I like the idea of every gun being able to take an ammo type. I don't understand why I have to choose between tracer rounds and a battle scanner. All guns should, by default, show "ballistic rounds" or "magnetic ammo" or whatever and then adding special ammo should be a short research for each new gun type. And none of that should keep me from putting a thing in the slot where grenades go.
And if they ever want me to make and use a vest the tradeoff can't be that I have to leave grenades back on the ship. There's no reason that wearing a vest under the armor should make it so I can't load cool bullets in a thing or pack a plasma grenade.
In short, XCOM's soldier inventory is super fucked up.
Game mechanics don't always make perfect sense when real world logic is applied to them, news at 11
It's dumb whether or not it's some "videogames aren't realistic" complaint. I'll pretty much never take a vest or ammo on anyone but a sniper sharpshooter because it's a slot that could have a grenade. Adding space for vests and ammo is a minor change, doesn't conflict with any real or in-game logic (because +2 health or poison damage doesn't somehow snap the game balance in half), and it's both weird and annoying that they haven't allowed for it. It just makes vest/ammo research a trap, and a waste of cores.
So the random stuff from the proving ground is not all of that random in my experience, IE I don't get repeats until all of the grenades or weapons have been revealed.
I really expected the flame weapons to have shred like the incendiary grenades, without that they suck. Plasma blaster is too situational to bother bringing along.
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mastertheheroProfessional Video Editor & Book AuthorRegistered Userregular
I like the idea of every gun being able to take an ammo type. I don't understand why I have to choose between tracer rounds and a battle scanner. All guns should, by default, show "ballistic rounds" or "magnetic ammo" or whatever and then adding special ammo should be a short research for each new gun type. And none of that should keep me from putting a thing in the slot where grenades go.
And if they ever want me to make and use a vest the tradeoff can't be that I have to leave grenades back on the ship. There's no reason that wearing a vest under the armor should make it so I can't load cool bullets in a thing or pack a plasma grenade.
In short, XCOM's soldier inventory is super fucked up.
Game mechanics don't always make perfect sense when real world logic is applied to them, news at 11
Yes, I understand that. But offense is so much more valuable in XCOM 2 than defense. I literally can't think of a single reason to manufacture and wear a vest. I have ammo only on my sniper because they are often out of grenade range anyhow. There are systems here that could and should be neat to use, but the design of the game and the relative usefulness of the items keep me from interacting with things that aren't explosives unless my guy is a sniper and then I stop when I get to bluescreen rounds because fuck Sectopods.
It's silly, and it bums me out. I want vests to be useful. I want to think about whether it's worth it to invest in another set of tracer rounds or venom rounds. I want to see the fact that I can make a mind shield and legitimately consider it instead of go "haha leave that trooper without a grenade/mimic beacon, nope!"
Yeah, I hate to be "that' guy but in the original DOS version of X-Com. You could bring different types of ammo with you on a mission, equip each soldier with a medpack, maybe throw in a psi-amp in there, AND have a slot available for a battle scanner. Then you simply swap them out at the cost of an action point.
Though I love X-Com 2, it definitely gets a little frustrating to sacrifice building vests in order to equip more exotic types of ammo. Venom rounds have saved my ass numerous times but the stasis vest has also been useful too. Do I bring more bombs or do I bring more vests? Well if I kill the threat first, why bother bringing vests?
That's IF you kill the threat thought. If you get that 99% shot and it MISSES, the vest will save your ass when the Chrysallid comes in to pinch you. I definitely think there needs to be an expansion of the inventory system, but that may affect the balance in ways we don't know about yet.
Poison is more than a DoT, it also slows and reduces accuracy.
So f'rinstance a gunslinger with poison rounds may do very little damage but he can debuff the shit out of an entire map of organic guys. Or use fire and hit a bunch of DoTs and then skedaddle and let them burn down. Or get AP rounds and suddenly pistols are pretty great at burning through high-armor dudes, but nothing special vs. groups of less armored dudes.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
So the random stuff from the proving ground is not all of that random in my experience, IE I don't get repeats until all of the grenades or weapons have been revealed.
I really expected the flame weapons to have shred like the incendiary grenades, without that they suck. Plasma blaster is too situational to bother bringing along.
I've definitely gotten duplicates. This current run, I got double incendiary grenades before I got acid grenades. Not that I can really find a good use for either, despite legendary streamers commending them. Maybe because I tend to wipe out pods on the first swing, so the DoT doesn't really help? Or enemies have slightly more health on legendary than commander? Blech.
Certain abilities just need to be redone or replaced. Deep cover of course topping the list, who thought that would be useful.
It would be fun to make a classless version of xcom. With a larger selection of perks on each level. Be hard to balance with the current abilities as there wold be too many synergies.
