One Infiltrator with high stealth to spot the Hoplits, this way you can see them without activating them, 2 Assaults with Rapid Clearance to kill as much as possible Hoplits in one turn on one position, one Heavy with Boom Blast + grenade launcher and one Sniper, the latter two in save positions out of LOS from anything. Mostly you can spot the Cyclops without activating him in the first turn. Then I go with the Infiltrator and the 2 Assaults and use a path around the map with most possible distance to the Cyclops to search isolated Hoplits and kill them one after another.
The best build for me to kill these Hoplits with one action was a close combat melee specialised Assault / Infiltrator with Sneak Attack, the Synedrion bionic body for 1 AP melee attacks and Marduks Fist or the PP Shock Lance. When vanished (stealth with double damage) they are able to kill one Hoplit with one hit for 1 AP and thanks to RC I get 2 AP for this kill (OP as hell but you have to go close). This way I can kill pretty savely all Hoplits at one position. The upside of this melee build is that melee attacks ignores their shield, so even if they are active and shields up, no problem.
For the Cyclops then I mostly disable his legs with my sniper and grenadier, then he can’t move anymore and also his laser head.
It takes a while to get all done but it is pretty save as long as you keep the distance to the Cyclops.
On one map I have really bad luck and found not one isolated Hoplit, they were all very close to the Cyclops, I don’t know how much exactly but I think around 10. But thanks to the Terminator build I was able to kill all Hoplits in one go and after that the Cyclops. That was a real slaughter fest.
You are abusing all the possible ways you can get. I don’t blame you, as the game gives you those options, everything is fair. But it’s not tactical, or intended or fun for me.
I do not expect a casual player can or bother to do that too.
I fight against 8 of them once. Just gun fight with turret support. It was hard as hell but I enjoyed that.
Cleaning one of the hardest part of the game in one turn can give someone a satisfaction. I respect that, but I don’t think that this is how devs planned. It’s totally designers fault.
Oh, it is not done in one turn, I think it takes more time / turns than engaging them directly and for me it felt highly tactical. I searched the Hoplits one by one and defeat them one by one, better said groupwise because there are often more than one Hoplit on one place. For me it is just another form of tactical gameplay as the usual ‘in ya face’, more sneaky, stealthy and yes, I like that and no, I don’t like open fights face on face that much.
Then, yes, I use terminator builds but only after I realised that this is the easiest way to kill them before they have a chance to stand up and fight back. The first times I used more conventional ways to get them down and it takes then 2 turns instead of one for each group of Hoplits.
And at the end, no, I don’t enjoy terminator builds, but I use them because many tactical parts of the game are pretty boring for me than satisfactory. After the 10th heaven defense (especially with rescuing civilians), Nest or Lair clearing I really have no fun to play this every time more conventional and so I use terminators to get fast through these missions.
Ancient sites are completely different. With the exception of the one I described, where all Hoplits are close to the Cyclops, I was never able to solve them in one turn. And even this one mission takes me around 4-5 turns alone to see what is going on on this map. Well, sneaky reconnaissance.
It’s your taste. Please, I don’t blame you to do anything. You are not cheating. As you say, this game play is more fun for you.
At old xcom, we did not have any skill. We just shoot eachother for hours. So I like to have some little skills, but I don’t want to make big mixes to create terminators.
As I said somewhere else, this game is an ability hell and you can mix them. Mixed hell. Noone can survive that.
I am still modding the game to make it more ability free and single useful class way. Many games including old and other xcoms and turn based tactical games do not have so many skill. Useful items yes, tactical approach yes, silent warfare yes but not this and more.
It’s like giving limited abilities to chess pieces like a tower can go like horse for one turn.
Maybe the game is not fun because without those abilities, classes and weapons suck. I can include terrific ai to this mess. And my biggest issue is there is no tier system and you don’t get any new weapons for 3/4 of the game… Lota weapons do not help at all as they are very limited as type wise.
I made some good steps at balancing and making fun of the weapon types. I will create a post soon with details.
I wouldn’t equate the sneaky gameplay that I like with terminators, that I like not that much. The first one is a tactical element that I really like and that I used extensively myself even in the old x-coms. My favorite missions were at night, when I could defeat enemies pretty sneaky with thrown light sources.
What you said about the sandbox is not completely wrong but I don’t think that it never can be balanced. Many terminator related problems are gone or tuned down like Rally the Troops, Dash, Rage Burst, even Adrenalin Rush is now a trade-off instead of a brain-dead ‘turn the terminator on’. The most annoying for me is still RC and that you can gain AP out of nothing. But I hope they will also go into that and than there is not that much left. Maybe also Boom Blast, even when I’m not that convinced that this one is really so OP or Terminator like. Powerful of course, but also very situational compared to the RC terminator builds.
Edit:
Oh, I forgot to mention Sneak Attack, this has also to be tuned down, of course
But I think this one is one of the easiest to go, at least simply reduce the damage buff.
For the sake of balancing this sandbox system, you take away the fun of those skills. You nerf something so badly and took the fun part of that just to able to use in a sand box.
I rather have fun classes with the proper fun skills connected their arsenal. This is a choice. I made my sniper to infiltrator after I read your builds because I think sniper need a damage bug and it’s fun to use spiders and crossbow rather then pistol. I made my deceptor heavy to sniper as I need acc buf and quickshot so bad.
Multiclass is nice but should be limited with some skills. Random secondary weapon perks should be about acc only and for their proper class… Same ideas…
That night missions… I still did not feel the horror from any game yet. Tftd night underwater missions…
Here I have to disagree.
Did they take the fun out of Dash, Onslaught (the changed RtT), Rage Burst or Adrenalin Rush? Not for me, now IMO they are real tactical choices even in the open sandbox and not longer that OP as they were before.
But maybe I have some pink glasses on my nose, or what ever
Here I can agree, not at all, but almost. I’m not sure if limiting skills when multiclassing should be the way to go, maybe only as last solution if nothing else is working. I would prefer to let the sandbox as open as possible, this is for me definitely one of the nice things in this game, I like it.
Yeah, pink glasses …
Works nicely on normal missions.
But especially for this ancient sites and for my ‘sneaky’ tactic I think that an Aspinda (or any other APC) would activate too much enemies too early. That is definitely nothing I would like to have. But I haven’t test it, so maybe even for these missions not a bad idea.
Just thinking about a way to get in close quickly. I find that they tend to activate in pods, but yeah, an APC could set off more at once. Still it’s an interesting combo in general…
If I bring a vehicle it’s an Armadillo and I use it as a “decoy” (close to the evac square) to soak up some of the guardian beam attacks, with an engineer nearby to apply some healing. Meanwhile my soldiers sneak around the flanks and get in their shots from the sides.
Honestly, once you have the right tactics, these missions are not very challenging. I actually find it harder to defend the sites from Panda attacks since there’s more variety of enemies and therefore responses I must counter.
Question; I have not tried this yet, but have you used two Squads/Ships to make the assault? Can that even be done with more than 8 Soldiers as in Base Defense?
I think, 8 soldiers is overkill for this game. 6 soldier with a vehicle could be a maximum for standart missions. Maps sizes and enemy numbers are not so good over this. I played 6 soldier for a month and the number fit so good. 7 is mostly more then neccecary. You get spiders and turrets later so you became a little army against a little enemy squad. After a vile you got so much fire power, you don’t want to use extras like mount weapons…
