Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

Pirate Radar posted:

I want this to be good, but it’s just crashing repeatedly for me. I also see people on the Steam discussion forums saying they made it farther but found that knights become wounded when leveling up and that certain abilities don’t work. Hilariously, there seems to be two ways flamethrowers can be busted in this game: instead of having their intended 45-degree arcs they either have 0-degree arcs and don’t fire at all, or accidentally have a 360-degree arc and roast everything in range, including friendlies. I’ll give it a bit and see if they can patch out the issues.

Yeah, it's a bit of a rough launch. But when it works it's pretty fun and good. Also seeing a giant tincan of a man shoulder-checking a giant statue right into someone's face will never get old.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

Unlucky7 posted:

I am a little confused on when the part targeting appears. Is it on Melee crits?

All crits. Purgators have a low-level skill that guarantees a ranged crit, which early on is useful to shut down some of The poo poo (death explosion, heavy stubber, voxcasters, dudes on overwatch...) that dealing with otherwise would pull you out of position. If you don't have the arc bug I'd even suggest picking a Psylancer to go with that, for the added range and ammo.

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

Popete posted:

So is this legit good? Looks neat but gamers seem to be very upset about Twitch drops so the Steam reviews are "mixed".

It's about as good as Mechanicus. Mechanicus was pretty drat good.

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

Phrosphor posted:

Am I missing something with the falchions? is +5% crit worth missing out of 50% parry?

For the base weapons you should prolly stick with hammers because 6 damage instead of 5 makes a big difference early on. The scepter can also be decent on a Justicar in termie armour who just focuses on being a target and distributing APs (you'll run into issues regenerating willpower though) - but I stick to the hammer anyway and Aegis when I need to.

After that it really depends what mastercrafted weapons you drop.

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

Kanos posted:

The low level enemies are really well implemented, IMO. A group of zombies or cultists is something you have to pay attention to, and they can annoy you and present a serious complication if they show up at a bad time or you play badly, but in most cases the basic human enemies are little sacks of willpower/extra turns that you can trivially slaughter en masse.

Yeah, that's my take on it as well. Once you've grokked how the game works, regular & grenz cultists, zombies and bolter CSMs are basically consumable packs unless you've severely hosed up and/or the mission lol'd at you by moving a whole bunch of patrols into you all at once just as you triggered reinforcements. And that's early game only.

Once you've got advanced classes and are starting to roll your way into OP gear they're not even there anymore.

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

Psycho Landlord posted:

All the big guys do that. Helbrutes especially.

I've also had a case where a blight drone I critted careened into a giant gas tank which killed both the blight drone and couple plague marines when it went off.

Papa Nurgle giveth, Papa Nurgle taketh away. It's all part of the big cycle, innit ?

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

Mechafunkzilla posted:

That's a victory, obviously

<Servitor> If *BLAMMING* a fellow guardsman for morale is cool and good, then perforce *BLAMMING* a planet full of guardsmen is cooler and gooder and will boost morale further. It follows that *BLAMMING* every planet is the coolest and goodest, therefore topping morale infinitely. That's just basic Machine Cult!.
Any observed discrepancy is probably due to an overlooked stack overflow. </S>

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

MJ12 posted:

To be fair, even the chuds thought that was way too extra and people generally quietly pretend that bit of lore doesn't exist

I wonder if the reason they went with Grey Knights is because Games Workshop is ludicrously extra about the 'purity of its IP' and I wouldn't be surprised if they said that if you went with Ultramarines you'd have to make it so that only your high ranked officer characters can be customized, everyone else is a generic mook who gets a bolter and power armor and that's it, or something wack like that.

I mean, this game is the spiritual sequel of a game where you get to gently caress around with Ultramarines...
(that was before the Ward days tho)

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

Bardeh posted:

I don't know if I'm just bad, but I'm (9 hours in) pretty much out of healthy marines to take to missions. Everyone is varying degrees of hosed up. Also I hate the UI for switching gear and marines - having to go in and out of menus makes it tedious and difficult to keep track of who I have and what they have equipped. This could all have gone on one screen, and drag and drop the equipment like an MMO inventory. Being able to see everything at a glance would make it much easier.