I like the idea of every gun being able to take an ammo type. I don't understand why I have to choose between tracer rounds and a battle scanner. All guns should, by default, show "ballistic rounds" or "magnetic ammo" or whatever and then adding special ammo should be a short research for each new gun type. And none of that should keep me from putting a thing in the slot where grenades go.
And if they ever want me to make and use a vest the tradeoff can't be that I have to leave grenades back on the ship. There's no reason that wearing a vest under the armor should make it so I can't load cool bullets in a thing or pack a plasma grenade.
In short, XCOM's soldier inventory is super fucked up.
Game mechanics don't always make perfect sense when real world logic is applied to them, news at 11
It's dumb whether or not it's some "videogames aren't realistic" complaint. I'll pretty much never take a vest or ammo on anyone but a sniper sharpshooter because it's a slot that could have a grenade. Adding space for vests and ammo is a minor change, doesn't conflict with any real or in-game logic (because +2 health or poison damage doesn't somehow snap the game balance in half), and it's both weird and annoying that they haven't allowed for it. It just makes vest/ammo research a trap, and a waste of cores.
Well A) if you're wearing general armor you're going to have two item slots and only one can be a grenade, so you gotta put something there already, if you've got a grenadier or two specializing in nades it feels pretty extraneous to bring along more since eventually you're gonna want to actually shoot those bad guys whose cover you've blown up, and C) vests that give healing or extra armor can be huge boosts to survivability.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Poison is more than a DoT, it also slows and reduces accuracy.
So f'rinstance a gunslinger with poison rounds may do very little damage but he can debuff the shit out of an entire map of organic guys. Or use fire and hit a bunch of DoTs and then skedaddle and let them burn down. Or get AP rounds and suddenly pistols are pretty great at burning through high-armor dudes, but nothing special vs. groups of less armored dudes.
Depends on if you picked Face-off or not. I've picked off a full viper pod just using Face-off and some lucky damage rolls.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
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Anyone find the balance on the Strategy side of Legend a little weird? Like I'm sitting on top of a pile of actual resources, but nothing to spend them on because everything takes 3x as long
Uh, why wouldn't you? Doesn't use cores, single build. I mean, eventually, I'd replace it all with War/Wraith suits given enough cores and time, but it's a great initial armor upgrade. I usually keep my Grenadiers in it - 3 grenades and a misc item - until I get to build War Suits for them.
I like the idea of every gun being able to take an ammo type. I don't understand why I have to choose between tracer rounds and a battle scanner. All guns should, by default, show "ballistic rounds" or "magnetic ammo" or whatever and then adding special ammo should be a short research for each new gun type. And none of that should keep me from putting a thing in the slot where grenades go.
And if they ever want me to make and use a vest the tradeoff can't be that I have to leave grenades back on the ship. There's no reason that wearing a vest under the armor should make it so I can't load cool bullets in a thing or pack a plasma grenade.
In short, XCOM's soldier inventory is super fucked up.
Game mechanics don't always make perfect sense when real world logic is applied to them, news at 11
It's dumb whether or not it's some "videogames aren't realistic" complaint. I'll pretty much never take a vest or ammo on anyone but a sniper sharpshooter because it's a slot that could have a grenade. Adding space for vests and ammo is a minor change, doesn't conflict with any real or in-game logic (because +2 health or poison damage doesn't somehow snap the game balance in half), and it's both weird and annoying that they haven't allowed for it. It just makes vest/ammo research a trap, and a waste of cores.
Well A) if you're wearing general armor you're going to have two item slots and only one can be a grenade, so you gotta put something there already, if you've got a grenadier or two specializing in nades it feels pretty extraneous to bring along more since eventually you're gonna want to actually shoot those bad guys whose cover you've blown up, and C) vests that give healing or extra armor can be huge boosts to survivability.
By the time you get around to the armour with extra slots, you'll probably be dealing with enemies that need shred applied, which is where the grenades are most useful. You're still spending cores to produce the stuff, too, so unless you're doing exceedingly well and just rolling in them when they're still better off spent on the heavy weapons and better grenades.
I don't think the vests and ammo are huge boosts, anyway. They're nice, but my XCOM experience is that soldiers tend to have two stages: the stage where they die in one or two hits, and the stage where they're walking fortresses. The vests barely matter to the latter, but they could definitely make the former more interesting. And likewise, with ammo, you still have to actually hit, which is a problem early. Letting that hit add poison isn't going to hurt anything.
I like the idea of every gun being able to take an ammo type. I don't understand why I have to choose between tracer rounds and a battle scanner. All guns should, by default, show "ballistic rounds" or "magnetic ammo" or whatever and then adding special ammo should be a short research for each new gun type. And none of that should keep me from putting a thing in the slot where grenades go.
