-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
edited July 24
Something that’s annoying me is there is a total of one explosives expert, Barry.
It’s good that he’s there but every other role has a couple of options.
Something I do like is the little sub-objectives you get. Last night I had a fight where I had to get 5 limb shots across the team for Kalnya and and have Fox burst headshot 3 enemies. Made some of my shot decisions more interesting than ‘Center mass, fire’.
Something that’s annoying me is there is a total of one explosives expert, Barry.
It’s good that he’s there but every other role has a couple of options.
Something I do like is the little sub-objectives you get. Last night I had a fight where I had to get 5 limb shots across the team for Kalnya and and have Fox burst headshot 3 enemies. Made some of my shot decisions more interesting than ‘Center mass, fire’.
I might be missing something but there is also Fidel, Nails and Red. Haven't hired anyone of them so perhaps they are annoying and then there is only one explosive expert.
Something that’s annoying me is there is a total of one explosives expert, Barry.
It’s good that he’s there but every other role has a couple of options.
Something I do like is the little sub-objectives you get. Last night I had a fight where I had to get 5 limb shots across the team for Kalnya and and have Fox burst headshot 3 enemies. Made some of my shot decisions more interesting than ‘Center mass, fire’.
I got a sub-objective to shoot everybody in the groin.
I failed it because, apparently, hyenas do not have groins. And that was unacceptable.
+4
-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
edited July 24
So, how do I fix low morale?
This one is bugging me. There's no explanation I can see on how to raise it. I've got 2 mercs on -2AP and two on -1AP. I guess one of them is because she doesn't like the other one (Fox doesn't like Steroid, which eh, I can deal with), but I assume the others are from looting that mass grave.
How do I raise it? I tried R&R and that just gave a separate +1AP that went away pretty quick.
Edit - apparently the mass grave thing only lasts a few days, so I’ve got no idea why some these mercs have low morale.
Apparently Fox is -1 because if Steroid and Mouse is -1 because if Fox. Again, eh, I like Fox so I can deal with it. But my Merc has -1 and I think Mouse is actually -2 and it doesn’t seem to tell you why.
Something that’s annoying me is there is a total of one explosives expert, Barry.
It’s good that he’s there but every other role has a couple of options.
Something I do like is the little sub-objectives you get. Last night I had a fight where I had to get 5 limb shots across the team for Kalnya and and have Fox burst headshot 3 enemies. Made some of my shot decisions more interesting than ‘Center mass, fire’.
I got a sub-objective to shoot everybody in the groin.
I failed it because, apparently, hyenas do not have groins. And that was unacceptable.
Something that’s annoying me is there is a total of one explosives expert, Barry.
It’s good that he’s there but every other role has a couple of options.
Something I do like is the little sub-objectives you get. Last night I had a fight where I had to get 5 limb shots across the team for Kalnya and and have Fox burst headshot 3 enemies. Made some of my shot decisions more interesting than ‘Center mass, fire’.
I got a sub-objective to shoot everybody in the groin.
I failed it because, apparently, hyenas do not have groins. And that was unacceptable.
Fatal flaw in the game
Hyenas are famous for their groins
Especially female hyenas.
One of those things where you look at it and say “hey evolution… man what the hell was going on there buddy?”
Something that’s annoying me is there is a total of one explosives expert, Barry.
It’s good that he’s there but every other role has a couple of options.
Something I do like is the little sub-objectives you get. Last night I had a fight where I had to get 5 limb shots across the team for Kalnya and and have Fox burst headshot 3 enemies. Made some of my shot decisions more interesting than ‘Center mass, fire’.
I got a sub-objective to shoot everybody in the groin.
I failed it because, apparently, hyenas do not have groins. And that was unacceptable.
Fatal flaw in the game
Hyenas are famous for their groins
Especially female hyenas.
One of those things where you look at it and say “hey evolution… man what the hell was going on there buddy?”
Evolution lied on the resume and got the job anyway.
"Ok, human. You're going to have grasping hands, tool use, and exceptional walking stamina."
"Great."
"Also you're the smartest and most social thing in the world and you've still got the skeleton of a quadruped so your back and knees are going to hurt all the time and your abdominal wall is all kinds of messed up."
"Wait go back..."
"Yeah you can eat basically anything and control fire."
"Can we go back to the knees and back thing?"
"I'd really rather not."
Something that’s annoying me is there is a total of one explosives expert, Barry.
It’s good that he’s there but every other role has a couple of options.
Something I do like is the little sub-objectives you get. Last night I had a fight where I had to get 5 limb shots across the team for Kalnya and and have Fox burst headshot 3 enemies. Made some of my shot decisions more interesting than ‘Center mass, fire’.
I got a sub-objective to shoot everybody in the groin.
I failed it because, apparently, hyenas do not have groins. And that was unacceptable.
Fatal flaw in the game
Hyenas are famous for their groins
Especially female hyenas.
One of those things where you look at it and say “hey evolution… man what the hell was going on there buddy?”
Evolution lied on the resume and got the job anyway.
"Ok, human. You're going to have grasping hands, tool use, and exceptional walking stamina."
"Great."
"Also you're the smartest and most social thing in the world and you've still got the skeleton of a quadruped so your back and knees are going to hurt all the time and your abdominal wall is all kinds of messed up."
"Wait go back..."
