Mission 4-3 of the dlc. One dude from the first pod ran to hide with 2 pods stacked on top of each other. I waited 5 turns and they never stopped their circle jerk. In this pic I'm scouting them with my reaper, all of my other dudes are no longer concealed.
Mission 4-3 of the dlc. One dude from the first pod ran to hide with 2 pods stacked on top of each other. I waited 5 turns and they never stopped their circle jerk. In this pic I'm scouting them with my reaper, all of my other dudes are no longer concealed.
You only have two pods stacked on top of each other? Lucky.
Yeah the second time I played it I actually got 3. I decided they weren't worth the points and just went around them. My reaper dodged like 3 attacks getting out of there.
I'd run through them once each just for the story stuff, but Rulers and SPARKs have slightly different placement in the WOTC campaign than when they first came out. I don't think it's going to break anything, but the balance may be a little off.
So normally once a door is open aliens can always see through it. This is to prevent you from blocking the door and then opening/shutting it to cheese them (as aliens cannot open doors).
However that does not work with Bulwark Sparks, because sparks are blocking terrain when upgraded to bulwark and they do then effectively block the door.
Yeah the second time I played it I actually got 3. I decided they weren't worth the points and just went around them. My reaper dodged like 3 attacks getting out of there.
I hacked the MEC (after like three tries) and blew some of them up with mini-rockets, then I creeped around at maximum range and carefully pulled them by moving juuuuuuust close enough for small groups to engage, with the rest dancing back and forth forever.
SnicketysnickThe Greatest Hype Man inWesterosRegistered Userregular
Having escaped the clutches of ancient Greece, I finally got around to playing through the first of the new campaigns.
Bloody hell that police station was not mucking around! I got caught out pretty hard by there being a hole in the wall where there wasn't one in the vanilla map and revealed a pod with an end of turn dash. Then the lobby turned out to be a clown car full of troops, I'm amazed that no-one died. Ended up about 2k points short of gold, which is a shame, but oh well.
Did they bring back the classic sectoids for Legacy?
Still hate their new designs.
Nope. No new or old aliens. The only new assets are the classic maps and weapon and armor skins.
Actually the monsters don't make a lot of sense... Bradford carves through legions of enemies he is surprised to meet meet the first time in the main campaign, like Faceless, Andromedons, and Avatars.
So many Avatars... I chalk the whole thing up to Bradford being an unreliable narrator.
BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
Poor Lily's explanation of how she got the Avenger running again was significantly embellished by a drunken Bradford leaning over her shoulder, slurring "and then she killed... hic... three Avatars."
...and of course, as always, Kill Hitler.
+8
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WACriminalDying Is Easy, Young ManLiving Is HarderRegistered Userregular
I'm really stoked about the free-aiming mechanic in this. It seems like the best of old and new XCOM, and precisely tuned to result in watching Beagle pixel-hunt for the absolute perfect shot to take.
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
Booted up Enemy Within for another go now that I’ve got a nice new monitor. What a difference a better quality panel and resolution bump makes, the game looks great for its age.
Now I want to jump in to Xcom 2 to see the improvement. On my old monitor both games looked kinda muddy.
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
Alright so I’m finding it difficult to want to keep playing Enemy Within. I forgot how much better Xcom 2 is.
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
I think I would just say EW has a better tactical layer, but a much worse strategic layer because of how many force moves you're required to not lose half the world.
My big problem with X2's balance is that even on Legendary, by halfway though the campaign you've won, you're just waiting for the research to complete. Even halfway upgraded, your soldiers have enough abilities to alpha strike everything you meet, and the game doesn't even throw you many serious enemies aside from the Alien Rulers. I actually consider it lucky to get a double Gatekeeper map, since that means it'll actually be interesting, instead of a walkover.
By comparison, the tactical layer in EU/EW is well tuned, so long as you've been focusing on your main squad. But that itself is the equal problem; if you lose them, you've probably lost the campaign.
I hope for X3 there's a happy medium. I suspect completely removing Overwatch would fix a lot of things, but I suspect that'll never happen.
I hope for X3 there's a happy medium. I suspect completely removing Overwatch would fix a lot of things, but I suspect that'll never happen.
Why Overwatch? I can't say it's particularly much of a factor, positive or negative, for me. It honestly rarely impacts gameplay, personally. It's easy enough to cancel out the enemy overwatch, and if I'm relying on overwatch shots myself, I'm setting myself up for bad outcomes.
EU/EW is all about cover, and X2 is all about concealment. In both games, if the enemy gets to shoot at you in any appreciable quantities, you're doing it wrong.
