OpenXcom Forum
Modding => Released Mods => XPiratez => Topic started by: legionof1 on November 21, 2016, 09:42:45 am
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So, it having been a very long time since i took a crack at the early game, i started up a new play-through. I presently stand at January the first and wish to share some thoughts.
First thing up on the block, handles are spectacularly effective for early missions. Very little in early game opponents can remain awake after a few blows from decent gals. Even Guild security can be clubbed unconscious from the front in fairly short order. Every single gal has 2-3 master of handle commendations
Next up the new organ grinder mission. I really like this mission conceptually but it is a tremendous pain in the ass to complete when you get access to it. Even at 1 year mark i dont have the gear to make it cost effective. Also after a few turns it becomes a severe strain on the eyes to pick out anything in a grey map full of smoke with grey foes. Thank fuck for orange night vision filter. The foes presented remind me in a bad way of cyclopes. Massive hp pool regen and not particularly effective offense.
A close runner up to the handle is the hammer/pickaxe to cut your way around. The very small village map closes of foes with annoying frequency. All the gals are packing something to break walls just ease my own frustration. On the other side I've discovered that you can crack open the sides of watchtowers, research bases, and warehouses which makes those missions much simpler. Even saved my hide when i opened up a tower full of zombies.
Air game has yet to get off the ground for lack of resources, the runts that i can afford simply can't keep up with production needs. Didn't help that they had to go full for cash production until October to keep fiscally afloat.
Research feels soo much better then last time through i have yet to bottle neck on a crucial topic though i can see the first one approaching if i cant get of the ground soonish.
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Nice Report! I recently just restarted too and am in April of the first year. I've not given the handle as much love, but my Round Shields have been having a Bash! That Barbarian Outfit is a great first tier armor.
I'm trying out having an early dedicated aid troop this time, with one of the strong gals lugging around a barrel of grog. The quick heals and stims are great. If I can set up an archer team to shoot over the bus, I can keep the barrel gal with them to keep their energy up. I've also been bringing along mutant meat for the first time to try to cut down on time out for gals in sickbay.
I've enjoyed flinging flaming arrows around immensely. In my Academy heavy run so far, the flame arrows are ineffective on Osiron Security, and they have been presenting my biggest tactical puzzles. An Assault Cannon with Exp Cannonballs has been the most common remedy (when they hit).
I've yet to see guild and durathread in this game, so I have no access to the Workshop because I can't research the Runt Outfit. I feel like by this point I would have already had my workshop up otherwise. In despair, I've dropped in another Excavator to increase manufacturing somewhat. I have tons of apples, and can crank out Chateau for cash, but I don't have real manufacturing scale in my base. This is the first concern I have with my campaign.
Air Game: I bee-lined for the Airball Launcher in hopes it would allow me to tackle Civ Shipping for more income. (This was terrific in my last start with the Charger Laser) I got my 2nd hangar, Air Car with launcher and ammo online in march. So far my results have not been stellar. I've had two interception opportunities on Civ Ships. The first attempt resulted in two misses, and one hit, but the target kept going. The second got two misses and a one shot kill to the target. :/ Despite this, the AirCar has made itself worthwhile. I've tracked three Academy small craft (Runabouts and Cutters) to their landing sites which the Airbus would not have been able to do. The loot from the ground assaults has more than made up for it. I've picked up various cannon parts and will probably get them researched in the next month or two and maybe they will allow me to be more effective.
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If you want to damage stuff get a Chainsaw
It hurts like you think it would, though the Hammer might be more effective against heavily armored foes. These weapons do not miss
(if I could suggest to dioxine, to cut the damage the Hammer does in half but give it +100% demolitions, this would give it a more realistic effect as a weapon and still let it break walls like the tool its designed to be - this making it more like an implement than a worthwhile weapon since it never misses).
Handles yes indeed are quite useful but -
Cattle Prod does the job better when you can get it. The downside is it costs 20 TU to hit and its a 2 handed weapon but your gals will rack up melee experience before that, so giving it to someone with 100+ melee makes them a Heavy Hitter.
Hit people from the back if you can too, the armor is weaker there and the chance of hitting them is higher, like seriously if you have some TU to spare to actually move around them and hit from behind do it (even risk reaction fire if you have to).