The key to not getting your marines hurt is to either
A) wiping out pods turn 1. Purgators have a neat power that applies vulnerability in a wide zone. Followup with grenades, teleportat attack, a heavy weapon barrage... Also get the "for 1 AP give someone else 3 AP" line on every justicar you've got, it's silly useful, in particular when you want your interceptor to trigger an execution to give 1 AP back to everyone (or 2 with a Chaplain) or
B) be in heavy cover AND far away. Long distance halves ranged damage. Heavy cover halves ranged damage. Both means zero damage. Also a frontman Justicar or Paladin in +armor termie suit with the +barrier line of skills can tank a chaos terminator to the face and still have armour left over.

If you can't figure out a way to do either (or the Bloom just gave a horde of plaguebearers 5 armor...), then think about backing away. Let the melees race at you while their shooty allies stay in cover, that will let you focus fire the idiots.

EDIT : oh, re: the menus, right click goes back to the previous submenu. Speeds things up a bit.

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

neonchameleon posted:

You missed out:
C) Terminator armour in general. Two armour might not seem like much but it really does prevent chip damage when you aren't mixing long range with heavy cover (which you can't always do). Also aegis shield.

D) Never taking overwatch damage or suppression fire. There are two easy ways to throw enemies out; an Interceptor teleporting in and hitting someone in the face and a Purgator with a Psilencer to disrupt them.

E) (Especially in the early game as it becomes much easier later) making sure you always have AoE weapons to hordebreak.

And as a rule of thumb I can't see many reasons I'd want an apothecary with a frag grenade and terminator armour over a justicar with a psycannon, terminator armour, and a healing servo skull. The Justicar's Honour of the Chapter buff is better than the support provided by the Apothecary probably until you (a) get an upgraded Iron Hand buff for an interceptor and (b) an Apothecarion skull so you don't have to have your medic keep up with your interceptor. My normal squad is 2-3 justicars, 0-1 interceptor, and 0-1 purgator.

All valid points as well (I tend to run 2 interceptors, but that's mostly because teleporting solves an infinite number of problems).

I was also pondering on the way to the shops, and I think it also helps to understand the various enemy AIs and MOs - they're all fairly predictable after a while. I might make an effortpost about that later.

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019
IMPORTANT : if you have the arc weapon bug (where psylancers and flamers alternate fire either have a 0 or 360 arc and are thus unusable), go into your Windows 10 regional settings and switch "Regional format" to English(UK). Now your weapons work.


No, I don't know why it works, but I vouch it does.

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

neonchameleon posted:

The problem with the Chaplain is that Litany of Hate feels like a "Win More" ability. Yes it may let you feel awesome sometimes - but if you can clear that much chaff you don't normally need the help while if you're actually facing hard opponents it will probably not help at all. And the rest of the litanies are nice but none of them change the tactical situation to give you extra options. Just to hit a bit harder or be a bit tougher (and if you want that bring a paladin). Chaplains are fun without being good (which is still better than apothecaries)

The Litany was underwhelming to me because past a certain point you don't really stun guys anymore, your weapons are strong enough to kill them before that happens (unless you're really crit specced I guess).

That was until I got a Librarian to go with the Chaplain. They have an AoE Huge Stun power. The combo is ridiculous.

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

BadLlama posted:

What is the threshold for your bros to be considered hurt? I've taken damage and come back just fine.

I would also like to know, but I've noticed that when it happens your dude's armour gets covered in little specks of blood (which do not disappear when healed) so there's a line to investigate and Science!

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

Angry Lobster posted:

Dumb question, are master crafted items randomly generated or is each item unique?

They are pregenerated and there's a tiered list (e.g. there's 3 versions of the termie armour that gives willpower, one for each req. level). As far as being unique, I would guess so but amn't sure. I haven't yet pulled the same item twice, in any event.

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

Zore posted:

I do wish we'd gone with a different Space Marine faction if for no other reason than Chain weapons are rad, power claws are cool as hell and the dumb Force weapons the Grey Knights almost exclusively use are boring.

I'm hopeful the game will have enough of a niche success that they keep declining the formula. "a few overly specialized dudes against the world" would be a perfect setup to run an eldar aspect warrior team against hordes of orks or IG f'r'instance - just replace armor with dodge and we're good to go. I suppose it would also work well with Tau, but those were after my time so I don't know much about them.

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

Kobal2 posted:

I would also like to know, but I've noticed that when it happens your dude's armour gets covered in little specks of blood (which do not disappear when healed) so there's a line to investigate and Science!

It appears to be "taking two hitpoint hits in the same turn"

EDIT : two as in two separate instances of taking HP damage, not 2 points of damage
EDIT2 : going under a given HP threshold also seems to trigger it
EDIT3: gently caress it, I don't get it. It might just be a roll whenever you take HP damage.

