Uhm … yeah … maybe in the first 2 missions ? Most likely depends on Difficulty. Maybe it is not so bad on lower diff, but on legend it gets really annoying fast. Also, yes, most of my gripe with RF probably stems from NJ. Level 1 assaults already have RF without showing it as ability in their stats window
awful awful
And simply not needed. Like I said, it doesn’t really matter in end game. It only trolls new players and early game for no good reason. Bad form of challenge.
Yes, grenade works.
I mean, it’s not the worst thing in the world, I’ll give you that. It’s just annoying like a fly in your face. It’ll eventually go away but it is unnecessary.
AFAIK only in the first mission when you meet NJ the first time. After that I saw many NJ LVL 1 Assaults that not return fire me.
IMO something hard coded for this mission.
@MadSkunky if you need to have the double damage buff from infiltrators to have useful assaults, I guess you conceded that pure assaults cannot do much damage with assault rifles
That’s a fact for me, I guess assaults rifles damage at first is ok but they need much more shred to be usable. Then late game we get the piranhas from NJ and they’re alright, but you lose accuracy and thus it’s just better to dual class with anything else and use that instead, unless you dual class to berserker for armor break or infiltrator for double damage. Also the double damage will probably get nerfed in the future.
As for RF… I like the present mechanic in itself. It’s not always present and makes you adapt to that situation with what you have, so it’s a nice tactical change mechanic. I do agree that unlimited RF in a turn doesn’t make sense, but still I got no problem with it being in the game the way it is.
The REAL problem I see is… inconsistency with overwatch. Overwatch doesn’t stop the walking soldier’s animation, and if you have a lot of overwatching soldiers on the same spot only a few will get their shots. AFAIK this is to simulate a bit of time passage during the fight. RF is the opposite because while the original shooter does move back into cover during RF, to be consistent RF should also happen only once.
Personally, I would prefer that overwatch happened in an instant and not throughout some inconsistent time - every overwatching soldier can shoot at the same time at the target if they get LoS at the same time, instead of only the first ones and shooting at different positions. Then, RF could be consistent being the same as it is today - the RF’ing soldier is super twitchy and fast, being able to fire back when being shot at.
Yes. Stupid. Fix it. Put some more enemies in there or something else ! This RF bullshit has no business being there. Inconsistent icons and missing ability description in the stats window just add fuel to the return fire.
It takes a while till my Assaults get that, except my first ones. I take low level Assaults with me on every mission and I have no trouble with their ARs. Sure, they deal not much damage, but they hit, they shred and they take them finally down. I play careful with them, always in cover, maybe a little step to get line of fire and then back. But they do their job and I find they do it good enough for their mid range.
Sure they work like you said, but they are… MEH. Currently all my pure assaults (that I can’t dual class because I haven’t got the class tech yet) go train at the base for the 2nd team as soon as I get soldiers from other classes - and I never hire faction assaults. I also only hire assaults for food when they got great perks, and I do it for the perks, not the class.
Assault is a great complimentary class, but not a great class on its own, in my opinion. And that comes from their weapons, not the class itself and its skills. With piranhas they get much better. For instance, an assault can be very good mid-late game if he’s got the shotgun perk, now he’s able to do damage even to HA targets in exchange of getting close. The same with the trooper perk. However, if the guy doesn’t have that… only dual classing remains. It’s a bit similar to the heavy’s HW accuracy situation, really, but with damage/shred. Unless I’m missing something for mid-game that helps and is easy to get in any pure assault, ofc.
What is mid-game for you?
My first squad has 3 Assaults, 2 Heavies and 1 Sniper. All on level 5-6 with the exception of one of the Assaults, he is on level 4 and I take him with me because of nice personal traits in exchange of one of my starting Assaults. All of these are going to dual class with Infiltrator, because for me double damage beats all other possibilities. All Assaults have Daimos, 2 have also PDW personal trait and are equipped with VDM Defender for closer range. Actually I meet Sirens and Chirons, the Arthrons and Tritons are well protected, have up to 240-260 HP and also armed with MGs (Arthrons), Pistols, ARs and SRs (Tritons).
I have no problem to fight them with my ARs, more safe on medium range and if I have to go close, the VDMs are good enough to deal good damage. My Heavies are more my close fighters, they jump ahead and doing their job, bash around, War Cry and gunning in the following turn. The Assaults more in their back to cover them and shooting what ever they can hit. The Sniper, well, he snipes
Edit:
I almost don’t use the NJ ARs, also not the Piranha, for me they are to inaccurate so that I have to go to close. Then I can also go really close to use shotguns or PDWs if I have the perk.
Different play stiles, I guess
Mid game for me is when pandorans are already pretty armored but your own soldiers don’t have upgrades yet. You do have a good point in that early-mid-late game can be a lot different for everyone! I’m reaching the endgame mission mid-february and with very bad luck I just got the 25% NJ / 50% SYN / 50% Anu missions (all together) so only now will I get new toys to play with. Citadels are present since the end of January, although I haven’t detected even a lair yet.
Anyways, I was talking mostly about HA arthrons and tritons. Sirens at the same game time don’t have that much armor so you can use AR’s against them and also simply “gang-paralyze” up close. Chirons have the unarmored head so shotguns are really effective up close and AR’s can also chip in from mid-close range. However against HA arthrons and tritons they can’t do much on their own besides grenades, if you had a team of pure assaults against a team of those you would have a hard time because you wouldn’t have a ton of grenades. I guess you can use the shotgun if you get right beside them and focus on the tiny unarmored parts. I am talking of course about pure assaults and not counting perks, those Assault/Infiltrators and PDW perks you got are OK because of the damage multipliers and OPness of laser PDWs.
