Link Rally to Officer Promotion

[walan]

@VOLAND

if it’s just about difficulty, it would be better to make necessary adjustments to difficulty so that Rally is not needed and then remove it.

Can only agree.
cheat skills necessary to survive = broken balance
Why?
Beginners and casual gamers cannot “cheat” with the OP skills
Veterans are bored to death

[etermes]

@VOLAND

Right now you have a tool that is useful in any situation provided that you value the 2APs and 4WPs spent by the caster as less than the X APs spread among the squad. It allows for a greater variety of strategies than if you are limited by range and amount of WPs.

But using Rally and at the same time double dashing and Rapid clearance is creating many more AP for the Squad or “Killer” soldier, providing more than 1 AP or 2 AP , indeed 1-2 additional turns

[VOLAND]

@etermes

But using Rally and at the same time double dashing and Rapid clearance is creating many more AP for the Squad or “Killer” soldier, providing more thatn 1 AP or 2 AP , indeed 1-2 additional turns

Yes, indeed.

@VOLAND

The problem is balance. Once you start spamming Rally the Troops (and there is very little reason not too), especially as part of a First Turn Strike, to repair broken kill chains, that’s when everything falls apart. Thus the need to do something about it.

What to do? As I said, my preferred solution is

@PradBitt

“Turn Rally the troops into status buff (just like Frenzy for example) that lasts 1 turn. Status effect does not stack (just like Frenzy), so no matter how many times it’s cast, on a given turn soldier will be affected just once”

And if difficulty needs adjusting on Rookie/Veteran, adjust it. And if there are players who really like skill spamming, make a custom difficulty/second wave kind of setting allowing status effects to stack.

[VOLAND]

Of course I agree that leaving in exploits as a remedy for poor balance is stupid - the solution is fix the balance and remove the exploits.

But why do you think of Rally, if cast a single time per turn, as a cheat?

[walan]

@VOLAND

But why do you think of Rally, if cast a single time per turn, as a cheat?

I didn’t mean that either.

I refer to the current state of the game. Sorry I just can’t pretend that this cheat has disappeared just because a solution is being discussed here.

Edit:
It would still be very powerfull, but not a cheat anymore.

[Nattfarinn]

Just curious. Was AoE range of Rally the Troops ever considered? Right now it has global range and you can rally the guy at the oposite side of map. Give it like 10-15 range, maybe check for LoS. And/or make Rally work only on soldiers above some willpower threshold.

[Yokes]

@Nattfarinn

Was AoE range of Rally the Troops ever considered?

Yep, that is what I have suggested few posts above.

[BoredEngineer]

I really wonder when this is going to end. Again and again some op ability or a combination of abilities is being discovered. Then someone defends it as a necessary evil because otherwise the game is too hard
So on one side we have a case of designers either not seeing how what they created can function or being too busy with other things to have enough time for such analysis. On other side we have players who are defending these mechanics because they help them to deal with challenges which otherwise are perceived as unsolvable or too cumbersome to get through.
Something needs to change fundamentally in the design of this game, otherwise this will be just a continuous loop of finding new exploits, nerfing them and shifting attention to a next one.

The game needs some hard wired rules that set bounds on the systems that are designed. Like an absolute maximum of mobility that any given soldier can achieve. So if there are alternative ways with different side effects of how you can improve mobility, then it still can’t go beyond X tiles per turn of movement, which of course can’t be the size of whole map. Then this absolute limit can be used to judge other mechanics. The same can be done for weapon output or WP spenditure.

Not a first time I see posts where people describe how they like early game more, when there are no or very few abilities are given. Perhaps its time to face the reality that maybe it wasn’t the right choice to go with FiraXCom like design? At least it doesn’t seam to play well with other unique mechanics that pulled this game out of being a clone, at least marketing wise.

[walan]

@BoredEngineer

Not a first time I see posts where people describe how they like early game more

Oh you say it …

@BoredEngineer

Perhaps its time to face the reality that maybe it wasn’t the right choice to go with FiraXCom like design?

PP didn’t just follow the Firaxis with the Supersoldiers, they even far exceeded it in terms of 1 man power (terminator)!
The problem is: If you want to play super soldiers, you always take the original. The unfortunate thing is: PP has the basic structure to be completely different (see early game), but does not consistently take it over for the whole game. And the potential is absolutely there!

PP did a few important things wrong in early game:

• Dangerous opponents (bomb-chiron, siren) come far too early
• First DLC also brings “pure” in eary game. They have super strong armor.
• The higher complexity compared to other TBS is not explained or is explained poorly
• The loss of soldiers in PP is (at the moment) far worse than in Firaxis (replacement much too expensive, especially for beginners)

So they have “many” votes: NO !! All super skills are necessary!
All in all, it leads us to a game that is tactical at the beginning but at the same time too difficult. And in the end-game it becomes super arcade until the boring “click around”. From mid-game, nothing is surprising, the positioning can be neglected, because you can either run across the whole map directly in front of the opponent’s face - even with AP-Regeneration - or you can even shot “boss opponents” away from the intial position with multiple shots.