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Hey, I just caught up with this LP! Is it too late to sign up to be a soldier?
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Apr 27, 2020 10:28
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FairGame posted:It is, yeah. Sorry. The roster kinda is what it is at this point. Oh well! Was hoping to be a psi soldier and make the late game stupid.
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Apr 27, 2020 23:30
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Man, there's only one Sitrep I hate as much as Surgical, and that's, I think Low Profile? The one that doesn't like you come in with any units higher than Sgt. rank. And that one is only really bad if you get it late game. There ARE good Sitreps. Some of them can give really great bonuses, too. Is it just a Legendary difficulty thing that you're far more likely to get the negative ones? EDIT: By the way, I hope you don't leave the alien rulers on the sidelines. They can be annoying, but they can be managed, and the rewards you get for them can be amazing. Or at least really funny. Gothsheep fucked around with this message at 06:31 on Apr 28, 2020 |
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Apr 28, 2020 06:23
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I'm actually surprised you didn't bring a Mimic Beacon or two for that Surgical sitrep. If the game is going to throw bullshit at you, you're well within your rights to throw bullshit right back at it. As for Spectres, I just don't understand what their role is or why they were needed. An enemy should have a playstyle they encourage or counter. Like how Mutons will seek out heavy cover and throw grenades, but aren't terribly mobile or accurate, encouraging you to spread out your units and make use of flanking. Sectoids push you to keep your units together and move aggressively, since they have a lot of disabling abilities which are reversed when they're killed and a melee vulnerability. Vipers punish you for letting units get too isolated or grouping up too close, and do low amounts of hard to avoid damage and status effects which reward you for leaning more on healers. Exc. The only thing Spectres really do is encourage you to immediately fall back and form into a big overwatch ball, which I thought was a playstyle that the designers wanted to discourage because it was dumb and boring.
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Apr 30, 2020 08:42
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FairGame posted:I don't think this needs to be spoiled. And hey, my thread, so if I hosed it up that's on me! EMP bombs are more useful late-game, when you also have The shadow chamber so you can see if the enemies in a mission warrant giving up a more generally useful grenade for it.
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May 1, 2020 01:00
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Akratic Method posted:I just noticed Sugar Addict is a genius! You're getting great luck with the combat intelligence on your special troops. Yeah, no kidding. I literally didn't know a heroic unit could be anything but Standard. I've never seen it.
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May 1, 2020 01:30
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silentsnack posted:
I mean, if you're concealed then they'll only be able to see you if you don't have cover from them. So they only see you if they walk into a flanking position or you aren't in cover. But once you aren't concealed, it goes back to the X-COM 1 method of 'a pod activates the moment you get vision on it' and since they get a free move (or rarely, Overwatch) when activating, if you activate late into your turn they can get their free move, then move again on their action, and then fire, all before you can do a single thing about them.
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May 1, 2020 08:26
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Sounds about right, though I swear to god I am the loving king of activating pods with my last movement. If there is one square on the map where I can put a guy so he will see through two windows and a doorway to spot an enemy on the other side of a building when I thought I was safe, I will find it with the last guy I move every single time.
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May 1, 2020 10:48
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Either way, watching the Hunter get completely distracted from his mission by killing Lost and only remembering why he was actually there when it was too late to stop them was pretty funny. You also got a really rough draw on his weakness being hits from higher ground, considering his standard MO is to grapple to the highest point in the map and snipe from there. I sense a lot of grenades blowing up the floor underneath his feet in his future.
