Lairs vs Citadels

That’s exactly what I’m saying, and what I’ve always said. I don’t want to remove RB, I want to balance it.

The Skills and the WP system are one of the most interesting aspects of PP, they’re just so all over the place at the moment that they seriously unbalance the game. So let’s come to a consensus about how they should be balanced and turn this game from a one-shot Sniper snoozefest into something that is truly interesting.

I absolutely agree with everything you say here.

Snapshot simply needs to find a way of making Lairs & Citadels both interesting and a natural progression one from the other, so that players aren’t put off by the grind and tempted to just ignore the Lair entirely.

Why Rage Burst with sniper wasn’t found during BB5 ?
I guess it is because it worked differently by setting a start and end point and it would sweep between both.
So eventhough you could set start and end at the same spot, the idea of a sweep prevented thinking about it. Human brain easily sets boundaries even when there aren’t.

And “dash - quick aim - rapid clearance” was a killer.

We globally agree, but still some nerf you suggest aren’t necessary I believe, like not for Sniper. I have the feeling that for Rage Burst a Team nerf would work well, it would disable mix in same turn a quick kill and a quick capture, but would still let open many solutions without abuse excess. The real fix for such skill would be ammo management and economy, but the game is far from that.

In fact same for more cases, it’s team cumulation that tend create the problems. Stealth would require another method, if any are possible.

EDIT: Another point is those global skill points, let a player put most of them in few soldiers and there’s an abuse. But the freedom is nice, put a limit per soldier would be hard to tune and limit a lot builds variations.

A berzerk allow 4 attacks, soldier Bererk/Assault with a Heavy skill, no Rage Burst but nice flexibilitiy. Quick Aim is more for sniper to increase precision too.

I made that point in A Call for Cooldowns

Part of the problem, I believe, is that multiple Squaddies can stack skills like Rally, which create a not-quite-infinite loop - or at least keep 1 Soldier running long enough to find the Maguffin and end the Mission in 1 or 2 turns. So I’m starting to believe that there should be a quite severe limit on the number of times a Skill can be used in a particular turn - or on a particular individual.

Most of these Skills are fine on their own, it’s when they stack that they become OP.

Can’t see how a team nerf would work on RB at all, though, since it’s an individual skill.

Only 2 RB per turn for whole team, and if not enough, only one but that looks extreme.

Frankly, 1 RB/turn with a Sniper Rifle is too much. That ends a Citadel mission on Turn 1.

Mmm not for me, what Rifle? With extra damages skill?

Synedrion Sniper Rifle coupled with Marked For Death: 15x120+50% = 2,700. If that’s not enough, throw in an Armour Break from your Berserker - or just get your second Sniper to finish the job.

Or you can simply wait for Turn 2 and do it again. Either way, the mission’s over without you even having to move from your start spot. That’s broken from my pov.

This is a problem with the mission. For example, two explosive Chirons, Turns 2 can be too late. But one shot and an Armor Break ok it needs a tuning, never noticed. :slight_smile:

I don’t think missions need be 20 or even 10 turns to be fun, but ok Citadels have failed achieve well short missions.

I’ve never done it myself, because I refuse to use Sniper RB.

Citadels can be quite fun with a couple of Snipers on the backline, a Heavy and a Berserker in a fast-approach vehicle, and a/n other (usually a Techie for vehicle support or an Infiltrator for distraction drones). The trick is to take out the Scylla’s head &/or mandibles with the Snipers, then run the Heavy & Berserker up close to her, pop them out the back and 1 Armour Break + Gatling RB later she’s down. I use it as a form of sport to give my Peeps some R&R after a particularly gruelling mission.

Thing is, as I stated at the top of this thread, it’s not really a challenge, and Lairs are much more difficult. So the solutions suggested by Andraug and Vipre are worth considering, as they would actually make things much more interesting.

So far I’ve been very lucky with explosive Chirons. I’ve only ever encountered a couple. The trick with them in the Citadel is not to open fire too early. They’re so far away that they don’t really notice you until you open fire. And when you do ‘unleash Hell’, make sure your Peeps are either on the cliff edge or in a vehicle - unless you’re very unlucky, at least 30% (and usually more) of the Chiron’s load will simply fly wide and miss you harmlessly - and the vehicle can cope with a couple of rounds of punishment.

The cannon is definitely enough, and I seem to recall that even when I was targeting it with the basic sniper the red skull and crossbones appeared. Actually, an RB with a pistol is enough to kill a Scylla once you strip the armor off the body part.

As I said before, I agree that Citadels at the moment are underwhelming, even without rage burst. Also, perhaps lairs could use some adjustments. Everyone seems happy with nests.

However, I’m against mixing them with each other. Nests are labyrinths with no verticality. Lairs are battlefields. Citadels are arenas.

The reason they each work - and the nests especially - is because they are short, self contained, specialised.

Mazes are generally not fun, not fun at all, because they are annoying obstacles on the way where you want to be. But in PP it works because it’s just the maze and nothing else. The thrill of having to separate your team to have them go down different paths, not knowing which is the right one. It’s great as long as I don’t have to think about another section, map, screen where they all have to converge.

I enjoy lairs because I think of them as large battlefields where the game is to maneuver my forces so that they go round the stronger defences.

And Citadels would be great if the arena concept was properly realised, for which I think the most expedient solution is a variation of the ambush mission.

Though I am also fond of the protective creature idea, because with PP’s ballistics it could be made into something really interesting (i.e. not kill the sectoid or advent trooper to remove the shield boost it is giving).

The idea with the protective creature is what makes the difference to other missions. The question is how (or by which means) you try to achieve to goal (killing the target and get away alive). Hack your way through with brutal force (NJ), infiltrate and kill the target with a surgical precise strike (infiltrator?) or any combination that meets your style.
All i wann to emphazise is, that attacking a lair or citadell should feel more like marching into the heart of darkness. From the storytelling aspect humans are the underdogs, trying to strike the enemy at its (or one of its) hearts. Something like Dolittles bombraid on japan directly after pearl Harbour.

To be honest, as the “protective creature” (a new Panda, or perhaps a variant of a chiron) is something that would require considerable resources to implement, I can see it in an eventual DLC.

Right now the fix I suggest is that the Citadel starts by waves of attacks by lesser Pandas until Scylla makes an appearance. Like in the ambush missions.

That would teach the likes of MichaelIgnotus not to let the lairs grow into Citadels :wink:

Understood. What you mean is some kind of starship trooper style in trying to prevent being overrun.
I would like this scenario more in the haven defences. In case of lairs and citadells, we are the attackers and hopefully come in undetected. Especially the infiltrators could get their state in such situations. The only case i could think of are the „steal missions“. Sneak in, download the blueprints and try getting pur unharmed.

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Quite right too :wink:

Agree that it is not a development against tactics: progression of the aliens is linear in that they progressively get tougher objectively independently from the tactic being used by them or by the player

What I mena is: It is always benefitial for a Crab to get as much and think an armor as possible as it apperantly does not suffer any penalties by getting it. It does not seem ot get lower accuracy or speed due to the amount and strenght of its armor which makes the improvement objectively better in any scenario

If the aim is to get a dynamic interplay between alien equipment and tactics, each alien improvement needs to hold some serious disadvantage like in case of player:

  1. Heavy armo reduces speed by -3-5 and accuracy by 15-35% (depending on how many budy parts it is located on)
  2. Grenade launcher reduce speed by -2
  3. Bombard bug range reduced to the same range players have with grenade launcher while worms can be launched longer distance
  4. Detection of invisible bug much higher if it is armored