|
Aww man, I missed the start of a Chaos Gate Daemonhunters LP. I absolutely adore this game as a massive SRPG fan, and all the quality of life they put in compared to the contemporary of the modern XCOM. I probably played far too much of it as a result but hey.... No hit chances, cover and distance give stacking damage penalties - great! Means you can just take the shot anyways if the unit only needs 1 health or something to die. No taking bad losses due to missing on high hit %s. Overwatch being directional - great! More interactive to dodge the enemy overwatch and you have to think about where to place yours if you want to use it yourself. Skill trees being more interesting - they can be balanced bad at times, but still way more interesting to build your marines - great! And all that stuff you mentioned about the information they give you about group locations and Marines restoring their AP on view is just fantastic. Really helps to keep the pace up for it. I'm a little sad that you didn't show off any of the passives that your starting marines have, some of those passives can REALLY change how strong a certain build is on them or not. As for the Duty Unbroken DLC, it's a mixed bag. I do think it's overall a benefit to the game, but the complaints the reviews bring up are reasonably valid. The Dreadnought is meant to be brought to special higher difficulty missions, but in pretty much any game, the special higher difficulty missions actually appear earlier than when you can possibly get it, which is a really stupid alignment. The higher difficulty missions also appear when the game naturally raises the difficulty on its own, so not a great concurrence of factors. The missions ARE doable without it, especially with the assassins DLC because one of the assassins is an absolute early game powerhouse. But.... it shouldn't be like that in the first place. Funny story, on my first DLC run, I actually got the Dreadnought killed on the first of those randomized higher difficulty missions I brought it to, and never actually ended up making another one that entire run. Because of another mechanic.... where it takes servitors to repair. You know, the things that are required to repair your ship. And it's stupidly EXPENSIVE. The Dreadnought does bring some good power to missions, but because of that factor, it's use is counterintuitive to some degree. It's best to treat it like a glass cannon that you avoid allowing to take injuries at all costs. It does have armor that helps for that goal, but trying to use it as a tank will inevitably lead you to bleed servitors, so yeah, no. It is still useful if you keep that caveat in mind, though. The thing I think is a pity is that Jade Star won't have access to the Techmarine, the Duty Unbroken Marine class. While again, it has some really weird (and often dumb) design quirks that impact how well it can perform at times, it does fulfill a role that no other Space Marine does well. It is the undisputed best one at hard CC and also at aoe knockback, which can give it some high lethality on specific maps. I actually rate it higher than the Apothecary when it comes to supporting the group, and prefer its function over quite a few of the other options. I play on Legendary here because unlike XCOM, a run won't be nuked because of unavoidably bad RNG rolls (sectoids being able to one-shot your marines on an unlucky crit is just kind of rear end, XCOM). Would anyone be interested in gameplay thoughts with the Legendary difficulty context? If people would like them, I'd totally be up for making some large-rear end effortposts on this game, as mentioned I really do love it.