The only reason id say a Stun Baton isnt better than a handle is because anybody with armor has better protection against it (apparently the Plasteel armor is really good at redirecting energy not just being tough, like the Tesla armor from fallout. So the laser+plasma resistance is higher and all electric discharge weapons are said to cause Plasma damage but most of the harm goes into stunning)
(*personally I consider Plasma to be a Superheated Explosive type of damage, like a shaped charge but without the blast radius, but thats just my personal understanding).
Also the Rope
Do not forget the Rope, that starter item with a high TU cost.
It causes Choking damage, almost everybody takes at least 300% damage from choking.
In tough missions carry around a Light Cannon, the ones you've been stockpiling from missions. Use it on the tough guys, it ignores 20% armor.
Purple Boom Fruits are also my favorite, they're cheap as hell to attack with (usually ~25 TU) and they blow up for a whopping 50-ish damage. No priming needed, you literally throw it at someone like its a baseball. Thats under-armor damage.
If you've tried stunning someone with a Cattle Prod and it didnt work, run away and let someone else toss them a Boom Fruit. It may kill them, but if it doesnt it will finish the job the Prod started.
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There is a guaranteed way to get early access to traders. Research Who's Who? to get Warehouse Wars. You might get zombies, I'm sure.
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I consider cattle prods & stun batons to be an utter underdog, for their crappy DPS. They reedeeming value, imo, is using Plasma resistance (allowing to sidestep Stun resistance/immunity on some enemies). Both are also useful for weak soldiers, since Baton is fast & accurate, and Cattle Prod deals very high attack damage, useful for getting through heavy armor. Handles and Fistycuffs only get similar/higher damage (but more than twice DPS) when wielded by melee monsters.
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Played another 6 months.
Air game is still grounded for lack of resources mostly manufacturing capacity. I cant keep the lights on and build air resources. Also the gals are really starting to suffer downtime issues. Firepower is really lagging behind due to a almost complete lack of rifles type weapon drops. And most the gals still dont have the firing skill to use the more inaccurate classes. Ditto snipers. More injuries as a result.
Another problem is pogroms they are just (mostly) score drains since i simply dont have the gal power with a pachyderm to handle them. But to go beyond the pachy you must do mutant alliance which enables the score penalty and a hefty one. To compensate i'm forced to do almost every other mission possible to maintain score.
I have managed to cobble the funds to start a secondary base so hopefully more detection area will get us something.
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How many brainers are you trying to support? Those suckers are expensive :o
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initially it was about 3. I'm well aware of brainer's cost. I'm doing okay but i can feel the glacial growth pace of my industry and expansion.
The problem stems from that i had very few early landed craft opportunities or other big stimulus of funds to kickstart the industry. All I could manage was small incremental increases for the first 8-12 months. I'm also taking much higher loses then in the last play-through and the replacement budget has been significant.
Other cost is that I've had to make do with a high percentage of purchased arms, mostly explosives to get things done. I mentioned the scarcity of rifles before but it's actually quite a pain. I've seen maybe 5 rifles drop total. Meanwhile I'm swimming in smg and shotguns, and pistols. I'm pretty much stuck with the RFC carbine line which is well behind the challenges i'm facing. Explosives are making up the difference but very little of those are self made as yet.
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I've yet to see guild and durathread in this game, so I have no access to the Workshop because I can't research the Runt Outfit.
You can get durathread from civilians. When you rob a savvy girl, you get durathread.
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You can get durathread from civilians. When you rob a savvy girl, you get durathread.
You are the bomb!
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Rifles are completely unnecessary early game. They may even be counter-productive. This playthrough I didn't use any long-range guns until the ESLasrifle became available, and then for several months I only used one of those. As early rifles are too low damage to defeat armor, bows sufficiently fill the long-range niche. Also, night fighting is an option which will further enhance the utility of short range weapons.
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Bows still too long-range? :)
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My last experience with them was that they were too accurate, yes. Being able to hit far away isn't so bad. You can still feel the effect of them being balanced for when there was a hitting bug, and gals had low throwing acc because you wanted to nerf grenades.