And if they ever want me to make and use a vest the tradeoff can't be that I have to leave grenades back on the ship. There's no reason that wearing a vest under the armor should make it so I can't load cool bullets in a thing or pack a plasma grenade.
In short, XCOM's soldier inventory is super fucked up.
i would not be shocked if that isn't modded in at some point
Someone had the idea of having ammo act like a limited usage ability. Maybe only two uses per mission.
Or maybe only a single mag of specialized ammo that has to be explicitly loaded. That would be hard as the mechanic does not exist currently.
Anyone find the balance on the Strategy side of Legend a little weird? Like I'm sitting on top of a pile of actual resources, but nothing to spend them on because everything takes 3x as long
Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of the fact that part of legendary's 'difficulty increase' is just 'everything takes twice as long to do and each region costs twice as much to contact'
It's a pretty boring way of increasing the difficulty - I'd rather have more enemies per mission and more missions per month than just have to play the endurance game.
Depends on if my map has the 'armor projects complete instantly' continent bonus. If it does, then no, I just save up 6 cores and build a full set of war suits when I unlock the tech. Otherwise I'll usually build warden armor to bridge the month or two gap while my war suits get built - it's not like you're usually short on supplies by that stage of the game.
I like the idea of every gun being able to take an ammo type. I don't understand why I have to choose between tracer rounds and a battle scanner. All guns should, by default, show "ballistic rounds" or "magnetic ammo" or whatever and then adding special ammo should be a short research for each new gun type. And none of that should keep me from putting a thing in the slot where grenades go.
And if they ever want me to make and use a vest the tradeoff can't be that I have to leave grenades back on the ship. There's no reason that wearing a vest under the armor should make it so I can't load cool bullets in a thing or pack a plasma grenade.
In short, XCOM's soldier inventory is super fucked up.
Game mechanics don't always make perfect sense when real world logic is applied to them, news at 11
It's dumb whether or not it's some "videogames aren't realistic" complaint. I'll pretty much never take a vest or ammo on anyone but a sniper sharpshooter because it's a slot that could have a grenade. Adding space for vests and ammo is a minor change, doesn't conflict with any real or in-game logic (because +2 health or poison damage doesn't somehow snap the game balance in half), and it's both weird and annoying that they haven't allowed for it. It just makes vest/ammo research a trap, and a waste of cores.
Well A) if you're wearing general armor you're going to have two item slots and only one can be a grenade, so you gotta put something there already, if you've got a grenadier or two specializing in nades it feels pretty extraneous to bring along more since eventually you're gonna want to actually shoot those bad guys whose cover you've blown up, and C) vests that give healing or extra armor can be huge boosts to survivability.
The second slot is for mimic beacons.
As far as grenades becoming extraneous, nah - I've finished the game three times now, loaded everyone down with grenades largely without exception, and have never once thought "Oh, no, I wish I'd brought something other than this grenade".
I have, however, shown up to long missions with two grenadiers toting 3 grenades each and all six soldiers carrying a rocket and ended up thinking "God damn it, this would be easier if I'd brought another grenade."
Poison is more than a DoT, it also slows and reduces accuracy.
So f'rinstance a gunslinger with poison rounds may do very little damage but he can debuff the shit out of an entire map of organic guys. Or use fire and hit a bunch of DoTs and then skedaddle and let them burn down. Or get AP rounds and suddenly pistols are pretty great at burning through high-armor dudes, but nothing special vs. groups of less armored dudes.
The debuff isn't valuable enough to be worth giving the aliens an additional turn to shoot.
"That's XCOM, baby!" is more than just accepting bullshit, it's embracing that you cannot trust probabilities over a small sample size. Certainty is almost always more valuable than uncertainty, particularly in the context of short-term tactical decisions.
The way the game is currently balanced, you should always overvalue offense over defense, because giving the enemy an opportunity to take an action gives them an additional dice roll to fuck you over. If you can kill someone, do it. If you can't kill them during your turn, then go into Overwatch and kill them during their turn. Running away and hunkering down is literally your last resort, when you can't do anything else.
The biggest problem with special ammo and defensive items like vests and grenades isn't that they aren't useful - it's that there are not enough turns or actions over the course of a mission to make them valuable. If you had long firefights that lasted multiple turns, then they would be far more useful. Instead, fights are so short and bursty that the value of a single grenade far outweighs the value of a +1 damage shot or a +5 HP vest, especially since the former is guaranteed damage in addition to a hit and damage modifier (by virtue of shredding and removing cover) for everyone else.
