Then so, so much wargear. Do you stick to Imperial weapons, or do you give your Salamander a Fusion Gun? Give your Black Templar a Choppa or a Rock Saw?
Wait, it's beem awhile...is Deathwatch allowed to do the tech heresy?
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
Then so, so much wargear. Do you stick to Imperial weapons, or do you give your Salamander a Fusion Gun? Give your Black Templar a Choppa or a Rock Saw?
Wait, it's beem awhile...is Deathwatch allowed to do the tech heresy?
From last I remember, yes, as part of Inquisitorial permission. They can't take it with them back to their Chapter, but they're free to grab that Fusion Gun to melt some Eldar.
Xenos tech isn't as bad as Chaos artifacts - an Ork Choppa isn't going to be constantly seducing you to the dark side in your mind.
Well, it might to a Space Wolf.
edit - this is from the current Deathwatch book.
The Deathwatch is freed from the usual technological dogma that plagues the Imperium and their arsenal also consists of vast amounts of Xenos technology. Their wargear is highly specialized and reflects the varied requirements of their mission and vast array of potential threats. Development of weapons often includes Apothecaries, who specialize in analyzing maximum bio-damage to enemy xenos. Their equipment is produced by specifically vetted Tech-Priests sworn to secrecy and regularly put under hupno-therapy to allow for maximum discretion.
Then so, so much wargear. Do you stick to Imperial weapons, or do you give your Salamander a Fusion Gun? Give your Black Templar a Choppa or a Rock Saw?
Wait, it's beem awhile...is Deathwatch allowed to do the tech heresy?
From last I remember, yes, as part of Inquisitorial permission. They can't take it with them back to their Chapter, but they're free to grab that Fusion Gun to melt some Eldar.
Xenos tech isn't as bad as Chaos artifacts - an Ork Choppa isn't going to be constantly seducing you to the dark side in your mind.
Well, it might to a Space Wolf.
edit - this is from the current Deathwatch book.
The Deathwatch is freed from the usual technological dogma that plagues the Imperium and their arsenal also consists of vast amounts of Xenos technology. Their wargear is highly specialized and reflects the varied requirements of their mission and vast array of potential threats. Development of weapons often includes Apothecaries, who specialize in analyzing maximum bio-damage to enemy xenos. Their equipment is produced by specifically vetted Tech-Priests sworn to secrecy and regularly put under hupno-therapy to allow for maximum discretion.
Depends on the xenos
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
This game is getting mighty tempting.
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
Having different xenos with different combat ethos would probably really spice up this framework. But I think part of the flaw of this game is that it doesn't scale enough. You get sturdier, your knights heal faster and you have some cool abilities, but I don't feel like the progression from rookie to colonel (let alone psi) in Xcom2.
I'm entering late game now, I have my first max level characters, and still what I mostly do is set up shots to avoid enemy cover, hit groups with psychic onslaught, then send in my teleporting knight to clean up.
The only real tactical thing I developed that is a main stay is that I use immobilize to delay enemy reinforcements and insure low damage on enemy turns.
It feels different from the Xcom2 escalation, where late game each class can do crazy stuff.
Try the one with the adeptus mechanicus I reckon. That one is straight up great. Really solid and clever mobility loop where you get extra action points by probing things.
Try the one with the adeptus mechanicus I reckon. That one is straight up great. Really solid and clever mobility loop where you get extra action points by probing things.
I bounced off of Mechanicus fairly quickly, though it sounds like they've made some favorable updates. I did enjoy having skittari teammates
Try the one with the adeptus mechanicus I reckon. That one is straight up great. Really solid and clever mobility loop where you get extra action points by probing things.
I bounced off of Mechanicus fairly quickly, though it sounds like they've made some favorable updates. I did enjoy having skittari teammates
My guess is how much someone will like the game has to do with what they think of the board game exploration and the rouge lite elements to upgrades with the troop unlocks , new weapons and upgrades all being random . I know some didn’t like that but I felt it gave the campaign a lot of replay value . Plus I liked the story and characters .
