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VDay posted:Yeah in Beta 7 there's a 50/50 chance that you get whatever class you have the least of, so it's going to take some really lovely luck to get like 5-6 guys of three classes but only 1-2 of the fourth. Well, to be fair he is called Beaglerush. 
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Apr 20, 2014 00:27
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Ok, seriously, the last fifteen UFOs have been over Asia. North America's fighter squadron is getting bored.
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Apr 20, 2014 01:59
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On my classic playthrough and I just built the Gollop Chamber. I never remember the game getting this much easier after the Alien Base.
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Apr 20, 2014 02:10
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I just had a pretty funny "Oh yeah? Well gently caress you." moment in my latest LW game. First UFO of the game: a small scout that I manage to shoot down with my first interceptor. Like 4 days later a motherfucking battleship shows up. Then another scout a few days later that almost kills the two guys I send after him. Few days after that yet another scout who almost shoots down my last interceptor. 3 days after that, another scout shows up to taunt me. I imagine he just spent the whole time flying above my base, blaring super loud music and giving me the finger out of his window. I'm sorry I shot down one of your ships, I promise I'll never do it again. 
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Apr 20, 2014 02:13
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VDay posted:Yeah in Beta 7 there's a 50/50 chance that you get whatever class you have the least of, so it's going to take some really lovely luck to get like 5-6 guys of three classes but only 1-2 of the fourth. I always end up stumbling through the mission and what begins as a tactical sweep n' destroy ends with me rushing one guy back to the Skyranger while some brave rookie pushes the button.
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Apr 20, 2014 02:47
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There's a variety of permutations, but my standard approach to LW Newfoundland is:
02. Post up at the garage door, open it, open the interior door, kill the Zombie that's probably inside, and begin moving the snipers to the left, toward the ships 03. A second Zombie will stumble out of a building to the right, and into this long building with the zombies, kill it too, move your snipers up into the top of the conning tower of the first boat at the docks, being sure to take out the shark to its side 04. Move up through the buildings toward the vendor stalls while using steady aim on snipers, trying to get the Rocketeer into position to fire into the large building "north" of the stalls without triggering what's inside (Thin Men, maybe Seekers), blowing up the shark in the middle of the stalls when convenient 05. Kill the Zombie and Chrysalid that show up, and begin moving people down to cover the long pier that leads toward the hullbreach in the ship, particularly the Rocketeer. Keep the Assault on the upper dock 06. Rocket and snipe the pack of probably Thin Men. Begin running the Assault up the broken ramp onto the upper deck of the ship toward the bridge 07. Post everybody else near the shipping container with the large tuna over a fire or whatever it is, destroying that too whenever convenient 08. Push button, run Assault back 09. When the Assault reaches the remainder of the party, all of them run back toward deployment 10. Snipers leave their nest around 1-2 turns later  Since it almost always shows up in mid-May I tend to try and keep a few soldiers with the classes I need on hand around to do it, but even if they're just SPCs, they'll probably work.
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Apr 20, 2014 03:14
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I've decided to get as many trophies as I can. My plan is to save now that I have completed the Gollop chamber and go hunting trophies before reloading. If I endlessly scan and ignore smaller ships am I guaranteed a battleship? Also will sectoids ever show up again? fake edit: literally just started a mission that featured loads
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Apr 20, 2014 13:10
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How exactly is Exalt managing to siphon cash I don't have? 
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Apr 20, 2014 16:57
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Deuce posted:How exactly is Exalt managing to siphon cash I don't have? They stole your credit cards!
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Apr 20, 2014 16:58
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Were there any patches to EW since early after its release?
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Apr 20, 2014 16:59
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Space Hamlet posted:Were there any patches to EW since early after its release? They fixed a few bugs and made Memetic skin more expensive.
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Apr 20, 2014 17:01
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Speedball posted:They stole your credit cards! The game explains how EXALT does what it does in the little newsfeeds. It's pretty neat. For stealing money, it has a few different ones. "World financial markets in disarray following unidentified attacks on major infrastructure" "Rolling blackouts have been instituted in some areas following power grid disruptions across the globe" "Concern among the general populace grows as strange disruptions in infrastructure and services become widespread" "Stock markets institute trading curbs as reports of possible data manipulation leads to massive selloffs" "Mysterious disruptions in infrastructure lead to ongoing supply issues in countries around the world"
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Apr 20, 2014 22:02
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Classic Ironman, few missions in and it's going well. Only one steam vent though and it's the bottom right block, worth restarting?