Kobal2 fucked around with this message at 08:40 on May 12, 2022

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019
nvm

Kobal2 fucked around with this message at 10:49 on May 13, 2022

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019
I mean, 2AP for 3WP is still kind of a no-brainer (or at least something you can use often, especially if you have the "Prognosticators = +1 WP per Warp Overload" research thingy). 3AP for 5WP is a harder sell but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

Collapsing Farts posted:

Yeah ok, the Paladin force lightning blast AoE is ridiculously good. it does so much dmg :psyduck:

I now have 3 paladins just nuking anything on screen down in 1 round

Fun fact : the libarian has the same power.
Except it's not range limited.

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

Pierson posted:

I think what happens is when the corruption on a planet is high enough it triggers a big mission where you have to destroy a chaos gate and if enough gates are left standing the game ends. I don't know for sure but the way the Inquisitor was talking and the cutscene that was playing gave a pretty big "this is the death timer, do something about it" vibes.

I was actually surprised to fail a Bloom mission once - they don't directly tell you but those missions ARE timed (the timer is on the objective tracker). That's what those "delay the bloomspawn emitting for one turn" green vents are about. I couldn't figure it out, at first I thought they were to prevent the big artillery flower from shooting but that emphatically did not work as expected.

Collapsing Farts posted:

speaking of loving up planets: what does the exterminatus missiles actually do? Do they just remove a planet from the system? How am I supposed to be using them

Exterminatus eliminates all corruption from a planet (and it also says it blows up any prognosticar linked to the planet ; but I'm not sure if that means the travel links or whether it *actually* destroys a limited resource. I was too much of a coward to try it out and I'm playing Ironman so can't try at not cost, will do it before final mission for sure). Basically you want to do it to planets that have reached max corruption and are outside network before you get hosed by a chaos gate opening there while you're on the other side of the sector and won't make it in time. It's a preventive measure, not a reactive one.

Kobal2 fucked around with this message at 14:45 on May 17, 2022

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

bamhand posted:

You're not missing out on Chaplains. They're kind a one trick pony. It's a powerful trick but requires a pretty particular set up.

I mean, even without that one trick, the "massive armour for everyone" and "get refunded your psiblasts/force attacks" chants are useful as well. Plus the chaplain himself is extradurable so he makes a good diversion while your naked interceptors get to turning people to red mist left and right.

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

Zephro posted:

I'm on the fence about this. It sounds like it has the same problem as Mechanicus, where your dudes get so powerful by the end that the game is a cake-walk. Is that fair?

Bane of all XCom-likes, really. I can't really think of a single one where the endgame isn't just a leisurely victory lap, no matter how much poo poo the endgame throws at you. I feel like it's a just reward for eating poo poo throughout the game (although IMO Chaos Gate is pretty easy right off the bat, once you've grokked how it works)

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

Sipher posted:

Random event took my top three guys for SIXTY DAYS, goddamn.

I'd been very careful about spending req. on items, taking only the bestest, most Can't Miss This ones and always always trying to bank 10 before the grandmaster report.
On the fateful day of the report when I had reached rank V in each category and was almost guaranteed godlike items after every mission in the runup to the endgame, Kai threw a pissy fit and blocked me from the armory for 60 days.

Old fucker.

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

NmareBfly posted:

I'm not 100% sure about that but it seemed to line up. If someone else knows what that number is, say so lol.

I'm liking this a lot, probably in middle / latish game? haven't done any of the demon missions yet but I'm sure I'll get some soon.

My main real complaint so far is a lack of strategic info a lot of the time.

What I would *really really* like to know is "how long is it going to take to travel to point B ?". Often I have had cases where I had to guess whether I could make it to a second mission if I did this or that one first ; or whether I had time to sail around a warp storm instead of straight through it. Kind of annoying.

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

Max Wilco posted:

Oh cool, a Chaos Gate Daemonhunters thread.

I haven't picked up Daemonhunters yet, but I've been playing the original Chaos Gate on-and-off for a while now. Has anyone here played through it?

Not "through", but yeah I liked it a lot back then. I tried to make it run recently but it's a giant pain in the arse without some form of emulation (which is its own giant pain in the arse)

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

NmareBfly posted:

Now suppression, for whatever reason, does absurd damage even at long range.