Try the one with the adeptus mechanicus I reckon. That one is straight up great. Really solid and clever mobility loop where you get extra action points by probing things.
I bounced off of Mechanicus fairly quickly, though it sounds like they've made some favorable updates. I did enjoy having skittari teammates
My guess is how much someone will like the game has to do with what they think of the board game exploration and the rouge lite elements to upgrades with the troop unlocks , new weapons and upgrades all being random . I know some didn’t like that but I felt it gave the campaign a lot of replay value . Plus I liked the story and characters .
I love board game exploration and roguelite elements! I played hundreds of hours of FTL...
I managed to get a lvl 2 chaplain, and in my humble opinion he probably needs to be buffed.
He has a lot of useful abilities, but they are far into the skill trees so you need to do some work to get them. His core ability is adding vulnerability to his melee hit targets. It's a 10% chance though....I have yet to see it trigger. If it was reliable he'd be a worthy member for that alone.
Other things to note. He gets like +6 armor through skills. You can make him a tanky boi,! He has some sort of litancy/chant that adds buffs to the squad. No time limit, so I think he can activate once and last all battle (1 ap and 1 wp). One is plus 10% resistance, which can be upgraded to plus 30.
Another is an innate auto that allows 15% chance for knights to gain 1 wp on use of a wp skill. This can be upgraded, cannot recall the max.
Got a paladin, but he just seems to be a justicar with the shield skill. Which will actually get him in trouble with auto attacks, because he will charge after the first target that moves within his radius. The ai seems to know this and goads him to run past the front line to be whacked.
The problem with Mechanicus early on was that it was extremely easy. Early battles were decent when you were figuring things out, but once you had your tech priests geared up, nothing could even touch you. In my campaigns at any difficulty, I never lost a battle, and rarely lost a priest, and I don't feel like I was making any clever combos or anything.
With the latest big patch, they added an enormous suite of difficulty tweaks, including enemy health and numbers, numbers of fights in dungeons, etc. You can make the game easy enough to introduce a child to tactics games, or hard enough that it's likely impossible to win a battle past the tutorial. I plan to go back to it and see which levers make for the most genuinely challenging experience (especially since you can tweak mid-campaign).
Just fought the Great Unclean One. That was a grueling battle! Even after you take out the nurgling generators, he produces his own, which he can use for defense, creating melee daemons, or healing. He healed so much that I probably doubled his HP in damage over the fight.
Also my Purgator was a big damn hero and got downed twice in the process of doing stupid amounts of damage. I figured he was at the side of the Emperor, but after the fight he was just critically injured (he also has a trait where he gets buffs but can't gain resilience, called Marked for Glory or something). The only brother that didn't get downed at least once was my justicar, who was at 1 HP at the end of the battle. Said he was ready for duty afterwards...normally he'd be out for a couple weeks.
Definitely something weird going on with boss fights. Maybe they break out the good archaeotech medicine for people who take down a greater demon.
The problem with Mechanicus early on was that it was extremely easy. Early battles were decent when you were figuring things out, but once you had your tech priests geared up, nothing could even touch you. In my campaigns at any difficulty, I never lost a battle, and rarely lost a priest, and I don't feel like I was making any clever combos or anything.
With the latest big patch, they added an enormous suite of difficulty tweaks, including enemy health and numbers, numbers of fights in dungeons, etc. You can make the game easy enough to introduce a child to tactics games, or hard enough that it's likely impossible to win a battle past the tutorial. I plan to go back to it and see which levers make for the most genuinely challenging experience (especially since you can tweak mid-campaign).
Mechanicus is on my shortlist for backlog, and I played XCOM and XCOM 2 on long war, so I figured I might need to tweak that game up. let me know what your results are!
Generalísimo de Fuerzas Armadas de la República Argentina
It was just great that it regenerated all damage instantly. Just great. And chopping off limbs to lower its max HP spawned plants that both did damage (and thus couldn't be ignored if nearby) but also didn't provide WP when killed. Actions spent pruning the shrubbery were not spent trying to stun the boss.