I use NJ AR’s only on soldiers that have some kind of buff to accuracy. I usually make do with what I have until late game when I can finally have spare resources to build weapons and armor. By then, the deimos has lost a lot of its charm because of HA enemies. The only game I got to that point was my first game (early game version) where I liked the piranha + sniper helmet. All my other games have been stopped before that because of big patches.
I wouldn’t mind an upgrade to the PX AR or the deimos with more shred or penetration, to make them more usable late-game and keep the balance of range vs power the initial trio of AR’s have.
Sirens have at least 20-30 armor and more HP, even the late game Arthrons have parts with 20 armor but of course HA carapace and shields (overwatch with Daimos helps me a lot against these types), I never saw a Triton with more than 30 armor, arms and/or legs almost maximum 20 armor.
With the exception of the HA parts of Arthrons I don’t see that much difference to Sirens with more HP.
And of course, I have almost one/two heavies and one/two sniper, enough help to deal with almost anything. The Assaults are mosttly the ones that shoot at least, so armor is often hardly lowered or completely down.
All these nice things I actually don’t have, none of my squaddies is level 7 for Sneak Attack and I have also not the laser PDW (I’m close, 48% with NJ, then 3-4 days for research). With the exception of the PDW perk they are pure Assaults. The VDM PDW is nice but not that much better than the Daimos, you deal more damage per bullet and of course per AP but you also have to go much closer to hit.
This is correct AFAIK on all difficulty levels. Even the most heavily armored Arthons will always have a couple of limbs with 20 armor. Tritons tend to have more, and never above 30.
It’s on purpose, precisely to enable the basic functionality of ARs, which is to be able to reliably shoot off limbs from a medium/short distance away (5-10 tiles) (and that’s base values, no buffs to accuracy or damage). For comparison, that’s something that shotguns can do from 1 or 2 tiles away. It’s true that SGs can do more brute damage, but it’s almost a golden rule in PX that at closer engagement range you can deal potentially deal more damage to the target per AP than at a longer range. So SRs can engage targets at longer ranges, but potential damage per AP is lowest, ARs can do a bit more but at closer range, and SGs most but at very close quarters.
About Return Fire, the purpose is to give some reactivity to the enemies. This - allowing reactions from opponent during the other player’s turn - is fairly common in the TBS genre, and even reaction fire as it is done in PX is not something unheard of.
The version on release was more interesting, but it did create a lot of problems.
Ok I was remembering siren armor from my head, my mistake. I also thought about its health but I had already written a lot and it was about the amount of damage done to enemies, not about killing them.
@VOLAND I usually don’t consider using AR’s to disable limbs, I’ll try that. I guess I use them most early game when they’re killers, and later with armor and shields it’s so rare that I usually am shooting with them from a bigger distance (circles covering entire arthron/triton) or switching to another weapon if I can get closer (like the SG). Anyway I guess I never see them as a good or the best alternative in any situation after enemies get HA, because usually I’ll be able to just dash up to them and SG, because I mostly go for 20 speed before anything else.
About RF, I don’t remember which was the release version - was it the one where every RF enemy fired at you if you fired? I hated that one, why would you find that more interesting?
Yes, every enemy with RF and in RF range fired at you. I liked it, because it was way more challenging but nothing what really stopped me from killing the enemies
That’s why reactivity from enemies is important in a game like PX where you don’t lose accuracy if you shoot after moving. Without reactivity, there is no downside to getting as close to an enemy as possible to blast them with a SG, as long as you make sure that enemy is disabled after the shot.
The RF on release countered that, the current RF not so much.
Plus, if I’m not wrong, the RF on release triggered also for melee attacks(?), the current definitely not.
BTW, another way to deal with the the RF Assaults in the first NJ mission, just bash them down.
Yes, it’s a recent change, made in Danforth IIRC. Given the current RF format, it makes sense, also to give melee weapons some advantage vs SGs.
My pet idea for melee weapons is to give characters wielding melee weapons attacks of opportunity if enemies step in/out of an adjacent tile. That would also distinguish it from bash, allow to use Bloodlust in a less meta way, allow for a Ninja build that ignores the AoO…
Also, I wish the old RF was brought back as an advanced mutation for some Pandorans.
And give them a lot more non-lethal reactivity, like Tritons casting mist upon attack, and when coming as reinforcements, enemies that do nasty things when you kill them (like a death scream that dazes targets nearby).
I feel another flaw with the game is it is to tight. The dev’s have left no room to experiment, no exploits to take advantage of, no fun tools to play with. You could say that every map is scripted with only one way to beat it. Games that have been nail down so tight tend to be boring wouldn’t you agree?
The whole skill trees are still full of exploits to experiment and you can take big advantages out of it. I would say there are still many funny tools to play with.
Others called it mostly OP as hell
The maps, well, the story and faction missions are always the same in every play through, but the enemies are different (except the first 3 faction missions, I think they never change) and also their positioning is almost always different, at least slightly.
But the maps of heaven defences are more or less procedural generated, some things like the objectives and some other buildings seems to be fixed but placed slightly different and with different surrounding. The enemies are not always the same and also placed on different places, in some heaven defences completely opposite than expected. Nests, Lairs and Citadels, they are also not always the same. But I assume there is at least a fixed set for Citadel and Nest maps and one is selected at the start of the mission, Lairs seems to me clearly procedural generated. And also on all of these pandoran base maps the placement and types of enemies is always different.
That said, I can’t see that there is anything scripted in the form that you only have one way to solve a mission.
Here I can agree in general, but I don’t see that for PP …