IF you do something. You can just stay put.
(or teleport away. Or punch the guy in the face. Or throw a grenade/disruption power at him. Or drop a statue in his face.)

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

Olanphonia posted:

Any advice for builds and the like or that is really unnecessary?

Either go all in on stuns on your entire team ; or don't bother at all.

Having a source of at-will crits (either ranged, or teleport+melee) on your teams at all times is essential.

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

Mordja posted:

Dreadnought

EVEN IN DEATH I STILL SURF.

gently caress YES gently caress YES gently caress YES.

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019
Any opinion on the Techmarine ? So far I've found him pretty underwhelming, not quite sure how to use him (beyond his ability to keep the dread healed up)

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019
Man, y'all weren't joking about the Technophage missions being tuned up. Double packs of 5 marines, including 2 meltas (with krak grenades) day 100 while I'm still on generic equipment, cool, cool, cool cool cool cool cool.

Am I just... not supposed to touch those ever, or... ?

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

Captain Oblivious posted:

Use the Plasma Servitors massive knockback to corner pocket idiots into pits all day

That was excellent advice, thank you (with the caveat that it seems to generate zero XP ? Not a huge matter but something to keep in mind when you can avoid doing so, hilarity notwithstanding).

It has also come to my attention that heavy bolter servitors can fire *infinite* overwatch shots, any time an enemy takes an action within the cone (that is, multiple times per enemy model should they activate multiple times within the cone in a given turn). Plaguebearers and fuckwits with their arms shot off emphatically do not like it when heavy bolter goes BRRRRR.

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

Captain Oblivious posted:

Technophage missions are designed for having the Dreadnought as a fifth character and they waited way too long to give you the Dreadnought. Biggest problem with this dlc is the pacing is all off and it makes character progression real fucky.

The Dreadnought doesn’t join until post craftworld and then is stuck with basic tier 1 gear until you complete all three excavation missions. I’m getting close to my third Reaper kill everyone is swimming in tier 3 gear and I still have no idea what unlocks Dread tier 3 gear.

Tech Marines are stuck with tier 1 gear until post craftworld, rendering them kinda garbage.

The content is good but how it’s gated is all wrong.

To be fair, the Dread is a brick shithouse even with tier 1 gear (provided you keep anything that strips armour the hell away from it ; but then "poo poo that permanently strips armour" tends to be your top 1 murder priority at all times anyway).

But yeah, making Tphage missions pop up before the dread is on the team is absolutely some bullshit (I bashed my Ironman forehead against them SO HARD. I didn't realize you'd a) get the dread as a permanent member b) it could come on non-scripted missions). Especially since the early game typically doesn't allow you much flexibility in choosing missions. And them always boosting pox by 2 or 3 is mean on top of that.

I think they waaaay overestimate how early most players do the craftworld. Do they think people beeline that poo poo ?

EDIT : also, unrelated but having started many, many Ironman campaigns : there's WAY too many Purgator traits that improve melee attacks they do not give even a token poo poo about, and you always seem to roll those. It's uncanny.

Kobal2 fucked around with this message at 09:01 on Dec 12, 2022

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

Mordja posted:

So, how'd things shake out with the DLC? Worth getting for the added variety? I knew before it came out that the Dread was only for special missions so that's not really a disappointing factor or anything.

The bad :
- it's weirdly/badly paced (huge difficulty spike before you get the dread, which you can only get after the Craftworld ; then it takes very long for the dread/the techmarine to get any gear upgrades)
- the techmarine is kind of rear end mostly. More a novelty than anything.

The good :
- new enemy types are cool and relieve the "same mission/pods all the time" syndrome a little ; some are goddamn menaces (marines with meltas...)
- the scripted missions are all kinds of tense, I really liked them
- the dread makes you feel like your cock is huge

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

Popete posted:

Is the dreadnought expansion worth getting? I read it added some really difficult encounters or something.

It is worth getting just for the increased enemy/map/mission variety but yes, because of the way it is structured it does make the game more difficult, esp. the early game.

Basically you only get access to the dread after doing the Eldar Craftworld mission ; but made-for-the-dread missions will pop from the get go. Those are basically undoable without the dread, so you can't do 1/3rd of the random missions that crop up before the Craftworld unlocks anymore (also you kinda have to rush doing that instead of slowly building up to it and open up the "real" game when you're good and ready for it, which is when the game becomes a lot more hectic).