Now that it's not the case, even if the weapons have been nerfed a bit, most thrown stuff is still pretty easy to get 80+% to hit with, compared to many rifles having just 90-100% accuracy on aimed shots, which gives you 60-70% to hit on a 70 firing acc gal. They also have more shots/turn and the damage is can quickly be better than with starting guns. Doing shots * chance to hit * damage applied, bows are way better. For example:
Combat Bow: 120% of throwing, aimRange 21, dropoff 4, 30 TUs, damage 10 + 40% Throwing + 10% Strength
Rifle: 100% of Firing, 60% TUs, damage 30
Take a 60 accuracy, 60 TUs, 40 STR gal:
Combat bow: 72% to hit (60% at 24 tiles distance), 2 shots/turn, 28 damage -> 40 damage/turn expected up to 21 tiles away.
Rifle: 60% to hit, 1 shot/turn, 30 damage -> 18 damage/turn expected
You actually need to go out to 31 tiles away, where bow accuracy drops to 32%, to get the same 18 damage/turn expected (32% * 2 * 28 = 18). With the increased visibility, that's possible, but it's not often necessary and often the rifle won't have a clear line of sight past 30 tiles either. If you are 31 tiles away, you can actually use 28 TUs with the bow gal to walk 7 tiles closer instead and get back to 60% accuracy. Then you essentially get the same outcome as a rifle (60% * 1 * 28), except that next turn you're close enough to fire twice at the same 60% accuracy, or move in to the preferred range of 21 and then fire once with the better accuracy.
So for the cost of 2 damage, you fire twice as much, which means twice as much throwing XP opportunity so you'll improve faster, and more dependable results. You also have better hit chance up to 23 tiles away which is still a decently safe distance given that you have arcing shots so you can fire while the enemy rarely can fire back and terrain doesn't matter as much unless it's indoors or a forest.
And then it keeps getting more advantageous for the bowgal as she improves her throwing accuracy (again, 2x faster than the firing one), since not only will she increase her close range advantage, she'll also extend the range to which she beats the rifle gal and she'll soon beat the damage too. I'd have to double check, but I think the outfits that boost throwing are also easier to come by and more numerous than those that boost firing, and they will boost bow damage on top of accuracy compared to rifles.
Since bows keep improving with the gal, it keeps getting harder and harder to find rifles that can compete. Maybe a battle rifle with PS ammo would be better than a bow for the 60/60/40 gal I used here. However, by the time you have that rifle, the gal won't be 60/60/40 anymore, she'll likely have good enough stats that the battle rifle doesn't measure up either, etc. Using stamina has decreased the ability to spam arrows, but with 2 shots per turn, instead of having two rifle gals you can afford to go down to 1 bow gal + 1 grog gal. Except the grog gal can probably help more than 1 bow gal per turn and you get 2-3 bows to 1 grog, where you get 4-6 shots out of 3-4 gals, which still beats the 3-4 shots out of 3-4 rifles.
Rifles do better indoors and in closer quarter with auto and snap shots and since they don't take stamina so you can run around more. But then melee/pistol/smg is better than rifles. So rifles rarely have a point until you get to sniper rifles (for gals that you stubbornly kept using guns with) or LC/HC/AC/HMGs.
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I have used ball bats instead of handles early in the game, then mostly whips for a long time, followed by cattle prods, which I still use in what is probably mid to late game. I do use stun batons because they are one handed but don't like them much.
Cattle prod and stun baton do highly random damage, that's what makes them risky. The same enemy may go down from one hit or take five.
I have done organ grinders for the second time now and wholeheartedly agree. It is the most annoying mission I have done so far.
The first time around I quickly lost my parrot and attack dog to the acid rain, the second time around I nearly lost a hand with too weak armor due to acid rain and smoke. I try to find the ghoul suckers as fast as possible but this is severely hindered by the smoke and map design. The ghouls themselves are OK in my opinion, it's just that finding them takes ages. Even if you find them, you can't tell which direction they are facing.
I will see what the ghoul scientist will be able to tell me, but I guess that I will not take any future organ grinder missions. Well, maybe once I have defender armor or something for everyone.
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...Even if you find them, you can't tell which direction they are facing.
Use the "Alt" key for to get unit facings. It pops up arrows over the units to show their direction.
