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yeah my basic evaluation is that this is a really bold attempt to shake up the normal turn based formula, but just because it's bold doesn't mean it's necessarily good. i've enjoyed the dlc but there's also been a couple of missions with rulers that i've reloaded because it kind of ended up like "how the gently caress was i supposed to play that one and not get turned inside out?" i'll be interested to see how beagle etc end up dismantling rulers after getting a feel for them though
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May 15, 2016 04:56
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Yeah, I think it comes back to the whole 'alpha strike' style the turns play out to be. If a pod activates on their turn, they get blown to oblivion before they can respond. If you activate late on your turn, you get wrecked on their turn. I'm putting together a little experiment right now which lifts the turn system from Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together. Basically, every unit has a recovery time. Whoever has the lowest recovery time gets their turn (just that unit). When they're done, they get put back into the recovery queue based on how many action points they spent, so if they have 2 left they have a really short recovery time (it's sort of 'waiting'), or if it's 0 left they have the full recovery queue. I think with a good display showing the turn order it should be an interesting way to play. I am interested in whether it can feel a more fluid way to play, as you have more flexibility, and damage is more spread out over a turn rather than each side 'taking their best shot'.
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May 15, 2016 06:00
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Let me see if I understand how the DLC works. If you load a pre-DLC save, you can enable DLC content, but won't be able to do the Nest story mission or find the hunter weapons for free on the Geoscape. Instead you build them yourself for a resource cost. You upgrade them when you get the prerequisite technologies. I assume the ruler aliens just show up at a certain date? When I started a new game with the DLC enabled, I waited a long time to investigate Big Sky's crash site. After I got the hunter weapons, I was surprised that I wasn't able to upgrade them despite having magnetic weapons. Once I did the Nest, I was able to upgrade them. I assume I'll be able to upgrade them further once I reach plasma tier. It sounds like DLC content is still enabled if you don't check that you want to do the Nest at the beginning. So paradoxically, if you want to start a new game without dealing with DLC content, you have to enable the Nest mission, and then avoid investigating the things on the Geoscape?
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May 15, 2016 06:15
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Dr Christmas posted:Let me see if I understand how the DLC works. Or you just uncheck the DLC from the box on steam. That'll stop the Nest/DLC weapons from spawning.
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May 15, 2016 06:18
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Maluco Marinero posted:Yeah, I think it comes back to the whole 'alpha strike' style the turns play out to be. If a pod activates on their turn, they get blown to oblivion before they can respond. If you activate late on your turn, you get wrecked on their turn. This kind of thing would be amazing, but actually making it be balanced in a mod would involve practically writing an entirely new game design that just used the existing XCOM 2 assets. I really hate what the schrodinger's alien system does to the game but it is just too inherently tied to the design to get rid of it without a lot of collateral damage. I understand what problem it was put in to solve (the possibility of an alien you've never seen before just walking out of the fog and instakilling someone, like in the first X-COM) but it has a lot of flaws and they built the whole game far too strictly around it.
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May 15, 2016 06:26
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oswald ownenstein posted:I don't think I'm a fan of this new DLC I've only had alien rulers show up on VIP extraction missions, I found them manageable since by the time the second ruler showed up my grenadier had two of those cryo grenades, the axe had a stun effect, the magnetic crossbow had a stun effect, the serpent suit had a freeze effect and I had fire and poison rounds plus I lured king number 2 up buildings and grenaded them down to the ground when they got close to my troops. That being said if my tech level were lower and I didn't have such advantageous terrain, that fight would've been nightmarish. Grapple hooks as free moves to get away from that thing were useful as well.
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May 15, 2016 06:32
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Digirat posted:This kind of thing would be amazing, but actually making it be balanced in a mod would involve practically writing an entirely new game design that just used the existing XCOM 2 assets. Yeah, I'm putting the mod together just to see what it feels like while I do the broader strategy rebuild for Guerrilla War. I think the pod system is something that can be conquered with concealment, better recon abilities, and a more logical command hierarchy for the aliens (so they send pods to support each other). So yeah, almost a new game with XCOM assets, but I'm game. I always wanted to make a game, but I never had the assets skill, and I always had big ideas. This lets me get as close to having a crack at that as I'd ever get while still holding a full time job, so why not.