"Yeah you can eat basically anything and control fire."
"Can we go back to the knees and back thing?"
"I'd really rather not."
I don’t know the hyena thing is still worse.
“Hey female Hyenas, so you know how most mammals have a penis and vagina right?”
“Yeah?”
“Well what if you had a vagina thats basically also a penis? Like its a vagina thats basically built into a dick that hangs out your body, and otherwise you pee out of it and it gets erect during sex and everything just like a penis.”
“Huh, how the hell does that even work? What possible advantages would it have? How would you squeeze babies out of a long tube like that?”
“What am I a fucking engineer?”
"How do you get babies out through that?"
"Well, most of the time you don't. Oh and you can chew up and eat bones and teeth and stuff!"
"What do you mean I don't?"
"Yeah, isn't that cool, you're the only animal I'm giving teeth strong enough to chew other animals' teeth!"
"No no I still have questions about the birth thing!"
This one is bugging me. There's no explanation I can see on how to raise it. I've got 2 mercs on -2AP and two on -1AP. I guess one of them is because she doesn't like the other one (Fox doesn't like Steroid, which eh, I can deal with), but I assume the others are from looting that mass grave.
How do I raise it? I tried R&R and that just gave a separate +1AP that went away pretty quick.
Edit - apparently the mass grave thing only lasts a few days, so I’ve got no idea why some these mercs have low morale.
Apparently Fox is -1 because if Steroid and Mouse is -1 because if Fox. Again, eh, I like Fox so I can deal with it. But my Merc has -1 and I think Mouse is actually -2 and it doesn’t seem to tell you why.
The mass grave isn't a "few days". It's a long-ass time, like 30 days or something, I don't know. It's incredibly brutal.
There are some quests around that can give you a morale bonus which should offset it. There's a straightforward one at the Refugee Camp (depending on earlier choices). More involved ones around the Fleamarket church and the south port.
0
-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
I wouldn't say the morale hit is 'incredibly' brutal. Like I said, I've got 4 mercs affected, but 3 of them seem to mostly be from not liking each other. And it amounts to -2AP on 2 of them and -1AP on one of them.
I'm only playing on the basic difficulty, so it isn't really affecting the outcome of a fight that I can see. Doing more would be nice, but I still pretty reliably hose the enemy.
So the last few weeks I have basically had nothing to do at work and was starting to feel my braincells curl up and die from boredom. So to give them something to do I decided to do something I had never done and play an XCOM alike on the hardest difficulty setting (no Ironman though, I'm too much of a savescummer at heart). Never done that before, so it should provide a nice (and possibly insurmountable) challenge. I chose the game, read some guides to get back into it, and started.
The first one was Mechanicus. I had played that before but given up on it because the the timepressure it created and the decision points just weren't fun for me. Since then it seems they changed some things to ease up on the time-pressure, which was a nice surprise. Playing it was... surprisingly not hard. They have enough customizable difficulty options so I could have made it even harder for myself, but didn't really feel like restarting, As in all of these games the start is the hardest and had some good challenges, but nothing as bad as I expected. The feel of the game fits the Mechanicus. It makes you be very analytical in your approach to try and get the most out of your cognition points and makes you plan your route through the levels very carefully.
As I was playing I also started to get a hankering to try Chaos Gate again. Like Mechanicus I had played it before but not finished as something just hadn't clicked and I didn't even get to the Craftworld. So I thought to myself, I need a new game to play on my Steam Deck and Mechanicus is Steam Deck verified. Chaos Gate isn't Steam Deck certified so the idea was to play that at home and Mechanicus whenever I'm away.
That wasn't how it turned out. Mechanicus runs well on the Deck but uses a different version of the game than the Desktop which resulted in savegames no being synchronized. Chaos Gate on the other hand ran absolutely perfect on the Deck and in fact played really well with the Deck controls.
So, Chaos Gate. On the highest difficulty I'd say the start is harder than Mechanicus. Resources feel sparser, you have less tools to keep your Marines from getting damaged and you have to get used to fielding them with Wounds, and it's much harder to do encounters perfectly. The feel is different as well. Less analytical and more fitting for the Grey Knights. When your group gets going you start to feel like a wrecking ball carving your way through the ruins, ripping apart enemies left and right. You are incentivized to move fast and charge into melee combat to do damage quickly, as cover is basically a trap in this game. The best way to not get shot is to stand next to the enemy with your power sword at their throat.
On the first attempt I got to the Craftworld and tried it once, but realized that I needed a better early game and restarted from the beginning. This second attempt went much better and I breezed through it after taking a good amount of time to prepare. After the Craftworld I got new classes and... with the Librarian and better weapons the difficulty just plummeted. Absolute freefall, even the most difficult mission types became jokes even when staying away from the "meta" builds. It feels like any combination of Knights can "one-round" any map where that's a possibility as long they have a Librarian. There is that one mission type whith an extra objective to keep a minimum number of guardsmen alive. Before the Craftworld I had basically given up on ever succeeding on that extra objective, once I had the Librarian it suddenly became easy. Easy enough that I challenged myself and managed to do the mission and no Guardsman got shot at even a single time. To them is must have been an interesting evening, just some giant shadows running past them in the distance, screams and body parts flying through the darkness beyond their encampment and then "job done, get back to base" through the comms. In the end this sadly made the game a bit too boring, so I haven't finished it.
