From the Ashes META

[Finnik]

This tread is created for players to share their insights, tips and efficient tactics.
Because FtA has a lot of new mechanics, I think it would be useful not only for players, who want to improve their performance or stuck with a problem, but also for me to take those insights into account for making better game balance!

[Skybreaker]

Going to go right ahead and ask how do you actually play this?

Tried it for a couple of months and I am completely lost.

First off overview says I have 532k funding, my base maintenance is 259k, I end the month with 29k, meaning I should have 276k at the start of a new month, but instead I have -230k. Seems like you are not getting any funding, which I shall assume is a bug.

Second, there are almost no missions and the ones I got had worthless rewards. I had base defence and 2 resistance missions in all. One resistance was to save 1 soldier from infinite zombies, the reward was 1000 bucks and a soldier, the other resistance was crazy nightvision guys with grenade launchers or whatever, just wiped me turn 1.
I tried covert missions, but they just fail and the squad is either wiped or runs away, both outcomes being worthless. I managed to succeed in one, got data vault and not much else, went to continue that chain, failed, and the followup mission disappeared.

Third, what do classes actually do? They require an absurd amount of time to train and get only minor stat boosts, unless I am missing something big here.

Any help would be useful.

[Finnik]

First off overview says I have 532k funding, my base maintenance is 259k, I end the month with 29k, meaning I should have 276k at the start of a new month, but instead I have -230k. Seems like you are not getting any funding, which I shall assume is a bug.

Sorry, that seems to be a  bug we missed with testing. This state does not provide any useful info, it would be replaced with different function. Info it shows irrelevant for gameplay, actual funding is always 0 per month.

Going to go right ahead and ask how do you actually play this?
Second, there are almost no missions and the ones I got had worthless rewards. I had base defence and 2 resistance missions in all. One resistance was to save 1 soldier from infinite zombies, the reward was 1000 bucks and a soldier, the other resistance was crazy nightvision guys with grenade launchers or whatever, just wiped me turn 1.
I tried covert missions, but they just fail and the squad is either wiped or runs away, both outcomes being worthless. I managed to succeed in one, got data vault and not much else, went to continue that chain, failed, and the followup mission disappeared.

Resistance missions are usually pretty hard, and the main reward for it is reputation. Also, there are a lot of items to loot on that maps, not only items in resistance agent's backpack. Looks strange you got only that missions, not a word about monsters and cultists...
Do you consider what soldier stats and loadout you're taking for the operation? I mean, there are numerous of ways to significantly increase odds. When I tested it, I managed to had "Good" odds for the most operations...

Third, what do classes actually do? They require an absurd amount of time to train and get only minor stat boosts, unless I am missing something big here.

You do. Stat increase is just a minor addition, I am considering even to hide it at all, as they take all player's attention. The most important are passive perks' soldier would get, and their mechanics are described in training state. I do not show exact numbers of those mechanics, it's a design decision.

[Skybreaker]

Sorry, that seems to be a  bug we missed with testing. This state does not provide any useful info, it would be replaced with different function. Info it shows irrelevant for gameplay, actual funding is always 0 per month.

Ah, I see.

You do. Stat increase is just a minor addition, I am considering even to hide it at all, as they take all player's attention. The most important are passive perks' soldier would get, and their mechanics are described in training state. I do not show exact numbers of those mechanics, it's a design decision.

Ah, I saw the text, but thought it was only lore. Tbf stats are the only things I do look at, and mostly just firing and str as I always go for heaviest armor + rifle or sniper rifle with a few melees here and there. Used to do grenades back in the final mod pack, but after I realized the answer to literally everything in the game is hot potato grenades or high ex I stopped using them altogether in every mod since then, including smokes. Pretty sure I haven't used a single grenade for the past 3000 hours of X-com I have done over the years. I suppose that falls under self imposed challenge category and might be something this mod doesn't support.

I eventually got monster and cultists popups, but no missions from them yet. Plus I do wonder what happens if I say no to those popups? I said no to Osprey, and the only thing it appears to have done is gave me a ufopedia entry and just closed off that chain, meaning that saying no to those popups has no apparent benefits at all. I do understand the coverts have modifiable chances now, since the first time I tried them I had only squaddies and they only got me poor I concluded that's how it is and left them to sit untested. In Xcom 2 I only sent rookies to do covert ops, so I suppose I wrongly expected them to be a rookie training tool in this mod as well. After I put in a few sergeants things changed, tho getting to sergeants is a hell of its own with how extremely easily the troops get mowed down.
Most of the coverts also bugged out, which I realized far too late. Out of the 5 I attempted, two got bugged out. Time slowed to 5 seconds, no popup, days of operation stuck on 18 and 19 respectively even when I tried to just move time forward 3 months to see if they will complete. Both had 5 soldiers on them, while other ops which didn't bug out had 4. Small sample size, but that is a 100% of bugged coverts with 5 soldiers on them.
Edit: Tested on a new game with 5 soldiers, and all the other combinations and couldn't get the same bug to occur. Went back in the old game saves to trace where it happened, and it seems to have happened in the M.I.B. Area Survey on a specific loss outcome, not the Success one and not the ambush one.