After that, Techpriest and Dreadnought gear upgrades are way behind regular gear upgrades which keeps them behind on the curve compared to enemy ramp-up (although the base Dread is so frickin' powerful, it's less of an issue. Techpriests absolutely suck as a result however).

Another thing that makes the game harder in general is that enemies who can permanently strip armour off your goons through various means have been added to the general mix. You have less leeway to mess up your turns in general IMO, and gate closing missions are *really* no joke now.

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019
I really, really REALLY wish that once you've detected a blip, the UI showed you which squares will trigger it, like XCOM2 does.

That is all.
It's so annoying to have to reload a turn half a dozen times to figure out which squares are lava while you're trying to finish off an encounter...

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

I R SMART LIKE ROCK posted:

got my first assassin, Callidus, and they're fun. all their abilities are on cooldowns instead of costing WP. so you're encouraged to use them often to keep up momentum

Yeah, they're all like that. And all of their CDs tick up on kills (including kills on the 1HP little shits that some plague units revive when they have nothing better to do). Other assassin factoids : they don't trigger overwatch or suppression at all ; and they don't count as Knights so you can't use For the Chapter or the teleport stratagem on them. They do still get 1AP on executions however.

So far, what I've seen/used :

Vindicare can precision target on a 3T cooldown, bleeds on crits, ignores half cover, has a "y'all can't shoot me !" ability on a 2T cooldown that doesn't cost AP and last but not least can simply erase any organic target on a 15T cooldown, no questions asked..

Eversor is a melee beast that uses HP instead of cooldowns, and heals on kills for a fraction of the victim's HP. They also explode on death but since all assassins only have the one life, it's not a very useful power. Other than that they can give themselves 1AP, teleport around inflicting large amounts of Bleed, immediately trigger a guy's bleed in melee and disable a guy in melee for one turn.

Callidus is kind of meh - they can transform into an enemy for 1AP which makes them untargettable (also won't trigger pods) but they don't reveal FoW in this mode. They also have a PBAE confusion and decent-ish melee damage.

Cullexus is the strangest : they work with WP but don't generate any, instead they'll suck up your guy's WP when they use some. They can close reinforcement gates in melee, and gain as much armor as they have WP at the end of a turn. They can also silence psykers, which, eh. Other than that they don't seem to do a lot of damage. Seems gimmicky as gently caress, maybe the later powers have more oomph.


As for gear, they regrettably use the same system as the Dreadnought and don't really generate more, so keeping multiple assassins on par with gear is a challenge (esp. since the dread should probably get priority)

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

Deptfordx posted:

So I finally got the drat thing to stop crashing all the time.

Should I be playing a first game on easy like Grey Hunter is doing in the LP?

I'm only a couple of hours in and it's already noticably getting harder. Does it ramp up super-hard?

Results vary greatly. I'm at a stage when Hard feels correct to me *most* of the time (I don't roll on everything effortlessly, but it's not frustrating) and then a hell-mission happens and everything goes to absolute poo poo.

So after many frustrating restarts I dialed it back to Normal. I roll over everything effortlessly... and then a hell mission happens and everything still goes to absolute poo poo.

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

wins32767 posted:

What are the hell missions that you're struggling with?

Not one in particular.
Last OH gently caress THIS moment was a "defend the servitors" Technovirus one. Turns out letting four pods coalesce onto one station while your split-in-teams-of-two knights deal with the pods attacking the other two stations is not good. Well, it's good actually, it worked fine, just as a million poxwalkers and their 1HP spawns born out of clean, grass-fed guardsmen is pretty much fine, it's just a high action turn.

UNLESS the RNG decides that they get +5 armor. For 2 turns. Each.

Just as they're on top of you and you're about to unleash Hell.

So long story short they (and the further pods because THE SPAWNS KEEP COMING) killed everyone. And the Dread. Then the 3 pods of back-up marines that spawned while the boys were busy sucking their chest wounds or smth killed everyone AGAIN.

Long story shorter : why dont' we have the option to just peace out of missions ?! Surely the Emperor can't protect THAT much.

Kobal2 fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Jul 31, 2023

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

Captain Oblivious posted:

Disruption shuts off all of his abilities and

........ well see, now I know that. gently caress. (I've beaten him the hard way a number of times now...)