In my opinion, the biggest flaw is that multi-turn, back-and-fourth firefights are inherently the worst possible type of engagement. Getting shot at all is an awful outcome due to how long your soldier will be out of action, so the best tactics are to do nothing remotely risky until you're ready to demolish the enemy pod.
For the tactical layer to be more interesting, I think more ablative defense might provide some interesting options, or maybe have combat healing do a lot more to defray recovery time. Maybe other detrimental effects that only last for the duration of combat? Taking fire lowers will, which lowers aim, or movement, or psi resistance, etc.. Some kind of system where getting shot is obviously detrimental, but being shot once or twice isn't absolutely unacceptable. Right now if I'm playing non-ironman and I get two soldiers wounded, I'm looking at which save to re-load.
Combat punishes risk taking, severely, to the point that even being shot at, much less actually struck, feels like a failure in tactics. Something needs to change to were taking fire is undesirable but an acceptable risk in order to gain a greater advantage. Then single engagements can last 5 or 6 turns without feeling like a tactical failure.
After seeing Beagle completely break down how it works in a recent playthrough of one of the Legacy Ops campaigns, I think Line of Play is the main factor in what's limiting XCOM 2's ground game. XCOM 3 should work on improving AI patrols and such so that it's actually possible to sneak around patrols and complete objectives in stealth, instead of merely framing missions as sneaking missions when in actuality you need to engage the first pod you encounter or else have them sandwich you later when you've engaged a pod beyond them.
After seeing Beagle completely break down how it works in a recent playthrough of one of the Legacy Ops campaigns, I think Line of Play is the main factor in what's limiting XCOM 2's ground game. XCOM 3 should work on improving AI patrols and such so that it's actually possible to sneak around patrols and complete objectives in stealth, instead of merely framing missions as sneaking missions when in actuality you need to engage the first pod you encounter or else have them sandwich you later when you've engaged a pod beyond them.
This is my biggest gripe about the concealment system. It just means that if you're careful you get one free, orchestrated opening strike at one enemy pod. Especially combined with mission timers, it's not like you can take the time to scout out the map and decide where to engage.
The one mission where you can actually play it fully stealth is the mission to rescue Mox, and that's assuming you take the right team composition. I've done that mission without firing a shot, just by having a specialist nuke the turret with combat protocol, and then sneak a reaper and ranger in to break him out and haul for the extraction point.
Yeah while I enjoy both games, the fact that the best way to play is to see as little of the map at all times as possible is the main thing they should change.
If aliens were competing tasks, radio' d for help, heard nearby fights and were partly spread out, partly in patrol pods you could have more dynamic fights where you are rewarded more for having knowledge, position, speed.
Steam: SanderJK Origin: SanderJK
+1
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SnicketysnickThe Greatest Hype Man inWesterosRegistered Userregular
If you could do things like start a fight on one side of the map to pull a patrol away from an objective, that would be a fantastic extra layer to think about. As it stands pods are a bit to tightly leashed.
BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
EW is only really about cover until you get battle scanners and/or Mimetic Skin. I mean, yes, you take a bit more fire than in X2, but you're treating it the same way as having a Reaper; identify a pod location, put your squad on the very edge of activation, set up overwatch and wait for them to path in. 5 free shots, then 6+ more on your next turn. Repeat.
You can play it as a statistical cover game, and there's nothing wrong with that, but optimal play is getting those 5 free shots on an enemy out of cover every time.
Line of play is a result of turn timers which are in turn an attempt to combat overwatch crawl that permeated EU, and it did so because enemies outclassed you and had significant HP advantages, and you were often punished for flanking by activating new pods. Once you limit OW and tone down enemy HP to compensate, a lot of those problems go away, and instead you can give soldiers a worse version of suppression by default to help them pin down enemy movement, which was the original point of OW.
Xcom 2 doesn't have MEC's and so will always be at a disadvantage to xcom 1. Battlescanners and Memetic Skin were OK... but not nearly as good as just having more and better MEC's.
Concealment and timers were a big step in making the strategic game interesting (especially at high levels) but they definitely could fix the fact that all missions are murder missions* due to line of play.
*The exception is that you can legitimately stealth the facility destruction missions, especially if you have a reaper or two.
Xcom 2 doesn't have MEC's and so will always be at a disadvantage to xcom 1. Battlescanners and Memetic Skin were OK... but not nearly as good as just having more and better MEC's.
Concealment and timers were a big step in making the strategic game interesting (especially at high levels) but they definitely could fix the fact that all missions are murder missions* due to line of play.
*The exception is that you can legitimately stealth the facility destruction missions, especially if you have a reaper or two.
What? XCom 2 has MECs. And their name is JULIAN.
