Several times in the past couple of weeks, I have had to leave guys behind or restart missions because the game is spawning pandorans with paralysis guns.
Repeat paralyzation is incredibly frustrating and takes the joy out of playing, especially in Lair missions. Paralysis should cap at the level of paralysis in which it creates actual paralysis.
It does not make a lot of sense that a soldier can get severely paralyzed but still be standing, but can’t move for 20 rounds. The above would be called a coma.
It is also unfair that it takes me three rounds to paralyze a pandoran with an Athena sniper rifle, but it only takes them one. The balance broken, the mechanic is tedious, and it is making me avoid doing lairs at all. If they are crab people or squids they have a lesser nervous system. The preceding would be to say they get paralyzed easier, not harder.
If a player kills the alien with the paralysis ability/weapon, another spawns in immediately following targeting the same soldier. Why alienate players? (see what I did there?)
I had the same issue with retrieving the Antediliuvian Collection mission. I grabbed the item and had all my soldiers within 10 tiles of the evac zone and then one of my soldiers got paralyzed for 20 turns. I stayed there and fought off the onslaught of forces for 17 turns before losing one of my soldiers.
There needs to be a cap of 5 turns to the paralysis or have some other way to move the soldier. Being able to carry the soldier like in XCOM would be great. But if that is not a possibility then perhaps allowing you to use other soldiers to give their movement to the paralyzed soldier allowing it to move at a reduced number of tiles. Perhaps give 1 tile to paralyzed soldier for every 2 or 3 given by a soldier. This would accomplish basically the same as carrying but without any added animation graphics.
I ended up having to reload and play the mission over and this time did it fairly easily.
There is also an issue with The Crystal Bow mission. The one tile I was given to move my soldier too and then retrieve the item was occupied by a chair. I was unable to retrieve the item. And reloading and them trying it again gave me the same map with the same issue. This pretty much made the game unplayable and now I need to restart a brand new game.
I will say that I quit playing the game about 9 months ago because of the terrible game balancing. So far I have been fairly impressed with the changes made. However I do find that having to steal and raid other factions who are also trying to get rid of the Pandorans seems a bit backwards. Why would you be fighting against each other while trying to save the earth? I would love to see this changed or have someone create a mod that completely changes this aspect of the game, where ALL factions are actually working together.
I am playing on Veteran and do not have to steal anything from factions (except for Special Missions that mean this, e.g. during faction conflicts). The game is very easy to me on Veteran so far: I am fully packed with 7-8 aircrafts, 4 vehicles, about 30 soldiers and 9 bases, allied with all the factions, the enemies are primitive so far (two types of chirons and two types of sirens) and I am about to raid my first spot of the An. Civilization.
I strongly agree with this, and virus as well. Since I’m doubting we’ll ever get the ability to carry other soldiers, I think there needs to be an item (separate maybe, to create choice in whether you want to prepare for this or risk it in lieu of other goodies) that reduces the virus stacks or eases the paralysis on a target. Something that removes the virus, but disorients your soldier for a turn and something that reduces paralysis to 25% of max (4/16 for example) allowing you to still move and do things, but at a reduced capacity so you can actually rescue these soldiers. (Maybe technicians can also deal with this using their abilities)
Have you tried evacuating all your soldiers except the paralyzed one?
I did this on a diplo NJ mission that requires evacuating an NPC (Ravi) and PX operatives. The mission ended and the paralyzed soldier was OK.
I wonder if this happens in all the other missions as well.
(I know it seems completely counterintuitive to leave behind a paralyzed soldier… I did it because I was sure that I had killed all the enemies on the map, so I decided to Evac everybody and then just press end turn until the paralyzed guy recovered. To my surprise the mission ended, with everybody safe and sound…)
I’ve put a lot of thought into this… and I think it’s fine that we raid. (though agree that a peaceful approach to diplomacy should be as lucrative as a hostile approach, only resulting in different types of missions essentially)
“Who are we?” Some people reigniting an old organization that virtually doesn’t exist anymore… “So what do we do, and why?” We do whatever it is we feel like we need to do to survive, and because we think it’s the best decision, we realize what’s important as time passes. “So we just raid and kill other humans because it’s easier to save them that way?” No not exactly, consider that all three factions have vastly differing views and approaches to existing on this planet, all conflicting with one another. Let’s say you favor one factions ideals over another, NJ perhaps… now do Anu continue to look like Humans worth saving? No, not really… they’re just additional abominations of the Pandoravirus attempting to seduce more humans into abandoning their humanity! They’re filth and a drain on resources that are desperately needed to save the planet, they’re no better than the Pandorans and for all we truly know they could just be agents of the Pandorans (thin man style, new xcom), THEY ARE ENEMIES! … you know what I mean? “Abandon material goods, submit to the new gods” doesn’t jive with NJ all that well, their continuing attempts to exterminate your allies leave you constantly sabotaging them… etc.
