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Yeah you are mistaken on that one Jade, unless something changed with EW and nobody at Firaxis bothered to talk about it. 1HP shows up as 'gravely wounded', but doesn't incur a Will penalty. Incapped/Bleeding out will incur a -15 Will penalty. It's a branding problem.
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Feb 5, 2014 17:28
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Jade Star posted:I will certainly take another look at the grave wounds issue to prove it one way or another. I will run a few quick tests.  Fresh game, Enemy Within, no second wave options. First mission, I bait an Overwatch shot and get this soldier knocked down to 1HP.  Rest of the mission goes easily. No issues whatsoever.  As you note, the game marks her as gravely wounded in the mission results screen.  But her will is 44 - that's 4 points higher than the Rookie stock of 40, and completely in line with the Squaddie rank-up.    Here are 3 Rookies who did not take part in the mission, to illustrate. e: The variations you're seeing in your tests are due to the fact that Will is random even without any second wave options. In EW I believe it's +1 +1d6. Checking. ee: It's something of that nature. By default the range is 2-6 (source), but there is an ini value you can mod to mess with that (iRandWillIncrease). Coolguye fucked around with this message at 18:19 on Feb 5, 2014 |
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Feb 5, 2014 18:14
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I'd need to check again but I think the barracks readout simply references how long they'll be out. I'd not be surprised if your 22-day guy, 13 days later, simply read as wounded. e: Actually that's what it is. It is because your sniper is at 1 HP. The other guys read as Wounded because they are at 2 HP. Snipers don't get a health point at Squaddie, but Support and Heavy do. This is also why he is out for so much longer. 1 HP -> 2 HP is handled differently than all other recuperation, due to the presumed serious nature of the wounds. I forgot about that for a bit. Coolguye fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Feb 5, 2014 |
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Feb 5, 2014 18:20
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Psychic aptitude is part of it, yeah, but that's still far off in this LP - it's probably best to get into the nitty gritty of that as we get there. For the immediate future, basically any time your soldiers take damage, EVERYONE has to roll a Will check to avoid panic. Light 2-3 strikes are unlikely to make even the person who received it panic, but big crits and people getting killed will scare the poo poo out of people in a hurry. It's totally possible to have someone 10 feet away go into a panic because someone near them got nicked on the elbow, though. If people take HP damage during a mission, they take temporary Will damage as well. To illustrate, in the above example I had where my Rookie had 40 Will, she had 30 effective Will after she had taken that 4-damage hit. This makes her more likely to panic even if she's not the next one who gets shot. You don't need a massive pile of Will to have an effective soldier, though. Many missions are very completable without taking any damage at all, and the missions that aren't you can definitely complete deathless. Essentially, if you play cleanly enough, you won't get many Will tests during normal play. My very first game had a Heavy called Xenia "Strobe" Gonzalez who got KOed so many times her Will was 43 even when she was maxed out in rank (you usually expect 90+ by that point). She required a little bit of babysitting but was still perfectly effective. So yeah, it may only be something you pay attention to when psionics come into play. Coolguye fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Feb 5, 2014 |
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Feb 5, 2014 19:13
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No, none of that factors in any bonuses. But you don't get any bonuses for conducting autopsy and interrogation projects, and those 61 days are spread over more than a dozen projects, and very few of them are important at all. Plus if you don't build any labs your rear end is asking for trouble.
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Feb 5, 2014 20:03
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limited posted:Any organization set up to stop it would be bogged down by politics/performance reviews, understaffed, and underfunded to the point that selling alien technology on the black market is the only way to fully fund SAVING THE ENTIRE drat PLANET.
