The Deceptor machine gun is awful

I agree.

My point is that the current situation with explosives, where you can shoot a devastating rocket across the whole map for 0 AP and follow it by 2 GLs (or 4 grenades, because with Quarterback and sufficient strength + Boom Blast you can throw a grenade the same distance as you can shoot a rocket but with 100% accuracy, literally allowing you to place explosive devices with different payloads at a location of your choosing) is not that different from RC+AR.

What can compete against that? Should other skills/combinations be buffed until they can compete with something like Boom Blast allowing mounted weapons to shoot for 0 AP or grenade placement accross the map, or does perhaps this combo merit a tone down?

3 Likes

Boom Blast is definitely overpowered, but it’s nowhere near as broken as RC/AR just because RC/AR can quite realistically clear an entire map on its own (without spending so much on grenades). I usually find that my Boom Blast/Grenade Launcher Heavies do a lot of damage, but not necessarily more than my Snipers do.

The bigger issue with the Boom Blast combo is that it’s just so disproportionately effective compared to all the other heavy weapons that it’s hard to justify your Heavy using anything else. Once I have the Goliath researched and built, I can’t see any reason to build or use the Hel Cannon, Deceptor, or Dante any more.

But that’s precisely my point - I’m not saying that Boom Blast is as bad as RC + AR, I’m saying that it is similar in that it is too good when compared to other options, or as you put it

So, should Cannon, Deceptor and Dante be made good enough to compete with the combinations that Boom Blast allows, or rather should something be done about these combinations?

BTW, it’s funny because right now Dante is bugged (has been at least since Danforth, the devs are trying to fix it) it does extreme amounts of damage, like almost destroying a Spawnery in a single shot, roasting Tritons, Arthons and sometimes Sirens with a single application, etc, and that is still not enough to make it preferable over the various Boom Blast combinations :slightly_smiling_face:

It seems to me that direct fire damage at all is somewhat bugged, maybe?
I’ve tried to paralyse a Siren in one of the new ancient site defending, the one where the Cyklops gives your weapons additionally fire damage. The result, I killed the Siren with the Hera before it was paralysed … (not F12 reported, sorry)

I’ve been thinking about making a longer post on skills, but re: Boom Blast, I’d probably suggest making it more like Quick Aim – it affects ONE explosive attack. Then make it 3 APs instead of 5, and make it only usable once per turn.

The Dante NEEDS to do pretty extreme damage given that its range is so short that it’s basically a melee weapon. The problem is that the Dante’s targeting is buggy as **** so that half the time that you fire it it does zero damage to targets supposedly in its cone.

Could be, the devs are investigating the Dante at the moment. Hopefully if it turns out to be something to do with direct fire damage in general it will be taken care of. It takes times but eventually those bugs get squashed - have you noticed that the over-shredding bug is gone?

Dante can be used effectively at +10 tiles (it’s ER is 12). More than an insta-killer or extreme damage dealer, it’s primarily intended as an area denial weapon. When aiming, look at the health bar of the target: if any portion of it is white, it will be hit, if not, not. (Right now if it will be
hit there is a good chance it will die, or have all of its limbs disabled.) I wish the aiming worked like Rage Burst does now, so you aim at a target, not at a space.

The thing is, something like Dante and the tactical opportunities it offers usually don’t make a lot of sense if you can just bombard the enemies from across the map :slightly_smiling_face:

Here is mine :wink::

Area denial isn’t very useful in most missions, honestly, so if that’s the primary use of the Dante then it’s probably going to be fairly lackluster. Most missions in PP require you to advance, which you can’t do if the space between you and the enemies is on fire.

Yes and I like it, before an AR burst could sometimes shred up to the double value that should be possible, pretty imba.

Edit:
BTW, we can talk about balancing the whole day, but actually it feels a bit useless as the devs throw the next OP things at us with the every new DLC. Holy shit, these ancient weapon values are completely out of anything we had before in this game.

