|
Cooked Auto posted:I'd almost go with ICE if we were to go with the hacker theme or why not Molly/Razorgirl? Ashamed I didn't think of this. Razorgirl would be an awesome nickname, especially if Finn is later augmented.
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2014 21:54
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 09:48 |
|
|
And this is why we always run an intel scan at the start of the month, kids.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2014 22:09
|
|
|
Gas grenades are pretty meh until maybe toward the endgame. The persistent effect doesn't particularly matter if you're just going to kill whatever it is next turn, which you will. They're also naturally useless against thin men, chryssalids, and all 5 kinds of mechanized units. The only way I see it being more effective than a flashbang (for aim & movement penalties) or a frag/alien grenade (for damage) is if you're dealing with a bunch of heavy floaters and/or muton elites and can't just kill them all in a couple turns. Might take one or two along for my next supply barge and see how they fare. I've never tried one for capture purposes, but I have to wonder if the poison would just kill it after you stun it. Ghost grenades are like Guava said basically an Oh poo poo button. They're not terribly powerful or even useful the majority of the time (given the rebalancing for firing from cloak and its one-turn duration), but when one of your soldiers shoots away the cover of a soldier who's out of actions, you'll be really glad you've got a ghost grenade on hand. Second slot on a sniper for me usually goes to either a ghost grenade, or chitin plating for the strangle protection if I get them early. For a nickname, I feel like further name punning is appropriate. "Wrong" Terne, or maybe "Left" Terne.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2014 22:10
|
|
|
So, our covert ops person is in charge of rooting out all these Exalt hackers, right? SHODAN "Look at you, hacker: a pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal [killing] machine?"
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2014 22:34
|
|
|
Yeah, Intern is definitely the way to go. It even sounds like her name!
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2014 22:37
|
|
|
I said it waaaaaay back before Jade decided to turn her into the Covert Ops lady, but Finn "Unpaid" Terne is the only real option.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2014 23:07
|
|
|
Raenir K. Artemi posted:I said it waaaaaay back before Jade decided to turn her into the Covert Ops lady, but Finn "Unpaid" Terne is the only real option.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 00:03
|
|
|
Jadestar: Selling all the alien stuff then not spending the X-Com Bux from it until Exalt steals it all. I think we know now why he lost all those soldiers...
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 00:12
|
|
|
Felinoid posted:Ghost grenades are like Guava said basically an Oh poo poo button. They're not terribly powerful or even useful the majority of the time (given the rebalancing for firing from cloak and its one-turn duration), but when one of your soldiers shoots away the cover of a soldier who's out of actions, you'll be really glad you've got a ghost grenade on hand.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 00:21
|
|
|
Veloxyll posted:Jadestar: Selling all the alien stuff then not spending the X-Com Bux from it until Exalt steals it all. Until EW there was no reason to hang onto damaged parts and other things without research benefits. Though now you've got EXALT to try to prod you not to keep more liquid cash than you need, selling that stuff straight away is a hard habit to break if you've been through EU a dozen times. No idea why he sold the EXALT stuff, though. Especially at the quantities he did, since council requests for EXALT stuff are for 10 regular/laser rifles, or 6 of any of the other things.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 00:30
|
|
|
Clearly the answer is Razor Wolfsnake Osprey Girl. Nerds.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 00:56
|
|
|
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax3hmhHScc0 Every time you get one of those exalt base clues, I imagine this happening at XCOM HQ.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 00:58
|
|
|
Triggerhappypilot posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax3hmhHScc0 I get more of a https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGufyFt6zQc vibe. "In order to find us, Player, you'll need all the clues."
