On my third playthrough my sniper rifle got destroyed by the first ranged enemy’s first ranged shot. So my sniper than played pistol scout the rest of the mission. He even managed to single-handedly shoot off one of the Queen’s legs witht he pistol, over multiple turns, as the rest of my team scoured the map for ammo, explosives and enemies.
But yes, I like the random developments a lot. Hope this is expanded on more and more. Though we should be able to target wounded body parts with medikits, even if it results in a working but less functional appendage (lower aim or movement), so a soldier isn’t simply removed completely from the encounter because his hand got scratched on the first round.
I am interested to see how the mechanic develops and what options open up as you progress. The aliens evolve so to level out the playing field I assume we do to.
You can disable an enemy and take them out of the game. Add bleed to the mix and they die. This adds a balance to the gameplay as disable and bleed also effect your soldiers.
On my second run I used disable and bleed. I took out all the enemies except the one on the roof and the queen. The reason I left those two was because I did not want to use the loot boxes, I wanted to see how far I could get before my ammo ran out.
I am thoroughly enjoying the game and experimenting with different strategies etc.
Just completed my third mission in a row - crack 'em till they bleed, then run 'em till they bleed out - seems to be the consistently winning strategy. Had to use both my grenades in the initial push into the facility. Had two aliens come out almost side by side, immediately put their shields down. So it was grenade early, or lose early. Forced me to use a different queen strategy. Put my sniper on the second level to disable her pincers, while my heavy machine gun set up opposite side to rocket around the legs and peel armor. Used my lights as spotters for the other aliens. Didn’t move fast enough to trap the queen on terrain the last two games.