As most here I started JA 3 instead. Not on the highest difficulty though I now think I should have as it's not that hard. The difficulty feels much more consistent than with Mechanicus or Chaos Gate though. Even with a good group of sniping specialists that easily clear most encounters things can still go wrong really quickly.
Edit: Went back to Chaos Gate just now to see if it had really gotten that easy. Did a kill the Bloomspawn mission on day 465 of my Legendary campaign to try getting the "do a mission with only two knights" and the "do a mission with only Justicars" achievement. Went without a hitch and I got maybe 3 points of health damage in total. Good equipment makes for one hell of a difference.
Gokerz on
+3
MonwynApathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime.A little bit of everything, all of the time.Registered Userregular
Fired up XCom 2: WotC last night and something had broken all the fucking mods and I am deeply irritated
So the last few weeks I have basically had nothing to do at work and was starting to feel my braincells curl up and die from boredom. So to give them something to do I decided to do something I had never done and play an XCOM alike on the hardest difficulty setting (no Ironman though, I'm too much of a savescummer at heart). Never done that before, so it should provide a nice (and possibly insurmountable) challenge. I chose the game, read some guides to get back into it, and started.
The first one was Mechanicus. I had played that before but given up on it because the the timepressure it created and the decision points just weren't fun for me. Since then it seems they changed some things to ease up on the time-pressure, which was a nice surprise. Playing it was... surprisingly not hard. They have enough customizable difficulty options so I could have made it even harder for myself, but didn't really feel like restarting, As in all of these games the start is the hardest and had some good challenges, but nothing as bad as I expected. The feel of the game fits the Mechanicus. It makes you be very analytical in your approach to try and get the most out of your cognition points and makes you plan your route through the levels very carefully.
As I was playing I also started to get a hankering to try Chaos Gate again. Like Mechanicus I had played it before but not finished as something just hadn't clicked and I didn't even get to the Craftworld. So I thought to myself, I need a new game to play on my Steam Deck and Mechanicus is Steam Deck verified. Chaos Gate isn't Steam Deck certified so the idea was to play that at home and Mechanicus whenever I'm away.
That wasn't how it turned out. Mechanicus runs well on the Deck but uses a different version of the game than the Desktop which resulted in savegames no being synchronized. Chaos Gate on the other hand ran absolutely perfect on the Deck and in fact played really well with the Deck controls.
So, Chaos Gate. On the highest difficulty I'd say the start is harder than Mechanicus. Resources feel sparser, you have less tools to keep your Marines from getting damaged and you have to get used to fielding them with Wounds, and it's much harder to do encounters perfectly. The feel is different as well. Less analytical and more fitting for the Grey Knights. When your group gets going you start to feel like a wrecking ball carving your way through the ruins, ripping apart enemies left and right. You are incentivized to move fast and charge into melee combat to do damage quickly, as cover is basically a trap in this game. The best way to not get shot is to stand next to the enemy with your power sword at their throat.
On the first attempt I got to the Craftworld and tried it once, but realized that I needed a better early game and restarted from the beginning. This second attempt went much better and I breezed through it after taking a good amount of time to prepare. After the Craftworld I got new classes and... with the Librarian and better weapons the difficulty just plummeted. Absolute freefall, even the most difficult mission types became jokes even when staying away from the "meta" builds. It feels like any combination of Knights can "one-round" any map where that's a possibility as long they have a Librarian. There is that one mission type whith an extra objective to keep a minimum number of guardsmen alive. Before the Craftworld I had basically given up on ever succeeding on that extra objective, once I had the Librarian it suddenly became easy. Easy enough that I challenged myself and managed to do the mission and no Guardsman got shot at even a single time. To them is must have been an interesting evening, just some giant shadows running past them in the distance, screams and body parts flying through the darkness beyond their encampment and then "job done, get back to base" through the comms. In the end this sadly made the game a bit too boring, so I haven't finished it.
As most here I started JA 3 instead. Not on the highest difficulty though I now think I should have as it's not that hard. The difficulty feels much more consistent than with Mechanicus or Chaos Gate though. Even with a good group of sniping specialists that easily clear most encounters things can still go wrong really quickly.
Edit: Went back to Chaos Gate just now to see if it had really gotten that easy. Did a kill the Bloomspawn mission on day 465 of my Legendary campaign to try getting the "do a mission with only two knights" and the "do a mission with only Justicars" achievement. Went without a hitch and I got maybe 3 points of health damage in total. Good equipment makes for one hell of a difference.
Did you get the new DLC? I'm probably going to tonight or tomorrow but was interested if you'd met any of the new stuff yet.
I need to pick up the new Chaos Gate DLC, but maybe not right away. Duty Eternal broke my game pretty hard on release, so maybe we can let it sit for a minute to get the kinks worked out.
I still haven't done more than a couple of the tech marine/dreadnought missions yet.
Hmmm I guess I'm getting old because I watched some JA3 and I really didn't like watching these guys who aren't in uniform getting popped in the face. Weird how symbols of dehumanization work, although I probably wouldn't even notice if it were like 2005 graphics.
Haven't played JA3 yet, but I know what you mean. I checked out of the Max Payne games because I found the violence in 3 to be too much. 1 and 2 are pretty cartoonish looking but 3 was just too realistic for me.