As an example, you have a 12-turn mission with 11 pods at ~30 HP each, that's 330 total HP that you have to burn through. You have the choice between 6 grenades, which guarantee at minimum 5 damage each, that's 30 damage at a 100% hit rate, assuming you only hit 1 enemy per grenade. The alternative on the other end of the spectrum is to take 6 specialized ammo that will give you +1 damage per shot. Even if all you do is shoot for every single soldier on every turn with a generous 75% hit rate, that's an average of 54 damage.
To match that damage output, all you would have to do with grenades is hit ~2 enemies per grenade, which is much easier to do than land 75% of your shots while firing every single turn (instead of, say, shooting a grenade or using a special ability). And this doesn't take into account the damage buff you get from shooting at enemies who aren't in cover and who often become flanked due to the grenade, or applying the same debuff you would get from ammo if you used a special grenade (incendiary grenade > incendiary ammo, acid bomb > everything).
All this isn't to say that you shouldn't use special ammo, ever. There are always pros and cons on every mission, and sometimes you don't have the choice between an ideal setup and whatever you happened to get in your particular campaign. But right now Firaxis is making us choose, both in terms of the strategic layer (i.e., limited resources/time) and the tactical one (i.e., a shared utility slot). That being the case, it's really hard to justify the use of anything except grenades. Bring in other items like the Mimic Beacon, and ammo and vests fall even farther behind.
Sharpshooters are probably the best case you can make for special ammo, but frankly if you weigh their resource costs, they're ridiculous, and this doesn't even get into those missions where they can't do jack shit but run up and shoot their pistol. You not only have to upgrade their sniper rifle, you have to upgrade the aforementioned pistol, then you have to build a Proving Grounds and get special ammo just so they can use it to make their Colonel-level ability worth using.
I just want them to buff ammo and vests and smoke grenades and even flash bangs. Otherwise none of those things is worth building unless you have a ton of supplies and time to burn. An alternative would be to make fights last much longer and to give everything (including your soldiers) more HP.
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NEO|PhyteThey follow the stars, bound together.Strands in a braid till the end.Registered Userregular
Has anyone ever used fortress? Single most useless ability ever.
You don't use it, it's a passive ability.
It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing... And take away its pain.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
I think ammo would be in a fine place if A)you could control which ones you built, B)you could control which other experimental projects you built (so that you don't need to hoard all your cores for extra shots at the Shredstorm Cannon Slot Machine), and C)they went into a weapon mod slot instead of a utility item slot.
The ammo effects aren't bad they're just never worth taking over a grenade - so the solution is probably just to stop making that be the choice you're asked to make.
Also I'd like to applaud Firaxis for not putting in more shit like Newfoundland, Friends in Low Places, the Annette missions etc. I really hated them especially once you figured out the gimmick of them. So I'm glad they're not in, for now.
I appreciate the attempt at storybuilding, but XCOM's best stories were always the ones created by the players playing the actual game.
Jane Kelly is a character from a story mission. Why do you hate Jane Kelly? How long have you been on the alien side?
On a more serious note, two of the forthcoming DLCs (Alien Hunters and Shen's Last Gift) seem to have narrative elements.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
+1
Fondor_YardsElite Four Member: HydraRegistered Userregular
Ugh turns out after dling the dev kit, you have to download some other stuff to fix the error that comes with it. Woooo can't wait to finish this 42 gig download a second time!
No you don't have to re-download anything, all of the extras needed are inside the SDK folder. I agree that it is a pretty shitty installer but they are there.
Yea but I already started to redownload before I looked that up. Yes I know how dumb I am.
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I think ammo would be in a fine place if A)you could control which ones you built, B)you could control which other experimental projects you built (so that you don't need to hoard all your cores for extra shots at the Shredstorm Cannon Slot Machine), and C)they went into a weapon mod slot instead of a utility item slot.
The ammo effects aren't bad they're just never worth taking over a grenade - so the solution is probably just to stop making that be the choice you're asked to make.
I feel like bluescreen round versus EMP grenades as the round still hurt organic targets whereas the grenades do not. Though I only consider it on my sharpshooter who does not carry a grenade anyhow.
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mastertheheroProfessional Video Editor & Book AuthorRegistered Userregular
edited February 2016
Yeah, bluescreen rounds are super valuable. An EMP is great but you only get as many EMP nades as you can equip. Whereas blue screen rounds will decimate a sectopod and or make it easier to hack. Was fun taking control of it for a few turns and using its abilities against the aliens.
Grenades are still super valuable, but at some point you run out and then you're stuck with a bunch of mechs and sectopods with no more nades to throw at them.
See: Alien Defense mission and final mission.
masterthehero on
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scherbchenAsgard (it is dead)Registered Userregular
well, got my first save-and-reload-a-bit win on commander, now on to bronzeman with what I have learned (especially for the final mission) and beyond!
got a much clearer view of what to spec and what to build now. a general gameplan if you will.