I think this fight suffered from the stunning nerf. Actually a lot of fights have suffered since the stun nerf, because executions are fun but now most enemies run out of HP before getting stunned.
Yellow Daemon boss down
Ill post after work the details.
Ive got a lvl 3 chaplain Mace so he's now pulling his weight, 3 turns of 2 vulnerability is worth it. Chaplain litanies cost 1 WP per turn so don't forget to turn it off.
Made short work of the green daemon.
Ive got 7 knights that any combination of is an A team. Ill show off their builds
After bouncing off XCOM 2 a few times I am finally getting into it. I beat the original campaign on either Veteran or Commander (can't remember), and now I'm playing WotC for the first time on Commander. I think I'm about to lose to the Avatar project because I thought the red icons on the map would decrease the Avatar bar when I did them, but it turns out they are using red for Chosen missions too, so I ended up rescuing Pratal Mox which does sweet fuck all to the Avatar timer and things are looking grim. Oh well - at least I learned something for the next campaign.
After bouncing off XCOM 2 a few times I am finally getting into it. I beat the original campaign on either Veteran or Commander (can't remember), and now I'm playing WotC for the first time on Commander. I think I'm about to lose to the Avatar project because I thought the red icons on the map would decrease the Avatar bar when I did them, but it turns out they are using red for Chosen missions too, so I ended up rescuing Pratal Mox which does sweet fuck all to the Avatar timer and things are looking grim. Oh well - at least I learned something for the next campaign.
That's what we in the "biz" call XCOM, BABY!
But seriously, if there's an Avatar project facility around, go knock it over quick.
Once you start doing infiltrations the timer gets less dangerous.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
You can keep it going indefinitely once you know what you are doing.
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
Playing Chaos Gate on Ruthless and it seems extremely hard to land any executions. You certainly don't get the cool puzzle-solving, high-risk loops that were so fun in Gears Tactics.
To reliably execute a cultist, you need to hit them five times without killing them, and they have 6 HP. This means you have to hope they're in cover and then pull back and plink them at max range. It's really weird.
I'd almost prefer the removal of executions for chaff enemies if they don't want them to be a source of easy AP. It's much easier to execute chaos marines or other beefy enemies.
I guess there must be some stun powers or gear beyond hammer hand later, but still.
I was just reading on tue Steam boards for Daemonhunters that the bosses need to be buffed, because one dude killed all of them in 1 round each. Reading a little more, he had a full roster of knights with 9+ WP, some sort of pre-order bonus, and tier 3 weapons. So I was like, sure if you wait 300 days to start taking on the bosses things are going to be easier.
I certainly struggled on the purple and green bosses, approaching them basically as soon as I could.
But now it's 440+ days in, and I killed the red boss in 2 rounds and maybe there's something to that guy's BS. A lot of it is squad make-up (nerf Interceptor/Honour the Chapter), but the power differential between starter knights with regular weapons and upgraded champions with master-crafted gear is staggering; if I get time to prepare and get better, why wouldn't Chaos be tougher later in the game?
The xcom-like subgenre seems to very often run into two major design challenges: player scaling vs enemy scaling, and death spirals from setbacks in the campaign (especially when you've already lost but you don't know it for hours...)
Both of these are complex and multivariate and seem like they would require extensive playtesting at various levels of experience.
I'm not surprised that player scaling is a challenge in late game, since there are not only many ways to break the action economy (as usual, the strongest option in a turn based game) but also ways to break the mobility economy with teleportation and swaps, and a ton of flexibility with willpower to buff attacks and solve marginal damage output issues
That said, I'm impressed with the scaling at the early game end. Usually this subgenre is brutally hard at the start and you rely on RNG a fair bit to get a successful campaign going, or else it's trivially easy for a while. But after the first couple of missions, the number of enemies really ramped up and posed a genuine threat without making me feel vulnerable to a bad roll of the dice. Really good!
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
Yeah its a problem but I would rather they keep some freedom even if it means you steamroll the last quarter of the game versus being overly restrictive and just making the game feel like work
That said, I'm impressed with the scaling at the early game end. Usually this subgenre is brutally hard at the start and you rely on RNG a fair bit to get a successful campaign going, or else it's trivially easy for a while. But after the first couple of missions, the number of enemies really ramped up and posed a genuine threat without making me feel vulnerable to a bad roll of the dice. Really good!
