cover, action economy, pod management, and what gear work best when. They also give a lot more thought to what they do on the strategy layer than most first time players. Cut 'em some slack.
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Apr 4, 2019 04:52
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Qrr posted:I'm surprised anyone voted for Deep Cover. I can't really imagine a scenario where it would be useful. I got a crossclass Deep Cover as a random ability on a Sniper. That actually convinced me to take Aim because every time she double moved she auto-hunkered and proc'ed the +20 to hit from Aim. On the other hand, that takes a great random roll to get that combo, and Untouchable has saved so many Rangers from injury or death over the various games I've played that it's pretty much an auto-pick.
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Apr 6, 2019 05:20
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Important tactical note that you guys seem not to have noticed: Sparks, like ADVENT MECs, don't benefit from cover.
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Apr 6, 2019 16:20
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So the thing about the Rocket Launcher that makes it nice is it's range. The thing can shoot nearly twice as far as a Grenade Launcher and two and half times as far as a thrown Grenade. True, as you noticed, you get no arc on the shot, but it does have 2 armor shred. They're respectable weapons. And they lead into the MUCH better Blaster Launcher down the line! To say nothing of Shredder weapons!
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Apr 9, 2019 01:32
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Dead Reckoning posted:I actually think Vigilance is one of the worst dark events, because it increases the chances of accidentally activating a pod, and accidental pod activation is one of the leading causes of soldier death. Well, they were complaining about how easy the game is...
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Apr 9, 2019 23:03
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So will this be the time that they finally run into everyone's favorite Death Bugs? I quite like the team in place and i don't want anyone to die, per say....but a lil something to knock 'em outta their complacency could be amusing to watch! Oh and Severa peeking her head out to watch when Emi was taking that Overwatch shot was just precious.
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Apr 11, 2019 00:30
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Notty posted:I wonder who the biggest single point of failure for them is at this point? Has to be either Pete or Emi, right? Who would be the bigger loss between those two? Emi. They've got Spag as a spare combat Ranger. What they haven't got is a Tech spec'ed Specialist, so Emi's replacement would have to get brought up from Rookie again. jng2058 fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Apr 12, 2019 |
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Apr 12, 2019 00:24
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Alas, Serial and Rapid Fire don't stack because if the first shot fails to kill anyone it therefore counts as ending the Serial. Each shot has to kill to get the next one on Serial.
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Apr 20, 2019 00:27
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Akratic Method posted:Sorry, Serial only works with regular shots. Your reading of the ability description was completely reasonable and that's XCOM's fault for not making its rules clear, but from a game balance perspective it would have been way too insanely good to allow combining it with special shot types so I get why it works that way. Rapid Fire is already so good they nerfed it with a 5-turn cooldown in the expansion. Yeah, but its such an edge case that it doesn't really come up. If you can kill them with one shot, as you need to for your Serial to go through, then why take the -15 to hit from Rapid Shot? I mean if you really have to kill a mind controlling Sectoid or something I guess going Rapid Shot with Serial on top so you can maybe go after other guys if you get him on the first shot, but if you miss that first shot (or do minimum damage and fail to kill it) you get the second one to try and clear it up....but if that's your situation, I'd rather save Serial for later turn, you know?
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Apr 20, 2019 00:44
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