I use grenades to remove cover but almost never to shred armor, because my double shot rangers have AP ammo so why do I give an F.
Doesn't run out, either!
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
Yeah, if fights/missions last longer then ammo quickly realizes its value. It's too bad that outside of ~2 missions it's a lot easier to just ignore them completely.
Yeah, bluescreen rounds are super valuable. An EMP is great but you only get as many EMP nades as you can equip. Whereas blue screen rounds will decimate a sectopod and or make it easier to hack. Was fun taking control of it for a few turns and using its abilities against the aliens.
Grenades are still super valuable, but at some point you run out and then you're stuck with a bunch of mechs and sectopods with no more nades to throw at them.
See: Alien Defense mission and final mission.
Honestly, I've found bluescreen rounds more useful for Gatekeepers and Codexes. A Sectopod, I usually just shut it down for 2 turns with my Specialist while I mop everything else up. But shit, Gatekeepers are fucking action sponges with their defense, and Codexes' cloning and ammo-depletion too.
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mastertheheroProfessional Video Editor & Book AuthorRegistered Userregular
Yeah, bluescreen rounds are super valuable. An EMP is great but you only get as many EMP nades as you can equip. Whereas blue screen rounds will decimate a sectopod and or make it easier to hack. Was fun taking control of it for a few turns and using its abilities against the aliens.
Grenades are still super valuable, but at some point you run out and then you're stuck with a bunch of mechs and sectopods with no more nades to throw at them.
See: Alien Defense mission and final mission.
Honestly, I've found bluescreen rounds more useful for Gatekeepers and Codexes. A Sectopod, I usually just shut it down for 2 turns with my Specialist while I mop everything else up. But shit, Gatekeepers are fucking action sponges with their defense, and Codexes' cloning and ammo-depletion too.
Truth. Codex's are my thin men. But I do love mind controlling a gate keeper
Honestly, I've found bluescreen rounds more useful for Gatekeepers and Codexes. A Sectopod, I usually just shut it down for 2 turns with my Specialist while I mop everything else up. But shit, Gatekeepers are fucking action sponges with their defense, and Codexes' cloning and ammo-depletion too.
IMHO, Bluescreen Protocol is a trap tech.
AP ammunition is strictly better. The +5 damage and bonus to hack is irrelevant when you're likely to 1-shot the target regardless, and Bluescreen does not apply against Gatekeepers, the first half of Andromedons or Avatars.
The only upside of Bluescreen is that sometimes Rapid Fire AP won't crit twice in a row against a Sectopod, and so AP will leave it at 1-2 HP whereas Bluescreen would've still killed it outright - and that's a pretty small situational upside given how easy it is to knock 1 HP off of an enemy without spending a tempo by that point in the game.
Honestly, I've found bluescreen rounds more useful for Gatekeepers and Codexes. A Sectopod, I usually just shut it down for 2 turns with my Specialist while I mop everything else up. But shit, Gatekeepers are fucking action sponges with their defense, and Codexes' cloning and ammo-depletion too.
IMHO, Bluescreen Protocol is a trap tech.
AP ammunition is strictly better. The +5 damage and bonus to hack is irrelevant when you're likely to 1-shot the target regardless, and Bluescreen does not apply against Gatekeepers, the first half of Andromedons or Avatars.
The only upside of Bluescreen is that sometimes Rapid Fire AP won't crit twice in a row against a Sectopod, and so AP will leave it at 1-2 HP whereas Bluescreen would've still killed it outright - and that's a pretty small situational upside given how easy it is to knock 1 HP off of an enemy without spending a tempo by that point in the game.
Bluescreen Rounds are a guaranteed thing you can get though, who knows how many times you have to make ammo to get AP ammo for the soldiers you want it on?
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
It would've been cool if they had more than just armor and shields, or more mob variety than just "everyone gets 1 shield" or "this big bad always has 6 armor" or "only Shieldbearers give everyone shields". Like, maybe some mobs have a lot of shields but no health, or a lot of armor but no shields, or a lot of both. Then they could have Incendiary work extra-well against shields but not that great against armor, while AP would ignore armor but gets stopped against shields, and Bluescreen would stay the same while Venom could be anti-organic. This would make it a lot more appealing to take specialized ammo and grenades, and would also allow for more class variety (i.e., Specialists shut down mechanicals hard, Rangers can one-hit kill organics in melee range, Grenadiers are anti-armor, Sharpshooters are anti-shields). Instead it often feels like the classes are directly competing with each other instead of helping to cover particular weaknesses, which is again only exacerbated by the opportunity cost inherent in managing the strategic layer.