Oh yeah, the early game in Daemonhunters is super crunchy and feels much better than early game XCOM when your soldiers can't hit the broad side of a muton, but is still quite challenging.
They also introduce 4 new classes late enough into the game that your getting them pretty under leveled to the rest of your squad - so depending on how many you want to use and how quickly, your squads power can drop dramatically for wanting to play with the new tools they give you
They also introduce 4 new classes late enough into the game that your getting them pretty under leveled to the rest of your squad - so depending on how many you want to use and how quickly, your squads power can drop dramatically for wanting to play with the new tools they give you
Except for the one freebie I got (Librarian), I've basically ignored the new classes in favor of using my requisitions on sweet gear for my existing hitters.
After bouncing off XCOM 2 a few times I am finally getting into it. I beat the original campaign on either Veteran or Commander (can't remember), and now I'm playing WotC for the first time on Commander. I think I'm about to lose to the Avatar project because I thought the red icons on the map would decrease the Avatar bar when I did them, but it turns out they are using red for Chosen missions too, so I ended up rescuing Pratal Mox which does sweet fuck all to the Avatar timer and things are looking grim. Oh well - at least I learned something for the next campaign.
When the counter maxes out, you do have like a two week doom timer before you actually lose, during which you can still bring down the avatar counter to save the campaign. If you rush, you can usually make contact with a facility region or somesuch to bring down the counter in time.
Yeah always just have an open mission you could do if you need to. All plot missions count plus facilities for reducing the timer
When I play I completely ignore things until the clock is ticking. They did make it so it doesnt reset to the full two weeks anymore but that was super gamey anyway
MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited May 2022
Yeah I don't pay attention unless the clock is ticking then I immediately start a covert op or jump on that facility that will reduce it. This will get you another month.
The worst thing to do is to waste all your facilities that reduce it desperately trying to stop it reaching the end, cos then you can be in a situation where you have no ability to stop it when you really need to. Always have one, and make sure you are aiming towards others opening up.
My last xcom2 game I went into the last mission because I'd gotten sick of curb stomping them, and felt it was time to end it. The avatar timer had gone off like six or seven times by then, it just didn't matter. Random meaningless bleating in the background that I coldly shut off with a covert op that would finish before the timer and ignored, or just quickly stomped on a facility with a difficulty far below my current tech level.
This also tells me that next time I play I should bump the difficulty up another notch.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited May 2022
Ok so I got Daemonhunters and it feels like Xcom2 and Battletech had a baby.
Space marines are basically Battlemechs anyway.
I like it.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
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SaldonasSee you space cowboy...Registered Userregular
Would be sweet if you could field a nemesis dreadknight.
Also, contrary to the thread title, there's no hit percentage chance.
You always hit, range determines damage dealt.
I really like that.
untrue, enemies behind cover might not get tagged.
anyone you have an angle or standing out in the open, yeah, 100% hit chance.
feels a bit funny though, running around in terminator armor and getting gibbed by some schmuck with an auto stubber.
tip.. tip.. TALLY.. HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
Someone doesn't have the ability to have 7 armor on demand then I see.
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
Also, contrary to the thread title, there's no hit percentage chance.
You always hit, range determines damage dealt.
I really like that.
untrue, enemies behind cover might not get tagged.
anyone you have an angle or standing out in the open, yeah, 100% hit chance.
feels a bit funny though, running around in terminator armor and getting gibbed by some schmuck with an auto stubber.
Marines are superhumanly tough, but they aren't invulnerable, even in armor. Part of their battlefield effectiveness is that they have great awareness of the battlefield and can use cover, line of sight, etc. effectively. It's the "soldier" part of "perfect soldier."