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Feb 5, 2014 23:28
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The soldiers are rationalized to be some of the best who are eligible. Most soldiers have spouses and family that will start asking some really uncomfortable questions when their sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers drop off the face of the planet. Yes, there are SEALs that are gone for months at a time and still have wives and 3 kids at home, but said wives and kids know that Daddy's in the SEALs and why he doesn't write very often. That is not possible with XCOM. Every soldier you get functionally does not exist. Think squads of dudes from Alpha Protocol. In the novels that were written about UFO Defense (I have no idea how canon these are supposed to be), there were only two requirements to be a soldier in XCOM: Be willing to disappear from the 'normal' world, and be aware of aliens without us having to tell you (this typically means surviving an alien attack). So a lot of soldiers that you get are presumably dudes who have stories like this: I was an overweight barber until a terror attack hit my sleepy suburb. My parents were killed and my girlfriend disappeared. I think she was abducted. All I want now is to kill as many of these bastards as I possibly can. XCOM found me, I enlisted on the spot. We faked my death and I worked at losing my gut and learning which end of the laser rifle is dangerous while I waited to be called up. And now, here I am, on the Skyranger, next to Sergeant Alvarez, as we hum across the sky to another terror attack halfway across the world. I still hear my own screams inside my head, from when I snuck past the road blocks and found my parents' home engulfed in an unnaturally green-tinted inferno. Fellis posted:IIRC in original XCOM you can lose all funding from the Council and continue to play by constantly manufacturing and selling things to fund yourself. Coolguye fucked around with this message at 05:23 on Feb 6, 2014 |
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Feb 6, 2014 05:16
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Rorahusky posted:I suppose it would be kind of hard to explain to your spouse about how you got all your arms and legs chopped off so you could be turned into a cyborg, or how you're now a mutant freak who can jump five stories with his new mutant legs. Funny note about that - MEC soldiers are one of a half-dozen ways XCOM really loving sucks at the whole secrecy thing in the EU/EW, but presumably the rationale is that after the aliens are all murdered they can release the truth to the world and say "THIS GUY WITH NO ARMS, NO LEGS, AND IS SWIMMING IS NOT 'BOB'. HE IS A HERO. SO SHUT THE gently caress UP."
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Feb 6, 2014 05:28
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Stunt double nothing. At that point, that joker has more qualifications to be an action hero than Schwarzenegger, Stallone, or Weaver. Just cast them as the star and have them do their own stunts. It's not like you're throwing anything at them that the aliens didn't.
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Feb 6, 2014 05:45
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MJ12 posted:Aim statistics for real life soldiers are incredibly low as soon as enemy fire becomes a thing. Again, remember that supposedly the aliens (and you) are shooting at each other all the time, they just took it out because it looked 'too busy'. In the turn based nature of a game, there's necessarily abstractions like this-but a 25% hit rate against guys in 90% cover is goddamn amazing and most armies would give you literally a billion dollars if you could train guys to shoot that accurately.  quote:XCOM is secret presumably not to hide from governments, but to give governments an excuse to not talk about aliens invading on live TV because that kind of sucks, or in the case of China/Japan (and other XCOM members, like Iran and Israel) to not talk about how their governments are actually militarily cooperating, because nobody wants to hear that. Tendales posted:I wonder how hard it would be to mod the game so that any civilian you rescue in a terror mission becomes a rookie, and that's the only source of new rookies.
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Feb 6, 2014 07:27
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Pvt.Scott posted:Even the lowest rookie accuracy is pretty drat good for night fighting while outnumbered with no support. I wish I could have the units use the suppression fire animations against each other when in range. Real firefights tend to involve thousands of rounds going down range. It would be so pretty! That might be something that Toolboks could eventually bring back if it's anywhere still in the code though.
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Feb 6, 2014 15:59
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I've actually got half an idea on how to handle a narrative LP of EW, but the functional points of it are a long, long time in the making yet. I'd hope someone else gets to it before I do because it'd be great to see someone else going after that, but at the very least you might take some comfort in knowing someone is putting some work in with that goal in mind.
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Feb 6, 2014 21:29
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Green Intern posted:Regarding Suppression, I almost feel like a Heavy is better at it than a Support, at least if you pick up Mayhem and Danger Zone. It turns Suppression into a guaranteed 1-3 damage with a small AoE, which is perfect for getting rid of small clumps of weak enemies, or making sure that you don't miss a critical kill to open the way. This is fine until you consider the opportunity cost, which you just did at the end of it. A Danger Zone suppression might be pretty cool, but a Danger Zone rocket is AWESOME. Like Guava also sort of alluded to, Supports don't really have much of a place on the battlefield if not doing stuff like this to enemies, too. Heavies, meanwhile, are always in demand because rockets are always awesome.
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Feb 7, 2014 04:13
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:Anybody else just get Kenny Loggins stuck in their head?
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Feb 7, 2014 06:59
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Jade Star posted:Guava brings up mention of the percent chances to hit not being exactly directly related to actual results. It's important to know that Easy and Normal will cheat a little behind the scenes in favor of the player. Every time the player misses on these difficulty levels they get a small invisible bonus to hit for their next shot, cumulative until they do score a hit. This isn't what we were talking about, but it's still important to know.
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Feb 9, 2014 19:23
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Any first-wave guys are going to be lower Will by definition anyway. The Officer Training School has a project called 'Iron Will' that you can buy, which doubles Will gains from leveling up. This is not retroactive.
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Feb 11, 2014 02:15
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Sloober posted:An assault could accomplish about the same thing. Squadsight can't really be replicated. The counterargument is that on a lot of maps - particularly the new ones that come with EW - Squadsight is relatively valueless. Snap shot snipers require some more work to get them into position and working, but they can find a niche on basically any map. The same cannot be said for Squadsighters.