MJ12 posted:

The Culexus trick is that the warp charge for their ranged attack adds damage equal to their current willpower, which means they can, with the right mods and enough willpower gain, effectively annihilate even very beefy enemies for a net -1 WP (-1 AP -2 WP for the attack, +1 AP for spending WP, +1 WP for getting a kill), which also reduces the Warp Surge meter. They're very weird but can be shockingly powerful if you charge 'em up enough by spending WP a lot.

Yeah, now that I've had the leisure to try them for real, I think they might be the most busted of them all. I've got one running on 15 WP and she's an absolute menace, erasing people left and right AND it doesn't matter if she's exposed because at the end of the day she's got more armour than the Dreadnought AND she can do all of that without line of sight anyway ?!!! I've refrained from upgrading her helmet from the tier I one with 15 range - since all of the damage comes from willpower anyway, they don't need further boosts there. Just gimme the "big fat delete anything anywhere" button to slam down.

And it's not like the "downside" is even one, because spending willpower to clean pods quickly is what you do in this game. She shines even more in Dreadnought missions, since the dread is another source of spent willpo that keeps gaining more.

I've also experimented with some more weird poo poo in this run. Some is bad (I still don't know what to do with Purifiers, or flamers for that matter) but the big highlights were :
- the Dread with the Lascannon tree, the tier 2 Lascannon (with 7 ammo) paired with a techmarine running the "give mechanicals +2 dmg on autos" buff (and ideally the support fire servitor to boot). The opening move of fights becomes : move dread in, hit something for 7-10 damage (or let rip a heavy flamer cone), then sit like a turret. Doesn't matter if your knights are taking 1 dmg potshots into heavy cover with dinky little bolters when they're followed by a chunky 6 dmg lazor and 2 dmg mini-melta. 48 passive damage to spread around is no joke.
- Psylancer Interceptor. I know, WHAAAT ?! right ? But pair that little fucker with a Purgator running the "delete all of your ammo for +1 dmg/2 ammo on someone else's next shot" buff. Give *that* dude a boltgun with 8 base ammo, both Purgator skills that increase ammo, and a +ammo passive item. Hit your Interceptor with that good poo poo, then let him teleport right behind enemy lines and let rip the cone fire. Chunks everywhere, very satisfying. If you run into hard targets, you can also do buff, reload, Interceptor takes a potshot from range for big damage, rebuff, Interceptor takes a second buffed shot.
- Psycannon on Justicars. I slept on those, but in Termie armor they can still carry melee weapons with them. And since Justicars are basically there to give everybody else APs anyway, having an off-hand weapon that deletes cover on a regular shot is handy. Would have been even better back when AoE kills gave 1 WP each of course, but very good still.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

Alctel posted:

God I'm playing on normal and getting my arse kicked

For reference I completed XCOM on classic/ironman but this game seems so much harder

In the early game, Justicars are what you want - your ranged damage is bad, your heavy weapons guys don't have all of the grenades to delete cover with etc... so you're better served running into melee. But since your melee DPS doesn't have the +AP on crits, +AP on teleport skills yet they're not super efficient. Once you get there your Interceptor(s) will take care of business, especially if you luck into the "+50% focus" passive item. Before that happens though, you want your team to run 2 Justicars who are only there to feed everyone else actions, and you want to run Daemon Hammers because they do +2 damage on a psystrike instead of +1. Get in their face and don't stop swinging until only paste remains.

Another important trick to figure out is that when you're in melee with a ranged unit, their turn will consist only of swinging at your guy, moving away and then maybe healing or laying down some crud/overwatch but never actually firing. Since plague marines only do 2 dmg with their knives, parking a Termie next to one is very good early game crowd control. Cultists don't even disrupt you on their melee strikes, so you get a free hit on them as they run away !

Yet another thing of note is how turns/buff durations work. Say you start your turn out of combat. Your apo buffs your Interceptor for 3 turns. Now you run into a pod all all your APs are refunded - but it's still the same turn. You kill them all, and your APs are refunded AGAIN - but it's still turn 1. Find another pod, and it's still gonna be turn 1. Also helps with mitigating Warp Surges.
(Be warned however that the expansions added missions types that do not refund APs on combat start/end - the Tentarus hives, Servitor defense, Cruiser strikes all run on "normal turn-based squad tactics" logic)

Basically, this game is about being super aggressive rather than all patiently tactical and poo poo à la XCOM.

(EDIT : also, if a knight dies, he dies. They can all die a bunch of times. It's fine. Just get the medicae upgrade that makes them even better when they die first.)

Kobal2 fucked around with this message at 13:44 on Aug 26, 2023

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply