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zyxophoj posted:The Chrysalids' "burrowing melee overwatch" ability is really annoying. One way to help deal with it is to remember that Threat Assessment exists and is one of the best skills in the game. Casting it on the ranger before moving him forward helps a bit. I actually find this mission a bit annoying - it encourages a slow and boring overwatch crawling strategy. It works, but I almost wish there was a time limit. Cypher, imo. The Minor Breakthrough doesn't really matter anymore at this point - if I remember correctly, it gets added to a facility, and even then Jade has enough time to get to the final mission. The Chrysallids are annoying, but barely do any damage anymore. The Intel cost always hurts, though.
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Apr 15, 2017 18:12
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zyxophoj posted:The Chrysalids' "burrowing melee overwatch" ability is really annoying. One way to help deal with it is to remember that Threat Assessment exists and is one of the best skills in the game. Casting it on the ranger before moving him forward helps a bit. I actually find this mission a bit annoying - it encourages a slow and boring overwatch crawling strategy. It works, but I almost wish there was a time limit. I'd remove Infestation because even if intel costs are increased Jade has plenty of time to build towards the next facility. A minor breakthrough adding one pip to the doom ticker is peanuts at this point since he has room for 7. 'Lids will just make a regular Jade mission more costly and bleed his roster from avoidable wounds.
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Apr 15, 2017 18:16
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The coloring on that archon suit reminds me of (kinda  )Hajime Sorayama's robot pinups
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Apr 15, 2017 20:27
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It's great to see Guavamoment so enthused about all these things. Autopsies, Icarus armour, Blaster launchers, the plot mission, Bladestorm being loving worthless, all cool stuff. But have we still not seen the dipshit golfball do its special transform move? Will we ever? And yes, you're right about Inquisitors looking forward to the end of their Grand Space Genocide (The Imperium are not Good Guys, people) but everything in the Warhammer universe wants to kill everything else, and if all the aliens died who would buy the alien models? Battlefleet Gothic is much the same. Really, all of Warhammer 40K is a perpetual losing battle of corruption, death, and Games Workshop not knowing how to progress their plot without affecting their model sales but trying to do it anyway.
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Apr 15, 2017 20:42
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Well, looks like I was wrong- I could have sworn that Inspire wasn't turn ending. Still, good if a single move isn't enough so get in position.
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Apr 15, 2017 22:40
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Anybody (Guava?) for Icarus Armor on a Gunslinger? Drop a grenade or bomb on a cluster of enemies and then descend from the heavens to finish them all off at once. Also, I usually found Bladestorm to be really effective, so this is clearly Jade's problem. In the final mission my Bladestorm ranger killed as many as three enemies a turn with it.
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Apr 15, 2017 23:24
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Bladestorm and Reaper are both absolutely usable. You just have to stack some aim on your ranger. A PCS and some tracer ammo will make all sword attacks 100% against all enemies but archons. (Yes, tracer ammo works on swords - at least back when I got a generated trooper named Jessica Jones who therefore had to be a melee ranger)
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Apr 15, 2017 23:42
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I assume the psi gate had a silent proximity alarm which is why the keeper knew when to pop in. 
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Apr 16, 2017 00:17
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pun pundit posted:Bladestorm and Reaper are both absolutely usable. You just have to stack some aim on your ranger. A PCS and some tracer ammo will make all sword attacks 100% against all enemies but archons. (Yes, tracer ammo works on swords - at least back when I got a generated trooper named Jessica Jones who therefore had to be a melee ranger) well, both have problems other than there aim, though - bladestorm requires stuff like chrysallids to actually target the ranger - and reapers loss of damage is rather crippling faster than one'd like.
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Apr 16, 2017 00:30
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Yami Fenrir posted:well, both have problems other than there aim, though - bladestorm requires stuff like chrysallids to actually target the ranger - and reapers loss of damage is rather crippling faster than one'd like. There's also the Bladestorm among the reinforcements approach. Reaper is pretty situational, though it's almost always a nice bonus skill via the AWS.
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Apr 16, 2017 00:49
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Today was not Hulkamania's day to run wild. Although, now I am curious as to how the gate changed sizes, since it most definitely shrinks to fit inside the Shadow Chamber. Unless the Shadow Chamber is much larger than the game lets us see.
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Apr 16, 2017 01:03
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AradoBalanga posted:Today was not Hulkamania's day to run wild. well it's not like you take the WHOLE thing, just the bits of it that works and tygan does his nerd magic to make it work despite having to shove it all in a small place. 
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Apr 16, 2017 03:44
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Reaper is REALLY bad. Jumping a fanfire sniper into the middle of a group at least lets you shoot all the people then run off. Reaper lets you jump in then kill some dudes IF you've set them up for it ahead of time. Reaper is a bad skill, never pick it.
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Apr 16, 2017 04:36
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pun pundit posted:Yes, tracer ammo works on swords - at least back when I got a generated trooper named Jessica Jones who therefore had to be a melee ranger Wow, really? Don't fix your game, Jake; swords need all the help they can get. I think Bladestorm is a completely reasonable skill to take, but Reaper has a number of problems, including being opposite the best skill in the game. Even if Reaper increased damage with each hit instead of decreasing it, I'd still take Rapid Fire every time.