|
#
¿
Apr 15, 2024 11:09
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 16, 2024 10:19 |
|
|
I just watched the third video, it's interesting to hear about the early days of the game where the 'stun meta' was a thing. I don't think it's very good now, but there's still plenty of ways to purge the forces of chaos. So, Legendary difficulty. It raises the costs and time of construction research, makes enemies more beefy and damaging. And it also nerfs the marines, in that wounds are more punishing (that light wound on the Justicar would be -5 HP rather than -4) and take longer to heal, and their starting Resilience is 1/1 rather than 2/2 . Resilience hasn't been shown, but in short, Marines lose 1 whenever they go to 0 HP, and if they have any left, will stand up with 50% HP for the rest of the fight after 3 turns and require healing time where they're unusable for a period. But on Legendary, starting with 1/1 means they're just dead if they go down. You lose a lot of margin of error under these circumstances, because last thing you want is to have a wounded marine with 9 max health just straight up die because oops. So, the most important things to prevent such things are reliability and control. You want the tactics you choose to do to always work, and you need to control the incoming damage so that it's not causing wounds for after the battle, because that can cause a snowball if you're not careful. And the best CC in a lot of cases is 'dead', especially early on. Cultists and Poxwalkers are glass cannons, where they're easy to kill but do comparatively high damage. With that in mind, early game is a melee fest for me by default until skills start kicking in. Guns lose damage at range and start to do better damage close up, but in most situations where a gun does their maximum damage, the marine can simply attack-move and whack them with a hammer in the same 1 AP cost without concern for cover or whatever. Plus cultists run away or punch the marine for a piddly 1 damage and run away if in melee range with a marine, which provokes an opportunity attack for a bonus 4 damage. So a cultist with <4 HP and in melee range of a marine is 'in control' on the enemy phase. In general, early game guns end up running a pretty bad AP deficit due to move (1 AP) and then shoot (1 AP), not to mention reloading (1 AP) on top of that. Weapon choice: See those fancy swords, halberds, and medicine spikes in the videos? In the trash bin. 1/2 chance to block melee, 1/4 chance to first strike approaching enemies, tiny crit chance increase, all fail the reliability check. Most Marine melee weapons have 'Force Strike', which increases the damage by +1. However, the Hammer's Force Strike increases damage by +2. There's a LOT of cases where 6 damage will kill or setup kills where 5 damage won't. Even on Jade Star's current difficulty, if his marines had hammers, they'd be able to just walk around chain-killing the regular cultists in 1 AP pops. So everyone gets a hammer, even the Purgator. Marine choice: You'll notice in the above point that everyone has a Hammer. That means that along with the other melee weapons, the starting Apothecary also gets tossed in the trash. They stop being able to heal if their Narthecium isn't equipped at this point. And you'll notice in the vid that even though Iolanthus got healed, he still had the lightly wounded status after. Being able to heal is therefore not really a valuable skill to bring to the table, it's much better to be preventative. And the Narthecium being stuck at 3 damage is bad at being preventative. Medicae skulls aren't exclusive to the Apothecary (which hurts their position a lot when compared to other marines), and I bring 1 for emergencies for DoT clearing. I tend to bring the second Justicar to fill in for him on the starting team, since eventually their support ability of 'grant AP to another marine' is invaluable for cases where they're not close enough to handle something but someone else is. Plus it ending up being 2 AP for 1 AP/2 WP cost, or 3 AP/1 WP for 1 AP/4 WP cost is really effective. Team comp can change, I'll speak more on it when Jade Star actually shows off how getting more Marines/units works. As for early kill priority for XP when you can, Interceptor all the way. The starting Interceptor receives a huge DPS spike at level 3. Plus I just consider it the strongest class in the game overall. The 15 range Teleport the first one starts with is stupidly good for picking off stray targets or getting the ones the others can't reach, a very typical target for the Justicar's AP granting move.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 15, 2024 22:05
|
|
|