+2
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SnicketysnickThe Greatest Hype Man inWesterosRegistered Userregular
They are even actually very good now that you can add mods to their weapons in wotc, both for damage and also because they never get tired and can be fielded injured with no penalty. Which makes them brilliant for propping up an early game squad or filling out the 6th slot towards the mid and end game.
They are even actually very good now that you can add mods to their weapons in wotc, both for damage and also because they never get tired and can be fielded injured with no penalty. Which makes them brilliant for propping up an early game squad or filling out the 6th slot towards the mid and end game.
There’s a bunch of mods for them too, if you don’t like how they are out of the box.
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DuriniaEvolved from Space PotatoesRegistered Userregular
Call me when they can rocket punch sectoids off of roofs
For business reasons, I must preserve the outward sign of sanity.
--Mark Twain
+4
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SnicketysnickThe Greatest Hype Man inWesterosRegistered Userregular
Xcom 2 doesn't have MEC's and so will always be at a disadvantage to xcom 1. Battlescanners and Memetic Skin were OK... but not nearly as good as just having more and better MEC's.
Concealment and timers were a big step in making the strategic game interesting (especially at high levels) but they definitely could fix the fact that all missions are murder missions* due to line of play.
*The exception is that you can legitimately stealth the facility destruction missions, especially if you have a reaper or two.
What? XCom 2 has MECs. And their name is JULIAN.
It really doesn't. SPARKS are fine if you use one of the boost mods (and have value on legendary due to will issues but are still kind of weak without boost mods*) but xcom 2 MEC's are a still pale imitation of xcom 1 MEC's. They're not even as good as XCOM 1 SHIVs without boost mods because XCOM 1 shivs were cheap comparatively and had the same relative role. (which was to take aggressive positions and shoot things in the face because you didn't care about them taking damage and because they're strong when out of cover.) Alloy and Hover SHIVS were legitimately good soldiers in their own right and you could easily construct a campaign around them.
*the main thing is that, because they cannot upgrade their weapons they're stuck at a low aim value compared to other shooters but even without this their abilities are not guaranteed and are on long cooldowns and have negative synergy with themselves.
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DuriniaEvolved from Space PotatoesRegistered Userregular
After seeing Beagle completely break down how it works in a recent playthrough of one of the Legacy Ops campaigns, I think Line of Play is the main factor in what's limiting XCOM 2's ground game. XCOM 3 should work on improving AI patrols and such so that it's actually possible to sneak around patrols and complete objectives in stealth, instead of merely framing missions as sneaking missions when in actuality you need to engage the first pod you encounter or else have them sandwich you later when you've engaged a pod beyond them.
Long War 2 did this.
It does not improve the game.
Turns out that "two soldiers sprint to the objective" is not actually interesting.
Posts
:thinking:
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
edit: oh I forgot to post the screen shot
You only have two pods stacked on top of each other? Lucky.
Now I'm starting a new campaign to see my unlocks.
Was thinking about starting over so I could play them alongside the WOTC content this time but seeing some saying thats a bad idea.
So normally once a door is open aliens can always see through it. This is to prevent you from blocking the door and then opening/shutting it to cheese them (as aliens cannot open doors).
However that does not work with Bulwark Sparks, because sparks are blocking terrain when upgraded to bulwark and they do then effectively block the door.
I hacked the MEC (after like three tries) and blew some of them up with mini-rockets, then I creeped around at maximum range and carefully pulled them by moving juuuuuuust close enough for small groups to engage, with the rest dancing back and forth forever.
It was silly.
https://clips.twitch.tv/DeterminedFineSparrowCoolStoryBro
Bloody hell that police station was not mucking around! I got caught out pretty hard by there being a hole in the wall where there wasn't one in the vanilla map and revealed a pod with an end of turn dash. Then the lobby turned out to be a clown car full of troops, I'm amazed that no-one died. Ended up about 2k points short of gold, which is a shame, but oh well.
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
Still hate their new designs.
Nope. No new or old aliens. The only new assets are the classic maps and weapon and armor skins.
Actually the monsters don't make a lot of sense... Bradford carves through legions of enemies he is surprised to meet meet the first time in the main campaign, like Faceless, Andromedons, and Avatars.
So many Avatars... I chalk the whole thing up to Bradford being an unreliable narrator.
Like, a lot of drinking.
Enough to forget.
That's Beagle's head-canon explanation.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
"And then I dodged a shot from an activated Sectopod at close range, with no cover!"
Seriously, BeagleLuck is real y'all.
HYPE TIME!
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
I'm really stoked about the free-aiming mechanic in this. It seems like the best of old and new XCOM, and precisely tuned to result in watching Beagle pixel-hunt for the absolute perfect shot to take.
Now I want to jump in to Xcom 2 to see the improvement. On my old monitor both games looked kinda muddy.