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May 2, 2020 04:51
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NeverHelm posted:The Hunter, while not nearly as annoying to fight as the Assassin, is still high up there on the "Xcom-BS" scale. Depending on his traits, he can be a real nightmare to deal with - such as one with Templar weakness, but Melee immunity and Shadowstep. I got that once. This Hunter's pretty high up there in the BS department too. Wow, I honestly thought the game would not let two directly contradicting traits to happen on a Chosen. Specifically the Immune to Melee/Vulnerable to Templars, one. I did get a Chosen that was Immune to Melee/Vulnerable to Close Range though, which was annoying. But at least I always had the shotgun option. As for the Chosen personalities, the Hunter is definitely the most awful personality-wise. He's sarcastic and cracks wise, talks back to the others and even mouths off to the Elders, so I initially thought I'd like him the best, but as you get to know him I quickly decide he was the biggest gently caress of them all. I only ever felt the Assassin was dangerous, and that's just because you were nearly guaranteed to take a hit from her in her opening attack because of her stupid movement range and stealth. On the other hand, I've only played this game on Normal difficulty, so it's entirely possible the other two ramp up significantly as the difficulty does. Still, if it'd been the Assassin and not the Hunter who showed up, I'm not sure you could have gotten out of this mission.
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May 2, 2020 09:16
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NeverHelm posted:For all their crazy stunts, lone Chosen are fairly non-threatening. They often waste their turns doing things like summoning Advent meatshields or the Hunter's Tracking shot, which really just forces you to move (which you would usually do anyway most of the time). It's when they attack along with something else dangerous like a group of Mutons or ADVENT lancers that they become problematic, since you can't use use the full force of your superior action economy to beat them up. That's one of the reasons why the Assassin is easily the most dangerous of the three. They have two phases to them: Pre-activation and post-activation. Pre-activation each has their own thing that they'll sit around doing. With the Hunter, it's those Tracking shots that can pierce walls but all you have to do is...move, so they're really easy to avoid. The unrevealed one does an unrevealed thing. But the Assassin spends her pre-activation time charging you in stealth, which means she'll attack you on her terms instead of letting you decide when to start the fight proper.
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May 2, 2020 10:11
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Man, you got really lucky with that Muton deciding to suppress rather than just murder someone. Aiming the rocket launcher might be a bit easier if you tried rotating the camera. I've found that can help a lot to find the perfect pixel. I am also a little disappointed you got Guardian Angels. I've never seen an Ambush (thanks to that order) and I was hoping to see you handle one. Same with rescues. I'm actually secretly hoping you get someone captured so I can see you do a mission to free them.
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May 3, 2020 04:36
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There is one good thing you get from researching Alien Encryption. You get to build the Shadow Chamber, which gives very useful information.
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May 3, 2020 07:40
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FairGame posted:It's true, but considering the power cost there's no reason to do it now. See psionics. Yeah, completely understandable. It was thanks to this LP that I finally looked up what the best thing to build on a power node was and found out that actually building a power relay is the sucker's move. It just made such sense that I never even questioned it.
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May 3, 2020 11:42
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Seraphic Neoman posted:
They do different things. Left Behind puts the risk of Capture on every mission. Guardian Angels removes the risk of Ambush.
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May 3, 2020 21:57
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I've always been able to assign the 'extra safety' slot to negate the capture, but that could be because I play on Tiny Baby difficulty and not the Bigboy Pants difficulty Fairplay is on.
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May 4, 2020 00:07
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Normally if you were running with the prescripted missions, one of the missions to introduce the factions and the Chosen would also be a Capture rescue, but without that, I doubt we'll see them as well unless Fair gets really unlucky with the Chosen. I thought it might happen with an 11th hour Tranq Shot from the Hunter on the last mission, but then he decided killing Lost was more fun.
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May 4, 2020 00:20
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Honestly, you probably would have regretted not dealing with Cobra Commander there if you had gotten away with it. He'd start showing up in random missions, probably when you had a *much* worse setup and no chance to isolate and beat the poo poo out of him. This was basically a free chance to activate him when he's nice and isolated and blast half his health off. Activating him and three other pods wasn't great, but nuking him down here and now was the better move.
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May 5, 2020 05:00
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I haven't watched the second update yet, but I was really amused by the 'Bradford wouldn't shut up' bug on that mission. "Central, we're getting swarmed! We need an evac!" "So there I am, titty in my left hand, titty in my right, with more booze in me than downtown Detroit..." "It's no good, his radio is stuck on 'transmit'. Dig in and fight!"