1 Like

It’s nice to see something better improved at new tech to be honest. As I said before somewhere, those weapons should be unique ones to get from hard missions rather then the unnecessary and very annoying capture/defend/mine/manufacture complex.

If unique or not, they should be a bit more balanced and not that much better in any aspect as their conventional counter parts.
(Edit: see the unique living weapons, the AR and MG, for me they are pretty nice balanced compared to their counterparts and almost a good alternative, but not a nobrainer like the new ancient weapons).

Overall I like the idea how they implement it with mining and producing, it feels more startegicaly than just get something unique by missions (this always feels for me more RPG like, not bad but should not be to much). My personal opinion, of course :wink:

2 Likes

This game is already full of “not that much better in any aspect as their conventional counter parts”… I was not so happy to use same laser rifle I got from first days for whole game. Balancing is another thing. As unique I tried to say “get 1 only and can’t manufacture”. Living weapons are little DLC which you can get very early too…
There should be some “tier” at some point. This is very weak at PP.

I explicitly like that there is more sidegrade than upgrade in the game, alternative solutions for different approaches.
In PP the upgrading, the ‘tiers’, are much more founded in the open and powerful skillset. If you also have upgraded and plain better weapons in the game then you have to balance the whole shit even more.

But as I said before, my personal opinion, I can also understand that many people dislike this and miss a system that is more going the way of also upgrading your tools.

I am not against different options, I try to tell, those different options should have tiers. I like lasers but there is totally no update for lasers… whole game… NY weapons get a slight one and I like my sniper. But why does Deceptor not get that improved AP tech version?

Skill set is nice of course, but when you want to train your newbies at battlefield or sending them to a mission with the same weapons from early game at mid-late game, It’s suicide. So remember old xcom days, or new ones… even your new soldier sucks, they can survive better at least with better tech, armor and weapons…

As weapons can’t kill fast enough and your armor can’t save you at 2. bullet AND enemies get buffs again and again, you can balance this as you said with good soldiers but if this game is ok with only 6-7 soldiers. I always played my x-com style games with only one squad. But here you need more trasport planes and more soldiers to do other stuff.

At other X-com games, you can chill for a while just let time pass by freely… Now you should always do something. For factions, for pandoras, for DLC 1 and DLC 2 story missions, for defenses, for resources… Resources… It’s so bad now, as most of the missions just don’t give you any resources, I got times that I don’t have resources for reloading my crew… I can’t imagine to make weapons/armors/stuff for a second squad…

On paper and for hardcore players, this could be not a big deal even more enjoyable… but I am not legend class player… I can say hero for this game… but enjoyable hero… harder tactical but relaxing strategic layer player. RPG elements are nice but every RPG is about to have a better and better character and gear. If you put RPG elements and don’t give you something better in return, the problem starts for most of the player base.

It became a bit out of topic and you got what I mean. I hope :).

1 Like

Sure, it is your opinion and I can fully accepted it. All fine :slight_smile:

Thx!

So we need a DLC without any mission which only improves our arsenal. Does new weapons got a minigun version? I saw explosive, melee, crossbow, shotgun and sniper. What is the 6.?

why use Deceptor then? its not that different to a shotgun, with same accuracy… and you can use Shotguns for 1 less AP…

Sadly not, the 6th one is also a melee weapon with light AOE effect and even more brutal than the first one.
That said, no assault rifle, no PDW (but we have Gogon Eye-A :wink: ), no MG, no turret, no Priest weapon.

I say that… At PP someone got a very big “minigunphobia” … They just fear that a better minigun will kill this game for good with no balancing chance… If they won’t change this, modding will be final hope…

So only sniper is good for my playstyle… this is sadly very limited and a second melee weapon is a bad choice.

With Berserkers Adrenalin Rush AP cost doesn’t matter :wink:

1 Like

Still, not better than shotgun… just same…

Personally, i think Deceptor needs to get some accuracy boost… not much… but some… (let say to 15 range, so its slightly longer range than shotguns at least…)

1 Like