Just tried it again after the hot fix and the game is now completely out of control!
Whats with the new “zombies” you kill it and it comes back to life twice as strong? It is already hard enough this is not diversity this is just irritating!
The Timer is WAY to fast I am playing on rookie attacking every liar that is exposed and saving every settlement and doing all the mission goals I can at my level and I have not got anywhere near doing the research or being able to build any kind of alliances and it is already at 60%.
The resources are ridiculous! You bust your ass to get the bare minimum and you cant afford to recruit and forget every building an aircraft, then when you finally think I can now do this they attack a base you can’t get to in time and that takes all your resources (and you can’t afford to have men sitting at a base either, your lucky if you can keep a full team) to repair and to top off you can’t even heal there because the entire thing is now trash. I get the idea and it is not a bad one but it is not implemented correctly! The game should not be a constant struggle to get resources just to do the minimum, why bother having half the things in it if you can’t every get to test them or use them?!
So far i have not even seen the new DLC that was added recently and I assume this will also require more RESOURCES to take advantage of?
the aliens constantly get harder and your men constantly get weaker and require more and more mind numbing repetitive shots to make a difference which again takes more and more resources, you getting the trend of this thread yet?
The frustration levels of this game make it not worth the effort… It is in a constant state of flux meaning you can NEVER get any kind of strategy sorted because as soon as you do all the balances are readjusted again… Seriously!!! !
PLEASE return the console commands so I can at least get unlimited resources and just then I may be able to get close to finishing this! Then once I can see what is with having and what is not I can try again without using the console commands! The game is obviously still in beta mode and development so be fair let us at least get some enjoyment out of it, as it is now I just want to kick the computer off the desk!!
I’m not seeing this on Rookie mode. Just finished Ancients last night, and am going Veteran now.
You might have to uninstall/reinstall to get the game verified and fixed. As I had to after the hotfix broke all my Ancient Saves.
Time will tell, I suppose.
I agree with you about the timer and disagree about the difficulty
My suggestion: Pandoran evolution as an additional difficulty tier?
is to let player choose all the aspects of game difficulty.
I would like to be able to slow down the doom counter and pandoran evolution.
If you spot an Arthon or a Triton Umbra, think before you kill it. You don’t want to do it at close range if you can’t concentrate a lot of OW on it.
If you kill the host with fire, the Tar Shadow will not spawn. So my advice is to use fire grenades on these Arthorns and Tritons, and then kill them.
The Tar Shadow has no armor, so the best way to kill them (besides killing the host with fire so that they don’t even spawn) is with Shotguns, ARs, PDWs, MGs…
This is actually a very good idea! Same with the timer because recently I can’t even get close to completing the main mission with it running as I just don’t seem to be able to get the resources no matter how careful I am with them, I only do the bear min and this still is never enough. Before all these updates and the recent DLC I actually was able to complete the game, in fact I have completed every ending available. Now I don’t get even close to an ending on rookie. The research time alone will make it impossible to even research the injector for the end game. If you had the ability to adjust the timer depending on the level you pick, and maybe even a “training” level were the time would not kick in at all but achieve victory the same way by killing the end boss. In fact I would love this it would allow all the time you need to research anything, build anything, explore anything. Then you could leave all the other stuff alone because if you lost men who cares you would have time to replace and train! if you lost a base you would eventually repair it, you could really be able to get into in. Everything else could stay they same outside this but the game would only end if you were able to take out the final boss. Now that would be one awesome game! AND… It would NOT effect anyone who did not want to play this way (the could leave the timer on) and it could still be as hard as it is now because it is all about the TIMER when you boil it down. I could live with it being difficult as long as I had the resources and time to recover form the hit.
So simple solution:
1: just add the ability to turn on and off they TIMER in any level
2: Play could chose any difficulty they like and decide if they want to add the pressure of the TIMER
3: It would not effect the game in anyway except for those who turn it off
PROBLEM SOLVED… and you can make all the “balancing” you like and keep everyone happy at the same time!
It is excactly the direction i was thinking about. No need to restrict difficulty to 4 option.
Let us choose:
XP gain: slow - medium - fast
resources: little - medium - a lot
tactical AI: easy - tough - very tough
tactical number of enemies: few - many - a lot
pandoran evolution: slow - medium - fast
death timer/ODI/Population: no - slow - medium - fast
new recruits with: nothing - armor - armor + weapon
Add several ON/OFF toggles:
ironman
not created equal
disabled limbs healed outside of base/technician heal
items/turrets are picked automatically
Also open for other ideas.