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May 5, 2020 22:20
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I always loved the intro speech the Assassin gives for this mission. "I warned you I was coming, but I see you did nothing to prepare!" "Actually, we built a bunch of of long-range turrets." That's some really bad damned luck with that hill, though. That's going to do more than just neuter the turrets, it's going to make your whole defensive line have trouble, and give your enemies high ground when attacking. (Edit: Since this is a new page, there were not one, but two updates today on the previous page!)
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May 5, 2020 23:19
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Oh hey, FairGame, I've been meaning to ask if you've tried the Long War of the Chosen mod yet, and if so what did you think?
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May 7, 2020 18:36
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FairGame posted:I have not. I've seen Beaglerush and jolnrbs play Long War and came away generally unimpressed, and that seems to be the general feeling of the community as well. I don't begrudge someone who likes it, just as I'd hope no one thinks I'm crazy for thinking XCOM Long War is the greatest thing since sliced bread. But the community-built stuff for XCOM2 just doesn't do anything for me, though I admit maybe i'd feel differently if I were playing instead of watching. That's fair. I also watched an LP of someone playing it and also came away unimpressed, but my experience on X-COM is a lot more limited. Also, I really appreciate the way you teased losing the frost grenade really early. Now I feel a huge amount of tension for whoever has to carry the cursed item into battle.
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May 7, 2020 19:28
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eating only apples posted:Mediocre, my rear end! gently caress you council guy Yeah, when you play this game, you have to get used to telling Spokesman to go suck Muton dick sometimes. Some months are about launching non-stop assaults against the aliens, and some months are about bunkering down, consolidating our gains and bolstering our forces for the next assault. You know jackshit about tactics, Smokesy, that's why you had to bust my rear end out of psychic prison to lead this show. (EDIT: While it's true you probably don't want two specialists except for very specific missions, Psi Soldiers also use ARs, so it isn't necessarily a bad call to have two modded rifles if you aren't going to build the Bolt Caster.) Gothsheep fucked around with this message at 02:22 on May 9, 2020 |
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May 9, 2020 02:15
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Akratic Method posted:Thank god for mind shields, I guess. That mission would have been a total wipe for sure if Megane had panicked. Yeah, Mind Shield was definitely the MVP of that mission. I am a little worried you're going to get slowed down enough by those losses to have to make some tough decisions about slowing down Avatar progress vs. Chosen research.
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May 9, 2020 03:37
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I remember in the early parts of this LP when the Chosen showing up alone was enough to immediately force an evac on a mission. Now it's just like "Oh hey Assassin, thanks for pausing the mission countdown timer! Here, have several melee attacks to the face." I do love when Chosen weaknesses double-dip, too. Close-range and Templar, Explosive and Reaper, or multiple attacks and Skirmisher. Also, I don't think this was ever explained about Shredder, so as a quick aside, the amount of armor you shred is equal to the weapon's tier. So the tier 2 shotguns being used right now will shred 2 armor.
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May 10, 2020 00:10
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I love the snake suit. I won't go into what it does until we see it in the LP, but it's got some uses I love, and it looks...Well it looks.
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May 11, 2020 05:54
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I agree Lids are awful and frustrating, but I think what they did in THIS mission might have been a bug. I have...never seen that.
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May 12, 2020 00:44
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Donkringel posted:Thanks for this! If that's the LP I'm thinking of, he did abuse the absolute gently caress out of some of the weapons and tactics that were changed in WotC to not be so absurdly exploitable in order to make some things that should have been real trouble into cakewalks.
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May 12, 2020 07:47
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Grapplejack posted:
Yeah, I'm surprised you're not pushing Experimental Ammo more, too. When I play, I consider AP ammo absolutely vital in the latter half of the game. Some Venom rounds would also make your day a lot more sunny.