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Apr 21, 2014 01:29
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EmmyOk posted:Classic Ironman, few missions in and it's going well. Only one steam vent though and it's the bottom right block, worth restarting? I don't find that Steam Vent placement is gamebreaking. I say tough it out.
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Apr 21, 2014 02:06
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Restarted and the vent ended up in the same place, but got better rookies. Had a satellite uplink due finished on the same day as my first council report but it was above it in the list. Came back from a mission and it was below. 
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Apr 21, 2014 03:54
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Time spent travelling to/from missions is not counted as build time for buildings and satellites. You don't want to cut it too closely to the Council Report for that reason. Not sure if it's a bug or a feature, but I like to think that all the workers just drop everything the moment the Commander has left the base
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Apr 21, 2014 10:30
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I just got a 0 damage critical with a sniper against a thin man. That's not something you see every day.
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Apr 21, 2014 11:22
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John Dough posted:Time spent travelling to/from missions is not counted as build time for buildings and satellites. You don't want to cut it too closely to the Council Report for that reason. I didn't know that, I'll keep it in mind. Not ideal going down to the wire like that but it was the difference between 1 and 3 satellites in my first month. Only managed to launch 1, but no countries pulled out and I've 3 more available for the end of this month.
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Apr 21, 2014 13:48
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I've been watching some stream recordings of Beagle's Ironman Impossible run of Long War, and it's crazy how lucky and good he is at times. Step forward on the first Terror Mission of the game, activate no less than eight floaters, with four chrysalids a turn or two later? No worries, no hassles, no casualties. One injury, but that's it. He only had a squad of six, too.
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Apr 21, 2014 14:36
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Lost my first Classic Ironman, was doing very well up until my entire A-squad got wiped out on a bomb mission. The timer made me play more aggressive than I'd like and I misjudged where the bomb would be. Got flanked by thin men and then all mys soldiers missed their shots. I love this game so hard
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Apr 21, 2014 22:39
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So I think the Exalt Base in Long War broke my game. Also it is super-loving hard. I got lucky with my intel and managed to find the base while I'm still mostly on ballistics (I have two gauss rifles). The first room triggers 13 dudes who each take 3 or 4 shots to kill and who can usually one-shot me, 3 of whom have rockets. Soooo.... yeah, that's hosed up. Anyway, I decided that since I don't like fighting exalt anyway I'd just savescum my way through it and get back to fighting aliens like I enjoy. Now my game won't load my save files from that mission. And it crashes every few turns while I'm in there. It might be that it's trying to load 3 dudes who are stabilized, 2 of my dudes corpses, and 24 exalt corpses on a big-rear end map. Or something might have corrupted. I'm trying a re-install now.
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Apr 21, 2014 23:45
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EmmyOk posted:Lost my first Classic Ironman, was doing very well up until my entire A-squad got wiped out on a bomb mission. The timer made me play more aggressive than I'd like and I misjudged where the bomb would be. Got flanked by thin men and then all mys soldiers missed their shots. Make sure you take at least 1 assault on those missions. Equipping most of your soldiers with medikits is not a bad idea even in vanilla. If you have more than 1 Heavy you're golden.
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Apr 22, 2014 00:11
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Dominic White posted:I've been watching some stream recordings of Beagle's Ironman Impossible run of Long War, and it's crazy how lucky and good he is at times. Step forward on the first Terror Mission of the game, activate no less than eight floaters, with four chrysalids a turn or two later? No worries, no hassles, no casualties. One injury, but that's it. He only had a squad of six, too. I haven't watched that one, but a big help in that scenario is the AI. Floaters are vicious, and a bit cowardly. When they lose podmates, or get injured, they often flee. They also loving love to kill civilians. I've seen them pass on flanking opportunities to go peg yet another civilian with some plasma, many times. Then they cackle about it, right until my sniper takes their head off. It has saved my rear end more than once on Impossible terror missions.
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Apr 22, 2014 00:17
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amanasleep posted:Make sure you take at least 1 assault on those missions. Equipping most of your soldiers with medikits is not a bad idea even in vanilla. If you have more than 1 Heavy you're golden. I like to make sure at least a couple of the guys I don't care about have no medkit, though, because more medkits cause thin men to shoot more often. And as aggravating as poison is, their weapons fire is far more lethal in many cases. On the flip side, medkits take away the thin man backup option for when your guys are hunkered down in high cover, and overwatch/suppression are easier to deal with than that loving poison spit. God I wish it had at least some limitations, they seem to be able to spit on anything in sight range and the accuracy is 100%. Lame. Does vanilla poison cause the mobility reduction too? I can't remember.