We’re making up the story though, it barely exists in game (mostly just get background info via cinematics).
Very interesting, so there IS a mechanic to save the player time when this happens. It’s just not clear that it exists and it only matters in these now rare missions that you need to evac but there’s no enemy reinforcements (I’m assuming there weren’t in your mission).
I completely agree with the others on this, the need for a limit and/or a way to revert these exists and is very important. So much important for me that, if there was an specific item for paralyze and an specific item for virus, every one of my soldiers would lose 2 backpack slots because of it. OR… I would’ve to save scum out of it. No way I would put up with waiting 10+ turns for a soldier to recover and be able to exit a mission. If it only occurred in the middle of the mission there would be no problem, so a limit to 5 turns or an automatic recovery if no enemies are in the map would be best, because items still may lead you into waiting because you may not have them.
Edit: I just remembered that there was an episode of Retcon Raider’s PP videos where this situation happened with paralyze. He got very pissed about it, as probably most would.
I’m not sure if the existence of reinforcements matters, or not. It may well be that on any mission if you evac the other soldiers, the mission ends successfully.
BTW regarding raid/steal … I play Heroic. Febuary 19th I have activatede 12 bases and build an additional 5 Manticors for a total of 6, which all have armed and armored teams (some part Scarabs) - without stealing from/raiding any of the other factions.
I have fought other factions on special/story missions … Didn’t like to, but sometimes people disagree on certain matters.
Have diplomacy 75+ with all 3 factions, but "war"with pure.
My teams do not have optimal gear, but make do. Some grenader launchers and lately the back-mounted missiles and by now most assaults have scavanged Bulldogs.
I do not savescum, but do reload, when I’ve made obvious stupid mistakes, so have lost a few soldiers on the way.
My point¿ - don’t belive you have to steal/raid.
I do spend some time in real life/in game trading.
So don’t use up all ressources the minut you get them, but keep the first hundreds to trade and make them “Work” for you.
That would be a bug, then. If you have a paralyzed soldier there, you should either deal with reinforcements, or leave him behind although there’s currently no mechanic for this.
That 75+ with all 3 factions is key… since you got more rep you got more missions, more rewards, was able to know faction locations around the world which helps with traveling, more HDs, etc. In my cthulhu veteran campaign I got ‘good RNG’, meaning having all 3 factions near my starting base, all 3 having HDs, etc, and although I didn’t reach february in it, I was already 75+ SYN, 50+ NJ and almost 50 Anu. It was a walk in the park.
In my current campaign I didn’t get that and couldn’t raise rep at all with NJ, raise only a bit with SYN and not much past 25 with Anu (few Anu HDs, only 1 or 2 for SYN, none for NJ, and only 2 nests found up to mid february). By mid february I managed to reach 50 Any/SYN and 25 NJ. What I see that I could’ve done differently that some people do was to start my 2nd team immediately in the Americas (I started in Africa) instead of focusing on some bases and 8-man squads, because I later on found out that the only NJ bases that were being attacked were in the Americas as in the rest of the world they were far from mist.
So you’re right that it’s doable, however it heavily depends on RNG if you don’t use this specific tactic.
You’re right! It’s the same mechanics as with enemies, although it doesn’t make much sense in reinforced evac missions. I for one thought that I would not get captured enemies the first time I did one like that.
Have a look at the amount of resources, planes and bases I’ve got by February 1st exclusively because of trade and 100% alliance with all the factions, without a single raid.
I don’t see that as an exploit, it is a basic game mechanic, but maybe not very well balanced.
As in the other thread mentioned, earlier aircrafts give you faster reaction on heaven defences, you can explore more POIs in the same time, you can do more scavenging sites in the same time and so on.
You only need to get this second aircraft pretty early, then the rest goes mostly the same way as long as you almost spend a good part of your resources in new aircrafts. It’s like a snowball and it is doable with stealing aircrafts, raids, trading or what I’ve done with only 5 sabotage missions early on (that not only give you reputation but also the needed resources for your builds, these early reputation boost leads to the faction missions, again more resources …).
Edit:
Lol, I saw you wrote almost the same in the other thread “It’s like a snowball”, so never mind
But I don’t think that trading here is the exploit, this is also possible with other strategies, but the biggest point is the focus on early aircrafts because this boosts anything, even trading.
