Beginner's difficulty setting question

[Abyss]

Lol, no. Twenty is plenty, forty is too much.

Oh, that must be not your case. This is comment for CHADs who don't reload turn every time their sniper misses and gets reaction-bullet into the head.

Look: 180 are recruited, 80 are lost by month 15. And these 100 will turn into fried chicken ASA actual alien invasion will start. Even though it's Brutal OXCE gameplay, I clearly remember having significant causalities vs ironman superhuman vanilla AI. Just because you don't know will this little green guy throw you a dynamite or not.

And then, you always have to have second/third good crew just in case, while rookies still training
 

[minimen]

...

Wow, such an advanced strategy. I'm pretty sure the game is more interesting when every mistake counts and every action is final.

[Stone Lake]

This is comment for CHADs who don't reload turn every time their sniper misses and gets reaction-bullet into the head.

My comment is for CHADs that can play without losses in the first place. You literally reload the autosave if something goes wrong in your videos.

Look: 180 are recruited, 80 are lost by month 15.

Is that an army of 100, though? Does that include base defense rookies, dogs and all that stuff? I mean 20-40 Helix Knight agents (or in-training) that you actually send on missions.

With Kitsune you can roll 2 HWPs / 7 agent team. With Ironfist that's 2 HWPs / 10 agents or 3 HWPs / 6 agents. I had 40 agents four campaigns, two of those SH / IM. And it's too much each time. Especially now, with insanely OP spartans on the roll.

And these 100 will turn into fried chicken ASA actual alien invasion will start.

How? That's (unpopular opinion) literally the easiest part of the game with all the tech you can have. Are you using same lazy "firing squad" against aliens or something?

[Juku121]

Are you using same lazy "firing squad" against aliens or something?

He seems to be using BAI, which is probably somewhat harder than SH, though likely not Ironman. Well, depending on whether the AI works with the battle situation, since XCF seems to have fights that differ quite a bit from Xilmi's primary test battles.

[Abyss]

My comment is for CHADs that can play without losses in the first place. You literally reload the autosave if something goes wrong in your videos.

Yeah, I reload quite a lot when see something is unfair. Like, forgetting that downed/killed agent had 3 pre-primed proxy grenades in inventory. In videos I reloaded for different reasons, adjusting options. BTW Xilmi removed the mistake-probability and now it's quite plain fight vs better AI, so videos are not representative anymore.

The thing is, current agent training model makes it impossible to make it even through 2 years with casualities more than 60-70% overall (which means 20-25% by mission). 

Is that an army of 100, though? Does that include base defense rookies, dogs and all that stuff? I mean 20-40 Helix Knight agents (or in-training) that you actually send on missions.

That's the point beyond message! To get 30+ consistent crew you have to train 3x amount, and also have base-defense human meat & dogs.
In my particular case, 83 agents, 72 lost. Dogs do not count in this tab. No meat yet, all are in training for covering casualities in future. Tight economy makes it impossible to get more agents right now, and that's bad, because there will be much less zombie/creeps missions in the future. Seriously considering to keep syndicate monsters spawn even on year 3.

Are you using same lazy "firing squad" against aliens or something?

I wish that was possible. See, lazyness of brainpower is a result of sameness of processes. Once you got used to optimal strategy in allocation/gathering of "a resource", your brain will tend to be lazy. Change things and your strategy adapts, but tends to find best energy-effective solution in terms of reward/efforts.
So, nothing bad about firing squad - it was vanilla OXCE sort of instrument to deal with 70% of missions.

BAI uses different mechanics, there is no sniper-spotter mechanism as we knew it for 3 last years or so. Instead, when your agent reaction fires on enemy's turn, it becomes revealed, no matter of darkness, camo, smoke etc. And gets suppressed from various parts of the map, including some amounts of grenades.
What I do like, is that BAI mechanic doesn't cheat with highlighting your units for 2-5 turns no matter where they are. 

[Juku121]

Instead, when your agent reaction fires on enemy's turn, it becomes revealed, no matter of darkness, camo, smoke etc.

Really? I thought enemies just remembered where the fire came from, and bombarded probable agent locations if no better targets presented themselves.

[psavola]

Really? I thought enemies just remembered where the fire came from, and bombarded probable agent locations if no better targets presented themselves.

If you reaction fire and hit after pressing end-turn, you definitely get sniper/spotter love immediately. Which is why it is often vital to ensure that you don't do any reaction firing unless you want to (e.g. intentionally sit in the smoke and not see anyone).

I suppose this will come only after the reaction fire has hit someone, and depending on the enemy movement order, you might not get "backfiring" from all the snipers that you would have got if you had shot spotters on your own turn. I have neither investigated whether "spotter: 1" will in this instance only mean the enemy sniping on its turn; I suppose so (i.e. the spotting based on reaction fire on enemy turn would not carry over to the next enemy turn with spotter=1).

[Juku121]

snipers spotters

I thought BAI had done away with sniper/spotter completely, and it's main feature was a sophisticated system of sniping and spotting for every enemy?

If you get return fire for reaction shots, that doesn't mean you've been revealed, just your current position. This distinction is academic until your next turn, but very much relevant then. Or is it not so?

[psavola]

I don't think it's useful to discuss BAI in this thread. (Even if Abyss is playing with it, and I think usually so that some portion of enemies is controlled by vanilla-AI and some portion by BAI).

[Abyss]

I don't think it's useful to discuss BAI in this thread. (Even if Abyss is playing with it, and I think usually so that some portion of enemies is controlled by vanilla-AI and some portion by BAI).

Xilmi confirmed that no vanilla AI-controlled enemies were on the mission which I recorded previously. So, whole my assumption was wrong. All were BAI, but some BAI were tuned one-turn-dumb specially, statistically random. This lead to mine relatively easy one-by-one sniping of enemies, as if it was played vs kind of vanilla AI in terms of overall difficulty.
Now, it's all different, and not abusable anymore. Xilmi removed this function once and for all, because "this way BAI does not perform on the intended way". Sad.

I guess, if there were more players in Brutal AI subforum, voting for somewhat reduction of overall sweatness of BAI, Xilmi would have to, at least, consider putting back to options the making enemies little bit more making mistakes.

If you get return fire for reaction shots, that doesn't mean you've been revealed, just your current position. This distinction is academic until your next turn, but very much relevant then. Or is it not so?

It's not sniper-spotter by means of OXCE. BAI doesn't see the unit itself, but knows exact firing position. This is quite enough to both explore you, explode you or rain you head with no-LoS lead.
And now, it even can verify enemies location by accidentally bullet-hitting (when wounding) someone beyond the target. I suggested the "bullet-scanner" (aka BS) mechanism, Xilmi didn't accept the whole part, but partially this is it.   

See?
They watch the smoke cloud and either lurk beyond the corners, waiting for you to come out, or rush you with flamethrowers, dynamite and everything else possible.

[Chuckebaby]

Raise an army of 100 in two years.

A debatable topic for sure.
20 great soldiers are way better than 100 average soldiers. But expendable bodies are a must in this game so I can respect that.
It's in the beginning game were expendable bodies hurt most (cost wise=30,000 a piece).

[PPQ]

My advice is to start the game at the difficulty you usually play XCOM and than dynamically change it up or down by editing your save file if the challenge proves to be too much or too little to your taste. That's what I do.

[Empiro]

For beginners (or even veterans), I recommend the limit TUs on first turn mod. I think the hardest and most frustrating part of the mod is how in many missions you basically start out surrounded. It was always a big source of frustration for me, and not getting trounced on the very first turn has mad the mod much more enjoyable.