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Apr 22, 2014 00:19
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Depending on the map, a squadsight sniper (or two) can be an absolute life saver on a bomb mission because you just park him in the very back of the map and have him cover/take potshots the entire time as the rest of your group rushes forward. With how many enemies you run into and how aggressive you have to be, the sniper should have a target to shoot at every single turn once poo poo hits the fan. Also I find that more than any other map/mission type, bomb missions reward thoughtful pre-planning and proper squad compositions. It really pays to think about the team that you're bringing along, not just in an "I'll bring an assault because they're good" way, but actually considering how you're going to move through the map and what each squad member will do on certain turns. If I have to rush the assault up to hide behind a bomb that he has to press to stall, what's the support going to do? Is there something for my gunner to do? Do I have anyone with smoke or grenades to cover him? etc etc.
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Apr 22, 2014 00:47
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It was a train station map I'd seen before but I assumed the bomb was always in the same place. I rushed down to the end of the platform and spawned a few easily killable thin men. Then realised the bomb was across the tracks. A load of thin men activated on the tracks parallel to my strung out squad. Managed to win with one soldier because Emily Evans is a loving valkyrie. For some reason this run I have not managed to get a sniper with squadsight. So many promising squaddies that endlessly miss 70+ hits. Next mission was all squaddies though. Went well to a point, then I found out it was my first mission with mutons 
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Apr 22, 2014 01:24
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Deuce posted:I like to make sure at least a couple of the guys I don't care about have no medkit, though, because more medkits cause thin men to shoot more often. And as aggravating as poison is, their weapons fire is far more lethal in many cases. On the flip side, medkits take away the thin man backup option for when your guys are hunkered down in high cover, and overwatch/suppression are easier to deal with than that loving poison spit. God I wish it had at least some limitations, they seem to be able to spit on anything in sight range and the accuracy is 100%. Lame. Yeah, poison has no to hit roll. It's like a grenade with range = LOS. And yes, it gives movement, aim, and will penalties.
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Apr 22, 2014 01:31
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drat, I think I've lost North America. I launched three satellites and stacked the area with interceptors, but two back-to-back terror missions and an Exalt agitation attempt meant that I just couldn't get control of the panic. Mexico was already about to go and that just pushed it over the edge. When the aliens want a country, there isn't much you can do to stop them until you can shoot down battleships. Two terror missions on the continent, even if you're saving a good chunk of the civilians, isn't recoverable. Shame, because I was getting 2 Meld on missions, so I'm not even sure how they can afford to do that. I'm close to getting plasma cannons on my interceptors, we'll see if the Firestorms I'm hoping I can get online can help. Or, failing that, I'll just try to secure what's left of Africa before it goes under. When you do the alien base assault and free a country, do you get the country back at a reasonable panic level or does it come back just about ready to leave again? edit2: Assuming I'm using Goliaths and Marauders, I'm guessing that most of the time, the defensive perk is the one I want? Barring, of course, Close Encounters on my Marauder so I can shoot for free, then punch someone. Actually...with MEC Close Quarters combat, can I use the punch for the free attack from Close Encounters? Two punches after a move sounds amazing. Any thoughts on MEC use in LW would be nice. Ravenfood fucked around with this message at 03:13 on Apr 22, 2014 |
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Apr 22, 2014 02:23
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I think I'm done with long war until the aerial combat calms down. It takes months to get any kind of air upgrade and the aliens just kept spamming ships over Asia, no way to keep up and suddenly the health of every goddamn alien spikes and they learn a bunch of new tricks. I beelined for gauss weapons but even those aren't cutting it anymore. 30+hp berserkers, mechtoids that seem to have a sectopod's half damage ability, gently caress it. And I invest way too much time into a campaign before it becomes obvious that poo poo has gone downhill. I don't think it would take a lot of tweaking. The early air war is fought largely with avalanche and stingray missiles against small scouts. With avalanche, an interceptor only gets three shots off at a small scout, if the engagement time were like one second longer I think they'd get a fourth shot. I think both weapons could us a bit of an accuracy upgrade also, it's pretty common for an interceptor to go up and miss all three shots while taking enough damage to put it down for two weeks or more. I've more than once had a small scout get engaged by three interceptors and fly away while damaging all three. It's just not fun to be attacked by a dozen ships on the same continent in one month. Before you've even managed to upgrade a weapon. Deuce fucked around with this message at 02:59 on Apr 22, 2014 |
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Apr 22, 2014 02:56
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Dominic White posted:I've been watching some stream recordings of Beagle's Ironman Impossible run of Long War, and it's crazy how lucky and good he is at times.