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Bows are an option true but at least for me have been of limited success due to mission terrain being largely forest and the production drain for ammunition being relatively higher due to smaller ammo count per batch. Longbow and combat bow ammo is 60 shots per batch. Rifle ammo is around 4x times that for average 1.8 the time. Alot of my runt hours are tied up in processing incoming prisoners and things like small engines and computers so storage overflow doesn't happen
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Use the "Alt" key for to get unit facings. It pops up arrows over the units to show their direction.
Thanks Ivan, one of the many things I don't know. It will certainly be useful.
Because we were talking annoying missions, I had a progrom yesterday in a city full with multi-story buildings and one tile corridors. And the map was filled with star gods. Constant mind control and those suckers can be hidden in any cabinet. In addition you practically have to run into them to see them.
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Thanks Ivan, one of the many things I don't know. It will certainly be useful.
It's in the Hawtkeys article, right at the top...
Is there something wrong with that article, like not being displayed? It looks fine for me.
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More then likely it's veteran player/wall o text blindness. At least some of the hotkeys are new as well as the entry itself, easy to overlook for players of older versions. Adding the multiple rather verbose pages it easy to lose details.
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More then likely it's veteran player/wall o text blindness. At least some of the hotkeys are new as well as the entry itself, easy to overlook for players of older versions. Adding the multiple rather verbose pages it easy to lose details.
Well, you're right. But then again, all unread articles are marked as such.
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I've certainly looked at that article, but you can't access it if you are in the middle of a battle AFAIK.
Plus there are some hot keys which are completely undocumented, for example for moving facilities. (I saw it in Meridians LP, tried to figure it out from the code and failed, even though I found the actual function that does the moving. Trial and Error eventually did the trick.)
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I think Meridian said at one point what the key combination is supposed to be, but that one's a bit more game-y... although I unashamedly use it all the time. For the pedia, you can access it pretty much anywhere - press "U" to bring up the menu. You can also press the right and left buttons to scroll through the entire thing one article at a time once you middle-click a weapon to bring up its article. Checking the options for the extended keyboard shortcuts is a very good idea.
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I've certainly looked at that article, but you can't access it if you are in the middle of a battle AFAIK.
Plus there are some hot keys which are completely undocumented, for example for moving facilities. (I saw it in Meridians LP, tried to figure it out from the code and failed, even though I found the actual function that does the moving. Trial and Error eventually did the trick.)
You can access it. By pressing 'U'. It's in the same damned article :)
Also, moving facilities is undocumented since I consider it cheating. Maybe if it costed you money...
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Well 2 years done and finally got the economy boost i needed from some mansion runs. Why they took 18 months after finishing the research to appear i dont know. Next stumbling block is power armor parts from lack of high tier guild ships, but plenty of juicy freighters in the mean time.
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I consider cattle prods & stun batons to be an utter underdog, for their crappy DPS.
Im worried about the portion of the damage which turns out to be lethal with handles. The prod/baton doesnt do lethal at all afaik.
How many brainers are you trying to support? Those suckers are expensive :o
personally I fill up my entire quota as fast as I can
minimum 10, if not 15
I usually have them researching 3-4 different things.
Rifle ammo is around 4x times that for average 1.8 the time
Shotguns are obscenely accurate, and the Military Shotgun AP ammo does like 50 damage or something. You would think they had a scope, reflex sight, and laser dot on them for the accuracy they've got. And you can buy the ammunition, and its available rather early on, and the ammo may even pile up from missions.
Rifles are a trap, the only use for them is auto fire at point blank range. And a Clockwork Gun is better for that (muh 40 damage). Scoped Hunting Rifle is the only exception ive seen for ranging.
My last experience with them was that they were too accurate, yes.
The arcing behavior along with obstructions really balances these weapons out. If anything the damage is rather steep for a bow (my suggestion is settling it at around 30, altering the damage bonus so that the ladies' veteran stats comes out to around that much, this being for the most destructive bows).
The use for a bow id say is a Throwing enhancer like how the various melee weapons are unarmed enhancers, so you can capitalize use of throwing skill for more than explosive stuff. It balances against firearms because bows and arrows should be dirt cheap.
Currently the combat bow and longbow are unnecessary, expensive, and even though its a game balance issue they have different ammo than the Hunting Bow - which strangely has much less capacity. Most of the damage for the bow is in the damage bonus and its better to have 16 shots per quiver, plus you use ammo you're getting in the maps and can buy so you dont need to make it.