And make the unscouted question marks disapear after couple of days and new ones appear (like XCOM2)
This way everyone can setup the game than suits has/her gaming preferences
Why? PP doesn’t “draw” events. Maps and locations are generated at the start of the game from what I understand. If anything I would like PP map to be more consistant and interactable, rather then less.
I agree with this one, those Zombies are poorly designed. They further push everyone into all-sniper squads. I feel like they really want us to always use long range weaponry and forget about everything else. The ancients are literally made to be fought with snipers; and I mean literally in the original non-inflated sense.
The biggest issues with those zombies are: It’s not well communicated who will turn into a blob and they attack on the same turn while having like 5 billion movement speed and a 1 AP melee attack. You cannot get away from them when brawling - again … Snipers FTW. Why ?
Resources are scarce and I like it. I play on legend and it’s really a struggle - which is good. However I hate that it is balanced around stealing air crafts. A few patches ago I never stole them, I always build them because it “felt” wrong. Now, I had to restart a few times before I finally gave in and stole one. It’s a completely different game. You pretty much double your crew in the first week instead of the third with absolutely no drawbacks. Why is this a thing ?
I like the static locations like heavens or special missions, but there is no reason for random and thematic encounters or ambushes to be static.
It is a lot of fun to find a convoy or abandoned bunker in the first third of the game later on all the POIs are discovered and I miss those encounters.
You can also make the late game encounters darker as humanity is being extinguished.
They tried to do smth like that with overgrown maps, but i would love to see constant new encounters.
Just having a team dedicated to scouting and gathering resources
The Arthron/Triton Umbra are my favorite thing in LOTA, and probably what will stop me from switching off this DLC in future playthroughs…
What I like about them is that they penalize the player for carelessly killing them. The best way to deal with the Umbra is to not kill them. Disable their legs, paralyze them, viral them, MC them… What they encourage is not snipers, but to engage them in a different way from all the other enemies.
If you have to kill them, I would recommend avoiding all-sniper teams. The SRs do too little damage - the Tar Shadows have 500 HPs, no armor and no limbs to shoot off. You would need to land 4-5 shots with an SR to kill one of those things, and you will want to do that on Overwatch…
Now, the single best way to kill them is killing the host with fire; they are called tar shadows for a reason , but if you can’t do that, you will want to set close range Overwatch with high dps weapons: a Deceptor with Strongman or Reckless will kill them with a single burst, just make sure that the OW is set really close, but something like an OW with a Deceptor and with any shotgun, or 3 close OWs with ARs will also take care of that thing for good.
500 HP is not an issue for Snipers, especially if you go Infiltrator (which you should anyways). Thats 2-3 shots from a safe distance. Snipers are king in LOTA, I’m not sure how anyone could argue against that.
It’s true that you can make the host harmless by shooting off limbs. I had my first encounter with explosives. It was disabled, but bled out. It spawned a blob which proceeded to kick my ass on that same turn. That is something that should be tweaked IMHO. Also, I find them quite uninspired visually. I mean, finally some new pandoran enemy, which looks exactly like something we already have, with a different texture … meh
Also, again, the way they are communicated is just … non existent. It’s just bam, blob. Deal with it. I guess I should have read the reports Oh well, I kinda hope they’ll add cut scenes that introduce stuff like that at some point … like in firaxcom (I know … gameplay >> fluff but still … it really helps drawing the player in).
As in all these discussions about the best strategies, outside TBs, imo there is no such thing as optimal solutions.
A Sniper/Infiltrator is a fairly late build, costing an extra 50+30+20 SPs (you will want at least Vanish for this build), which on Legend is 20 missions worth of SPs. You do get more DPS at long range, but in exchange for a fairly constrained build that relies on casting Quick Aim, is quite slow and squishy.
It’s not bad, but if you want to go for maximizing DPS through Sneak Attack, you could just as well go for an Assault/Infiltrator, kitted for accuracy with Synedrion Sniper Armor and give him a Deimos.
If what you want is accuracy and DPS at long range your best bet is currently a Heavy with a Destiny III, but of course it has the disadvantage of not being able to use it on Overwatch… But then for OW against a Tar Shadow you want to set it up right next to your operative anyway and do so with a Deceptor… Though that of course only works if the Tar Shadow is coming after the Heavy, and not against someone else.