rastilin posted:Predictability is huge. I know that in theory in Xcom you have to plan around random chance, but I also know that in practice a lot of people just resort to doing save/reload to get out of bad situations. Because the random chance element combined with the difficulty of recovering from a bad situation means that you have to use the very safest most predictable tactics ever because the moment you take any kind of risk your team and then game can get wiped out. Then the game starts throwing timers at you that you have to take risks to beat. Vis a vis randomness, the moment I missed a melee attack in XCOM 2 was the moment I knew I would not like the game. Melee is in general a higher risk tactic where that unit is put into more danger than a person at range. Giving me a 5% chance to miss on top of that means that it's just leaving an opportunity for the game to give a big middle finger, especially with the low health of your units relative to enemy damage at the start. In regards to the Episode 4: The Chekov's Nergal pods demonstration was quite amusing, I never had a circumstance quite that blatant happen in any of my games before. Oh, Interceptor Support Fire, the primary reason why Voldred Storm should be leveled preferentially to level 3 before the others. One thing to put emphasis on is that it's a flat amount of damage. As long as the Interceptor would deal at least 1 damage from where they're standing, they'll still fire that 5 damage shot at the enemy's face. Considering that weapons are doing 4-6 damage by this point, it's a serious increase in damage potential on your turn. And it's prerequisite is Teleport and the 5 range increase for it, a skill pretty much every Interceptor wants anyways. This ability has particularly good synergy with a Psilencer Purgator (who can get 18 range with literally any Psilencer) and 2 of the assassins. At least once on a map where poo poo hit the fan really badly, I chipped down the forces with the Interceptor running up to range, the long range guy triggering two Support Fires, and the crew just running away after that. The Poxwalkers are a good demonstration as to why I prefer Hammers for the generic weapon for the Marines. On Legendary, they have 6 HP. The difference between being able to one-shot them or not with any given marine can make the difference between cleaning them nicely and getting swarmed for 3 damage chips. The Space Marine recruitment 'cycling' feels ridiculous, because it evokes the mental image of the commander bringing in a Space Marine, checking their teeth, giving them the once-over before sending them back to Titan like a prissy little window shopper. And that's what'll happen to the majority of the Space Marines because as Jade Star said, it's a zero cost method to check them out, and a good method to fish for specific passives, especially the mentioned skill point one. But as shown, the Space Marines can sometimes come in with a really stupid arrangement of skill points distributed.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 16, 2024 20:51
|
|
|
The first map is always the same one because they're still pulling punches for unavoidably having a group of most level 1s. The 2nd one is one of two different maps, and if you happen to get an arrangement that lets you do two maps after the first, the 3rd map will be the other of the two map styles. I think its a bit dumb, but I believe the game does it this way because the two maps that are slated to be part of the first 3 choices are smaller than most of the maps after that, probably to account for you still having level 1s and a level 2 at most.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 17, 2024 04:02
|
|
|
Ah, the personal skills. Devoted Practitioner is definitely the best one. A max level Marine has 18 skills points, a DP Marine has 21. Those extra 3 points can enable some builds for a lot of classes, especially Justicar and Interceptors. There's only a couple of classes which aren't particularly point heavy in its useful builds (like Purgator) that I'd prefer a different personal skill. As for what skills would be good for an Apothecary, the +1 to servo skulls ammo is probably the best, though I'm sure they'd be good with Devoted Practitioner too (no empirical testing as RNG has not deigned to give me one). I'm not actually fond of Great Destiny myself, though that's a Legendary/The Duty Eternal specific thing. Legendary removes 1 resilience from everyone, so Marines only start with 1. Having no room for error regarding critical injuries on that Marine at any level is just mildly uncomfortable. This combines with The Duty Eternal basically raising the difficulty of the game as a whole. I'm overall positive on the DLC, but there's no denying that it generally raises the difficulty further than the power it gives you. It wouldn't be great if the Assassin DLC wasn't there as a counter-balance, since its overall additions makes the game easier. On the subject of assassins, I sort of don't agree on the 'no bad picks' for assassins, largely because they have a series of problems that I group under the umbrella of "assassin problems". - They're not Knights. This is the big one. Most Space Marine support abilities and quite a few of the stratagems specify "Knights" in their targeting. To use examples we've seen in LP so far, the Justicar's Honour the Chapter and Vakir's stratagem both can't hit assassins. This combines with what Jade Star mentioned that assassins don't gain AP from executions, so you can't grant them additional AP from external sources. This hurts, badly, because a lot of the Space Marine support abilities are really nice, and it hampers those respective support moves if an assassin is present. - They're expensive. They require their own equipment and their own armory category that costs requisition to upgrade. Their equipment is stuff you choose, so it removes the RNG aspect, but they make you pay a premium as anything that's tier 2 or 3 costs more. Vindicare was the first one I ended up choosing on my first game, as 'more fragile' and 'melee' didn't sound good for 2 of the other assassins, and Culexus just sounds gimmicky in its short blurb. Which