I need to pick up the new Chaos Gate DLC, but maybe not right away. Duty Eternal broke my game pretty hard on release, so maybe we can let it sit for a minute to get the kinks worked out.
I still haven't done more than a couple of the tech marine/dreadnought missions yet.
Picked it up, got far enough to start getting assassins, have a Vindicare and Culexus so far.
Running two assassins kind of sucked, and it feels like a full team is a bad idea. Seems best to run three marines and an assassin chosen based on what major enemies the prognosticars warn you of. They complement the marines nicely but each other less so. Each temple is set up to hard counter a certain subset of enemies (and I do mean hard - even at low levels there's no half mast here, Vindicare can headshot the biggest organic units, and Culexus can shut down a whole group of psykers), but they're all fragile and can't soak damage, and none of them have control options.
So the last few weeks I have basically had nothing to do at work and was starting to feel my braincells curl up and die from boredom. So to give them something to do I decided to do something I had never done and play an XCOM alike on the hardest difficulty setting (no Ironman though, I'm too much of a savescummer at heart). Never done that before, so it should provide a nice (and possibly insurmountable) challenge. I chose the game, read some guides to get back into it, and started.
The first one was Mechanicus. I had played that before but given up on it because the the timepressure it created and the decision points just weren't fun for me. Since then it seems they changed some things to ease up on the time-pressure, which was a nice surprise. Playing it was... surprisingly not hard. They have enough customizable difficulty options so I could have made it even harder for myself, but didn't really feel like restarting, As in all of these games the start is the hardest and had some good challenges, but nothing as bad as I expected. The feel of the game fits the Mechanicus. It makes you be very analytical in your approach to try and get the most out of your cognition points and makes you plan your route through the levels very carefully.
As I was playing I also started to get a hankering to try Chaos Gate again. Like Mechanicus I had played it before but not finished as something just hadn't clicked and I didn't even get to the Craftworld. So I thought to myself, I need a new game to play on my Steam Deck and Mechanicus is Steam Deck verified. Chaos Gate isn't Steam Deck certified so the idea was to play that at home and Mechanicus whenever I'm away.
That wasn't how it turned out. Mechanicus runs well on the Deck but uses a different version of the game than the Desktop which resulted in savegames no being synchronized. Chaos Gate on the other hand ran absolutely perfect on the Deck and in fact played really well with the Deck controls.
So, Chaos Gate. On the highest difficulty I'd say the start is harder than Mechanicus. Resources feel sparser, you have less tools to keep your Marines from getting damaged and you have to get used to fielding them with Wounds, and it's much harder to do encounters perfectly. The feel is different as well. Less analytical and more fitting for the Grey Knights. When your group gets going you start to feel like a wrecking ball carving your way through the ruins, ripping apart enemies left and right. You are incentivized to move fast and charge into melee combat to do damage quickly, as cover is basically a trap in this game. The best way to not get shot is to stand next to the enemy with your power sword at their throat.
On the first attempt I got to the Craftworld and tried it once, but realized that I needed a better early game and restarted from the beginning. This second attempt went much better and I breezed through it after taking a good amount of time to prepare. After the Craftworld I got new classes and... with the Librarian and better weapons the difficulty just plummeted. Absolute freefall, even the most difficult mission types became jokes even when staying away from the "meta" builds. It feels like any combination of Knights can "one-round" any map where that's a possibility as long they have a Librarian. There is that one mission type whith an extra objective to keep a minimum number of guardsmen alive. Before the Craftworld I had basically given up on ever succeeding on that extra objective, once I had the Librarian it suddenly became easy. Easy enough that I challenged myself and managed to do the mission and no Guardsman got shot at even a single time. To them is must have been an interesting evening, just some giant shadows running past them in the distance, screams and body parts flying through the darkness beyond their encampment and then "job done, get back to base" through the comms. In the end this sadly made the game a bit too boring, so I haven't finished it.
As most here I started JA 3 instead. Not on the highest difficulty though I now think I should have as it's not that hard. The difficulty feels much more consistent than with Mechanicus or Chaos Gate though. Even with a good group of sniping specialists that easily clear most encounters things can still go wrong really quickly.
Edit: Went back to Chaos Gate just now to see if it had really gotten that easy. Did a kill the Bloomspawn mission on day 465 of my Legendary campaign to try getting the "do a mission with only two knights" and the "do a mission with only Justicars" achievement. Went without a hitch and I got maybe 3 points of health damage in total. Good equipment makes for one hell of a difference.
Did you get the new DLC? I'm probably going to tonight or tomorrow but was interested if you'd met any of the new stuff yet.
Not yet, just base game so far. You can still get the enemies they introduce to appear though (it's in the options), which I did. They are good, the basegame itself is definitely lacking in different enemy types.
But they also make it obvious that the developer doesn't really understand what makes for a dangerous enemy. This far into the game, with Beasts of Nurgle and giant dreadnoughts common sights, the most dangerous and annoying enemy is still the humble traitor guardsmen + Psyker mix. They are the only enemy with the right mix of hp, numbers, that spreads out far enough on spawning and has the right special abilities to never cease to be at least annoying. Those damn Pin Grenades of theirs still mange to piss me off! Compared to that "endgame" enemies like Dreadnoughts just evaporate, I have killed more than a dozen of them and never even got to see one act. Do they have cool special attacks? I wouldn't know.