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Apr 16, 2017 09:02
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I get why they put in the damage drop off, I really do... but it drops off way too far. Especially when you consider health amounts in mid to late game, which is realistically when you would actually get the skill. Beyond that, it is a feeder skill... that gives kills to a colonel. If the drop off stopped at a reasonable amount, or if it came earlier, I could see an argument for it... But as it is, it is one of the few skills I would say is outright worthless.
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Apr 16, 2017 11:25
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Forever shall we remember the days of the phantom grenadier.
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Apr 16, 2017 11:44
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They mention on a number of occasions that invasive alien species are actually spreading across Earth's wilderness areas, including at the start of the Viper King mission. It's a nice touch, since mass colonization of alien species - particularly aliens with such a significant focus on biotech and as sloppy containment and biohazard policies as the Elders - would almost certainly result in something as devastatingly invasive as the Colombian Exchange.
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Apr 16, 2017 20:03
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The book also mentions special quarantine zones that have begun to appear, inside which animals seem to be covered in crystalline growths. ADVENT is actively fighting the quarantine zones, and a character notes that the forces ADVENT sends in there are armed with flamethrowers - not their usual equipment. Doesn't come up in this game at all outside of one investigation event mentioning them.
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Apr 16, 2017 20:17
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On the note of Reaper, in an abandoned campaign, running Grimy's Loot Mod, I once found a sword that singlehandedly made Reaper *AMAZING* out of a lootbox. It was a legendary lootbox... and the sword had an ability that caused Reaper to *GAIN* two damage on each successive attack rather than lose two. I'm incredibly disappointed that I never got to use it.
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Apr 16, 2017 20:32
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Cythereal posted:The book also mentions special quarantine zones that have begun to appear, inside which animals seem to be covered in crystalline growths. ADVENT is actively fighting the quarantine zones, and a character notes that the forces ADVENT sends in there are armed with flamethrowers - not their usual equipment. I was going to post "Wasn't this a thing in a spin-off book or something?" because I knew beplagued alien quarantine zones were part of a book but I couldn't remember which video game spin-off book. I thought it was XCom, but I figured it might be anything up to and including Assassin's Creed somehow. It could have even been another crossed wire from Warhammer, since those books are pretty much the same thing.
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Apr 16, 2017 21:06
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Quarantine zones with crystalline growth also sounds real Tiberian.
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Apr 16, 2017 21:27
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Tasteful Dickpic posted:Quarantine zones with crystalline growth also sounds real Tiberian. Which would be more interesting than what we've got, in my opinion. I enjoy the gameplay of X-COM 2 but I think the story and setting are unremarkable at best - probably not helped by a number of other notable recent games that use many of the same plot elements.
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Apr 16, 2017 21:43
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Cythereal posted:The book also mentions special quarantine zones that have begun to appear, inside which animals seem to be covered in crystalline growths. ADVENT is actively fighting the quarantine zones, and a character notes that the forces ADVENT sends in there are armed with flamethrowers - not their usual equipment. Isn't that the plot to Apocalypse?
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Apr 17, 2017 04:45
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Apocalypse was more of that the earths environment has become inhospitable to human life following the two alien wars. Now the only large chunks of civilization live in Mega-Dome cities. Or maybe it was just the one and only megadome city. It wasn't that alien life was encroaching on earths biosystems as it was that the entire planet got utterly hosed over by T'leth or whatever exploding and ruining the entire planets ability to support life.
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Apr 17, 2017 04:59
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Yeah Apocalypse was pollution writ large. Also there was only one Mega City. There were plans in the lore to build more but the enormous expense of construction of the first one which was followed by an immediate extra dimensional invasion put those on hold. I don't think they ever wrote anything for a post-Apocalypse timeline, after that they focused on spin offs set before it.
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Apr 17, 2017 06:26
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Kwyndig posted:Yeah Apocalypse was pollution writ large. Also there was only one Mega City. There were plans in the lore to build more but the enormous expense of construction of the first one which was followed by an immediate extra dimensional invasion put those on hold. I don't think they ever wrote anything for a post-Apocalypse timeline, after that they focused on spin offs set before it. There was a planned but unproduced sequel where the aliens from the first X-Com invaded again, but again, unmade.
