What is your playstyle for this mod?

[nrafield]

So since there did not seem to be a thread for doing this, I had felt like making one to share my experiences and tactics.

-Early game I feel (from first month) shotguns are king. While not very good for long distances, initially, neither are muskets. The difference between high and low accuracy is readily apparent - a gal with high accuracy can afford to make a shot pretty far - and if one of the pellets hits it's already as powerful as a single shot from any other weapon, except you are more likely to land multiples of them at once for the same cost. The pellets also mean the shotguns are excellent to make autoshots with - they are considerably worse than vanilla with pretty much any other weapon unless you are point blank - but a gal with high accuracy and a shotgun that can autoshot can basically deal extreme damage to zombies while ALSO being in the safe distance.

I DO NOT like bows. Don't see why so many people like them, I personally find various things obstructing the arc of fire WAY too often to justify using them. Not to mention, they only seem to be effective against very early enemies. They are also particularly awful against Osiron Security and Mechtoids - units which you will 100% have to deal with if you assault any Academy ship or Reticulan ship. Actually, there aren't many things that can deal with them at all besides close combat - in fact literally the only reliable option I found is to smack them with a hammer.

I do not use smoke. I simply do not understand how to use it properly. Especially with how Intelligence works - it makes me simply too afraid to think that enemies may be able to see me for some turns regardless of what I do, but I may not see them. Better just to take cover to be sure.

Hammer is my favorite weapon. You get it right off the bat, and it remains effective till pretty much the end of the game. The best part about it is that you are also likely to actually knock out the armored enemies this way instead of killing them - very handy when you want a Mechtoid, as literally nothing else will work.

Aside from hammer, my favorite weapons early game are:ALL the Shotguns, Ol' Carbine, Blackmarch Pistol, Black powder bombs and stick grenades.

I find it's necessary to start preparing potential pilots right off the bat. Bravery seems to be actually the most important stat for pilots - not only it means your craft will be able to close in faster to deliver airballs, but it also leaves less enemy for the enemy craft to retreat, which isn't that uncommon. So I tend to pick a gal with highest accuracy or two, strip them of all armor and do tons of things to lower their morale on easy missions - whether it's holding the banner, being set on fire, or taking combat drugs. In the end all's worth it if they can train their bravery.

For new gals I usually put them in swimsuits  - the terminal lack of stamina seems to plague quite a few of new recruits. If your max stamina is under 50, you will struggle getting literally anywhere in the battle. This also makes them sort of expendable. But at least some of them wind up getting good and graduating into a better outfit so it allows me to screen them while keeping them useful!

By midgame, I prepare to dominate the airgame. As I build a ton of bases just to manufacture stuff and advanced radar range, I am faced with the fact that sooner or later I am going to face the obligatory monthly crackdown, and if I don't take appropriate measures, at least one of them will eventually wind up finding one of my weakly defended bases and destroying it. Since I prefer to build bases for radar coverage, it means that by this point I've made sure the entire world is covered by base radars, which might not be the best thing. So I start building up the airforce. Hellerium appears to have become REALLY scarce compared to previous versions - but now we have the Scarab, which runs of batteries, and it seems marvellous for shooting down the enemy vessels they send after you. Although in some cases you shooting down one means they immediately send another, larger one, and another one after that.

I wind up transitioning mostly to explosives:Regrettably, a lot of ranged weapons you can unlock still don't pack enough wallop against such enemies.  Mortar, Assault Cannon with Superconductive cannonballs, Quad Launcher = all excellent. Of manufacturable weapons at this point I believe the boarding gun and it's upgrades to be some of the most efficient damage dealers out of which you can easily manufacture. Although the chem  ammo is a great help for that - Blunderbuss is probably the best since you can autoshot it.


-Out of enemies I found Bandits are surprisingly dangerous. Possibly actually the most dangerous and unrewarding of early game enemies as you will mostly meet them during a pogrom, they are unrewarding to capture, blood hounds and armored cars can easily wreck your gals, and ghouls use chem ammo. General Operators are basically walking 20000$ cheques waiting to be stunned and redeemed, and Academicians aren't very dangerous either, although Osiron Security and drones are much more of a pain to get rid of than Guild Security. Humanists soldiers are abouts as strong as GO's. Reticulans can be dealt with as long as you have a way to dispatch the Mechtoids. Spartans aren't very dangerous, although some heavy troopers carry guns that will instantly kill your strongest gals if you aren't careful. And mercenaries are hardly ever worth messing with...

[Solarius Scorch]

I really like your approach. It's not 100% the same as mine (well, hard to say now, considering I haven't played seriously for quite some time), but it looks really fun! As opposite to the "efficient but anal" methods that are too prevalent for my taste.

[legionof1]

Bow have unfortunately suffered from nerfs of circumstance. They are functionally snipers with arcing fire but much easier to train and be effective with with subpar stats. However because of the reduction in gal numbers for much of the early game there is much less room for support fire units. On top of this the vision changes most notably thermal vision has limited the validity of support weapons across the board. While smoke camping was a bad thing in general the player being at a vision disadvantage for nearly the whole of the tech tree makes it extra bad for low mobility support units. 

I favor a mix of melee and heavy weapons with copious grenades. Aside from chem rounds i dont find shotguns particularly attractive after the first month or 2. the foes you can reliably affect with a shotgun generally don't have the reaction score to pose a threat to a charge across a shotguns effective range.