 All of that combined means I have to start a new game next time I get enough time to try it out, as this run is both broken from bugs and broken from me overspending money and getting into a debt spiral with no way out.

[Finnik]

Ah, I saw the text, but thought it was only lore. Tbf stats are the only things I do look at, and mostly just firing and str as I always go for heaviest armor + rifle or sniper rifle with a few melees here and there.

That's not METa at all =) Notice that chances for operation are affected with items you are taking, it's category, Concealable and Silent properties are taken into account. Basically, everything that I can imagine is taken into account, even combined squad composition.

I eventually got monster and cultists popups, but no missions from them yet. Plus I do wonder what happens if I say no to those popups? I said no to Osprey, and the only thing it appears to have done is gave me a ufopedia entry and just closed off that chain, meaning that saying no to those popups has no apparent benefits at all. I do understand the coverts have modifiable chances now, since the first time I tried them I had only squaddies and they only got me poor I concluded that's how it is and left them to sit untested.

No means no, I'm trying to give you as much info as you need to make a proper decision (without breaking the immersion and not using metagame info), it's up to you to define the benefits of your choice.


Funding is an issue currently, and I am already working on solutions to it. Although, you are able to be funding positive with clever playing.

[Skybreaker]

Second run went much better. Since my playstyle is rifles I put everyone into combat training and specced them into snipers as they were able to, with the addition of Unarmed for close combat. Focused on extra Engineers as soon as possible, had them on chems until Workshop became available, then rushed it and swapped them to combat shield + scrap. Did enough to keep me going until I managed to get a Military convoy, which gave me enough equipment and funding to barely manage until the end. Sold everything except Rifles, corpses, personel and the starting dropship.  Skipped monsters and Osprey, as such nothing much happened in the game.

As of now my thoughts are that most things don't have a place. Score doesn't provide any benefits. Loyalty is basically a binary check of if 0 you die, if >0 you're fine. Resistance being neutral or friendly impacted nothing at all since I didn't really buy much from them, just the Engineers and some troops. Missions don't really provide benefits worth the risks, so I pretty much just went on resistance missions, tested turn 1 what is there, then just hightailed it out of there. Unless there were some soldiers or scientists to save, them I sprinted to my ship asap since the disks actually gave some money. Convoys and the data vault were the only things worth doing.

As is now the mod feels like it obfuscates a lot of mechanics needed for informed play, while being very punishing with very little rewards to be gained. Of course those are just initial impressions, I'll definitely give it another whirl in a year or two to see where it's at then.

Attaching the post game screenshots, hopefully they're of some use to you.

[Finnik]

Thanks for feedback =) Actually, army convoy attack mission spawn without high reputation is a bug, intended behavior is it spawned on honored reputation. High reputation actually give a lot more benefits rather than only that mission. For example, it gives you clues about MIB, as there would be a new logic in the next release when after some time MIB would strike your base unless you destroy their HQ.
I assume, on your playthrough you did not assault it, right?

Also, I will make more monster missions and other stuff like that where you spend clips without looting it in order to make Resistance trading more valuable.

Currently, I'm making a big feature, after it's done I will have a lot of things to rebalance, so I will also fix balance issues reported here, in main tread and in Discord.

[Bonakva]

You do. Stat increase is just a minor addition, I am considering even to hide it at all, as they take all player's attention. The most important are passive perks' soldier would get, and their mechanics are described in training state. I do not show exact numbers of those mechanics, it's a design decision.

Passive skills?
Whoa... Can I see in the code what they do?

Unexpectedly, looked up the code.
I didn't even know perks were so cool. The training is very useful judging by the description of the perks

[Finnik]

Passive skills?
Whoa... Can I see in the code what they do?

Unexpectedly, looked up the code.
I didn't even know perks were so cool. The training is very useful judging by the description of the perks

 

[Skybreaker]

I assume, on your playthrough you did not assault it, right?

Correct. I didn't even get a single live MIB the whole playthrough. I capped the commander in the first mission. I took some live military personnel from the covert op where you have to steal an item, however, they died with the no alien containment message.

[Finnik]

There would be new interesting mechanics about that in the next release

[Emru]

Is there anything going/anything playing? Or nobody cares about forums and sits on some kind of IRC?

[Finnik]

I care =)

Guess, before full release there will be not much attention to the project.