Hunting Bow you can just bring 1 quiver pretty much and itll work, no need for bringing more ammo. Its pretty dang effective, and something just seems odd about trying to shoot somebody in plasteel armor with arrows.
DPS doesnt mean anything in tactical when you can shoot somebody Twice and walk off and let him bleed to death. Or since you know where they are, have someone else come out of nowhere and "handle" them because they're probably about to drop anyway.
All that matters in this game is how much damage you can do with one shot, because thats what will blow through armor, after that somebody can be left to bleed out. If they're really dangerous or they might kill civilians blowing them up is always an option, thats why you bring fancy weapons.
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I found the stamina drain of bows prohibitive, especially for the stronger bows. Yes, you can drink beer or whatever, but it's annoying and costs time.
I do play with relatively small teams, it certainly is less of an issue if you go in with 20 people.
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Im worried about the portion of the damage which turns out to be lethal with handles. The prod/baton doesnt do lethal at all afaik.
The handle won't kill anyone who wasn't already heavily wounded.
With things like ball bats, bone clubs and anything with a stun damage multiplier though, overkill is such an issue that they aren't worth using (unless I simply can't fit anything but fisticuffs in a gal's inventory)
Rifles are a trap, the only use for them is auto fire at point blank range. And a Clockwork Gun is better for that (muh 40 damage). Scoped Hunting Rifle is the only exception ive seen for ranging.
How? At 33, the damage is still too low to compete with bows. The scoped rifle might let a gal with crap accuracy hit things, but it won't help her do any damage against enemies that actually pose a threat.
I found the stamina drain of bows prohibitive, especially for the stronger bows.
Stamina stops being an issue once the gals get higher stats, especially if you put them in stamina boosting clothes.
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I'll agree that rifle damage is poor for the vast majority of them but rifles fill a need, namely firing training. Shotguns behave oddly in terms of exp gain(only first pellet checked) and i dont think that issue has been solved. At least for me shotguns also have competition from sprinting to melee. TU grow faster and more easily then firing early game. High TU gals benefit more from melee's fixed costs. Also Melee has very powerful scaling options from very early research. Stone Hatchet for example is survival tech and 125% accuracy 12 TU and 40 base dmg with 2 scaling stats.
I will grant that with later tech/veteran gals shotguns are quite a bit more flexible then one would assume but before you get there their engagement radius is out performed by melee blitzing.
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Different bows using different arrows is reasonable and logical. You can't use an arrow built for a short bow with a longbow, for example, the arrows are just too short, first of all. Second point is using a bow with a very powerful draw needs arrows that are built around surviving the shot.
On the using bows against people in futuristic armor, I figure all but the one bow you buy are probably built around the large frame of the Uber, It's not quite the same scale, but I imagine the bows used in Avatar, even wearing heavy armor, you're gonna feel that.
Musket weapons now act like they have more armor than they actually do, so it's still useful, but is not AP.
I usually have good early luck with the homefront rifle, though I wouldn't attempt to use it on someone with actual armor.
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I still use the battle rifle on easy missions. For firing training I found that the minigun gives more points than single shot thingies.
But I prefer melee. My strongest fighter atm is a gal in a swiftsuit wielding a bardiche. Just yesterday she took apart a tank two hits. That's a can opener. The bardiche just takes a lot of TUs (18), maybe I'll replace it with something else, but all other strong melee weapons I have a single handed. Not sure there is such a thing as a two-hand power bonus...
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Welp now late october year 3 and i think i lose. Siberia base decimated my gals and equipment stocks. Armor replacement will take 3.5 months and i have to make do with mostly raw gal replacements. Meanwhile there are sway government missions ongoing on 4 continents and the shutoff tech is 5 techs away. And i lost my manufacturing base to pure grey robe stargod base attack. Net loses this month total about 23.7 million and 8 months of base building.