Mercs are very difficult right now between the vision deficit and how poorly most weapons match up against them aside from plasma. Mercs having the combination of top tier camo, night vision and thermal in the same package is something the player can never match. The armors that have the vision dont have camo or vice versa. Ghost armor is an exception but is codex limited and not particularly good for the necessary captures towards tech and game completion. I rate current mercs as hard as the old LOS hack version of stargods.     

[nrafield]

Bow have unfortunately suffered from nerfs of circumstance. They are functionally snipers with arcing fire but much easier to train and be effective with with subpar stats. However because of the reduction in gal numbers for much of the early game there is much less room for support fire units. On top of this the vision changes most notably thermal vision has limited the validity of support weapons across the board. While smoke camping was a bad thing in general the player being at a vision disadvantage for nearly the whole of the tech tree makes it extra bad for low mobility support units. 

I favor a mix of melee and heavy weapons with copious grenades. Aside from chem rounds i dont find shotguns particularly attractive after the first month or 2. the foes you can reliably affect with a shotgun generally don't have the reaction score to pose a threat to a charge across a shotguns effective range.

Mercs are very difficult right now between the vision deficit and how poorly most weapons match up against them aside from plasma. Mercs having the combination of top tier camo, night vision and thermal in the same package is something the player can never match. The armors that have the vision dont have camo or vice versa. Ghost armor is an exception but is codex limited and not particularly good for the necessary captures towards tech and game completion. I rate current mercs as hard as the old LOS hack version of stargods.   

The mercenaries are literally the hardest faction to fight against in the mod right now, possibly barring a Star Gods crackdown.  But during ship assault, the Star Gods are much easier to handle - Waspites can be destroyed in one black powder bomb or even a stick grenade while Cyclopses do basically no damage, Silacoids have no time units, and Guardians are too few to make a significant difference. At this point, if I see Mercenaries on a Pogrom, I immediately retreat, it is 100% not worth it.

Also, it seems there is A LOT less Mercenary Soldiers than Commandos overall.  What's up with that?

[Martin]

Star Gods sometimes come with real firesupport (guardians and sectopods) instead of their usual trash and good luck with those.

[legionof1]

The commando issue at least partly has to with the ships mercs use. Soldier are the factions equivalent of G.Os and as such very few are found on the larger ships that make up the bulk of merc craft a player ecounters. Commandos on the other hand are equivalent to guild security and are abundant on large ships.

In broad terms each enemy craft has a deployment table with x number of given "ranks" of unit. Each faction has units assigned to that "rank". 

[Martin]

Wouldn't that be easy to fix by creating mercenary specific copy of the craft and giving it different deployment table?

[legionof1]

Simple sorta but i suspect its more mechanically time consuming then the broad outline i stated. Also i suspect not vastly rewarding for the time involved.

[BetaSpectre]

I normally just use rifles(slowly working towards Euro lasguns, those can last endgame), shoot then duck back into cover. For high reaction enemies like mercs, or star gods though direct line of sight is really bad.

You'll want some aye phone or sensor things.
Then lob grenades or artillery in an arc at em from safety.

Though some games I don't even bother, sending my expendibles or parrots to bum rush, find the location then boom.

Sometimes I prime two nades and just let a guy stand next to em.

[MAX BAX]

First of all, I look at my soldiers 1-3 missions: appearance, skills, "stage persona". Then I give them a new name, REAL name. Alias.

Finally, weapons and action style is selected in accordance with this image.

So, what I have.

METEORA, the barbaric queen.
Game Style: illegitimate daughter of Conan and Zena
Humongous strength, barbaric armor, primitive melee weapons only and mistress rank. Why not?

VIETNAM
In the beginning, ship arrived on the first pogrom, where the SPARTANS already have been. So, militarists staged a girls with REAL Vietnam. By the way, there were even a palm trees. So while the girls patched wounds at airbus, our heroine was able to give the Spartans fight back, kill some and even capture a machine gun.

Guerilla armor, grenade launcher/rifle/grenades. Combat style... hmm... usually it turns to something like Nightwish - "10th man down" typical fan music video.

COMMANDO
Favorite dagger + tac armor + reactions + maximum time units.

RAMBO
Like Commando, but with bow and camo paint.

NUKEM
Heavy pistol + grenade launcher or demolition charges. Riot police pipe bombs is fine too.

TOUCHE
For some reason I decided that she was a French.
Style: terrible mixture of parkour, fitness and fencing
Gym suit, rapier and many grenades.

ARNIE
Adventurer armor, simple shotguns at close combat and grenade launcher at large distances.

PRIMAL
She wears rags and uses the most simple weapons like combat sticks. Interesting, but too many "save-load" iterations.
___

Also, it would be interesting to try something like combat bard with chemical bagpipes, but there are very few ammunition for this type of weapon.

[nrafield]

Ah yes, I have to say that save & reloading is a curse that was plaguing me for a long time when I lose my favorite soldier or somehow accidentally fire a mortar or leave an explosive satchel lying around in my aircraft. But I am trying to crack down on it. I still save at the beginning of each mission, (never know when everyone on it might turn out immune to all your weapons and you realize too late you have to bail) but I am trying to crack down on it. So I adopted a house rule - every time I reload, I will abort the mission immediately.  Looking forward to see how my playstyle will change/how much harder the game will become if I play on a harder difficulty & Ironman.