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Apr 17, 2017 09:41
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 Operation [REDACTED] Pants Wrestling Today Guava and I set upon an old and reused map. I really think we saw this one before exactly like this, which is disappointing since until now while it was possible to recognize individual building blocks of maps, I had never seen an exact repeat of a previous map. Well several hundred hours of play into the game and I saw a map twice for the first time ever isn't so bad really. More critically Guava and I run into possibly the last of the Unexpected Troubles. Turns out Skulljacking plot important things always leads to something bad happening. Just like before this results in a new alien type appearing. This is labeled as the titular Avatar, but something seems a little off about it. In any case the Avatar is a dangerous foe with strong Psi abilities, 5 HP a turn regeneration, and most annoyingly the tendency to teleport around whenever you shoot the drat things. This got mitigated during this particular mission due to possibly the best use of a flashbang by me to date; cutting off mind control and making the Avatar unable to teleport away from danger as I poured explosive fire upon it. Avatars can be nasty when supported by other things to divide your attention, like most other high value or high plot significance enemies when they first appear. Mind Control is of course the biggest problem. Mind shields or flashbangs can really save you with that, or your own Psi soldier with Solace to break the control. Bunching up may get you a Psi Rift. The Avatars also posses great mobility and may simply be able to flank you when you might expect to be safe from such a thing. They're always a high priority target, but their regeneration and teleport-on-damage ability they can be tough to bring down. Either you need good concentrated fire while they teleport around, a way to get them to walk into a wall of overwatch so they can't teleport and don't get time to regenerate, or you need a way to stop them from doing that all together. All said, they're not quite the pants shittingly scary monster of the battle field you might expect from the titular alien, but they are very hard to kill and are very capable of turning the battle field against you as struggle to counter and kill them.
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Apr 20, 2017 10:30
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I remember vaguely that the reason you get 3 chrysalids per poison was they wanted to make civilians being poisoned by chrysalids into a real threat instead of an annoyance.
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Apr 20, 2017 13:33
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It took 33 episodes, but this LP finally convinced me to buy the game. Good job Jade Star (and Guava Moment)!
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Apr 20, 2017 16:09
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This is why I prefer to hack the codex in a story mission and only as the first action of the turn to ensure that I can kill it in one turns.
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Apr 20, 2017 16:30
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Would it be possible to hack the first Codex you see when you first hack an Officer, setting off the new enemy type? "Man, sticking this device up the Officer's nose totally killed it in one go, gonna try it on this new orange guy-" 
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Apr 20, 2017 17:17
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LashLightning posted:Would it be possible to hack the first Codex you see when you first hack an Officer, setting off the new enemy type? you can only use skulljacking/mining once a mission each
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Apr 20, 2017 17:25
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I really feel Skullmining is an underused mechanic. I like that you can get intel from it, but it doesn't feel like a good choice at any real point. There are a few things in this game like that, skills where really there's no reason to take the skill opposite because one is just so much more useful, but the Skulljack is also a plot device, so it feels like a wasted venture when you build it, hit one dude, and then never use it again. It's not really that useful so when they game tells you to use it the second time, again for plot reasons, it kinda feels like a rehash of the first attempt. It looks awesome, it sounds awesome, but it just doesn't get used. I didn't get the mission to tell me to hack a Codex, but someone told me to do it as it would bring down my doom counter. So I did, and I was amazed at how much of a pain that dude was. I ended up rocketing and then robot punching it to death, and it turns out that there is an achievement for killing it with a SPARK.
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Apr 20, 2017 18:04
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TheDarkFlame posted:It looks awesome, it sounds awesome, but it just doesn't get used. As far as the plot goes? Yeah, it's pretty underused. Skulljacking advent troops though is a great way to oneshot something tough and get a bonus out of it. Shieldbearers especially, since you can just ram the spike into them through the shield, and that removes it from any enemies while you're at it.
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Apr 20, 2017 18:24
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Avatars were scary for first-time players... but veterans of the alien hunters DLC are not intimidated. An avatar is less dangerous than any of the three bosses that Jade Star has already killed. Tactics that worked on the rulers will demolish a lone avatar. On top of that, we now have access to all the overpowered hunter equipment - and the avatar was balanced around the player not having that. I thought they were immune to flash-bangs, though. Obviously, I was wrong. So a cheap little starting-tech item shuts down all the avatar's gimmicks, turning it into a trooper with a lot of HP. Stop breaking the game, Jade. About skulljacking: The two mandatory plot-related skulljackings can't fail. Non-plot skullmining can. I think it's still worth it, mostly for the loot - although the instant-kill effect also doesn't hurt.
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Apr 20, 2017 18:58
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Wheany posted:The coloring on that archon suit reminds me of (kinda I recognize that from somewhere...
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Apr 20, 2017 19:31
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You almost just lost that mission because of that sectopod, I'm sure when you saw it move towards the objective you started to panic.
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Apr 20, 2017 19:38
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Are you going to skulljack officers to get the codex spawn, and then skulljack that to get an avatar spawn, then skulljack THAT for bonus intel and to reduce the doomsday clock?
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Apr 20, 2017 19:50
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I'm pretty sure missing arm syndrome (MAS) is due to a cosmetic mod that makes the arms "invisible" so it can replace it with something else as part of other armor.
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Apr 20, 2017 20:14
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monster on a stick posted:I'm pretty sure missing arm syndrome (MAS) is due to a cosmetic mod that makes the arms "invisible" so it can replace it with something else as part of other armor. Is it Popeye-arms? Please be Popeye-arms.
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Apr 20, 2017 21:12
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