So fair warning Siberia base is MUCH more difficult then it used to be. Stormtoopers and Supersoldiers have 20 Nightvision and 60% thermal. Flat and minimal exterior terrain means your essentially pinned inside your landing craft for the duration, Unless the stairs down are close. And at least in my case i had 60ish foes in a 4 map tile layout(same size as runabout maps) on difficulty 2. Including 7 tanks. It was an epic battle that i greatly enjoyed playing to the end. But i do feel it is overtuned for where lies in the tech progress
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Siberia is that hard since it isn't mandatory to finish the game.
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Unless I'm mistaken, you also don't have to go as soon as it spawns, so you can prepare more if needed. And it'll keep spawning so you can go, decide the layout isn't good, take off again and try again next time, assuming it's not a static map.
The enemies with thermal vision are a pain but it's nice to play without over smoking some times.
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After a few organ grinder missions I gotta agree with what others have said: too much smoke, too much acid rain damage.
If the acid rain damage only discouraged gals from going on the mission with exposed skin, that's one thing, but when even green and blue armor gets eaten through in a few turns then that's getting silly.
Also, the manacles requiring both 100% of TU's AND two hands free makes these really hard to use.
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Side content position is valid. But i still feel its a bit over the top. I only won because i abused door and LOS mechanics. More then 3 times the density of strong enemies(power armor, terror units, etc) then pogroms in less space....
Nothing wrong with the enemy have excellent vision but that plus density on tiny flat map leaves no options but mechanics abuse, or a straight standup brawl which runs counter to the entire game to this point. Now i grant that i may have had an outlier in the spawns types but the density won't change much. Keep in mind the density increase for higher difficulties. So what 80-90 dudes on 4 and like 100 dudes on 5? On smallest map size? Seems absurd to me.
After a few organ grinder missions I gotta agree with what others have said: too much smoke, too much acid rain damage.
If the acid rain damage only discouraged gals from going on the mission with exposed skin, that's one thing, but when even green and blue armor gets eaten through in a few turns then that's getting silly.
Also, the manacles requiring both 100% of TU's AND two hands free makes these really hard to use.
Acid and smoke resistance is the key here not armor thickness. Smokey armor or dont go. I would bet money that was the design.
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Heavy tac armor has smoke resistance already, and 80% chem vs 70% chem damage for smokey. My tac armor gals still started taking damage after five turns- at the same time as the gals who didn't have helmets. I don't see how smokey helps.
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It gives you longer duration once the armor has worn out. Resistance still functions with 0 armor. You will absolutely run out of armor completing an organ grinder run irregardless of what you wear because of chem armor stripping mechanic. Stripping is a percentage of damage caused after resistance. Not final damage to hp. More resistance serves better for longer. Smokey is also relatively sooner and cheaper then H tac or defender tier. Organ grinders dont offer particularly high rewards after you managed the ghoul captures for tech. Doing a few early and then ignoring them seems the best use to me.
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Siberia is perfectly doable with 12-strong+ squad, equipped with mid-late game tech. The solution to the number of enemies (which can reach 68 on the Jack Sparrow, but will be around 40 on John Silver - a third of them very weak, too) is the right amount of firepower to destroy/disable closest enemies instantly, and armor to withstand every weapon that isn't Tank, Baby Nuke or Supersoldier. If you can't do it, you're too weak yet to get endless lasers which are headache-savers.
As for the Organ Grinder, the lure is not monetary, there are Ghoul captures, slaves and most importantly, Life Support Systems to be won (if you need them). If the reward was too much, the player would feel missing out by not doing it. The key to this mission is speed and cold blood. If you finish it in 12-ish turns, you won't take much damage even with completely wrong armor (like Chainmail). Naturally the hospital downtime is high after such a mission, but not if you already managed to get Sickbay and Surgery. If you use Smokeys and well-trained squad, it's merely challenging IMO. It is supposed to be on the high end of the scale as well.
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Well after much consideration on my response I'm gonna to leave it at i respect, but disagree with the design choice. It is optional content and unless something changes, ill will mostly ignore it for future playthroughs. Nothing it provides is worth the cost/risk until late game, which by then tech negates much of the reward value. Maybe if space missions(energy gun limitation) had a higher difficulty or lasers where better in a broader range of land combat. The craft weapons are good but most of the lifting in the air goes to missiles due to shielding and lower risk from higher alpha. Laser and plasma base defenses.... meh
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Some of the laser weapons (the laser HMG type thing especially) are pretty useful. And the laser-HMG thing is awesome against mercs too as a way to reliably drop all but the bersekers in one salvo at relatively long ranges. They're also the perfect weapons to give to teams tasked with facing "easy" enemies as you progress.
