When was the last time anyone cleared the map with it? Rapid Clearance situationally allows you to clear the map. Typhoon Brigade, I’m looking at you! Can RC be OP, definitely! Often though it peters out as the conditions aren’t right. Still, with enough “onslaughts” it can clear the map.
For turrets, if all the shots hit and there isn’t any armor it does a huge amount of damage. With the gigantic Scalia target where the armor has been stripped, that is a prime target. Against the masses it isn’t so decisive. Late game Pandas have 30 armor and 400HP and will survive an entire burst. Contrast this with an adjacent Arthron with the 95 damage pincer. It can attack 4 times, so against the typical 20 armor an assault wears this is 75 * 4 = 300 damage which can only be survived with maxed out HP + Project Hectre, and then only if at most 2 body parts are disabled in the attack. This is your top notch assault carefully cultivated over 30+ missions killed (or nearly) in a single turn! And then the 50cal Arthon can fire 2 bursts of 50*6 with 6 shred/bullet. Again, your maxed out soldier is either dead, or almost dead from a single burst if all shots hit, even with full armor. If your armor was gone already, then dead. If all shots from both burst hit, dead.
How much will does a typical PP operative have? Sirens all have 30+ will, and when they show up my guys have around 10 will, so a single Artemis can readily control 4 of you soldiers. Sure they can only add 1/turn, but with a cost of only 2 will/controlled/turn they can sustain this for many turns. Also note that Pandas “overcharge” will. With kills they can go above their set will. Those kills used to always lower PPs will, but something change such that sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn’t.
What I’m saying is it’s a brutal world and all things can die by the right combinations. One time I had a 240HP tech who took consecutive hits from the piercing sniper rifle. Dead. He was at full strength with the normal 25 armor, but 130 * 2 = 260 with 50 piercing, so dead. This is extremely rare, but encountering 3 of those bastards isn’t uncommon, and they are usually hidden.
Of course one could just re-load, but reloading is the most OP thing there is. Even “honest man” play makes it hard to talk about balance. If either the SP exploits (excessive raiding of havens) were fixed or just not abused (play the game as intended, not just as it is), and players played iron man Legendary, then what is left as OP? At 5SP mission, and without getting lucky with level 5 or 6 haven recruits), it takes forever to build up the points to make these OP things to work. It can still be done, so of your 6 squads 2 will have some killer combos (the RC melee torso doesn’t work so well against the 1000+HP monsters), but the rest won’t. Some missions will be easy, and some will be really hard.