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May 12, 2020 21:25
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So, serious question. Given the recent losses, what do you figure the chances are, percentage wise, that you'll still be able to pull out a win from this campaign?
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May 13, 2020 06:28
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Dead Reckoning posted:
I admit whenever I play, I use the option to double all mission timers. Most of the timers are alright, but some are just completely unfair, and it is not fun to have a mission where you get 4 turns to haul your whole team completely across a map and then have to fight 3 pods at once because they were all by the objective and you don't have time to take it slow.
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May 13, 2020 09:05
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Dead Reckoning posted:E: I definitely would have gone for Solace over Insanity. Bringing a mobile jammer that can no-sell the Warlock's most annoying abilities (and occasionally shoot a gun) is crazy useful in his sanctuary assault. Yeah, you also had access to Void Rift and Soul Lance, which are two of the psionic's best abilities. You get Void Rift and Dominate on a Psi, and they're already going to be a major asset to the team.
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May 14, 2020 04:35
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I'm curious about something. If you use Threat Assessment on a panicked soldier, will they still take their overwatch shot?
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May 14, 2020 22:42
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Grapplejack posted:It's 100% worth getting the munitions expert one, mostly to replace your grenades with acid bombs, because those are infinitely better than plasma grenades. The one bad thing about acid bombs is that they don't destroy cover. My typical Grenadier loadout is acid bomb and either a plasma or a flash, depending on what I expect to be facing.
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May 15, 2020 00:39
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bpACH posted:
Oh, is that why that happened? I'd assumed it was just random if you lost the region entirely or just some of the region's value.
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May 15, 2020 06:52
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Robert Deadford posted:FTFY. Gatekeepers aren't mechanical, they're big psionic blobs stuffed inside a metal shell. AP rounds do a number on them, though. They can also be mind controlled when you get that ability, which is fun whenever you can pull it off. EDIT: Wait, do Gatekeepers take bonus damage from Bluescreen rounds? I could have sworn I tried that in my game and saw it not work! Whelp, shows what I know. Gothsheep fucked around with this message at 01:30 on May 17, 2020 |
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May 17, 2020 00:08
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Right, I looked it up. Gatekeepers are hit by Bluescreen and EMP, but not by the bonus damage that Combat Protocol does against mechanical. That's what got me confused. EDIT: Also according to the wiki, flashbangs and gas grenades do hit it like normal, but if it's in a gas cloud it will try not to move.
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May 17, 2020 10:09
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megane posted:In case anyone's wondering, you're not really missing anything. The Reapers and Skirmishers hate each other, so you drag them into a meeting and shoot Lost together until they like each other. The Assassin shows up and captures the Skirmisher guy, so you have to go rescue him later. I mean, it is a great mission, and a good introduction to the Reapers, Skirmishers, Lost and Chosen.
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May 17, 2020 23:55
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Dead Reckoning posted:Unrelated, the Warlock is complete bullshit on those missions. Due to turn order, he summons spectral zombies, they prime rupture, then you suck up your chair cushion while you hope the resistance guys don't kill the primed zombie next to your troops. Repeat. Or just runs into the middle of the big cluster of civilians, who don't run away, so you'll like like 4-5 civilians and there is absolutely nothing you could have done about it.
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May 19, 2020 01:35
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 15:05 |
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Grapplejack posted:Wayfinding is unironically one of the best things they added in xcom 2 imo. You rarely use it but when you do it's the greatest thing on earth. The WAR suit is also where I think Blast Padding starts to become not a garbage pickup. Because sources of armor stack, you can have 1 from Blast Padding, 2 from WAR Suit, and 1 more from a vest item, giving a Grenadier 4 armor, plus 2 grenades and a heavy weapon. Give them the Shredder or Flamer heavy weapon and they become a really solid frontliner for your group, with the armor and heavy weapon potential of a Spark, but able to take cover and also lob grenades.
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May 20, 2020 01:36
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