I may have waited too long to do the bosses though, one-rounded my first Reaper+bodyguard. I bet those Nurglings would have done some annoying stuff, pity they never even got to spawn.
Even going relatively early, all the reapers seem to be susceptible to that. Malathian, Munificus, and the unclean one are all weakest on the first turn. The Titan gives you one turn to just unload, after which you need to run from the breaking ground, unless you killed him.
The knight is the exception. He's full power, offensively and defensively, from turn one, but there's still a grind penalty since he destroys cover as you fight him.
Hevach on
0
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Honestly, I'm regretting spending the money on JA3. Gameplay-wise, it's basically Wasteland 3 but with slightly more tactics to it and Wasteland 3 wasn't even very good at it. The lack of a pause option in realtime mode is honestly crippling. Cover is a severe problem for hit resolution and view lines, particularly on Overwatch. Ducked behind cover? Great, now you can't see fucking anything; you have to manually tell the character to stand up, fire at a target, then squat back down. Overwatch when using a corner for cover? Enjoy watching somebody drill multiple bursts into the corner directly in front of them because of fucky sightlines. I've had multiple times with a prone team member at elevation with a HUGE accuracy buff repeatedly fire into the edge of the building they're on. The item system is something straight out of the 90s, I had to download a mod to keep from having to store. Enemy sightlines are wonky as hell; silently stealth kill somebody twenty feet behind another guy and there goes realtime mode because the guy up front "saw" his buddy get hit.
The character selection can also be very screwy. Not only can you have a SEVERE shortage of certain attributes (I didn't even have an option for leadership higher than 60 without going into the most expensive mercs), the hiring process automatically really fucking stupid automatic decisions like adding a new hire to a new squad instead of putting them in the existing squad. In my case, that meant my shiny-new very expensive merc ending up wasting days waiting on the starting island because I had to fucking take a city with a port, go over, meet him on the beach, take the island back again so I could leave, and then finally return to what I was doing before. As opposed to game just asking me if I want to send the merc to the two ports I had at the time.
And I know I mentioned the no pause to realtime combat thing already but fuck, it is extremely annoying for a game expecting you to do sneaking. Just let me pause the fucking game so I can line up multiple shots instead of this total stupidity with fumbling for one stealth shot at a time. Combined with that is the endlessly frustrating thing where the game defaults to selecting single characters instead of all of them. This means that every fucking time you want to move the whole squad, you have to hit the hot button for the whole squad or else manually select them all with the mouse.
Probably just gonna uninstall and forget it. There are waaaaay better tactical games out there than this, it isn't remotely worth this pricetag or slog.
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Well, to me, that apparently translates to a lot of tedium and repetition and bugs, plus there is barely a story worth speaking of here.
Just fucking moving around is tedious. Took a couple days to move somewhere? All the mercs are tired! Now you have to blow a day letting them literally sit and do fucking nothing because they can't even do Operation while they rest. And there's like... two people that can make ammo for some fucking reason, so enjoy waiting a whole day to churn out some ammo because this shit is a scarce resource only for you. Just about ready to go? Too bad, contracts are up and you have to individually go through every fucking merc, contact them, and rent them again. Just give me a damn daily cost for them and drop the negotiation shit. Alright, NOW we are ready to go... except the game dropped a merc squad on a place you need out in the ass end of nowhere and you haven't been able to train enough militia because a) they fucking cost money and b) the mercs available don't have anybody with Leadership more than 30 with dropping 10-15 grand on somebody. So now instead of progressing, you have to move all the way back to the ass-end of your own territory, boot the invaders, take it back, walk back to where you were... and now everybody is fucking tired again and contracts are up.
It's neither very entertaining or rewarding, with lots of damn headaches.
Definitely sounds like a JA title. You're not wrong, and I haven't played JA3, but these types of little things are what make JA2 unique. Having a limited ammo supply, entering a fight with damaged guns that might jam on you, using tired/low morale mercs who aren't operating at peak efficiency, deciding to stick it out and fortify a sector versus pressing on and leaving it lightly defended are the hallmarks of the series. It can certainly become a tedious slog at times.
+2
-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
edited July 31
Yeah those are the things that are making me really enjoy JA3. There's more to keep track of than just what guns I'm giving people. The weapon mod system is a whole bunch of fun too.
I've also gotten back in on a new Wartales run and I'm enjoying it a lot more this time around. Now that I know it's a bad idea to keep stealing shit and expanding your warband too fast can lead to all kinds of money and food issues, I'm just ripping through this. My mercenenary band is only 6 people, but holy shit these 6 people will kill the shit out of anything.
My second in command went from using one of those huge axes that swing in an arc to using a one handed axe, with a secondary attack that does a bunch of damage, and carrying a throwing axe in her offhand. She's just death incarnate now.
Question. Is there a way to play one or maybe one of the latest XCOM games in co-op, as in taking on the aliens in a team with a friend?
Full-disclosure. I have not played an XCOM games since it strayed and you fought under sea creatures.
Bones heal, glory is forever.
0
AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
LMGs in JA3 are hilariously OP and trivialize pretty much any engagement. Especially when you trick the weapon out. How good are they? Well in my game I've had plenty of mission end after turn 1.