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Apr 22, 2014 04:18
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It's funny that a lot of the time his best play comes from him being forced to be more aggressive instead of just hunkering down/suppressing/flash banging like he usually prefers doing. Weirdly enough, I think the thing that gets him in trouble the most is moving too far up and triggering another pack, which is something he constantly does despite his otherwise very conservative playstyle. Watching him has made me hyper-aware of the possible sightlines I'm opening up/running through when I play now, and it's helped me quite a bit in keeping situations manageable by not accidentally discovering 1-2 additional packs by moving guys too far up to throw a grenade or something.
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Apr 22, 2014 04:27
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Deuce posted:I think I'm done with long war until the aerial combat calms down. It takes months to get any kind of air upgrade and the aliens just kept spamming ships over Asia, no way to keep up and suddenly the health of every goddamn alien spikes and they learn a bunch of new tricks. I beelined for gauss weapons but even those aren't cutting it anymore. 30+hp berserkers, mechtoids that seem to have a sectopod's half damage ability, gently caress it. And I invest way too much time into a campaign before it becomes obvious that poo poo has gone downhill. They're "significantly changing" UFO mechanics in Beta 7. Hopefully we will sometimes be able to shoot down scouts with starting weapons! I managed to squeak in the avionics Foundry projects before I lost China in my current game, and they really level the playing field so hopefully they will be even more effective in the next version. I'm getting berserkers now and am full gauss, my favorite trick is to snipe the accompanying muton and flashbang the berserkers if they rush in too far. Pull back your scout and put everyone in a staggered overwatch line for them to charge into. I never take Gunners or Medics any more, mid-game is all about pumping 60-70 damage into a pack asap and bullet swarm/rockets/AP grenades/Gauss headshots are essential to pulling that off.
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Apr 22, 2014 16:25
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MMania posted:They're "significantly changing" UFO mechanics in Beta 7. Hopefully we will sometimes be able to shoot down scouts with starting weapons! I managed to squeak in the avionics Foundry projects before I lost China in my current game, and they really level the playing field so hopefully they will be even more effective in the next version. Agreed that for Berzerkers Gunners<<<<Infantry or Rocketeers. I have taken Medics against Berzerkers for Smoke and Mirrors double Flashbangs when I did not have a similar spec Engineer available though.
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Apr 22, 2014 16:56
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Holy poo poo, long war does not screw around. Second mission: Abductor landing. Enemies: 19 in total, 2 packs of sectoids, 1 pack of sectoids+drone, 1 pack of floaters, and a pack of 3 outsiders. Those outsiders are goddamn rough! I got lucky and was enable to save enough grenades and got close enough to breach into their room and take them down with only 1 casualty. This is fun!
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Apr 22, 2014 18:43
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I'm not going to play until the ufo mechanics have changed. I just had a run ruined because I could not shoot anything down. My first ufo went down to a single rocket, since then they all require around four, so I can take out one if i'm lucky, then the rest show up. Its not hard or fun, because there is literally nothing I can do to influence it. Just luck.
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Apr 22, 2014 19:10
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I think simply nerfing the scout UFOs would go a long way towards balancing the air game. The problem right now is that even scouts have the potential to shoot down/damage 4-5 interceptors which sucks because you should at least have a decent chance against the weakest UFO in the game. Nerf the rewards you get from shooting them down or something, but make it so that it isn't just up to RNG whether I one-shot them or have 4 interceptors get blown out of the sky. My biggest wish for LW right now would be if they nerfed the effect that RNG has on most parts of the game. Stuff like the randomness of scouts, the fact that grenades can roll 0 damage, or drones being able to either be one-shotted by a lucky soldier or take 1 damage from four shots in a row, don't actually add anything to the game. They just arbitrarily punish the player. With that said that's the kind of stuff that will hopefully get ironed out as they release more and more betas and the mod comes closer to being feature complete, letting them focus on tweaking precise values rather than just making big nerfs/changes every beta to see if they just happened to hit a good spot for something.
