Now to “late” feedback as I have slowly progressed to the endgame. Why so slowly, to enjoy all of the side missions.
Overall, the toning down of DDA appears to be close to a good overall balance. The only time I encountered a huge spike was in the Project Vulture mission. Perhaps DDA only applies to the Pandorans and not other missions. In this mission I encountered 3-4 times more and stronger enemy forces that in any other mission. More than 16 enemy (16 was the initial count - more were discovered later on). This comprised of 7+ snipers and 5+ heavies with missles. Through a bunch of assault and techs to even the odds even more so (not!).
Suffice it to say this was the toughest battle, even more than the final boss mission. I would hope this was an oversight, but it certainly felt totally out of place.
Things that are still broken (in my book) were not necessarily addressed in this patch.
- Lairs are just plain unfair (though they say there are looking at this - but no clue on what they are planning). Yeah, I know many of you out there think the Lair missions are the best in the game.
- Ambushes are a big pain since one has no clue where on the map their evac point will be. I would prefer that one at least know what side of the map the point will be, but of course it’s not activated until one has survived the 3 turns.
- The haphazd random placement of units in base defense is still wrong (again IMHO). Units twiddling their thumbs in the area the Pandorans are known to come from. Sometimes the unit can not be brought safely out of the line of fire in 1 turn. While the others are in the furthermost corner of the base and can’t be brought into play within 3 turns.
- Completed missions still showing on the geoscape
- Failed and completed missions not being removed from the summary on the left of the screen
- Enemy’s acid weapons appear to be more powerful than ours.
- Selecting an aircraft on the geoscape and a destination - only to find out there is no Move option. One must tab through the whole list of aircraft to trigger the Move option
- Virophage weapons still feel totally useless
- Infiltrator stealth was broken with this patch
- Many of the research benefits come so late in the game that they are totally useless
- The dearth of non-elite units available to recruit. By mid-game there were none available. With the TF “fix” it’s hardly doable to recruit an elite and multi-class then to a non-elite class.
- Early faction Special Missions in parts of the geoscape where one has no chance of reaching until late in the game.
Hopefully Snapshot will be looking and fixing the glaring things as well as work on the annoying, but not game breaking, niggling ones. Overall, I think that this patch was large step forward in making the game more enjoyable, while still challenging enough for one’s playing skills. I may even look at upping the difficulty level and notch or two and test some more.