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 01:19
|
|
|
Felinoid posted:No idea why he sold the EXALT stuff, though. Especially at the quantities he did, since council requests for EXALT stuff are for 10 regular/laser rifles, or 6 of any of the other things. Because 
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 01:38
|
|
|
Does Exalt ever get up to "Tier 3" X-Com? Titan Heavys that carry Blaster Launchers that take 2 less damage from Booshing 
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 01:45
|
|
|
HOOLY BOOLY posted:Does Exalt ever get up to "Tier 3" X-Com? Titan Heavys that carry Blaster Launchers that take 2 less damage from Booshing No. It's kind of a shame, because I really would have liked to farm plasma weapons off of EXALT.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 01:48
|
|
|
HOOLY BOOLY posted:Does Exalt ever get up to "Tier 3" X-Com? Titan Heavys that carry Blaster Launchers that take 2 less damage from Booshing No, but there's a mod for giving Exalt plasma weapons. I never tried it though, so I can't tell you how well it works.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 02:49
|
|
|
ulmont posted:No. It's kind of a shame, because I really would have liked to farm plasma weapons off of EXALT. That is likely exactly why they didn't do it. Not that it's hard to just make them at the point where you could use the EXALT versions anyway.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 02:50
|
|
|
Cooked Auto posted:I'd almost go with ICE if we were to go with the hacker theme or why not Molly/Razorgirl?  On my first run after installing Enemy Within, my first sniper which became my first colonel got turned into my first MEC soldier. As a bot with 122 aim (base) and Reactive Sensors, she racked up more unintentional kill-steals than all my squadsight snipers combined. Also I noticed the already-compressed strategic game feels even shorter when I accidentally got to the final storyline mission before ever collecting enough meld for one fully upgraded MEC and one fully gene-modded soldier. Not bragging about it, just that once you finally realize 'never move forward at the end of a turn' means you never lose any soldiers*, Classic+Ironman becomes easy but Impossible remains a grind of 'Abductions? Time to decide which continent I lose to a panic cascade this month!' *at least not until New Sectopods show up  ulmont posted:No. It's kind of a shame, because I really would have liked to farm plasma weapons off of EXALT. silentsnack fucked around with this message at 02:57 on Jul 7, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 02:51
|
|
|
Thanks for doing this...just stumbled across this and got Enemy Within off of the summer sale.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 03:03
|
|
|
Doc Vahlen also makes a big deal about Exalt going "too far" with gene mods, but they look fine aside from the whole orangey-aura that's similar to the one that gene-modded XCOM soldiers give off. There's this weird theme to Enemy Within about giving up your humanity or paying a great cost to defeat the alien menace, but it's only ever superficial. There's literally no downside to giving your soldiers gene mods, even though Vahlen will act all reticent about it. MECs are the only thing that come close to giving the player second thoughts, but it's not really a moral conundrum if XCOM just happens to have perfectly functional prosthetics lying around for when they're not in a robot suit (also there's no reason Vahlen wouldn't just put their limbs in storage for reattachment later). They just drop the theme halfway through execution.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 03:26
|
|
|
I agree, but on the flipside it's hard to have any real meaningful moral choices on a bunch of faceless goons with a few lines when they attack/get attacked. The only real characters in this game are Scientist and Engineer.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 03:40
|
|
|
Gamerofthegame posted:The only real characters in this game are Scientist and Engineer.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 04:17
|
|
|
Drakyn posted:How could you forget the heart and soul of this game, Captenant Missioncontrol?
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 04:21
|
|
|
Captain Steve Blum.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 04:25
|
|
|
Sacrificing my humanity nothing, having those gene mods or having kickass robot limbs? Sign me the gently caress up!
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 04:30
|
|
|
Drakyn posted:How could you forget the heart and soul of this game, Captenant Missioncontrol? I think we're all forgetting about the best character, bald Optimus Prime.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 05:12
|
|
|
Are you going to use the EXALT laser weapons in upcoming missions?
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 06:27
|
|
|
Raenir K. Artemi posted:I said it waaaaaay back before Jade decided to turn her into the Covert Ops lady, but Finn "Unpaid" Terne is the only real option.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 12:25
|
|
|
Jade basically encountered the one thing that EXALT can do to be even vaguely threatening, and that is using their rockets.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 13:46
|
|
|
Really digging the Lets Play so far guys. The only follow up question is in the far flung future, is a look at Long War on the cards?
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 15:20
|
|
|
TheNabster posted:Really digging the Lets Play so far guys. Doubtful. Every time people bring up something about Long War that Jade hadn't already heard, he groans. I believe "a few good ideas, but spergy as hell" is the verdict at the moment. Frankly, I can't blame him. They seem to have done everything they can to make sure that there isn't a single thing left in the game that's reliable. Just from what I've heard, everything has randomized damage, chances not to work, or both. Grenades doing 1-3 damage (or something like that), Lightning Reflexes proccing on every Overwatch but can fail, etc. Rolling a mountain of dice each turn is fun for some (myself included), but it makes it harder to set a strategy, because every single step can fail in some way.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 16:06
|
|
|
Except panic management. Because apparently having to chose which country to save was too hard for them... 1 abduction mission instead of 1 from 3.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 16:22
|
|
|
Broadly though the fact that LW prevents you from perfectly mathing your way through the game is in itself a vast improvement. If you want a game where you can completely eliminate risks  probably isn't the best candidate. Even with Lightning Reflexes now having a rather low fail chance the ability to draw four overwatch shots and get hit maybe once is much better than the one perfect miss because it opens up the whole field. Plus the most interesting thing about panic management isn't that it's harder to lose nations (although it is harder) it's that you can get them back (think this is in LW 10).