Setup LMG
Badguy moves
Badguy dies
Repeats until all baddies have moved
I haven't yet seen any limit to the number of interrupt attacks a person with an LMG can make. I assume it depends on ammo, but I have a 90 round drum and a trait that automatically reloads after Overwatch. I know I've gotten over 10 kills with one LMG during one round of badguy movement.
Downside is ammo consumption, but I have a RPK and it uses Warsaw 7.62 which is very, very common and easy enough to make.
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
Question. Is there a way to play one or maybe one of the latest XCOM games in co-op, as in taking on the aliens in a team with a friend?
Full-disclosure. I have not played an XCOM games since it strayed and you fought under sea creatures.
To the best of my knowledge, none of the xcoms support co-op - however, you can kind of get a a similar effect using a program called Parsec. This allows you shared control of the inputs to a game, so you could take turns with a friend. But it's not like co-op, you'd just be going back and forth in single player.
Question. Is there a way to play one or maybe one of the latest XCOM games in co-op, as in taking on the aliens in a team with a friend?
Full-disclosure. I have not played an XCOM games since it strayed and you fought under sea creatures.
To the best of my knowledge, none of the xcoms support co-op - however, you can kind of get a a similar effect using a program called Parsec. This allows you shared control of the inputs to a game, so you could take turns with a friend. But it's not like co-op, you'd just be going back and forth in single player.
Thank you - I feared as much.
I will check out Parsec, but it doesn't sound like it will fill the need.
Bones heal, glory is forever.
0
-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
I swapped back to Jagged Alliance 3 to take abreak from Baldurs Gate 3 and the combat feels relaxing comparatively.
Just moving Mouse and Kalnya up to good positions, flanking with overwatch lanes from Barry and Steroid, Fox and my PC as backups. Wait for an enemy to wonder into LOS and pffft boom goes the head, and it's on. I just took two towns that I'd been avoiding and none of my team even lost the first bar of HP to incur an injury.
Question. Is there a way to play one or maybe one of the latest XCOM games in co-op, as in taking on the aliens in a team with a friend?
Full-disclosure. I have not played an XCOM games since it strayed and you fought under sea creatures.
To the best of my knowledge, none of the xcoms support co-op - however, you can kind of get a a similar effect using a program called Parsec. This allows you shared control of the inputs to a game, so you could take turns with a friend. But it's not like co-op, you'd just be going back and forth in single player.
Thank you - I feared as much.
I will check out Parsec, but it doesn't sound like it will fill the need.
Divinity: Original Sin and its sequel) might work. The first one offers 2 player coop; the sequel supports 4 player coop. They've got turn-based, sort-of-D&D combat with some use of the environment.
Baldur's Gate 3 also has co-op in that same vein for up to 4 players.
WarTales also added co-op that I have never tried. It's basically a low-fantasy mercenary company simulator. More traditionally grid-like than DOS or BG3.
None of those have XCOM shooty bits though. Unless you count bows and arrows or crossbows.
+2
Zavianuniversal peace sounds better than forever warRegistered Userregular
Xenonauts 2 got an update that addressed my main complaint with it, which is that now you can adjust mission duration/reinforcement timer in the difficulty options
Xenonauts 2 got an update that addressed my main complaint with it, which is that now you can adjust mission duration/reinforcement timer in the difficulty options
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It’s good that he’s there but every other role has a couple of options.
Something I do like is the little sub-objectives you get. Last night I had a fight where I had to get 5 limb shots across the team for Kalnya and and have Fox burst headshot 3 enemies. Made some of my shot decisions more interesting than ‘Center mass, fire’.
I might be missing something but there is also Fidel, Nails and Red. Haven't hired anyone of them so perhaps they are annoying and then there is only one explosive expert.
I got a sub-objective to shoot everybody in the groin.
I failed it because, apparently, hyenas do not have groins. And that was unacceptable.
This one is bugging me. There's no explanation I can see on how to raise it. I've got 2 mercs on -2AP and two on -1AP. I guess one of them is because she doesn't like the other one (Fox doesn't like Steroid, which eh, I can deal with), but I assume the others are from looting that mass grave.
How do I raise it? I tried R&R and that just gave a separate +1AP that went away pretty quick.
Edit - apparently the mass grave thing only lasts a few days, so I’ve got no idea why some these mercs have low morale.
Apparently Fox is -1 because if Steroid and Mouse is -1 because if Fox. Again, eh, I like Fox so I can deal with it. But my Merc has -1 and I think Mouse is actually -2 and it doesn’t seem to tell you why.
Fatal flaw in the game
Hyenas are famous for their groins
Especially female hyenas.
One of those things where you look at it and say “hey evolution… man what the hell was going on there buddy?”
Evolution lied on the resume and got the job anyway.
"Ok, human. You're going to have grasping hands, tool use, and exceptional walking stamina."
"Great."
"Also you're the smartest and most social thing in the world and you've still got the skeleton of a quadruped so your back and knees are going to hurt all the time and your abdominal wall is all kinds of messed up."
"Wait go back..."
"Yeah you can eat basically anything and control fire."
"Can we go back to the knees and back thing?"
"I'd really rather not."
I don’t know the hyena thing is still worse.
“Hey female Hyenas, so you know how most mammals have a penis and vagina right?”
“Yeah?”