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May 15, 2016 07:02
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i think the biggest thing i would change about this DLC is to give the 'what was that noise' readout when there's an unactivated ruler on the board, regardless of if you're in a fight or not. maybe make it a bright blue instead of the normal orange to indicate that something's different. on things like VIP missions where a ruler would REALLY ruin your day, you'd have a chance to work around the ruler, and in the case where you absolutely must clear the field (like a retal mission or a macguffin defense mission) you can move forward with some basic common sense preparations, like pre-emptively reloading weapons and treating fog fearfully. rulers change what's up so incredibly much that i feel like the extra data point is valid. the shadow chamber also doesn't tell you if a ruler's gonna be on the board, which it should and i presume that's a bug. overall i think the worries about the rulers being OP were generally unfounded, but they're not entirely without merit. a ruler activating at a bad time, like when your soldiers have mostly empty mags (and no autoloaders) or when your squad is separated for whatever reason can very quickly spell F-U-K-D for your mission and there's not a whole hell of a lot you can do about it. that said, outside of those wow i'm boned at first glance situations i have not lost any soldiers to the rulers. though in the case of the archon king i think that is at least partially luck because holy hell 25 defense means some seriously scary accuracy levels on most of your troops. that, however, is kind of a persistent gripe for me with archons. i feel like they really need to nullify innate defense when stunned/disabled/disoriented for archons; their defense clearly comes from their mobility and as it stands right now even if you focus them down a couple bad coin flips and you'll fail to finish them off in a round through basically no fault of your own. this is fine for an otherwise normal unit like a trooper or a muton, but rule number loving one with archons is that you do not start what you can't finish with them. blazing pinions isn't a problem. their accuracy with their staff blows normally. but holy crap do they get mean when battle fury comes up so if you start hurting them you had best be ready to finish that fight this round, and with loving 25 innate defense anyone short of a colonel is gonna be very drat lucky to be pulling 70% CTH on them. Coolguye fucked around with this message at 08:34 on May 15, 2016 |
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May 15, 2016 08:11
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My main issue is that the Viper King mission comes too early in the game, with no warning of how difficult it is going to be. For me it was around the 4th mission of the campaign, I had no upgrades to anything, 5 people in the squad, mostly low level. I got pretty much stomped.
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May 15, 2016 09:38
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botany posted:My main issue is that the Viper King mission comes too early in the game, with no warning of how difficult it is going to be. For me it was around the 4th mission of the campaign, I had no upgrades to anything, 5 people in the squad, mostly low level. I got pretty much stomped. I waited until I had second tier armor/mag weapons/a decent squad ready to go and made it through smoothly; even got the king's health under half. Hit him with a freeze grenade and by the time he recovered he opened up his escape rift. Also haven't played in a couple months and I'm rusty as fuuuuuuuck at geoscape management. Constantly broke and trying to keep everything together, didn't a patch note mention that you can't cheese the doomsday clock now? 
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May 15, 2016 13:40
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botany posted:My main issue is that the Viper King mission comes too early in the game, with no warning of how difficult it is going to be. For me it was around the 4th mission of the campaign, I had no upgrades to anything, 5 people in the squad, mostly low level. I got pretty much stomped. To be fair, that also applies to the first Blacksite mission. It could be done as exactly your third mission.
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May 15, 2016 14:02
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POLICE CAR AUCTION posted:didn't a patch note mention that you can't cheese the doomsday clock now? You can't cheese it as much. If you ride it all the way to the end, it will reset to some minimum value (as in 1 week instead of 1 month)
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May 15, 2016 14:26
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Wheany posted:You can't cheese it as much. If you ride it all the way to the end, it will reset to some minimum value (as in 1 week instead of 1 month) And I assume they kept the minimum value of 1 week so that you at least have time to wait for some wounded troops you might happen to have have to heal, before you HAVE to go do a mission that gives you time. I can have moments of... eccentricity and sometimes be quite curious about things. Please forgive me if I do something foolish or rude.
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May 15, 2016 15:33
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Coolguye posted:
Nope: Thanks Jake posted:CharTemplate.bHideInShadowChamber = true;
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May 15, 2016 16:52
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Exposure posted:Nope: stupid
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May 15, 2016 17:12
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Jetamo posted:To be fair, that also applies to the first Blacksite mission. It could be done as exactly your third mission. No it doesn't, Bradford expressly tells you to make sure your troops are good and ready before you attempt that mission. There's no warning before the viper mission.
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May 15, 2016 17:13
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Bradford could solo the viper king mission honestly, and if you gave him the axes and the freeze bomb he would probably do a better job of it than many squads. The big thing to remember about rulers is that in many cases it is better to just hit backspace than burn your remaining actions.
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May 15, 2016 17:17
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oswald ownenstein posted:Ok serious question - does this game not run like poo poo for anyone? https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/tweaking-performance-in-xcom-2.6627 the site may be linux specific but the fixes are for unreal 3, as the memory pool size, a setting that most devs just leave "as is" for compatibility, is only 10mb by default
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May 15, 2016 17:23
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I thought "Alien Hunters" was about XCOM hunting special aliens. That is what the press release said, isn't it? But what we got is special aliens hunting XCOM.Exposure posted:Nope:
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May 15, 2016 17:47
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Digirat posted:This kind of thing would be amazing, but actually making it be balanced in a mod would involve practically writing an entirely new game design that just used the existing XCOM 2 assets. Activate-all-aliens is super basic and already makes the whole thing much less bullshit.
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May 15, 2016 17:53
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botany posted:No it doesn't, Bradford expressly tells you to make sure your troops are good and ready before you attempt that mission. There's no warning before the viper mission. I guess I completely missed that message as on my first game I tried to do the blacksite as soon as possible. 