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Feb 11, 2014 06:25
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The plasma pistol, when fully upgraded and with Gunslinger, rolls at 5-7 base damage with a crit of 8-10. The laser sniper rifle, with no upgrades at all, has identical base damage, +10% extra crit (+30 as opposed to +20), and better critical damage (9-11). True, the pistol never needs to be reloaded and still probably compares favorably to the laser SR, but the laser SR is kind of an unfair comparison since it's attainable and usable A LOT sooner than a gunslinger plasma pistol with all 3 upgrades, one of which requires the plasma pistol research itself and will not be done for 14 days after the completion of plasma pistol research at best. If you want a reasonably fair comparison you should compare it to the Plasma Sniper Rifle, which has base damage of 8-10. You don't even need to look at the rest of those stats because it does as much damage on a basic hit as your juiced up pistol does on a crit. And the Plasma Sniper Rifle doesn't require 80 weapon fragments of Foundry projects to get this good. I am not saying that plasma pistols aren't good. They rule. But to say they replace Snap Shot is simply not accurate. e: Also, drat Good Ground is objectively better than Gunslinger for a Saint Michael style sniper (Squadsight + Archangel armor). Nothing will ever touch that sniper, period, once he's lifted off and has great sight lines from high in the sky. Gunslinger is a wasted perk, while DGG will be useful every shot you take. Coolguye fucked around with this message at 06:58 on Feb 11, 2014 |
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Feb 11, 2014 06:54
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To say it's because Americans are lazy is to miss the point. Everyone's lazy when they can be, and people are not when they can't be. The larger situation is that in the vast majority of America, space is not at a premium at all. You will not find drive-up ATMs in New York City or Boston - the land is way too expensive for the value provided. You will find them in 50 miles away from NYC and Boston downtowns, though, because the land value drops off precipitously. You will find them in most of the Midwest because there is so much land to go around. You will find them along major roadways because there are thousands upon thousands of miles of roads in the USA and when people are driving these roads they typically have a long loving way to go and don't want to waste time switching tasks. Things like drive-up whatevers don't show up in smaller countries simply because there are fewer spots where they're viable. If people aren't accustomed to using them then they just don't get used. And then why have you bothered investing that money? In the UK, for example, due to the way the population is distributed, you'd probably have more traditional branches without drive-up service than expanded branches with drive-up service. In a situation like that, people aren't accustomed to using the drive-up service, feel uncomfortable with it, and just don't use it. I am not talking out of my rear end with half-cocked presumptions. I work for a bank and even as a programmer the bank goes to great lengths to make sure I understand the reasons behind their business decisions. I am giving you the exact rationale our VP of Teller Services gave me at our last major training.
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Feb 11, 2014 17:40
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Really I've always considered the fights over how to build your snipers to be indicative of good game design. If both camps of people have had so many good experiences with it, then clearly neither of them are worthless. It therefore provides a quality alternative choice where neither route is objectively 'bad'. Isn't that the point of build choices in the first place?
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Feb 11, 2014 20:44
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Jade Star posted:I'm thinking you mean bone marrow, in which case yeah you kind of have a point. But bone marrow gets less and less useful as you get better armors. So it doesn't flat out remove my con on revive, only makes it much more effective early on. This would aslo require bone marrow on absolutely every soldier to always be effective with revive. He's actually referring to Second Heart, I believe, which negates the will penalty and guarantees that you will go into bleedout as opposed to dying immediately. Adaptive Bone Marrow will not restore armor HP and takes forever to work so it's kind of tangentially related to the Revive argument really. Using ABM is more an argument for not taking Field Medic.
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Feb 14, 2014 00:59
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JerikTelorian posted:I am very appreciative of this LP, my play has really improved (at least insofar as the first few missions). I've got a question though: last time I played I got absolutely hosed by the first alien supply ship I met. I was completely outclassed. The interception is what gets a lot of people since a surprising number of folks are not willing to put stuff like the Pheonix Cannon on interceptors because it's short range. Yes, it is short range. It will still give you a better overall result than Avalanche missiles, however. Pair it with a Boost or a Dodge module (or both), and a basic interceptor can do quite a bit of damage to a supply ship. Even better if your research path has led you to laser cannons by that point.
