I tried not to place soldiers close to each other as soon as I saw the chiron. I tried to kill it in one turn, even got its head disabled. But still… Two soldiers can not shoot now, one of them is almost dying.
I checked the tech - I’m allied with synedrion and have nano tech. The soldiers are level 7.
Also I got 4 syrens to deal with, besides this chiron. It’s veteran difficulty, end-game, mission to reclaim archeological site back. Is this situation considered good game balance?
I’m not sure which chirons have bad aiming but I always get at least one soldier hit by at least one projectile.
It’s a bomb (blast) Chiron, because if it was Acid, even if you didn’t have the nanotech it would first strip the armor and only reduce HPs on the next turn.
The acid and blast Chirons look very similar, so I suggest always opening the info tab to check what kind of Abdomen they have. Also, see if they have Stability Stance or not.
My guess from the damage is that it had Stability Stance on and that you were unlucky enough to have 4 (or even all 5) projectiles land on your Sniper who was wearing some light armor.
All I can say is that these are supposed to be the hardest missions at the moment with Pandorans, and you didn’t actually get anybody killed. If this was Legend I would have no trouble saying, “yes, this is fair”. I don’t know about Veteran, tbh.
From the screenshot I would say it has, his legs are burrowed.
Well, all what @VOLAND wrote and additionally my personal opinion:
Yes, I think it is good game balance, because here you got nothing more than an enemy that can hurt you badly. You didn’t loose one soldier, but it was close. For me the game shouldn’t be designed that you never get painfully hurt or even loose some soldiers. Probably on Easy, but I think on any higher difficulty something like this should happen.
Edit, one tip for this situation against these types of Chirons (blast or acid):
I see you have the Gungnir SR, then shot their abdomen (the 2 bug wings). They are big enough to hit easily and AFAIK 2 hits are enough to disable it and then the Chiron can’t shoot anymore.
I’m not expecting such easyness from the game either. Maybe some of these situations when the game punishes player look just too random for me. I’ve completed XCOM2 by Firaxis on Legend/Ironman and it did not feel easy at all. But everytime I got punished, I knew exactly what mistake I made. Maybe I’m expecting that a game should be like chess too much (and not all games should look like chess). Where all moves must be carefull and well-thought but if you make no mistakes then everyone is alive.
Sorry for slight off-topic but despite I enjoy ‘body part disabled’ mechanics a lot, but sometimes enemies throwing fire grenades make the game unpredictable too. You either can leave the burning area easily, heal up and / or evacuate - or your soldier just gets hurt so much that even can not exit the fire. And there’s no mechanic to carry him out of the fire or extinguish the fire. I’m aware that this can be handled via tech and augmentations/mutaions. Just giving an example of what feels too random to me. On the contrary - when an enemy kills my trooper standing just next to it with retrun fire - I feel this completely deserved, because it was a stupid decision in the first place
I’m for punsihment for mistakes players makes. Maybe I’m making them and that’s why I have to save-scum so much. Just do not understand yet how PP could be played without save-scumming in late-game. I understand that the soldiers can be replaced easily, but there are situations when one or two wounded soldiers, unable to attack, just means that the mission is over.
I should watch probably some letsplays where people play PP on toughest difficulty with Ironman enabled. Usually if there are such streams, then it means that the game is well balanced.
Be prepared for every possibilities, that’s all what I can say. It sounds trivial but it isn’t because of the many things that can happen to you.
For instance:
If you take a Technician with you, then he can handle these wounded soldiers and ‘repair’ disabled body parts so they can fight again as usual. Or take an Aspida with the team, the Synedrion APC, it can heal and restore almost anything that can happen (except death).
Technicians and Aspidas are mission saver if something went terrible wrong.
Of course players get into trouble way before they have an option of a tech or an Apsidas. But, at least they should know the goal is to get these “tools” asap.
I have this with sneaky fireworms every once in a while… I have found that the best solution is to stay put and not move (because then the fire damage gets reduced each turn and no further damage from moving through fire is incurred), which is a bit counterintuitive, unless you can extinguish the fire around him with a controlled explosion (the only way of extinguishing fire AFAIK).