My big problem with X2's balance is that even on Legendary, by halfway though the campaign you've won, you're just waiting for the research to complete. Even halfway upgraded, your soldiers have enough abilities to alpha strike everything you meet, and the game doesn't even throw you many serious enemies aside from the Alien Rulers. I actually consider it lucky to get a double Gatekeeper map, since that means it'll actually be interesting, instead of a walkover.
By comparison, the tactical layer in EU/EW is well tuned, so long as you've been focusing on your main squad. But that itself is the equal problem; if you lose them, you've probably lost the campaign.
I hope for X3 there's a happy medium. I suspect completely removing Overwatch would fix a lot of things, but I suspect that'll never happen.
Why Overwatch? I can't say it's particularly much of a factor, positive or negative, for me. It honestly rarely impacts gameplay, personally. It's easy enough to cancel out the enemy overwatch, and if I'm relying on overwatch shots myself, I'm setting myself up for bad outcomes.
EU/EW is all about cover, and X2 is all about concealment. In both games, if the enemy gets to shoot at you in any appreciable quantities, you're doing it wrong.
In my opinion, the biggest flaw is that multi-turn, back-and-fourth firefights are inherently the worst possible type of engagement. Getting shot at all is an awful outcome due to how long your soldier will be out of action, so the best tactics are to do nothing remotely risky until you're ready to demolish the enemy pod.
For the tactical layer to be more interesting, I think more ablative defense might provide some interesting options, or maybe have combat healing do a lot more to defray recovery time. Maybe other detrimental effects that only last for the duration of combat? Taking fire lowers will, which lowers aim, or movement, or psi resistance, etc.. Some kind of system where getting shot is obviously detrimental, but being shot once or twice isn't absolutely unacceptable. Right now if I'm playing non-ironman and I get two soldiers wounded, I'm looking at which save to re-load.
Combat punishes risk taking, severely, to the point that even being shot at, much less actually struck, feels like a failure in tactics. Something needs to change to were taking fire is undesirable but an acceptable risk in order to gain a greater advantage. Then single engagements can last 5 or 6 turns without feeling like a tactical failure.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
This is my biggest gripe about the concealment system. It just means that if you're careful you get one free, orchestrated opening strike at one enemy pod. Especially combined with mission timers, it's not like you can take the time to scout out the map and decide where to engage.
The one mission where you can actually play it fully stealth is the mission to rescue Mox, and that's assuming you take the right team composition. I've done that mission without firing a shot, just by having a specialist nuke the turret with combat protocol, and then sneak a reaper and ranger in to break him out and haul for the extraction point.
If aliens were competing tasks, radio' d for help, heard nearby fights and were partly spread out, partly in patrol pods you could have more dynamic fights where you are rewarded more for having knowledge, position, speed.
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
You can play it as a statistical cover game, and there's nothing wrong with that, but optimal play is getting those 5 free shots on an enemy out of cover every time.
Line of play is a result of turn timers which are in turn an attempt to combat overwatch crawl that permeated EU, and it did so because enemies outclassed you and had significant HP advantages, and you were often punished for flanking by activating new pods. Once you limit OW and tone down enemy HP to compensate, a lot of those problems go away, and instead you can give soldiers a worse version of suppression by default to help them pin down enemy movement, which was the original point of OW.
Concealment and timers were a big step in making the strategic game interesting (especially at high levels) but they definitely could fix the fact that all missions are murder missions* due to line of play.
*The exception is that you can legitimately stealth the facility destruction missions, especially if you have a reaper or two.
What? XCom 2 has MECs. And their name is JULIAN.
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
There’s a bunch of mods for them too, if you don’t like how they are out of the box.
--Mark Twain
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
It really doesn't. SPARKS are fine if you use one of the boost mods (and have value on legendary due to will issues but are still kind of weak without boost mods*) but xcom 2 MEC's are a still pale imitation of xcom 1 MEC's. They're not even as good as XCOM 1 SHIVs without boost mods because XCOM 1 shivs were cheap comparatively and had the same relative role. (which was to take aggressive positions and shoot things in the face because you didn't care about them taking damage and because they're strong when out of cover.) Alloy and Hover SHIVS were legitimately good soldiers in their own right and you could easily construct a campaign around them.
*the main thing is that, because they cannot upgrade their weapons they're stuck at a low aim value compared to other shooters but even without this their abilities are not guaranteed and are on long cooldowns and have negative synergy with themselves.
It shows how little I used SPARKs - I don't think I ever used them enough to punch anything.
--Mark Twain
Long War 2 did this.
It does not improve the game.
Turns out that "two soldiers sprint to the objective" is not actually interesting.