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 16:29
|
|
|
Kytrarewn posted:Finn Terne is already redundant. Terns are seabirds, and so calling her a fin tern just doubles up on it. Finn "Byrd" Terne
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 16:39
|
|
|
Felinoid posted:
They changed how Explosive damage worked so rather then a flat amount of damage at every point of the explosion, if you want the max damage from your grenades you actually have to put the grenade near your target for to do the damage it used to do. HE grenades are more for cover destruction then anything, it's the AP grenades you want to use to delete enemies. The general gist I got was "We've made the game longer, harder and added more stuff", which I thought that is what people wanted from the new XCOM. TheNabster fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Jul 7, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 17:08
|
|
|
The thing isn't what it does in broad strokes, it's what it does in the details, and in a lot of details LW doesn't pan out for me (and apparently Jade, etc) when I look at LW I see a lot of interesting ideas mixed with a lot of fiddly bullshit for the sake of being fiddly bullshit. I can see why some people would be fine and some people would steer away. e: and in fairness, what I consider fiddly bullshit someone else might consider awesome, meaningful changes. they're wrong though 
Psion fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Jul 7, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 17:27
|
|
|
Obliterati posted:Broadly though the fact that LW prevents you from perfectly mathing your way through the game is in itself a vast improvement. If you want a game where you can completely eliminate risks There's a pretty big swath between "you can count on most things" and "you can't count on anything" that they could've settled in, though. I'm not faulting their intentions so much as their execution. See also: Psion's post above. TheNabster posted:They changed how Explosive damage worked so rather then a flat amount of damage at every point of the explosion, if you want the max damage from your grenades you actually have to put the grenade near your target for to do the damage it used to do. HE grenades are more for cover destruction then anything, it's the AP grenades you want to use to delete enemies. That makes a lot more sense than what people were telling me about it; they made it sound like it was just a straight-up damage roll. I imagine they didn't put in the (perhaps ridiculously) large effort to display the damage zones though, so it's still going to be somewhat unpredictable unless you're plopping it right on their heads.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 18:30
|
|
|
The current build of Long War, Beta 13, is in feature lock with only bugfixes to come. It is quite stable and the last round of features and balancing introduced in Beta 10-12 is awesome. Major improvements: 1. Air war balancing has finally come into focus. The addition of Aggressive/Neutral/Defensive stances makes a huge difference for player agency in managing early combat. There are a huge number of incremental upgrades for interceptors, some of which can be rushed. Bottom line is it feels much less random now and there are multiple viable air strategies (example: Armored Fighters + UFO Countermeasures + Aggressive Stance lets you take out bigger UFOs with weaker weapons which lets you skip lasers for Gauss if you wish). 2. All the new guns are amazing and give meaningful tactical differences on loadouts: A) Battle Rifle: High Damage, ammo and crit, lower accuracy and mobility. Fits right between a Shotgun and Assault Rifle, and in the right hands can be better than either. Great on Infantry and Assaults. B) Assault Rifle: Still vanilla, still useful when shooting at range because many of the other guns don't do enough damage. C) Assault Carbine: Lower damage and crit, higher mobility and aim. Wonderful for utility, training rookies, on Rocketeers, for flanking, etc. Probably the default weapon over the AR now, but still not dominant. D) SMG: Carbine damage, with no crit or aim, low ammo, plus crazy mobility. Great option for many support units. E) Sawed-off Shotgun: 1 tile range, Shotgun damage, -1 mobility, pistol slot: Wonderful addition, allows many flexible loadouts to include close-range lethality. F) Machine Pistol: SMG damage in the pistol slot, -1 mobility. All pistols have aim penalties at range. SMG is great for operatives, Infantry, and other units that run out of ammo. G) Strike/Marksman's Rifle: Lower crit Sniper Rifle with Snapshot penalty on move, and limited squadsight to 5 tiles. Very useful. H) LMG: Limited Squadsight move-restricted Heavy gun for Gunners only. High damage and ammo, low crit. Only weapon that is difficult to use currently because Gunners do not have pistol slot, can't Steady Weapon, so they often don't have a good action to take after moving with this. With enemies at the proper range this thing is a monster though. Suppressing from beyond sight range can be very powerful. The basic SAW that is not move restricted is usually the better choice though. Does Battle Rifle damage with no aim penalty. 3. The 5 weapon tiers have good separation now: A) Ballistics: Lots of tactical enhancements to boost damage and properties allowing a path that skips lasers. B) Beam Lasers: +1 damage and +7 aim over Ballistics. Very solid upgrade but misses great Ballistic enhancements. Tough choice. C) Gauss: +2 damage over Ballistics but no aim bonus. Sniper rifle variant has built in HEAT ammo. Compatible with Ballistics upgrades so overall very powerful with the right research and support tech. D) Pulse Lasers: +3 damage over Ballistics and crit bonus instead of aim bonus. Really effective by the time you get it since high level soldiers have great aim but crit boost increases damage. E) Plasma: Best overall damage, but very expensive to get. 4. Mission loadout screen tells you the type of map before you lift off. This is huge, as you can now tailor troop selection/loadouts to the mission. 5. Units on overwatch (including ALIENS) get an icon in tactical. THIS REVOLUTIONIZES THE GAME. 6. Every time a soldier makes a panic check, the actual roll and result pops up above the soldier. 7. You can get Collateral Damage as a Psi ability. loving Mind Bullets, y'all. If you have been putting off trying LW because of stability concerns, or were turned off by the bugs/balance of earlier Betas, now is a good time to try it out/again.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 20:01
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 09:48 |
|
|
Dareon posted:This video provides irrefutable evidence that EXALT uses Snap Shot. EXALT are commie mutant traitors. In addition to the regular Exalt heavy's Holo-Targetting skill, the elite heavies also have Rapid Reaction! I bet Jade Star's MECs are shaking in their metal boots. Oh, and I have to agree with the suggestion of Intern for Finn's nickname.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2014 21:17
|
|