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May 15, 2016 17:56
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It is kind of funny that your best option when dealing with the Blacksite is to get your men, but not your tech, advanced up a few ranks because of how the enemy scaling works.
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May 15, 2016 18:02
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I don't get the logistics of the doom counter not resetting. If you're setting back the aliens' progress on the Advent project (by the game's nebulous definition of what that means) why does the progress they made that you set back stick?
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May 15, 2016 18:06
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It really just sounds like anti-Beagle patching there. It doesn't make sense from a logical standpoint, but it does from a game one for difficulty. Riding the doom clock, once you know how to really cheese it, was making the Geoscape portion of gameplay trivial.
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May 15, 2016 18:11
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Just imagine the Doom Countdown after the counter fills is both them finalizing the project's materials, and then the time necessary to start actual production. The first time you have a good amount of time because they still need to finish the research work, they just are in the final stages of it, but after they do that, you only have about a week to gently caress up a facility or something before they're churning out Final Form Avatars because they know what they're doing, it's just a matter of starting the process. I mean it's obviously a game balance choice, but there are ways to make it make sense.
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May 15, 2016 18:19
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Met the Archon King and executed him right as he was about to seriously gently caress my squad up 
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May 15, 2016 18:42
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Repeaters really shouldn't be able to proc on rulers, haha Or at least it should be a significant portion of their HP instead.
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May 15, 2016 19:08
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gently caress that it actually makes repeaters worth installing
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May 15, 2016 19:19
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POLICE CAR AUCTION posted:Met the Archon King and executed him right as he was about to seriously gently caress my squad up Wheany posted:There is someone on this earth whose first encounter with a ruler will be
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May 15, 2016 19:20
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Granted, they're a lot less useful now that they don't work with stocks.
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May 15, 2016 19:21
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Coolguye posted:gently caress that it actually makes repeaters worth installing Rulers already don't obey the turn-based nature of the game, and don't show up with the shadow chamber. Having them ignore the bullshit-as-it-is (but in the player's favor) repeaters would just be another gently caress-you.
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May 15, 2016 19:24
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I'm guessing anyone who has the "kill a ruler in the mission it appears" achievement will have it thanks to a repeater.
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May 15, 2016 19:33
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Speedball posted:I'm guessing anyone who has the "kill a ruler in the mission it appears" achievement will have it thanks to a repeater. Good thing they cut the repeater drop rate in half.
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May 15, 2016 19:41
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all of the '% chance to do a thing' mods were worthless enough to me that i remanded them to being sold to the Black Market for supplies, because this game is swingy enough without me hoping for bullcrap like that. i mean i might go ahead and drop a hair trigger on something just because it doesn't really conflict with anything else and there's frequently not much else to drop on a sniper rifle or a cannon after a scope goes on, but generally speaking i'll happily take 10 supplies over 5% chance to kill something i was planning on killing anyway or 5% chance to get an action i can't count on and will therefore not bother using. but considering that a ruler is, most probably, 3 missions of touch and go pain and tension, i will happily install a repeater for a 5% chance to end that prematurely.
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May 15, 2016 20:09
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Auto loaders are way more useful than hair triggers on snipers and cannons. Between killzone and all the cannon abilities that use more than 1 ammo, free reloads make a big difference. Although I have definitely been saved by a hair trigger before.
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May 15, 2016 20:48
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I had the berserker queen show up on a blacksite mission when I had concealment and an elevated position, oh and a flashbang too.
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May 15, 2016 21:04
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A 15% chance to auto-kill something is pretty good though, especially when it worked with stocks. They've saved several bad situations for me, and while I'm never relying on that proc, they definitely have useful ripple effects through the length of a campaign.
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May 15, 2016 21:09
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Speedball posted:I'm guessing anyone who has the "kill a ruler in the mission it appears" achievement will have it thanks to a repeater. I did this, albeit with some heavy save scumming, on the Nest mission with magnetic weapons. I haven't fought the Archon King yet, but I assume he Viper King has the lowest hp. Another reason it'll be easier to get the achievement with the Viper King is that you can flank it for easy critical strikes after freezing it and blown long up its cover, unlike, I assume, the other rulers. Dr Christmas fucked around with this message at 21:24 on May 15, 2016 |
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May 15, 2016 21:16
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Echoing that, on legendary. I'm not doing ironman on this run but I didn't need to load for the fight- I had nearly everyone stacked on the plateau with overwatch ready before triggering his entrance and then Bradford took front and center to soak most of the neonate vipers' attacks. 2 uses of freeze bomb, two stuns from bolt caster, and mag weaponry took it down and all it could do was call the gate. Took some wounds from minions but otherwise it was super easy. Don't do this mission ASAP if you value your soldiers' well-being. e: I just got nothing as my specialist's AWC perk. 
dyzzy fucked around with this message at 23:12 on May 15, 2016 |
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May 15, 2016 23:09
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Yeah don't get me wrong if I have the choice it's an auto loader every time. But due to the nature of loot drops frequently I don't have a choice.
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May 15, 2016 23:15
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