General > Discussion

2.5 sucks completely

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Patupi:
OK, in the game I'm on currently part of it was lack of reasonable weaponry. For some reason alien light armour just didn't appear for ages, thus no laser research beyond ship and base weapons. With laser rifles and their pulsed autofire on RF things are slightly better (Still haven't managed to get the cash together to make any nano-armor for the troops though!) but still aliens are walking right through any defensive line and wasting people left and right from point blank range, even when I have a choke point the enemy has to come through to make sure they are ALWAYS in sight of my guys continuously! The solar array for instance with it's main entrance.

With laser rifles I have had one or two instances out of several dozens where my guys manage to actually shoot the enemy on RF before he walks up to one square away and blast my guys. It just seems odd that the enemy tactic seems to be basically individual suicide mode, especially when they aren't present in overwhelming numbers (say, crashed fighter). Even odder that it works for them! I've still had half my squad wasted like this. Having to 'replay' missions continually to avoid this kind of thing defeats the object of not having a save game in the combat missions (which honestly I agree with, if the combat was a little better balanced).

One other thing that has bugged me through all versions of this game. No auto save on geoscape prior to a mission. Admittedly, in a finished game it's probably not a big thing, but right now with crashes (admitedly not as prevalent as it used to be) it's really annoying! I've only had one crash to desktop since using 2.5, but I've had quite a few missions where I almost gave up, constantly trying to 'replay' missions and wanted to go back and just ignore that crash completely, but I didn't think to save prior to the mission. Also still getting the odd 'crash' where the mission just ends with no mission report, just goes back to geoscape, firebird is mysteriously back at base and all troops have vanished from the game. I've had this a lot in all versions of the game and it's still happening (though not as much again on 2.5). So far it's happened on the military bunker and one other map (I forget which one at present). An auto save would really help with that!

Patupi:
One other thing while I'm thinking of it. I'm not sure if this is an illusion or not but it seems as if the enemy knows precisely where my soldiers are all the time, whether they can see me or not. I had suspicions on that for a while, but it came to a head on a base defense mission. I had troops below ground and above ground on opposite sides of the map. My above ground troops rounded a corner and spotted a Sheevar on the other side, very close to my other group underground, facing those underground troops position, waiting. Since it hadn't spotted my above ground troops I went back around the corner into hiding and waited. Another spot view next turn showed him barely two squares from where he was, still facing my underground troops. Next turn (still spotting with above ground troops) I moved my underground troops forward, still out of sight but getting closer to the exit. The Sheevar immediately went round the corner towards my under ground troops and blasted them now they were in range.

Was it psychic detection? Was it hearing the underground troops? If the later how come my guys can't hear the enemy out of sight? Something is again a little imbalanced here. Whatever mechanism is being used seems too accurate, letting the enemy chose it's approach to avoid ambushes almost exclusively and place their own very effectively. That in addition to stronger troops (on average), more accurate weapons fire (hover nets seem to shoot my guys from across the map 1/3 of the time on average for example), and more TUS seems a little overpowering!

H-Hour:
Patupi, it sounds to me like perhaps you're not using RF correctly, so I'll ask a couple basic questions which you probably already know about and do, but just to be sure:

1. Do you know that you need to reserve TUs for reaction fire? Your soldiers won't automatically RF during the alien's turn. They must have enough spare TUs for their selected RF firemode.

2. Are you turning RF on? There is a RF button and you must activate it or your soldiers will not RF.

3. Are you relying on higher TU firemodes in reaction fire? I typically rely on 8 TU firemodes for RF (AR/Laser snap shots, shotgun/plasma ball). Anything higher and the aliens can usually get off a shot without catching return fire.


--- Quote from: Patupi on April 08, 2013, 10:44:23 am ---... An auto save would really help with that!

--- End quote ---

I'm pretty sure an autosave is made. Maybe you have to use F9 to reload it? Not sure about that. I never used it, but many people do. Hopefully one of them will tell you the load procedure.

When you crash from battlescape back to geoscape, please attach your ufoconsole.log (where to find it) to a bug report on our issue tracker.


--- Quote from: Patupi on April 08, 2013, 10:56:47 am ---Was it psychic detection? Was it hearing the underground troops?

--- End quote ---

The AI always knows where you are. This is common in many games as it's very difficult to create a challenging AI if they don't know where to look. AI improvements are always welcome, but it's a bit of a specialised field and hard to attract talent.

ShipIt:
The game auto-saves before each mission to 'slotquick.savx'. This is the same as saving by <F5> and can be loaded using <F9>.

Patupi:
Thanks for the help on this H-Hour.

1&2) Yes, I am holding enough time so I can enable the 'engage RF' button. I generally don't use the button above; the 'Reserve TU' or whatever it says. As far as I can see you don't HAVE to use the 'Reserve TU' button to make RF work. With the engage RF button on it stops you from using what it needs for that particular mode (selected on the fire popup menu). I generally just keep the engage RF down when I'm holding position and disengage it when I'm trying to move to a new spot (with attempts at covering my people while their moving, but little luck with that yet).

3) Until recently I wasn't aware that rapid fire was better and RF worked better with shorter TU using weapon modes. So I now do know why laser's pulse mode works so well. Fairly short TUs and has 6 shots. I'm not sure what calculation it uses to compare what TU's your weapon mode uses and what TUs the enemy has left at any given moment, but I'm aware it multiplies it's checks based on how many shots the weapon mode uses.

One other thing. I've heard that certain skills of the soldier improves Reaction Fire. Is it an average of all of the improvements or is it a certain specific skill such as speed or mind? I'd more think it'd be specific to the weapon type, and maybe be an average of speed and weapon type (such as heavy, assault etc).

Another quick query. The game used to use the weapon skill 'Heavy weapon' on certain weaponry, but now these have specific other skills like 'explosive' or 'close'. What use is improving heavy weapons skill? Does it improve handling heavy weight weapons? I thought strength handled that? Also there seems to be a sharp division between normal encumberance and over encumbered. Going from max move 31 suddenly down to 19 when you pick up a grenade seems a tad extreme! Shouldn't it go down gradually?

(EDIT: Thanks for the info on autosaves Shipit! I hadn't checked the key commands in so long I'd forgotten (or never knew!) that there were short cut keys for quick save/load. I thought it was only on the save/load menu!)

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