“Well what if you had a vagina thats basically also a penis? Like its a vagina thats basically built into a dick that hangs out your body, and otherwise you pee out of it and it gets erect during sex and everything just like a penis.”
“Huh, how the hell does that even work? What possible advantages would it have? How would you squeeze babies out of a long tube like that?”
“What am I a fucking engineer?”
"Well, most of the time you don't. Oh and you can chew up and eat bones and teeth and stuff!"
"What do you mean I don't?"
"Yeah, isn't that cool, you're the only animal I'm giving teeth strong enough to chew other animals' teeth!"
"No no I still have questions about the birth thing!"
*the first pregnancy. Later pregnancies are much more survivable for female hyenas for reasons that it is probably best not to think about too much.
And everything that implies.
Oh that's basically 100% I'll use my single use special on that.
...
FUCK THIS STUPID GAME WHAT THE HELL CHEATING BULLSHIT
The mass grave isn't a "few days". It's a long-ass time, like 30 days or something, I don't know. It's incredibly brutal.
There are some quests around that can give you a morale bonus which should offset it. There's a straightforward one at the Refugee Camp (depending on earlier choices). More involved ones around the Fleamarket church and the south port.
I'm only playing on the basic difficulty, so it isn't really affecting the outcome of a fight that I can see. Doing more would be nice, but I still pretty reliably hose the enemy.
The first one was Mechanicus. I had played that before but given up on it because the the timepressure it created and the decision points just weren't fun for me. Since then it seems they changed some things to ease up on the time-pressure, which was a nice surprise. Playing it was... surprisingly not hard. They have enough customizable difficulty options so I could have made it even harder for myself, but didn't really feel like restarting, As in all of these games the start is the hardest and had some good challenges, but nothing as bad as I expected. The feel of the game fits the Mechanicus. It makes you be very analytical in your approach to try and get the most out of your cognition points and makes you plan your route through the levels very carefully.
As I was playing I also started to get a hankering to try Chaos Gate again. Like Mechanicus I had played it before but not finished as something just hadn't clicked and I didn't even get to the Craftworld. So I thought to myself, I need a new game to play on my Steam Deck and Mechanicus is Steam Deck verified. Chaos Gate isn't Steam Deck certified so the idea was to play that at home and Mechanicus whenever I'm away.
That wasn't how it turned out. Mechanicus runs well on the Deck but uses a different version of the game than the Desktop which resulted in savegames no being synchronized. Chaos Gate on the other hand ran absolutely perfect on the Deck and in fact played really well with the Deck controls.
So, Chaos Gate. On the highest difficulty I'd say the start is harder than Mechanicus. Resources feel sparser, you have less tools to keep your Marines from getting damaged and you have to get used to fielding them with Wounds, and it's much harder to do encounters perfectly. The feel is different as well. Less analytical and more fitting for the Grey Knights. When your group gets going you start to feel like a wrecking ball carving your way through the ruins, ripping apart enemies left and right. You are incentivized to move fast and charge into melee combat to do damage quickly, as cover is basically a trap in this game. The best way to not get shot is to stand next to the enemy with your power sword at their throat.
On the first attempt I got to the Craftworld and tried it once, but realized that I needed a better early game and restarted from the beginning. This second attempt went much better and I breezed through it after taking a good amount of time to prepare. After the Craftworld I got new classes and... with the Librarian and better weapons the difficulty just plummeted. Absolute freefall, even the most difficult mission types became jokes even when staying away from the "meta" builds. It feels like any combination of Knights can "one-round" any map where that's a possibility as long they have a Librarian. There is that one mission type whith an extra objective to keep a minimum number of guardsmen alive. Before the Craftworld I had basically given up on ever succeeding on that extra objective, once I had the Librarian it suddenly became easy. Easy enough that I challenged myself and managed to do the mission and no Guardsman got shot at even a single time. To them is must have been an interesting evening, just some giant shadows running past them in the distance, screams and body parts flying through the darkness beyond their encampment and then "job done, get back to base" through the comms. In the end this sadly made the game a bit too boring, so I haven't finished it.
As most here I started JA 3 instead. Not on the highest difficulty though I now think I should have as it's not that hard. The difficulty feels much more consistent than with Mechanicus or Chaos Gate though. Even with a good group of sniping specialists that easily clear most encounters things can still go wrong really quickly.
Edit: Went back to Chaos Gate just now to see if it had really gotten that easy. Did a kill the Bloomspawn mission on day 465 of my Legendary campaign to try getting the "do a mission with only two knights" and the "do a mission with only Justicars" achievement. Went without a hitch and I got maybe 3 points of health damage in total. Good equipment makes for one hell of a difference.
Did you get the new DLC? I'm probably going to tonight or tomorrow but was interested if you'd met any of the new stuff yet.
I still haven't done more than a couple of the tech marine/dreadnought missions yet.
Picked it up, got far enough to start getting assassins, have a Vindicare and Culexus so far.
Running two assassins kind of sucked, and it feels like a full team is a bad idea. Seems best to run three marines and an assassin chosen based on what major enemies the prognosticars warn you of. They complement the marines nicely but each other less so. Each temple is set up to hard counter a certain subset of enemies (and I do mean hard - even at low levels there's no half mast here, Vindicare can headshot the biggest organic units, and Culexus can shut down a whole group of psykers), but they're all fragile and can't soak damage, and none of them have control options.