is a pity, because once I tried Culexus, it's actually my favourite of the assassins. Her early game power is straight up huge, better than the Space Marines. In large part because Tier 1 upgrades aren't expensive and add a lot of power to her, and she has a lot of synergy with Interceptors and Hammer + Bolter weapon setups, both of which I use heavily in the early game. I won't speak more in detail on this since she hasn't appeared yet in your roster. Overall, I feel that Culexus is the only assassin I'd take over a Marine due to the aforementioned Assassin problems, and I tend to drop her in the late game. As for the battle itself, it's really odd for me to see someone playing this game with more primary ranged combat. Your Purgator there showed the primary reason why I switch early-game Purgators to Hammer + Bolter. The big weapons don't do enough damage early on for me to want to lose actions having to reload their only damage source. And there were a lot of situations where the Purgator was close enough that it would've just killed the unit to move-melee in 1 AP if they had a melee weapon. However, it is a loss to not have that shoulder-check for those certain situations. To explain why the Vindicare stopped the suppressing fire, it's because it was a crit. Suppressing Fire in my experience does not stop if you shoot the guy normally. My best guess as to why a ranged crit stops it is that the crit menu makes the attack be considered as a melee attack, and that does stop suppressions. This also applies to Overwatch. Edit: And yes, the best universal upgrade in the game is indeed pockets. Keldulas fucked around with this message at 07:01 on Apr 23, 2024 |
|
#
¿
Apr 23, 2024 06:50
|
|
|
In terms of the melee heavy style I play with, one part comes down to positioning. For example, on engaging the first group, there's a wall to abuse that you can use to get a lot closer to them than going through the open sight lines, which reduces the AP needed to run into melee from 3 to 2, or even 1 for a couple of units for most of the Marines. Which changes the calculations for that fight significantly. Plus for that area specifically, it encourages a bunch of units to take cover near the edge, so oops Grenade! The other comes down to how I build my early Purgators. The main reasons why I go early-game Hammer + Bolter Purgator. - Cover doesn't really matter for melee attacks anyways - I really prefer Astral Aim first myself, because as the Vindicare shows, shooting off the gun arm or the Poxplosion head on demand is helpful. - I think the Psilencer and Psycannon kind of suck if not currently supported by the skill tree, so the Astral Aim delay hurts them. - After Astral Aim, I build the unit towards Psilencer build since I really want Disrupting Shot for something later in the game, and as well as having the 18 range Astral Aim option. I'll fully admit though that my playstyle is a personal preference, I'm fairly aggressive. The game does give a lot of tools to handle a lot of situations, after all. I do look forward to seeing how the tactics evolve later-on, as more skill points are spent and more distinct combat tactics can be seen. However, I've realized that my Hammer talk has gotten repetitive by this point, so I'll stop talking about the Hammer thing and focus on other things as more mechanics reveal themselves. I do appreciate you making this thread, since overall I feel that the game has gotten kind of less attention than it deserves. So, thanks for running the LP.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 23, 2024 10:53
|
|
|
Ah, blatant favoritism for Interceptor. Given that they're ridiculously powerful and the best class in the game, I can't fault you. I generally agree with your armory upgrading, Wargear is legitimately the best category. You had a slight disadvantage in that the early missions didn't give you much requisition, so you couldn't upgrade all the Marine equipment categories. Nor any 'double-taps', where missions spawned close enough to get 2 of them. Oh well. On the Stun conversation, I found with the current numbers it's generally impossible to feasibly stun someone unless you're deliberately taking several 1-2 damage long range bolter shots at someone. And only the Plague Marines or stronger can be stunned, until you get any of the no damage stunning abilities. Most cultists shouldn't be surviving two hits, nevermind the 6 or so hits of their stun on Legendary. I don't really get into stunning enemies until I get one of the stun-based melee weapons, and that usually ends up being a pretty big Force-Strike WP drain on the unit in question. However, if you do get into a situation where you can consistently stun targets in a group.... it kind of breaks the system entirely. It also plays into the reason why I'm not fond of assassins, since they don't benefit from the AP boost. I found that unless I was being careful, I ended up pissing off Vakir a lot. Overall though, that system is one I do love, the fact that ship decisions can increase or decrease the efficiency of your people's work based on their mood. It gives a nice bit of interactivity feeling with this crew of your ship.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 30, 2024 06:37
|
|
|
There's also variance in the value of the bonus missions, they can be worth 1-3 based on difficulty (though of course, some missions are way harder than others of the same level).
