I’ve just started my second playthrough. On Veteran, as I’ve seen in patch notes that abilities have been toned down while Pandorans have been boosted. Here are my first impressions (so far I cleared the Symes retreat and am building up the 2nd base):
the start lacks challenge. Pandorans are all melee and get shot before they manage to reach me. Peanuts.
old bugs are still in there: (i) sometimes the camera moves into wrong direction until you open the menu and press “resume game”, (ii) the camera rotates when you first enter the menu, (iii) sometimes (rarely) the screen starts to flash until you completely close the game, (iv) there is a chance you will end your turn unintentionally (is there some false key I press or something)? In the old version (patch 4 or 5) this could happen when I rotated camera with keyboard (that’s why I use mouse for this now): this might still be the case.
is there an opportunity to skip the tutorial when restarting? I couldn’t see it.
Extra thing that annoys me: Anu offers its mission to get through the 25 benchmark of friendship… on the opposite side of the globe, which would take me a few months of scanning just to get there. I’ve had to reload 4 times my last save to get such a mission located within aircraft distance.
I think this should be fixed. I didn’t face such an issue first time playing.
Don´t know if you are aware, but in current build of the game, you don´t have to scan your way to the other side of the globe. When you have the resources after research of “Phoenix Archives” (I think it is, that reveals all Phoenix bases) you can remote activate the one closest to your desired destination and then recruit soldiers to that location and place a newly accuried aircraft there …
That way you can go anywhere in the time takes to get a new aircraft …
Edit: Not sure if I play to slow, but by day 10 I have started to activate my 2nd base on a continent I can´t yet reach with my original Manticore but where there is a second red mist developing, trying to protect nearby heavens.
Devs already tried to fix this, looks like like mission generation can sometimes skip “rules” and still show quite away.
This method requires a lot of resources or negative standing with one of the factions, but if you are willing to do this then it is definitely faster way to reach spots, just prepare:
activate base remotely with some resources
build aircraft if you have a lot of resources and place it in newly activated base
recruit soldiers with full first dropship and place them in newly activated base
manufacture all necessary equipment for these soldiers (takes also a lot of resources) or if you don’t have these resources then take off equipment from first team, and give it to second team (thanks to inventory teleportation mechanic).
Can anyone explain how do I use the drones (forgot their name) that you can deploy on the map? I deployed one even though none of my aircraft were near the zone (it was somewhat near one of my bases though - base on northern Africa, deployed in the middle of Africa trying to cover as much land as possible), it showed a purple circle there, and just vanished after a bit of time passed.
It needs some explanation, as it’s not cheap (25 tech and 70 materials I think)… I’m afraid of using the second one and ending up with nothing again.
There should be more information in the game for this, yes. What I’ve learned is, you can launch the archaeology probe from any of your aircraft. It can target a place certain distance from the aircraft (the drone can fly on its own for some time, thematic explanation). It then scans the area you see on the map, and when (only when) the scan completes, you get the result. Either there was an archaeology site in that area, or there wasn’t. In both cases, the next time you launch a probe, that area is colored differently so you know to place the next one somewhere that doesn’t overlap.
I was confused when I launched two probes at the same time. Both scans also completed at the same time, and the result was 1 site. But it was just because one scan found something, the other scan didn’t.
Yeah the game should say that it completed the scan and found nothing or something, just a popup screen is ok. Well I’ll try a different place then, thanks.
BTW, I didn’t like this mechanic… I don’t know if a place where there’s nothing can have something in the future, like what happens with pandoran bases for example. Also it’s a chore, you have to remember to build the probes which use resources that are scarce, and then launch them somewhere without ANY clue if it makes sense to search there or not. Not the worst thing in the world but it could be more fun.
I also really didn’t like the new DLC story-wise. Gathering artifacts to create a weapon blueprint from clues? This doesn’t make sense, why only soldier weapons? To be like that, it was better to have the player find “ancient tech” and say “ok, part of the found tech is a weapon, we can study it like faction weapons and produce them”. It’s just very sloppy work when you compare it to the rest of the game’s lore which is great. Maybe I got spoiled by the books and lots of references inside the game, idk. I’m still at the beginning of the content, but for now I don’t plan on activating this DLC again if it continues on like this, it breaks the game’s immersion spitting THIS IS A SHALLOW PLOT GAME in your face whenever one of these contents pops up. Yes I’m a bit pissed about it /rant sorry about that I love the game’s lore and that’s the reason.
@sergioalmeida wait for the next patch, devs said it will be fixed. In the mean time the best way is to not kill them, try paralyzing or mind controlling.
sorry, fixing previous post