+2
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Looking at the number of balance issues that XCOM 2 has, I am pretty sure their balancing of the game was a secondary consideration. Legendary was kludged a bit with "Well, just make it take longer" and I think some core balancing issues - like mimic beacons and grenade spam - were never thought of/addressed. As I've mentioned before, the sheer power of explosives and grenades, combined with how every piece of cover melts at the vaguest idea that something might go boom around it. This greatly increases the power and value of grenades, combined with the AIs utterly incompetent habit of bunching up as much as they possibly can every single mission, while simultaneously devaluing every piece of equipment that isn't an explosive.
It's honestly a very tricky situation Firaxis have put the game in, because to fix the above problems will make the game substantially harder by a large degree. I'm not convinced that some of the mechanisms they have in place, like injuries, soldiers being shaken and such will allow the player to cope with the aliens shooting more. I think Firaxis have somewhat built the game with the aliens just not shooting that much in mind as well, which is why DoT and defensive items like vests are so worthless. If the game lets you never get shot at all, why would you bother?
Coincidentally, it's not surprise that the biggest single difficulty spike in all of XCOM 2 is the last mission. The last mission completely defies all of the hours of gameplay before it, because it's the one mission that punishes an all-in grenades and explosives strategy, because they simply won't last long enough. Then shockingly, players are finding it immensely hard when they have to actually engage in firefights with aliens, take wounds and maneuver instead of "Blow cover, shoot exposed pod: Rinse and repeat".
Hopefully there is going to be some serious attention to balance, because I feel that first patch might make XCOM 2 a new game. Mimic beacons are being nerfed, explosives erasing all cover is also being looked at, the avatar project will put consequences on players who let it fill up and so forth. Honestly tempted to just leave the game even if I do get a new computer, so that when I do start playing it they'll have fixed the core issues with the game and many of the more annoying to gameplay breaking bugs.
Honestly, I've found bluescreen rounds more useful for Gatekeepers and Codexes. A Sectopod, I usually just shut it down for 2 turns with my Specialist while I mop everything else up. But shit, Gatekeepers are fucking action sponges with their defense, and Codexes' cloning and ammo-depletion too.
IMHO, Bluescreen Protocol is a trap tech.
AP ammunition is strictly better. The +5 damage and bonus to hack is irrelevant when you're likely to 1-shot the target regardless, and Bluescreen does not apply against Gatekeepers, the first half of Andromedons or Avatars.
The only upside of Bluescreen is that sometimes Rapid Fire AP won't crit twice in a row against a Sectopod, and so AP will leave it at 1-2 HP whereas Bluescreen would've still killed it outright - and that's a pretty small situational upside given how easy it is to knock 1 HP off of an enemy without spending a tempo by that point in the game.
Bluescreen rounds definitely apply against the Gatekeeper. Kendrik's pistol shots do 9-11 damage against a Gatekeeper.
Posts
It's dumb whether or not it's some "videogames aren't realistic" complaint. I'll pretty much never take a vest or ammo on anyone but a sniper sharpshooter because it's a slot that could have a grenade. Adding space for vests and ammo is a minor change, doesn't conflict with any real or in-game logic (because +2 health or poison damage doesn't somehow snap the game balance in half), and it's both weird and annoying that they haven't allowed for it. It just makes vest/ammo research a trap, and a waste of cores.
I really expected the flame weapons to have shred like the incendiary grenades, without that they suck. Plasma blaster is too situational to bother bringing along.
Yeah, I hate to be "that' guy but in the original DOS version of X-Com. You could bring different types of ammo with you on a mission, equip each soldier with a medpack, maybe throw in a psi-amp in there, AND have a slot available for a battle scanner. Then you simply swap them out at the cost of an action point.
Though I love X-Com 2, it definitely gets a little frustrating to sacrifice building vests in order to equip more exotic types of ammo. Venom rounds have saved my ass numerous times but the stasis vest has also been useful too. Do I bring more bombs or do I bring more vests? Well if I kill the threat first, why bother bringing vests?
That's IF you kill the threat thought. If you get that 99% shot and it MISSES, the vest will save your ass when the Chrysallid comes in to pinch you. I definitely think there needs to be an expansion of the inventory system, but that may affect the balance in ways we don't know about yet.
So f'rinstance a gunslinger with poison rounds may do very little damage but he can debuff the shit out of an entire map of organic guys. Or use fire and hit a bunch of DoTs and then skedaddle and let them burn down. Or get AP rounds and suddenly pistols are pretty great at burning through high-armor dudes, but nothing special vs. groups of less armored dudes.