It'd be different if we were talking about Vulkan of course. Dude can't die. Sort of.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited May 2022
So I don't want to give people the wrong impression so here's the stuff that's similar to battletech.
you get a ship you have to upgrade as you go. feels really similar to the argo, just, like, more killier.
there's a starmap you gotta wander around (its very small compared to battletech) and upgrading your ship makes that easier
space marines feel, in combat, like mechs, cos they take a shitton of damage, they smash the fuck out of everything when they do anything at all, you take on several waves in a goliathy, stompy, smashy smashy way, and you get a ton of abilities with different specialised classes, which feels a bit like having different builds on a team of 4 mechs, and part of your basic strategy is learning to use the armor ability (think of it like brace) to mitigate damage
here's why it feels like xcom
research is important and unlocks important stuff, but takes real time to advance during which enemies are spreading over the map and getting stronger and doing bad things
time advances on the starmap
the enemy is continuously advancing and early on it feels like you aren't keeping up as the bad guys spread through and seem to be everywhere but you can only pick one mission at a time out of 3 and have to let the others go
mission success results in loot which you can use to advance your stuff (this is a little bit like battlemech too)
the loadout screen is extremely familiar if you've played xcom, and works roughly the same way
individual class upgrades let you specialise classes in various ways, although the ui for the talents screen is fucking nonsense and took me like ten minutes just staring at and pressing random buttons before i realised what the hell i was looking at. just like xcom you upgrade this via promotions
combat feels like xcom, action economy, overwatching, moving up, using abilities, etc.
early game at least everyone starts out carting around grenades cos theyre just as op
random things that are awesome
as others have mentioned, if you can hit, you almost always hit.
medics can get terminator armor
you have way more abilities to use right off the bat
you dont feel helpless, you feel like a wrecking ball right off the bat
the settings menu has a codex that lists exactly what everything in the game does. every ability, mechanic, status effect, etc. you can refer to it anytime including during a mission when you've just been hit by plague and have no idea what the fuck that means .
there's a speed up enemy turn option (like battlemech)
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
The ability of marines to cause collateral damage never fails to amuse me. Knocking over Ecclesiarchy statues onto enemies, shooting explody power cells or ammo crates the Imperial Guard left lying around, shooting a brazier to make it spray fire, or hucking the enormous lid of a promethium pipe are all things every Grey Knight can do.
Not to mention the big oil spill patches everywhere that we barely notice but are low-key the reason to bring a flamer.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
So in xcom your dudes climb up onto a ledge by a pipe and take a stealthy military stance.
In this game the 8 foot tall monster wearing a mecha suit climbs up the wall by slamming his gloves into it like wolverine and then when they get to the top they jump up to their feet which shatters everything around them then stomps over to their objective while pieces of wall crumble off them.
In xcom your guys kick doors open.
In this game your chonky mega men run up and wind up a kick that shatters the entire reinforced steel door into a thousand parts and charge in through the pinwheeling wreckage.
I threw a grenade and it showed a closeup of the thing flying through the air to show me the words WRATH written on its side in large font gothic script, and then anything your grenade hits that doesnt die gets knocked backwards which threw one enemy off a cliff and i got an ironic achievement for it.
My medic got the kill 5 guys in one turn cheevo on the first non tutorial mission.
Its a very Morninglord game.
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
I actually haven't used grenades much so far, except on dedicated purgators that can carry extras. I have always been a fan of passive upgrade gear, and thus game has a lot of it. Blessed greaves that up critical chances, a psi matrix that improves barrier, and lots more.
I suspect that when I play on Ironman I'll use grenades more, because they radically change engagement situations RE: cover and cliff proximity.
I do like how the various loot reward grenades have words on them, as ML mentioned. My anti-psyker grenade says "DOOM." Purge the wytch, little buddy!
Posts
Wait, it's beem awhile...is Deathwatch allowed to do the tech heresy?
From last I remember, yes, as part of Inquisitorial permission. They can't take it with them back to their Chapter, but they're free to grab that Fusion Gun to melt some Eldar.
Xenos tech isn't as bad as Chaos artifacts - an Ork Choppa isn't going to be constantly seducing you to the dark side in your mind.
Well, it might to a Space Wolf.
edit - this is from the current Deathwatch book.