|
|
#
¿
Apr 30, 2024 10:28
|
|
|
FoolyCharged posted:Well, the lp got me to give the game a spin. For your sake, I do hope you have the assassin's DLC as well. The Dreadnought DLC is unabashedly a difficulty spike, whereas the assassin's DLC countermands that to some degree. Also, until you gain more power or have a Culexus to counteract it to some degree, never take a 'protect the servitor's' technophage mission. You WILL eat poo poo for that. As for DLC/game integration, it's not the best, but it's at least nowhere as bad as Phoenix Point's DLC implementation (which remains the worst I've seen to this day). From the sounds of it, you're at the point of the game I mentioned where Duty Eternal kind of hits itself in the face, where it unlocks the Technophage missions before you get the Dreadnought. That's the worst of it, thankfully, and you do get some fun (if high difficulty) missions later on as well.
|
|
#
¿
May 6, 2024 23:12
|
|
|
ninjahedgehog posted:Mind elaborating on this? Never played PP To put it simply, Phoenix Point's DLC universally has the trait of making the early game harder, due to an utter lack of testing as to the proper timing to actually introduce the new mechanics/new enemies/new maps and what not. The air DLC is a particular carbuncle of design by having a lot of wait and watch design where you can't do anything to affect the outcome of the air battle or the big monster destroying havens. Tylana posted:For Duty Eternal, I basically speedran the plot stuff to get the Dreadnought up and running ASAP. And would suggest similar for most people if they are playing along and want Techmarines and all that, unless you LIKE doing the missions max corruption throws at you. Due to slightly dubious design decisions (repairing the big boy costs servitors and maybe you ship upgrading time?) I ended up only using it as a long range thing, but it's still night and day. I actually prefer to use it as a punchbot. The ranged damage is nothing special, whereas the punchbot often one-shot stuns enemies. A common trick I use to get off two punches in a round (and therefore stun two dudes) is use the charge ability into the fog to reveal them. Unlike normal movement, it gets to run the full measured distance, which often gets the Dreadnought close enough to punch two targets and set up 2 executes. Which should usually provide enough AP to let the Marines sweep the rest of that pod. Don't have to worry about it taking damage if the enemies don't get a turn. If it's not quite enough, then I just prioritize killing armor piercers/bad threats near the Dreadnought and then leave Marines in vulnerable positions to basically encourage the enemies to shoot them instead of the Dreadnought (this doesn't come up often). As for the update, it feels like a particular flavour of the game trolling Jade Star where he ran to that previous mission specifically for that teleporter, but then he comes in not being able to do that. At least long-term wise, the Interceptor hasn't wasted any points, since Teleporter Crit Interceptor is not exactly a bad build. It's also funny that he forgot to look at the new Interceptor. No willpower missions do kind of suck. Oddly enough, Interceptors with Support Fire are still one of the best since Support Fire does a lot to alleviate the lack of willpower. Too bad it's still too early and the Interceptors didn't have time to set that up yet properly. 2 Interceptors with that and the support of a Vindicare or Psilencer Purgator for long range triggers can actually cheese pods. Interceptors uses an AP to run into shot range, Vindicare/Psilencer triggers all the support fires, use rest of the AP to run out of range of the survivors, rinse, repeat. Also, oddly enough, No Willpower missions are where Jade Star is actually disadvantaged for not having Duty Eternal. As opposed to most circumstances where Duty Eternal makes things harder. The best parts of the Techmarine's kit also doesn't use AP. So you can just simply roll forward, kill what you can with Support Fire and other damage, then use the Techmarine's hard CC moves to just prevent the enemy from hitting you back properly.
