Enemies don’t currently scale their HP/armor values between difficulties. It might help if they did. High end difficulties at the moment might not need to be scaled up but lower ones might help to be scaled down. You pretty much -need- to go Shotgun to keep Assaults relevant once enemies start being mostly evolved variants with 200-340 HP and 10 armor minimum (other than just giving them a Heavy or Sniper weapon).
Been playing on hero and have been lucky to clear three lairs with no more than one Chiron in each (and only one had a damaging mortar and a pretty nice clear path to him in that case).
The lair spawns I had were nice enough to provide plenty of hard vertical cover and didn’t have spooky things like shotgun Tritons and the Arthrons with the MGs were not very agile.
I am not looking forward to the near future when my pandorans are fully evolved 24/7.
I will say that level 6 and 7 abilities tend to be VERY powerful and going into a lair with less than one or two of them might be part of the problem here. Not that you can always wait to have a full squad of leveled soldiers to tackle these problems.
I tackled my lairs with a full squad of 8 soldiers with 3-4 level 7s with level 4-6s supporting them and while they were controllable they always ended with me skipping past the last few defenders to just clear the objective. The reinforcements really do not seem to end. I must stress “seem to,” though, I haven’t really tested this yet.
Yeah, it seems like they infini-spawn, which I really don’t like, especially since they didn’t in the backer builds, and haven’t done in any previous Gollop game. Not a big fan of this.
You can block their spawns by standing near the entry points (at least it seems that it blocks them) but even one remaining active spawn near the end of the mission kept me locked in place until I made that last push for the Spawnery because of one reason or another.
Sacrificing a soldier to lock down an entryway isn’t the best option, especially if you’ve got 6 instead of the full 8. (God forbid you try to 3 man it with a vehicle. Although I guess a Scarab could just rocket the objective from spawn and maybe get an early win.)
I think this game needs a lot more balancing because some fights are just impossible to win. And those that are slightly possible leave half my team dead. Those sniper tritons or how they are called, those skittering bastards, some missions they snipe at least one member of my team from the second turn without revealing their position. Had 3-5 of these things show up and while I won the mission I lost 2 of my best soldiers (those with actually useful random perks).
Add that up to the siren mind control, crazy armor mutations and mortar mutos and it’s safe to assume this game needs some more balancing.
One way of doing it is waiting till your troops are stronger. The way I do it is upgrade your soldier speed and just keep running. There are little patches on the map covered by fog of war. you just have to keep running until you find the hatchery thing. Mag dump into the eggs or the torso and the mission will end without needing an evac (I don’t think)
Yeah, I agree. I play (and have beaten multiple times) Xcom on Legend Ironman, have no problems with Sirens, etc etc.
But these bomb chirons can actually be unbeatable in some maps like if you get a non-optimal lair layout, where there’s no way to get to a position to take them out right out the gate, and there is almost no cover from the bombs, then all you can really do is reroll the mission. It’s insane how much damage these things do, it’s not even remotely similar in threat level vs any other chiron variant, not even remotely close.
Yeah, honestly I think the bomb Chirons are straight-up the worst thing in the game right now.
Even on maps where you can hide in a building to not have half your squad instantly crippled (so not most lair missions), they’re still a massive problem considering how early they can show up. Even leaving aside the ability to wipe the floor with you at unlimited range, they’ve got so much HP and armour they’re just a chore to deal with. A sniper rifle hit that catches them directly in the head and bypasses their armour knocks off about 1/6 of their HP.
So, “all” you need to do is get six perfectly-aimed shots with the most damaging weapons you have, without ever exposing any member of your team for a single turn. It’s not interesting, it’s not challenging, it’s just either a tedious grind (if there is useful cover on the map) or losing half your squad through no fault of your own (if there isn’t) every time one of these things shows up.
And these things are starting to show up in more missions than not, before the first month is over, while I’m playing on the lowest difficulty. Something feels very off here.
Which basically means you either side with New Jericho or you are screwed. The poison weapons of synedrion just take too long to deal with the huge healthpool. Not sure about Anu, but seeing that most of their weapons have extremely low effective ranges they arent really suited to deal with a foe who can destroy your squad before you are even halfway there.
The Synedrion neural weapons are for capturing enemies. I’m allied with Synedrion at the moment, and tonight, completely out of the blue, I managed to capture a Siren, then a Scylla, on consecutive missions, having only two snipers with Athena rifles (well, 7 of the 8 strong team had Pythagoras rifles as well). The Scylla would have been impossible without my Anu priest who managed to panic it every turn, and stop the mist onslaught. I think you’re meant to think that Jericho is the best option, but it actually isn’t.
I’ve seen quite a few people say this now; mortar Chirons appearing a lot on easy difficulty. I’m playing on standard, and with ODI meter at 49%, I’ve seen only one in the whole game. Perhaps coincidentally, I played BB5 on easy, and saw a LOT of them, so I wonder if there is something wrong with the difficulty algorithm?
I play on the next higher, end of … maybe month 2? 10% ODI stuff and only seen the Goo-Morta… not once a explody one… seems to be really an issue with the “easy” setting.
I play on the second difficulty at about 15% ODI only having seen a single “goo” chiron. Everyone after the first has been a mortar type so far. Sure they are managable when there are enough buildings around. But facing one or sometimes two on a lair map with next to no cover is just a nightmare.
Overall I think that even the Goo-Ones are trash… in my last Lair there was just “one” of them… but I had no chance to spread out in turn 1 so it goo-ed 5/6 troops and permanently re-goo-ed them… so I could not move forward or backwards… ended up “alt-F4” and reload an earlier save. (I save everytime now when I start to explore a new ? or move to a Lair/Nest/Mission)
Interesting. I wonder if their appearance is totally random, or if there is a reason why some players see them more than others? It does seem to be the case that players on ‘easy’ tend to report them more, though.
On the subject of difficulty though, with the ODI 49% on standard, I’m just getting to point where ambushes are becoming incredibly hard to deal with, even with 8 guys. I’m having to just restart the whole thing numerous times, just so I don’t lose a man. Overall, the game is getting such that I’m already short-handed, and if I lose another guy, I might as well quit. A total roster of 12 at this point seems sort of hopeless; it’s getting so that I don’t actually want to find a fifth Phoenix base because that would be something else to defend, but I digress. I’m rambling again.
Step 2: Maneuver so you are standing behind / on the non-shield side of an arthon.
Step 3: Control your aim directly rather than using the default aim. Aim the weapon at a portion of the arthon that is purple and wiry rather than bulky white and crusty looking. Try and make the whole aiming reticle fit inside the exposed purple limb/body part you are aiming at.
Step 4: Pray to your gods silently.
Step 5: Pull the trigger.
In this way, even underpowered weapons can damage an enemy. In general, I find shooting the machine gun or weapon off an arthon or triton works best if you can’t find a way to get a one shot kill. Second priority should be launchers/spitting heads, and third should be legs.
Funny how everyone has shotgun solutions … it aint as easy as it sounds. This stream is kind of fun to watch though, 3 mindcontrolled soldiers healing the Siren … in the end he got saved by a turret but still lost 3 soldiers in a normal mission.
… in the end he got saved by a turret but still lost 3 soldiers in a normal mission.