As for craft weapons, lasers suck indeed. They're pretty much only good for dropping civilian/faction non-military crafts since they are low damage, high RoF and high ammo count weapons. They used to be really good and worth the investment in parts, but not anymore.. Hopefully there are tweaks coming up for shields as a recharging HP buffer instead of flat damage reduction that will make lasers relevant again.
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Whether it's 'worth it' or not, I'm looking forward to facing some tough missions where really big guns are helpful (such as the update Siberia). It's good to have a brutal bloodbath every so often to spice things up. Actually, I like what Dioxine said about organ grinders (and I think the same applies to any very hard mission):
If the reward was too much, the player would feel missing out by not doing it.
I think it's really good for the game to have challenging and varied missions (for many reasons), but it's also important that players aren't pressured into doing tedious / gimmicky tactics to progress in the game. So in that sense, it's probably good if the really difficult missions are not "worth it" from a risk & reward point of view. Because if they were low-risk enough to be worth it, then they wouldn't be performing their role as 'really difficult missions', and if they were worth it by being high-reward, then it would push players into doing things that they might not enjoy.
On my previous playthrough, I cleared Siberia with long-range, super-powerful seduction skills through the smoke. The super soldiers were completely helpless vs my seductress suited gals... But this time around, the seductress outfit and the smoke are both far weaker; so I'm looking forward to a big weapon shoot-out challenge.
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One more thing. For missions that are designed as optional challenging extras, I think it's a good idea if the 'pedia text signalled to the player that they should expect high-risk.
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Whether Siberia is hard or not depends. I was lucky the first time around and had no chance the second time it popped up. For Meridian, Siberia was easy, but he was much better equipped, had an arsenal of baby nukes, heavy plasmas to destroy tanks in one salvo and used cheesy bow tactics to kill everything in the vicinity without stepping out of the craft.
I knew that this mission was somewhat special, but I had no idea it was so hard and optional.
My guess would have been that it is essential to the main story.
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For Meridian, Siberia was easy, but he was much better equipped, had an arsenal of baby nukes, heavy plasmas to destroy tanks in one salvo and used cheesy bow tactics to kill everything in the vicinity without stepping out of the craft.
That's what I mean by enough firepower.
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That's what I mean by enough firepower.
And the same reason i think its not worth the effort. If your fielding hvy plasma and baby nukes to "earn" laser tech your going backwards. The singular advantage of the nuclear lasers(at the moment) is weight/inventory space. But the moment you have training facilities weight is a non issue. And its a very small margin of primary weapons that need more then one reload in a battle. Shotguns mostly but even then the higher tech ones have generous clips for the damage potential.
The base defenses tech you get are only of middle quality, being neither the most accurate nor particularly efficient in terms of tile to firepower ratio.
Missiles are doing the lifting in air combat because hey damage reduction makes alot of the guns really poor against targets gunship or above.
Can anyone make a case for this being worth the trip at plasma tech besides Dioxine?
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They're meant to deal with weaker enemies without the hassle/cost associated with all guns that use ammo; with the Battle Laser and laser gatling, they're not that highly inferior to plasma, either. You do Siberia once, you save a lot of maintenance later. If that's silly, well, my bad. But ammo manufacturing gets tiring at some point.
Also, neither the laser defense nor laser craft weapons are dependant on Russian Files.
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Laser craft weapons do not get a 1/3 Bonus for damage reduction.
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I don't believe i ever stated laser defenses. At no point did i ever mean more then the one locked type, plasma.
Craft BEAM LASER is dependent.
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My bad, sorry. Didn't check the code. Plasma Defense and Beam Laser are dependent. Beam laser probably needs a buff.
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I'll second that buff, 14 per shot for a hvy slot is....something. Considering ufo armor doubly so.
Even the Hvy plasma craft weapon isn't in a top tier spot. It takes 4 minutes longer to fully unload then an obliterator cannon for only 25% greater maximum potential dmg, and suffers more from armor. 5% better accuracy and 5km longer range(for plasma) is not much of an edge when pilots and craft bonuses are considered.