And then if I was going to be overweight on Snipers in a team, I would give them paralysing weapons, and turn those Umbra into hamburgers, and it would be counter-productive to cross them with infiltrators…
Anyway, you get the idea - everyone has their preferred play style, and what may seem the best to one player may seem useless to another, and viceversa.
Personally, I found that the best strategy against the Ancients was getting close to them and WCing them. It made those encounters an absolute cakewalk.
Mixing Infiltrator is a bit out of comparison if you don’t do the same with other classes. Sniper have still the worst damage per AP.
Imagine an Assault / Infiltrator with Daimos also in save distance, he don’t need any WP skill to deal even more damage on these nasties with the same AP cost.
Edit2:
In fact, if I go to any long range Infiltrator build, I would go for Sniper / Infiltrator with AR personal trait and give him a Daimos, 4 AR bursts with +120% damage in one turn is unbeatable for me.
If that isn’t present, then I often go with Assault / Infiltrator in sniper armor as a very powerful Sniper alternative.
Yes, but it’s all about the range and precision. As I said, those are great for ancient sites to shoot through those holes that are basically made to shoot through with snipers. Deimos is another long range weapon with high precision, especially on a Sniper.
All I am saying is that Range is King. I dunno why you’d argue that I avoid snipers because they feel cheesy - of course that depends on the map, but most maps are perfect for them.
It’s fine. I’ll stop now. Game is perfect The DLC is great. Blobs are implemented with care and thought.
And explosive is King, and RC terminator is king, shotgun is king …
Because IMO it depends hardly on play stile and I don’t see Snipers or Range in favour to most of the other possibilities.
I for myself have cleared almost any of these ancient sites with a combination of one spotting Infiltrator with high stealth, one or two close range RC serial killer (PDW or melee), one explosive specialist with Boom Blast and of course also a sniper, but mostly to cripple the big ones legs and laser head. This way I was able to get a good part of the Hoplits out before the Cyclops gets alarmed and active. All of my team of course cross classed with Infiltrator, so mostly invisible and hard hitting.
That’s why I arguing against that ‘Sniper or Range is King’
About the blobs… I confess that I obsessively look at the info tab of every enemy, both in the evo reports and in missions, but I imagine that many players don’t.
Baring a cutscene/scripted event (which I just don’t see Snapshot doing, because it’s expensive and that’s time & resources probably better spent elsewhere), what would you like to see there?
It’s kinda important because if (when) Pandorans start coming with reactive mutations, if just putting it in the evo report and the info tab isn’t going to be enough, something else has to be thought of.
Maybe a tutorial panel when the enemy first appears on a mission? And should it just say what will happen, or give hints as to what to do? Or something more narrative but less useful/specific. (For example, in XCom EW the scientist says something like “I would avoid those tentacles”, which doesn’t convey any useful information besides a vague notion that the thing is dangerous up close).
I think this is true too because we are probably safe players. It’s about game play. As I already said, we think range is the king because of the weak armor design which let you die or cripple with 1 melee attack from any enemy if you are not wear heavy armor with huge penalties.
As the game does not have any tool to save you from short range or melee damages like dodge or attack and run or good enough armor for mobile units, we choose range.
I made my sniper an infiltrater and I liked it. I still think it’s lame to get a damage buf for a sniper rifle just because you are not seen by that enemy. Like every ranged damage buf of this game, this makes no sense at all.
I saw my first umbra and it passed my heavy and killed a far away assault with 2 strike. Heavy armor? Sry? If the ai is programmed to attack weakest armor and you don’t have a skill like taunt or agro, sry but wtf can I do with heavy armor?
Here, some people think about balance and game play with only numbers. Heavy armor is enough protection, OK but enemy does not attack that! Assault rifles got good damage compared snipers but the range? Direct damage?..
We got many steps to balance the game. And ai is very wrong. Sometimes it’s clever enough to ruin the game, like to attack to the weakest unit even there are many targets on the way… Or very stupid as not taking any cover because it moves with the Los. Being Los is good but I can just step aside and shoot it clearly. This kind of ai could work at frax xcom 2 as you can only 1 move and shoot but here everybody can move freely.
Oh well, I kinda hope they’ll add cut scenes that introduce stuff like that at some point … like in firaxcom (I know … gameplay >> fluff but still … it really helps drawing the player in).
I avoid snipers because they feel cheesy - of course that depends on the map, but most maps are perfect for them.
The DLC is great. Blobs are implemented with care and thought.