I've definitely gotten duplicates. This current run, I got double incendiary grenades before I got acid grenades. Not that I can really find a good use for either, despite legendary streamers commending them. Maybe because I tend to wipe out pods on the first swing, so the DoT doesn't really help? Or enemies have slightly more health on legendary than commander? Blech.
It would be fun to make a classless version of xcom. With a larger selection of perks on each level. Be hard to balance with the current abilities as there wold be too many synergies.
Well A) if you're wearing general armor you're going to have two item slots and only one can be a grenade, so you gotta put something there already,
Depends on if you picked Face-off or not. I've picked off a full viper pod just using Face-off and some lucky damage rolls.
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Uh, why wouldn't you? Doesn't use cores, single build. I mean, eventually, I'd replace it all with War/Wraith suits given enough cores and time, but it's a great initial armor upgrade. I usually keep my Grenadiers in it - 3 grenades and a misc item - until I get to build War Suits for them.
By the time you get around to the armour with extra slots, you'll probably be dealing with enemies that need shred applied, which is where the grenades are most useful. You're still spending cores to produce the stuff, too, so unless you're doing exceedingly well and just rolling in them when they're still better off spent on the heavy weapons and better grenades.
I don't think the vests and ammo are huge boosts, anyway. They're nice, but my XCOM experience is that soldiers tend to have two stages: the stage where they die in one or two hits, and the stage where they're walking fortresses. The vests barely matter to the latter, but they could definitely make the former more interesting. And likewise, with ammo, you still have to actually hit, which is a problem early. Letting that hit add poison isn't going to hurt anything.
Or maybe only a single mag of specialized ammo that has to be explicitly loaded. That would be hard as the mechanic does not exist currently.
Even with EXO/WAR suits around I like it on a specialist so that they can carry a medkit and a skulljack.
Yeah, I'm not sure why they have ranks and sides of the psi trees when you get them out of order and can pick both sides. It's kind of silly.
Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of the fact that part of legendary's 'difficulty increase' is just 'everything takes twice as long to do and each region costs twice as much to contact'
It's a pretty boring way of increasing the difficulty - I'd rather have more enemies per mission and more missions per month than just have to play the endurance game.
Depends on if my map has the 'armor projects complete instantly' continent bonus. If it does, then no, I just save up 6 cores and build a full set of war suits when I unlock the tech. Otherwise I'll usually build warden armor to bridge the month or two gap while my war suits get built - it's not like you're usually short on supplies by that stage of the game.
The second slot is for mimic beacons.
As far as grenades becoming extraneous, nah - I've finished the game three times now, loaded everyone down with grenades largely without exception, and have never once thought "Oh, no, I wish I'd brought something other than this grenade".
I have, however, shown up to long missions with two grenadiers toting 3 grenades each and all six soldiers carrying a rocket and ended up thinking "God damn it, this would be easier if I'd brought another grenade."
The debuff isn't valuable enough to be worth giving the aliens an additional turn to shoot.
"That's XCOM, baby!" is more than just accepting bullshit, it's embracing that you cannot trust probabilities over a small sample size. Certainty is almost always more valuable than uncertainty, particularly in the context of short-term tactical decisions.
The way the game is currently balanced, you should always overvalue offense over defense, because giving the enemy an opportunity to take an action gives them an additional dice roll to fuck you over. If you can kill someone, do it. If you can't kill them during your turn, then go into Overwatch and kill them during their turn. Running away and hunkering down is literally your last resort, when you can't do anything else.
The biggest problem with special ammo and defensive items like vests and grenades isn't that they aren't useful - it's that there are not enough turns or actions over the course of a mission to make them valuable. If you had long firefights that lasted multiple turns, then they would be far more useful. Instead, fights are so short and bursty that the value of a single grenade far outweighs the value of a +1 damage shot or a +5 HP vest, especially since the former is guaranteed damage in addition to a hit and damage modifier (by virtue of shredding and removing cover) for everyone else.
As an example, you have a 12-turn mission with 11 pods at ~30 HP each, that's 330 total HP that you have to burn through. You have the choice between 6 grenades, which guarantee at minimum 5 damage each, that's 30 damage at a 100% hit rate, assuming you only hit 1 enemy per grenade. The alternative on the other end of the spectrum is to take 6 specialized ammo that will give you +1 damage per shot. Even if all you do is shoot for every single soldier on every turn with a generous 75% hit rate, that's an average of 54 damage.
To match that damage output, all you would have to do with grenades is hit ~2 enemies per grenade, which is much easier to do than land 75% of your shots while firing every single turn (instead of, say, shooting a grenade or using a special ability). And this doesn't take into account the damage buff you get from shooting at enemies who aren't in cover and who often become flanked due to the grenade, or applying the same debuff you would get from ammo if you used a special grenade (incendiary grenade > incendiary ammo, acid bomb > everything).