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Feb 15, 2014 08:00
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Che Delilas posted:If that's the case, then it was a misguided attempt. The maps are so laughably small that even if your sniper is at the very corner, all you have to do is dash towards the rest of your team one time and you're safe. Seekers are the biggest waste of development time. They're the buggiest pieces of poo poo in the whole game, and they don't even serve any purpose except to waste your time. The only time they're a real threat is when they reveal along with at least two other enemy packs and take your guys out of the fight at a critical moment. This is a classic case of two points being presented in a vacuum and people (mostly the media) hastily throwing it together and giving people the wrong impression. During the development of EW, Solomon and a few other senior developers were well noted as disliking Squadsight snipers. They didn't like how powerful they were and they didn't like how they defeated many aspects of the game. They said they were going to work at making them less desirable. They then, in unrelated news, talked about how they were working on enemies that would shake up traditional squad dispositions and force people to make decisions they hadn't had to make before. When they revealed the Mechtoid, people took this in the spirit it was intended; giving early squads an 'oh poo poo' enemy to gang up on or run the gently caress away from, with the Sectopod receiving buffs to make it do the same thing in the late game. These enemies make it a LOT harder to one-round a lot of aliens and can force you into rolling firefights that most commanders would rather avoid. When the Seeker was revealed and they pointed out that it was intended to go after isolated guys, everyone immediately thought if their Squadsight snipers a billion miles away from everything and declared it a sniper hunter. Except that it's not. Squadsight was taken care of when it got nerfed and Snap Shot got buffed. The argument between the two in this very thread is proof positive that the balancing there worked. In the stereotypical situation where you reveal a Seeker swarm and you have a guy far in back, the problem that is presented to you scraping a Seeker off that person if they theoretically didn't move is the same problem presented to the Seekers - they have to move halfway across the loving map to get to the guy, at which point he has doubtlessly run his rear end off/moved. Let's not forget that there are a solid fistful of ways to become immune to strangulation as well. It is beyond trivial to throw the anti-strangulation accessory onto a Squadsight sniper and call it a day. Nobody thought of the Support on the fringes that throws smoke and suppresses targets as the potential Seeker bait, nobody thought of it as the advanced Assault who just finished Run 'n Gunning a dangerous Thin Man. Nobody ever bothers to mention the way a Seeker effectively acts as an alien Flashbang by inducing 'Catching Breath', which could disable someone important in the middle of a firefight. And yet these are exactly the targets that are hardest to guard against and most panic-inducing when the hit. Seekers are not 'gently caress snipers', they are 'gently caress your rosy tactical plot that you've probably executed a dozen times in this exact situation'. Seekers work fantastic in that they force you to make a very uncomfortable decision when they show up. Do I circle the wagons and wait for the strike, or do I try to continue what I was doing and plan for the worst? They're a beautiful unknown variable. And yes, it's perfectly possible to continue what you were doing while you plan for a Seeker or two to gently caress you. I've continued - and won - plenty of firefights with a Seeker spooking me in the middle of it, because I had a plan to fall back or harden my position for a turn or two while I dealt with the goddamn squid. Smoke bombs work incredible for hardening a position that's under attack when someone gets strangled. Just attack the Seeker and pop the smoke after it's dead to blunt the counterattack you're inviting. Alternately, dropping explosives into the enemy's midst so they suddenly have better things to do than take potshots at you also works great for continuing to work while being under Seeker attack. The problem arises when they start using their guns, because as Lego said, they're altogether too hardy for how hard they can hit. Most of the complaining I see about Seekers come from people who just give up the second they see them. Oh darn, Seeker group, well, might as well just put everyone right next to each other and drop down Overwatch. Well, then you just made the determination that the fighting capability of your squad as it stands right now is more important than the Meld on the map. That is a decision you made. If you are unhappy with that decision, perhaps you should not make that decision anymore. Danaru posted:My only gripe with training roulette is my number of supports who got none of the medkit related skills, and now have absolutely nothing going for them. I guess I can Mec them, but drat. Coolguye fucked around with this message at 08:07 on Feb 17, 2014 |
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Feb 17, 2014 08:03
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The best way to think of The Bureau is Mass Effect without an ambitious story and roughly half of the Bioware-isms. If that sounds interesting to you, by all means go to it. It's not a poorly made game. It is, however, a poorly directed game, so if you go in expecting something really cool you're going to be disappointed.
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Feb 18, 2014 20:35
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That's slander. Vahlen isn't power-hungry. She's an amiable, efficient, unrepentant torturer and cold blooded murderess, as charming and vicious as Patrick Bateman ever was. Seriously, you make her sound like some sort of megalomanaic.
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Feb 19, 2014 23:36
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Thin Men are way better off than Snakemen if for no other reason than 'gently caress Thin Men' is a piece of trauma shared by every XCOM player ever, and 'gently caress Snakemen' has been said by approximately nobody in the history of time.
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Feb 20, 2014 16:29
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