FEEDBACK BB4 - Weapon Info & Crabbie Obsession

Still really enjoying this, even if it still feels easy. I’m sure you’re OP’ing us so that we can test out more of the Build.

A COUPLE OF SUGGESTIONS FOR WEAPON INFO

  • At the moment, it’s not very clear which weapon equates to which perk. For instance, +20% for Light Weapons, but at a glance, which weapons are light? Or Return Fire but only with weapons able to do that - but it’s not at all clear which weapons can and cannot RF. So I suggest either an icon or a two-letter code at the bottom of each weapon’s statcard, telling you what the weapon is and what it can do. So the Auto-Rifle would be HW RF, the SMG would be LW RF, but the Sniper Rifle would just be SW (for Slow Weapon, 75% APs) - or something like that. Something which once you’d got used to it, you could tell at a glance what perks go with which weapon.

  • The other perk-related thing is skills like Gunslinger. When I first bought it, I forgot that it needed APs to activate, which would have informed what I spent the rest of my points on (Willpower). All you need is a short line in the perk description which tells you this.

CRATE OBSESSED CRABBIES
This seemed like such a good idea when I first saw it - like Meld in Enemy Within: it’s the player’s choice whether to push their luck and overextend themselves, rather than having an artificial time-limit imposed on you. But as it stands, the Crabbie obsession with crates (or destroying Haven Tech) to the exclusion of everything else just makes missions too easy. All you have to do is identify which crates you want to defend, dawdle up to them and form a killing zone. Meanwhile, the Crabbies go after the other crates and ignore you - and any Crabbies that were going for the ones you want are so focussed on them that they become sitting ducks.

What’s needed is a line for threat assessment in the AI. Something as simple as ‘If Squaddie in range = TRUE then attack Squaddie’. If you want to refine it, you increase the percentage chance of the Crabbie switching from the crate to the Squaddie based on how much damage the Squaddie is dealing to the Crabbie &/or how close it is. But you really need something that makes the Crabbies form a threat to the Squad as it tries to defend the crate, because right now all you have to do is sit back at Sniper range and pick the Crabbie off while it chomps on Resources/lobs grenades at Haven Tech.

CRABBIES HUNKERING DOWN
As things stand, the other thing that works against the Crabs is their tendency to go and hide in a corner once they’ve finished destroying their crate. This is both counterproductive and annoying. It’s counterproductive because instead of presenting an active threat to the Squad, they just become a sitting target which can be picked off at range once you’ve found them. It’s annoying because you’ve got to trawl the map to find them.

It would be much better if the Crabbie default code was ‘Hunt Squaddies’. So once they’ve destroyed their crate, they pose an active threat to the Squad as it tries to defend what’s left. I’m sure this is just a bug or a tweaking thing, and I’m looking forward to seeing it fixed and making Scavening Missions as hard as they ought to be.

Hope this all helps.

Of course, I’ve yet to encounter a Siren or one of those lob-throwing things, so I’m sure I’ll eat my words when they wipe the floor with me :wink:

Sirens are basically a stop and focus fire moment. If everyone unloads on em, they’ll be down in a round or so. I’ve been trying to disable tail and right arm, but usually wind up taking out the torso and then killing it before I can get anything else disabled. Hel Cannon does a number on them.