Acid is insane... why did you think this was a good idea?

yes but they did not ask for someone to take an ACID trip and make the game stupid beyond words! Get real with it!

The main problem is somewhere else. In PP, the damage done over time can be almost ignored, as the game mechanics allow both sides to defeat the enemy within a round. Instead of eliminating the main problem, the acid damage has been readjusted so that your soldiers are done in 1-2 turns. They adjusted the damage of acid to the alpha strike mechanics, nothing else …

Already described here …

Technicians have 2 skills that deal with acid:

  1. field medic - reapplies armour and hitpoints to a squaddie so he doesn’t take acid damage
  2. electric reinforcement - gives temporary armour to all squad, this effectively shuts down acid damage as long as you repeat cast it each turn.

The game provides technicians as a countermeasure but if you don’t have technicians then acid is absolutely OP.

I hope that at some point the devs or a modder team go through all the OP elements in the game and nerf them - there is much I like about this game but I think it would be better without all the OP skills and weapons.

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did you test number 2? because it depends on the order of operations when this buff falls off at the beginning of the players turn.

I have used field medic, so I know that one works for sure, but field medic restores limb HP and armor damage, so unlike electric reinforcement…it isn’t an temporary buff.

I’ve used both and they both prevent acid damage; electric reinforcement allows the technician to totally shut down acid through the power of his will alone; like a Jedi master

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Agreed that a leveled up technician can aide in acid protection, this doesn’t address the issue that acid attacks show up way before one has developed a tech to this level. What is one to do prior?

Acid is bugged and unbalanced right now but hopefully the devs will hit it with the nerf bat in future and fix the explosions bug.
I guess the main thing to do is not allow yourself to get blobbed by acid and to try to evacuate any soldiers who do get blobbed badly.
There are 3 acid pandas and I’ll write what I do to deal with them.

  1. acid worms, these are pretty easy to deal with and you can always run away from them if you’re worried they might get you from somewhere like rooftops, I’ve never been had by an acid worm yet.
  2. acid launcher arthrons - be cautious around crabbies with launchers and shoot off their launchers if you can’t kill them in your turn - I don’t often get hit by crabbies with acid launchers but I evacuate them if I can.
  3. acid chirons - if I see one of these and I can’t hide in buildings from it, then I abort the mission and evacuate, it’s just not worth the risk - they’re an absolute nightmare in lairs but at I scout at the lair to identify what chiron is guarding it and I run away if it’s an acid one. Better to live to fight another day.
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All very sound advice, David - especially the last point.

I don’t think enough players realise that a tactical retreat is always an option and that there is no dishonour in it. This is, after all, a war against the odds - and it is a truism of all wars that the side which fails to withdraw in a timely fashion ultimately loses in the long-term.

Retreat and start mission again is like reload autosave :slight_smile: Don’t think it’s good solution to ‘fight’ acid Chiron

Forgive me, but no it isn’t - especially as far as the DDA is concerned.

A tactical withdrawal registers as a technical loss with casualties.
S&R registers as a win - most likely with no casualties, as that’s why most players say they do this in the first place.
Those will produce very different outcomes in terms of the next forces you encounter.

Also - and I don’t mean to disparage anyone who S&Rs here - but for me personally, a tactical withdrawal is a legitimate move, while for my own personal style of play saving & restarting is a cheat. Just as I refuse to break the laws of physics in this game by limiting Skill exploits to 1/turn rather than Dashing all the way across the map, I refuse to break the laws of Time by resorting to Edge of Tomorrow tactics against the Pandas.

As I say, this is my own PERSONAL play preference, and I am not denigrating anyone who wants to S&R. This is after all a solo game, and everyone is entitled to play it how they like. But S&R is different to opting to retreat.

So, start mission and retreat make game easier, then just reload? And who is cheating? :wink: Nothing personal :slight_smile:
Such situation looks strange for me and a bit fun.