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Apr 22, 2014 19:30
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VDay posted:I think simply nerfing the scout UFOs would go a long way towards balancing the air game. The problem right now is that even scouts have the potential to shoot down/damage 4-5 interceptors which sucks because you should at least have a decent chance against the weakest UFO in the game. Nerf the rewards you get from shooting them down or something, but make it so that it isn't just up to RNG whether I one-shot them or have 4 interceptors get blown out of the sky. Yeah, overall I think it's an amazing mod, it just needs a little balancing in a couple spots. The air war I think could be pretty simple: - slightly increase avalanche/stingray accuracy - slightly decrease small scout/fighter accuracy - slightly increase small scout engagement time - unboosted interceptors only fire off three shots and seem like they only need another half second to fire a fourth shot off - Maybe slightly decrease fighter repair time. 25 days is a long rear end time when there's a pretty hard cap on how many fighters can even be operational. But this might be anti-thematic so I'd be cautious. Maybe 20 days on a wrecked plane. Edit: and something to help Asia. I don't know if airbase positions are modable, but UFOs over Australia can sometimes only be engaged by a single interceptor before they big out. The flight time is too long, and scouts move about the same time as interceptors so it takes a bit to catch them. Alternatively, increased UFO loiter times or interceptor flight speed? The odds of shooting down a small scout or fighter with one interceptor are pretty low. I don't disagree about 0-damage grenades, I thought I remember someone mentioning they were looking at that. Honestly I like the  drones! I've only played Normal difficulty so I don't find them too bad. They can be irritating to kill but their aim is awful so the threat is not overwhelming. One of them tried to shoot a civilian on a terror mission and the civilian survived the hit.  Deuce fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Apr 22, 2014 |
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Apr 22, 2014 22:57
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I think it's pretty OK that at the start you are not able to down every small UFO. Of the 5 UFO's I tried to intercept, I got one down. It fits the narrative IMO, and it adds another layer of difficulty: losing sattelites never really happened in the base game, here it happens about once a month. I also like the small RNG added to grenades and lightning reflexes. It makes the game more fluid and tense, instead of puzzle-like. It made me think more about tactics instead of keeping a 'nade as backup in case poo poo went wrong. Anyway, I get the complaints, but I like it. I play on normal anyway, and it is difficult enough for me. I haven't lost a mission yet, but my dudes are damaged all the time. In vanilla classic, after the first few maps I just mopped up the aliens all the time. It's way more tense now, although not much more difficult.
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Apr 22, 2014 23:03
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Samopsa posted:I think it's pretty OK that at the start you are not able to down every small UFO. Of the 5 UFO's I tried to intercept, I got one down. It fits the narrative IMO, and it adds another layer of difficulty: losing sattelites never really happened in the base game, here it happens about once a month. The trouble with getting beat down by scouts is that it leaves you less able to defend yourself when real dangerous ships to up, and apparently letting them go uncontested can be a problem. I really don't know how those mechanics work, but when I had a string of UFOs dominate my skies suddenly all the aliens gained 3 or 4 hp and sectoids started using psi powers on me. It's not just being unable to down them, they have a tendency to trash your interceptors in the process. It's frustrating to have three interceptors engage a scout and all three return down for 15 days and the scout flies off laughing. It leaves the impression that the air war is just unwinnable, because if I can't even take down scouts why bother against anything bigger? Also, one of the notes I saw said that thin men use poison spit more often on higher difficulties. They already use it all the goddamn time! thin men! Random question: do cyberdiscs still have that half damage from ballistics when closed up ability? and do gauss weapons count as ballistics? Deuce fucked around with this message at 23:35 on Apr 22, 2014 |
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Apr 22, 2014 23:28
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Deuce posted:Yeah, overall I think it's an amazing mod, it just needs a little balancing in a couple spots. The air war I think could be pretty simple: Honestly. I don't think this die rolling BS is worth it. I don't care what they do to the rolling to make it better. I want fighters showing up on a sky map that's like a very small tactical map--the fighters you send show up together on one end. Then the enemy ufo appears in the middle. You move up and shoot your stuff at different sections, depending on how big it is, to try to take it down. FTL style. Each turn, the UFO moves towards the far-edge of the sky map, and your fighters have to try to keep up. When they get shot, they 'panic' and get set back sometimes or damaged. I mean. SOMETHING INTERESTING TO DO. Assigning what type of random die they roll with what completely imaginary weapon system when the fighter silhouette approaches the cream pie from space is not a game. It's just busywork.
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Apr 23, 2014 00:15
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