Depends on the xenos
I'm entering late game now, I have my first max level characters, and still what I mostly do is set up shots to avoid enemy cover, hit groups with psychic onslaught, then send in my teleporting knight to clean up.
The only real tactical thing I developed that is a main stay is that I use immobilize to delay enemy reinforcements and insure low damage on enemy turns.
It feels different from the Xcom2 escalation, where late game each class can do crazy stuff.
Try the one with the adeptus mechanicus I reckon. That one is straight up great. Really solid and clever mobility loop where you get extra action points by probing things.
I bounced off of Mechanicus fairly quickly, though it sounds like they've made some favorable updates. I did enjoy having skittari teammates
My guess is how much someone will like the game has to do with what they think of the board game exploration and the rouge lite elements to upgrades with the troop unlocks , new weapons and upgrades all being random . I know some didn’t like that but I felt it gave the campaign a lot of replay value . Plus I liked the story and characters .
I love board game exploration and roguelite elements! I played hundreds of hours of FTL...
I just didn't like how Mechanicus did it...
He has a lot of useful abilities, but they are far into the skill trees so you need to do some work to get them. His core ability is adding vulnerability to his melee hit targets. It's a 10% chance though....I have yet to see it trigger. If it was reliable he'd be a worthy member for that alone.
Other things to note. He gets like +6 armor through skills. You can make him a tanky boi,! He has some sort of litancy/chant that adds buffs to the squad. No time limit, so I think he can activate once and last all battle (1 ap and 1 wp). One is plus 10% resistance, which can be upgraded to plus 30.
Another is an innate auto that allows 15% chance for knights to gain 1 wp on use of a wp skill. This can be upgraded, cannot recall the max.
Got a paladin, but he just seems to be a justicar with the shield skill. Which will actually get him in trouble with auto attacks, because he will charge after the first target that moves within his radius. The ai seems to know this and goads him to run past the front line to be whacked.
With the latest big patch, they added an enormous suite of difficulty tweaks, including enemy health and numbers, numbers of fights in dungeons, etc. You can make the game easy enough to introduce a child to tactics games, or hard enough that it's likely impossible to win a battle past the tutorial. I plan to go back to it and see which levers make for the most genuinely challenging experience (especially since you can tweak mid-campaign).
Also my Purgator was a big damn hero and got downed twice in the process of doing stupid amounts of damage. I figured he was at the side of the Emperor, but after the fight he was just critically injured (he also has a trait where he gets buffs but can't gain resilience, called Marked for Glory or something). The only brother that didn't get downed at least once was my justicar, who was at 1 HP at the end of the battle. Said he was ready for duty afterwards...normally he'd be out for a couple weeks.
Definitely something weird going on with boss fights. Maybe they break out the good archaeotech medicine for people who take down a greater demon.
Mechanicus is on my shortlist for backlog, and I played XCOM and XCOM 2 on long war, so I figured I might need to tweak that game up. let me know what your results are!
I think this fight suffered from the stunning nerf. Actually a lot of fights have suffered since the stun nerf, because executions are fun but now most enemies run out of HP before getting stunned.
Ill post after work the details.
Ive got a lvl 3 chaplain Mace so he's now pulling his weight, 3 turns of 2 vulnerability is worth it. Chaplain litanies cost 1 WP per turn so don't forget to turn it off.
Made short work of the green daemon.
Ive got 7 knights that any combination of is an A team. Ill show off their builds
That's what we in the "biz" call XCOM, BABY!
But seriously, if there's an Avatar project facility around, go knock it over quick.
Once you start doing infiltrations the timer gets less dangerous.
To reliably execute a cultist, you need to hit them five times without killing them, and they have 6 HP. This means you have to hope they're in cover and then pull back and plink them at max range. It's really weird.
I'd almost prefer the removal of executions for chaff enemies if they don't want them to be a source of easy AP. It's much easier to execute chaos marines or other beefy enemies.
I guess there must be some stun powers or gear beyond hammer hand later, but still.
I certainly struggled on the purple and green bosses, approaching them basically as soon as I could.