In Lairs this is how I deal with them, I make sure ALL my men are out of range, usually this means move them all back to the evacuation location and put them on overwatch. Then I take a jet jumper and draw the fire away from them (keep him near a cliff edge or around obstetricals so he don’t get cooked). This will generally bring it into range of the rest of the team were you can snipe it out. So far I have been able to deal with all of them like this in Lairs. In the open it is way harder but doable… However, they MUST really fix this, acid oxidizes in the open air and should be a one hit only weapon, sure it can be a little higher than a normal weapon but needs to end after one shot or is just like being on an ACID trip that is just not fun at all…

Who said anything about going straight back in?

Even if you did, the process of going through the motions of a withdrawal - setting up a rearguard, falling back, extracting your troops without taking too many casualties, is very different to simply hitting ‘Go back in time and redo’. It can be just as satisfying as winning a mission if you pull it off perfectly.

And the in-game justification could be that you wait & scout the place until the optimal time to strike presents itself which is what most special forces do.

So, you retreat and never return to that mission?

Lately I have been encountering a lot of acid Chirons.

This works pretty well

In one mission I managed 3 turns of bombardments by keeping most of the squad in a one story building at the corner of the map and 2 snipers on the roof. The Chiron was aiming at the snipers but mostly over shot. When he didn’t, it wasn’t a big deal.

And here is the thing about acid - you can never predict how much damage it will do. Sometimes you get splashed, sometimes you get bathed and sometimes you get submerged in a tank full of acid (with the double damage bug).

Another bug (reported via F12): if a unit gets hit by acid and then mindcontrolled, if it stops being mindcontrolled because the siren doesn’t have any WPs left (because you blew her head off on your turn), it will first take acid damage during the Panda’s turn (for being on their team), and then immediately on the player’s turn, for not being mindcontrolled anymore.

I wonder if the same thing happens with poison and fire. Can anyone confirm?

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Sometimes. Lairs are a good example. Occasionally, I let boredom or overconfidence override my better nature and decide to try a Lair Mission again. I go in, rediscover what a f!*£%ng nightmare they are, and evac back out again, leaving it to mature into a Citadel which is much, much easier.

I’ve also been known to scout out a Scavenging Mission to see whether the pickings are easy - and if they aren’t, I simply evacuate.

There’s no dishonour in choosing to live to fight another day - and if, like I do, you play on HonestMan, then knowing when to bug out is just as important as knowing how to ace a mission.

And surprise, surprise, you don’t get hammered by the DDA. The worst I have ever encountered on any mission (other than a Lair) is around 15 Pandas in the entire 190+ hours I have played - and that’s using the original DDA settings, not the newly nerfed ones.

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If the map allows sniping out chirons and buildings to hide in, then I’ll do that. I won’t just let chirons take pot shots at my squaddies though - it’s better to lose a mission but keep experienced troops than to win it but lose soldiers.
Troops in this game require huge investments in resources and time to build them up - the original XCOM made troops more expendable, they were cheap to replace and you could bring lots to missions so you could absorb losses easily.
I play these games without reloading saves so it makes me risk averse.

Maybe I will post it in here, as this topic is more related to acid and its sanity. :slight_smile:

Just had my first encounter with acid and found my soldier taking limited damage on hit but then 100+ damage per turn after that. It’s far more powerful than other damage per turn effects and as far as I can tell all you can do is retreat, if you’re lucky enough to be near an exit.

They really just need to take the simple old school solution; Since acid takes time to eat through something then if you have no armour the acid hits HP and the only option is retreat or die fast (assume the aircraft have some kind of decon chamber and medbay so makes sense you could save the soldier after retreat).
If you have armour the acid slowly dissolves it (say, 1 full turn to consume) before applying to HP. Dropping the armour will prevent HP damage. Dissolved armour needs to be replaced.

This makes it realistically deadly whilst adding economical and strategic decisions and offering a way out. It would also then have a unique function rather than just being a mega-damage version of other damage other time effects that renders them all obsolete.

first tick of acid will never deal damage to HP on an armored bodypart. and as no acid weapon I have seen in the game has innate shred on top of the acid status it isn’t able to remove armor on-hit. this means that provided you are armored, you have your 1 free turn.