So, does the difficulty do anything except gives you lower stats on recruits and no gun / armor?
I.e. Is vet going to be actually going to be easier than hero wrt game mechanics? Is the DDA going to bump opposition to same level anyways?
I saw on another thread somebody mention that after the DDA has had it’s way with you about 10 days into a campaign, tactical missions are the same difficulty regardless of your setting. I’m not sure if they actually tested that though, or if they were just being hyperbolic.
Having only attempted normal and easy modes myself, I didn’t notice any differences at all so I’m thus far inclined to believe them.
Haven’t noticed a big difference between normal and easy either.
Just started a Legendary run, so I’ll see. Having a worm throwing Chiron on the “worms infestation” mission and needing 2 bash to kill a worm does make it tougher.
It feels like difficulty depends mostly on the spawning you get.
“Machine gun, Spitter head, Launcher” Arthron in the first scavenging sites is a bad start.
There are huge differences, the list is very long between Easy (current play) and Legendary (let’s play). Less between Easy and Normal but I couldn’t make a list.
As a work in progress, features in Easy not in Legendary:
- Start with 6 soldiers instead of 4
- Haven recruits and start soldiers have better start attributes.
- Level up requires less XP, max is 850 at Easy (it’s still boringly long to level up a rookie after a level 7 death).
- Some mission have team restore Will point (+3). You walk in it and get the restore for the team. For many missions types, but not for Nest/Lair/Citadel.
- The first three factions missions are ridiculously easy.
- Haven success self defense against Alien last some time, not sure it ever happen in Legendary.
- Haven recruits have full equipment and even better than at Normal, and even not only initial stuff, for example you can get the first or second crossbow with infitrator, the recruit price hints the difference.
- Need a better check, but I had the feeling Haven defense wait a longer time before to break when the defense is at zero.
- Base tend have less rocks slots, and start base seems ensured to have only 2 rocks.
- Enemies have less Armor and HP but the auto scaling can make it very relative.
There’s more but I don’t remind now.
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Will restore points are found in heroic level too.
I was playing heroic but the 28+ haven attacks stopped being fun at all, probably because I was restarting missions when people get wiped out. So I restarted on veteran now.
Taking losses should keep DDA in check but actually recruits cost more in veteran so cannon fodder is in fact less disposable. Too bad you can’t reclaim armor off dead guys… (can you?)
I had will restore points on legendary.
For my first haven defense, New Jericho could have beaten the Pandorans by themselves.
I had a base with two rocks on legendary (though their placement makes one space unavailable - so let’s say 3 rocks)
I rather have recruits without equipment. I can recruit more and have them train at base. I build equipment only if I need it. I don’t want to pay for an assault rifle or part of a heavy armor if I’m going to mutate them or build Acheron. You get some weapons in loot, you can use them.
Can’t state for Hero or Legendary but I’m playing on normal and always seem to get armor back so long as I successfully complete the mission. Ambushes being an exception.
You get back items if not destroyed during combat, same for Easy/Normal and Legendary. If they are destroyed in combat you get items back at end of mission, not with soldier death.
Ok didn’t notice watching a let’s play. I’d say for self defense ok but not as much, it’s not one mission and only NJ at Easy. I agree that the equipment stuff is ambiguous, Legendary setup have some clear bonus. That said sacrifice rookies is ridiculous, it’s bizarre to be able to do missions only perfect or wipe out. 
I’d say that I doubt that sacrifice is enough in first month. I never noticed any change from loosing two soldiers for example. It’s only much later than the first phase that it seemed had effects.
I never tried sacrificing someone to try lowering the difficulty (and don’t plan to try). Clearly, legendary would be better for this aspect since you only pay food for a recruit.
As long as the mission doesn’t ask you to extract, you get all loot on the map (in my experience):
- what the enemies were carrying (including their weapon with the mod I use - but I read that there is a probability for it happening without the mod)
- what could be found in boxes
- your “Killed In Action”'s inventory
Rookie I don’t know, first month, it changes nothing in my experience, I’d even say first 1.5 month, but time is relative in the game. But past first spikes, at least since third month for me, it’s more or less clear, I have periods doing more errors, and quote quickly a drop down of difficulty. Let be clear still with many crabs with big AR, many Chirons and Sirens, Scylla and so on, but still a drop down. And new spikes that seem more or less linked to good series. But in all cases that’s for death of level 7 soldiers, Vehicles or Mutog, not rookies, and not first two months.
I can tell one difference for sure. On Hero you don’t see naked 
at all, they come with carapace and much more hp than you get in veteran. Veterans un-armoured 70hp are target dummies basically.
I’ve seen some 90 HP “naked” crabs in a couple of missions of my Heroic walkthrough.
Okay, but on vet they’re all over the place before DDA really kicks in. And it kicks in hard, given how easy those guys are to wipe out.
Imho each havens or base or any places that being attack should gives player a bit of clue/information. For instance, Antartica - put some info possibility of enemy type that may appears in the battle. So player can prep their things before jump in to the battle or just leave the battle.
- Starting squad composition
- Starting resources
- Starting inventory
- Recruit stats
- Recruit cost (multiplier per level)
- “SDI” augmentation (ODI = SDI / 500)
- per day
- per haven destroyed
- per phoenix base destroyed
- per nest/lair/citadel spawned
- per nest/lair/citadel destroyed
- Dynamic Difficulty System
- Deployment size
What? I don’t see the difference, and what level?
The Dynamic Difficulty System keeps the “X” last battles outcome (X is stored in some resource).
It makes an average of the “outcome” / “expected outcome” for each mission.
- “outcome” is:
- how well you achieved the objective (crates/persons saved compared to crates/persons present)
- damage received compared to HP+healing done
- healing your soldiers makes this ratio go up
- soldiers still alive / soldiers deployed
- “expected outcome” is:
(1f - threatLevel.ExpectedOutcome) * DifficultyRating + threatLevel.ExpectedOutcome
SO to make it easier, you either need to:
- have soldiers die
- wound your soldiers before leaving a mission (and heal at base)
- let the Pandorans destroy as many objectives as possible
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Where did that information come from? First time I see details…
Which is totally false at beginning of campaign, I bet that when X isn’t reached there’s something awful wrong in the code.