|
|
#
¿
May 7, 2024 20:50
|
|
|
Yeah, that mission was much easier. Another factor that made that much more smooth is that the map this time is one of the easiest map layouts. Basically, all those walls/doors, and sight line interruptions. It makes accidental pod reveals much less likely, and also allows the player to cram the Marines much closer to the pods before activating them. Compare that to the previous map (one of the harder layouts, actually), where the sight lines were largely uninterrupted to most of the spots the pods like to stand. This map allows much more control over when/where to fight, which is always a benefit useful to have. On the subject of pods, for these typical maps where you're exploring and revealing pods, there's actually a trick you can do to 'initiate' and get one unit much closer than normal. Basically, it's Justicar/Dreadnought (if you're playing that) specific, and it's the charge ability. Get to the edge of the activation (whether in normal fog or on the other side of a door (for the Justicar), or wall (Dreadnought only). Activate the Charge ability and point it towards the pod, and while you activate the pod, the ability still completes the full movement and it shunts the charger much closer in the fray, allowing use of melee based tricks. And the unit will still have full AP/CDs. So in the Justicar's case, it allows him to setup a big juicy Rend the Unclean, much more easily than normal. Or simply charge again if any of the enemies decided to hang near ledges for knockback kills. Holy hell, that Purgator basically rolled as badly as he could've in his skill choices. I'm surprised that anyone could find a silver lining to Arcane Weapons, it is such a mess of AP/WP opportunity cost. Not only does it cost 1 AP, you have to use an AP to reload your gun after, and it also costs 2/3 WP (though honestly you should just Warp Charge it if you're going to use it at all), for... a damage boost to a singular attack? It feels like too much effort, personally. And definitely the worst 1st skill to grab for any recruit. I actually looked it up, apparently some people like to pair Arcane Weapons with a Psycannon barrage, since the boost affects all the enemies hit? Sounds kind of neat, potentially (I could see stacking an additional +10 damage to that Barrage with the right setup), but I'm honestly still not sold on that for the fiddlyness. And the fact that's a late-game setup reliant on a specific gun drop. If you want huge AoE damage, a (advanced class not shown yet)Purifier can match that damage on their own, and then explodes into fiery death with the Justicar's Honour the Chapter AP boost or any similar effects. Regardless, I may test it next time I play deep enough in Chaos Gate since if nothing else, it's a weird thing I haven't tried before. At least the main 'benefit' of Arcane Weapons is that it doesn't really interfere, anyone who gets Arcane Weapons always has it in that bottom-right corner (for some reason). So it's not a mandatory path like any of the cardinal NSEW groupings if you want something else. I've been itching to talk about the Space Marine classes in the game, since I do think the setup is overall quite good. But I'm refraining for now until the LP's marines are at least around level 5 or so and we actually see more of their kits directly. Shei-kun posted:I could sense your frustration when you were looking for what to research and there were no options for 4 servitors. Quick note, on Legendary, due to all servitor costs being 50% more, it's basically mandatory to rush-priority both upgrades that automatically generate Servitors. Otherwise the situation with Lunete just sitting there being unable to work happens A LOT.
|
|
#
¿
May 13, 2024 08:19
|
|
|
If you're doing the hard Arcane Weapons lean, then honestly it sounds like you benefit from being a Devoted Practioner. Typically, the +3 skill points don't really help, because 18 points is enough to get the important stuff and I prefer the 10% ranged crit talent for consistency. But since you're not really speccing into massive ranged critting if you're leaning hard into that Arcane Weapons, then the +3 points enables you to get the Arcane Weapons while still having Astral Aim/Reload/Psilencer talents. Alternative is a Devoted Practioner who decides to not go Psilencer and uses a Storm Bolter, since those points can be redirected into Grenade pockets and talents instead (though you may have to remove some Arcane Aim Support points) and go for a hybrid-y support build with Grenades/Arcane Aim, and whatever your melee weapon does. Kind of a weird setup theory. Since I don't care for Devoted Practioner in my regular Purgator builds anyways, I may try that sometime in the future.
|
|
#
¿
May 14, 2024 07:32
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 16, 2024 10:19 |
|
|
Duelist is a baffling trait that speaks to me of a much different design than what the game currently has. It is so stupidly specific for no reason and straight inferior as mentioned, it really needs to be +20% given the fact that the +10% focus talent exists. Of course, that statement also assumes that +% to melee affliction is in any way useful at all in the first place. No one has % to inflict a status in any of their skill trees, so it's purely applied via melee weapons. The ones that apply DoTs still means that the Marine meleeing in question has to expose themselves to that unit's turn of damage since DoTs are end of turn. And the ones that apply control are so mild and low odds that the Duelist talent simply doesn't save them, anyways. And yes, Tylana totally just cursed Jade Star there with Duelist.
|
|
#
¿
May 14, 2024 21:04
|
|