All this isn't to say that you shouldn't use special ammo, ever. There are always pros and cons on every mission, and sometimes you don't have the choice between an ideal setup and whatever you happened to get in your particular campaign. But right now Firaxis is making us choose, both in terms of the strategic layer (i.e., limited resources/time) and the tactical one (i.e., a shared utility slot). That being the case, it's really hard to justify the use of anything except grenades. Bring in other items like the Mimic Beacon, and ammo and vests fall even farther behind.
Sharpshooters are probably the best case you can make for special ammo, but frankly if you weigh their resource costs, they're ridiculous, and this doesn't even get into those missions where they can't do jack shit but run up and shoot their pistol. You not only have to upgrade their sniper rifle, you have to upgrade the aforementioned pistol, then you have to build a Proving Grounds and get special ammo just so they can use it to make their Colonel-level ability worth using.
I just want them to buff ammo and vests and smoke grenades and even flash bangs. Otherwise none of those things is worth building unless you have a ton of supplies and time to burn. An alternative would be to make fights last much longer and to give everything (including your soldiers) more HP.
You don't use it, it's a passive ability.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
The ammo effects aren't bad they're just never worth taking over a grenade - so the solution is probably just to stop making that be the choice you're asked to make.
Jane Kelly is a character from a story mission. Why do you hate Jane Kelly? How long have you been on the alien side?
On a more serious note, two of the forthcoming DLCs (Alien Hunters and Shen's Last Gift) seem to have narrative elements.
Yea but I already started to redownload before I looked that up. Yes I know how dumb I am.
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I feel like bluescreen round versus EMP grenades as the round still hurt organic targets whereas the grenades do not. Though I only consider it on my sharpshooter who does not carry a grenade anyhow.
Grenades are still super valuable, but at some point you run out and then you're stuck with a bunch of mechs and sectopods with no more nades to throw at them.
See: Alien Defense mission and final mission.
got a much clearer view of what to spec and what to build now. a general gameplan if you will.
loving this game.
Doesn't run out, either!
Honestly, I've found bluescreen rounds more useful for Gatekeepers and Codexes. A Sectopod, I usually just shut it down for 2 turns with my Specialist while I mop everything else up. But shit, Gatekeepers are fucking action sponges with their defense, and Codexes' cloning and ammo-depletion too.
Truth. Codex's are my thin men. But I do love mind controlling a gate keeper
No it is a war suit ability. Turns you into high cover, but the unit that enabled it gets no buffs at all.
Ugh, yeah I think you are right. No clue what the war suit ability is called.
IMHO, Bluescreen Protocol is a trap tech.
AP ammunition is strictly better. The +5 damage and bonus to hack is irrelevant when you're likely to 1-shot the target regardless, and Bluescreen does not apply against Gatekeepers, the first half of Andromedons or Avatars.
The only upside of Bluescreen is that sometimes Rapid Fire AP won't crit twice in a row against a Sectopod, and so AP will leave it at 1-2 HP whereas Bluescreen would've still killed it outright - and that's a pretty small situational upside given how easy it is to knock 1 HP off of an enemy without spending a tempo by that point in the game.
Bluescreen Rounds are a guaranteed thing you can get though, who knows how many times you have to make ammo to get AP ammo for the soldiers you want it on?
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It's honestly a very tricky situation Firaxis have put the game in, because to fix the above problems will make the game substantially harder by a large degree. I'm not convinced that some of the mechanisms they have in place, like injuries, soldiers being shaken and such will allow the player to cope with the aliens shooting more. I think Firaxis have somewhat built the game with the aliens just not shooting that much in mind as well, which is why DoT and defensive items like vests are so worthless. If the game lets you never get shot at all, why would you bother?
Coincidentally, it's not surprise that the biggest single difficulty spike in all of XCOM 2 is the last mission. The last mission completely defies all of the hours of gameplay before it, because it's the one mission that punishes an all-in grenades and explosives strategy, because they simply won't last long enough. Then shockingly, players are finding it immensely hard when they have to actually engage in firefights with aliens, take wounds and maneuver instead of "Blow cover, shoot exposed pod: Rinse and repeat".
Hopefully there is going to be some serious attention to balance, because I feel that first patch might make XCOM 2 a new game. Mimic beacons are being nerfed, explosives erasing all cover is also being looked at, the avatar project will put consequences on players who let it fill up and so forth. Honestly tempted to just leave the game even if I do get a new computer, so that when I do start playing it they'll have fixed the core issues with the game and many of the more annoying to gameplay breaking bugs.
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Bluescreen rounds definitely apply against the Gatekeeper. Kendrik's pistol shots do 9-11 damage against a Gatekeeper.