But now it's 440+ days in, and I killed the red boss in 2 rounds and maybe there's something to that guy's BS. A lot of it is squad make-up (nerf Interceptor/Honour the Chapter), but the power differential between starter knights with regular weapons and upgraded champions with master-crafted gear is staggering; if I get time to prepare and get better, why wouldn't Chaos be tougher later in the game?
Both of these are complex and multivariate and seem like they would require extensive playtesting at various levels of experience.
I'm not surprised that player scaling is a challenge in late game, since there are not only many ways to break the action economy (as usual, the strongest option in a turn based game) but also ways to break the mobility economy with teleportation and swaps, and a ton of flexibility with willpower to buff attacks and solve marginal damage output issues
That said, I'm impressed with the scaling at the early game end. Usually this subgenre is brutally hard at the start and you rely on RNG a fair bit to get a successful campaign going, or else it's trivially easy for a while. But after the first couple of missions, the number of enemies really ramped up and posed a genuine threat without making me feel vulnerable to a bad roll of the dice. Really good!
Oh yeah, the early game in Daemonhunters is super crunchy and feels much better than early game XCOM when your soldiers can't hit the broad side of a muton, but is still quite challenging.
Except for the one freebie I got (Librarian), I've basically ignored the new classes in favor of using my requisitions on sweet gear for my existing hitters.
When I play I completely ignore things until the clock is ticking. They did make it so it doesnt reset to the full two weeks anymore but that was super gamey anyway
The worst thing to do is to waste all your facilities that reduce it desperately trying to stop it reaching the end, cos then you can be in a situation where you have no ability to stop it when you really need to. Always have one, and make sure you are aiming towards others opening up.
My last xcom2 game I went into the last mission because I'd gotten sick of curb stomping them, and felt it was time to end it. The avatar timer had gone off like six or seven times by then, it just didn't matter. Random meaningless bleating in the background that I coldly shut off with a covert op that would finish before the timer and ignored, or just quickly stomped on a facility with a difficulty far below my current tech level.
This also tells me that next time I play I should bump the difficulty up another notch.
Space marines are basically Battlemechs anyway.
I like it.
Switch: SW-1493-0062-4053
This just put my interest level up several degrees.
You always hit, range determines damage dealt.
I really like that.
Well the thread title is still about XCOM, even if we're sometimes talking about other games.
untrue, enemies behind cover might not get tagged.
anyone you have an angle or standing out in the open, yeah, 100% hit chance.
feels a bit funny though, running around in terminator armor and getting gibbed by some schmuck with an auto stubber.
Marines are superhumanly tough, but they aren't invulnerable, even in armor. Part of their battlefield effectiveness is that they have great awareness of the battlefield and can use cover, line of sight, etc. effectively. It's the "soldier" part of "perfect soldier."
It'd be different if we were talking about Vulkan of course. Dude can't die. Sort of.
here's why it feels like xcom
random things that are awesome
there's a speed up enemy turn option (like battlemech)
Not to mention the big oil spill patches everywhere that we barely notice but are low-key the reason to bring a flamer.
In this game the 8 foot tall monster wearing a mecha suit climbs up the wall by slamming his gloves into it like wolverine and then when they get to the top they jump up to their feet which shatters everything around them then stomps over to their objective while pieces of wall crumble off them.
In xcom your guys kick doors open.
In this game your chonky mega men run up and wind up a kick that shatters the entire reinforced steel door into a thousand parts and charge in through the pinwheeling wreckage.
I threw a grenade and it showed a closeup of the thing flying through the air to show me the words WRATH written on its side in large font gothic script, and then anything your grenade hits that doesnt die gets knocked backwards which threw one enemy off a cliff and i got an ironic achievement for it.
My medic got the kill 5 guys in one turn cheevo on the first non tutorial mission.
Its a very Morninglord game.
I suspect that when I play on Ironman I'll use grenades more, because they radically change engagement situations RE: cover and cliff proximity.
I do like how the various loot reward grenades have words on them, as ML mentioned. My anti-psyker grenade says "DOOM." Purge the wytch, little buddy!