Not yet, just base game so far. You can still get the enemies they introduce to appear though (it's in the options), which I did. They are good, the basegame itself is definitely lacking in different enemy types.
But they also make it obvious that the developer doesn't really understand what makes for a dangerous enemy. This far into the game, with Beasts of Nurgle and giant dreadnoughts common sights, the most dangerous and annoying enemy is still the humble traitor guardsmen + Psyker mix. They are the only enemy with the right mix of hp, numbers, that spreads out far enough on spawning and has the right special abilities to never cease to be at least annoying. Those damn Pin Grenades of theirs still mange to piss me off! Compared to that "endgame" enemies like Dreadnoughts just evaporate, I have killed more than a dozen of them and never even got to see one act. Do they have cool special attacks? I wouldn't know.
I may have waited too long to do the bosses though, one-rounded my first Reaper+bodyguard. I bet those Nurglings would have done some annoying stuff, pity they never even got to spawn.
The knight is the exception. He's full power, offensively and defensively, from turn one, but there's still a grind penalty since he destroys cover as you fight him.
The character selection can also be very screwy. Not only can you have a SEVERE shortage of certain attributes (I didn't even have an option for leadership higher than 60 without going into the most expensive mercs), the hiring process automatically really fucking stupid automatic decisions like adding a new hire to a new squad instead of putting them in the existing squad. In my case, that meant my shiny-new very expensive merc ending up wasting days waiting on the starting island because I had to fucking take a city with a port, go over, meet him on the beach, take the island back again so I could leave, and then finally return to what I was doing before. As opposed to game just asking me if I want to send the merc to the two ports I had at the time.
And I know I mentioned the no pause to realtime combat thing already but fuck, it is extremely annoying for a game expecting you to do sneaking. Just let me pause the fucking game so I can line up multiple shots instead of this total stupidity with fumbling for one stealth shot at a time. Combined with that is the endlessly frustrating thing where the game defaults to selecting single characters instead of all of them. This means that every fucking time you want to move the whole squad, you have to hit the hot button for the whole squad or else manually select them all with the mouse.
Probably just gonna uninstall and forget it. There are waaaaay better tactical games out there than this, it isn't remotely worth this pricetag or slog.
Just fucking moving around is tedious. Took a couple days to move somewhere? All the mercs are tired! Now you have to blow a day letting them literally sit and do fucking nothing because they can't even do Operation while they rest. And there's like... two people that can make ammo for some fucking reason, so enjoy waiting a whole day to churn out some ammo because this shit is a scarce resource only for you. Just about ready to go? Too bad, contracts are up and you have to individually go through every fucking merc, contact them, and rent them again. Just give me a damn daily cost for them and drop the negotiation shit. Alright, NOW we are ready to go... except the game dropped a merc squad on a place you need out in the ass end of nowhere and you haven't been able to train enough militia because a) they fucking cost money and b) the mercs available don't have anybody with Leadership more than 30 with dropping 10-15 grand on somebody. So now instead of progressing, you have to move all the way back to the ass-end of your own territory, boot the invaders, take it back, walk back to where you were... and now everybody is fucking tired again and contracts are up.
It's neither very entertaining or rewarding, with lots of damn headaches.
I've also gotten back in on a new Wartales run and I'm enjoying it a lot more this time around. Now that I know it's a bad idea to keep stealing shit and expanding your warband too fast can lead to all kinds of money and food issues, I'm just ripping through this. My mercenenary band is only 6 people, but holy shit these 6 people will kill the shit out of anything.
My second in command went from using one of those huge axes that swing in an arc to using a one handed axe, with a secondary attack that does a bunch of damage, and carrying a throwing axe in her offhand. She's just death incarnate now.
Full-disclosure. I have not played an XCOM games since it strayed and you fought under sea creatures.
Setup LMG
Badguy moves
Badguy dies
Repeats until all baddies have moved
I haven't yet seen any limit to the number of interrupt attacks a person with an LMG can make. I assume it depends on ammo, but I have a 90 round drum and a trait that automatically reloads after Overwatch. I know I've gotten over 10 kills with one LMG during one round of badguy movement.
Downside is ammo consumption, but I have a RPK and it uses Warsaw 7.62 which is very, very common and easy enough to make.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
Thank you - I feared as much.
I will check out Parsec, but it doesn't sound like it will fill the need.
Just moving Mouse and Kalnya up to good positions, flanking with overwatch lanes from Barry and Steroid, Fox and my PC as backups. Wait for an enemy to wonder into LOS and pffft boom goes the head, and it's on. I just took two towns that I'd been avoiding and none of my team even lost the first bar of HP to incur an injury.
Divinity: Original Sin and its sequel) might work. The first one offers 2 player coop; the sequel supports 4 player coop. They've got turn-based, sort-of-D&D combat with some use of the environment.
Baldur's Gate 3 also has co-op in that same vein for up to 4 players.
WarTales also added co-op that I have never tried. It's basically a low-fantasy mercenary company simulator. More traditionally grid-like than DOS or BG3.
None of those have XCOM shooty bits though. Unless you count bows and arrows or crossbows.
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/538030/view/3686812408444312613
"You can no longer throw grenades into UFOs through their roof."
Whoever reported that as a bug is a damned traitor to humanity.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists