General > Discussion

Finished game on 2.5 Hard mode. Thoughts and experiences.

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Telok:
Save attached if anyone wants to play or data mine it.

Soldiers:
My A list soldiers were a rockin' slay-fest by the end. 100% weapon skill, 35 TU, and 160 health armed with particle beam rifles, grenade launchers (PB ammo), coil guns, and sniper rifles (enhanced ammo) made for a smooth death machine. The only save scumming I did was when I lost 2+ people on my first turn (that happened every five or six missions) or the transport got shot down by a surprise alien gunboat out past interceptor escort range (this only happened five or six times in the whole game).

My B list guys were pretty good too, except that last guy. Aliens have a tendency to target the easiest kill, which is pretty logical. But that guy is usually the newest guy, he'll have lower strength so may be in nano armor instead of power armor, and he'll have the lowest health total even when fully healthy. So I ended up hiring expendable assault rifle guys for that slot and letting them draw fire away from more valuable troops. This is pretty gamey and probably an unintended tactic but the AI pretty much required it.

When the aliens bust out the particle beam weapons you'll want a third squad and transport. This might give you time to train them up a little and maybe get some of them into power armor and the 120+ health range before things get hairy.

My C list guys are almost totally expendable. Maybe half are strong enough to wear power armor, which means that they other half usually die to a single shot from a particle rifle. That base (in Africa) has about 15 soldiers, most of them are pretty badly wounded much of the time. Almost none of them last for ten missions, the kill rate with particle beam weapons is too high for new recruits to survive gaining enough experience to get past the "mook" designation.

In future games I'm going to change my soldier skill spread. In this game I used (on the A and B teams) two assaults, three snipers, and three grenadiers. I will reduce the grenadiers to two, but I don't know if I'll increase the snipers or assaults. Plus the weight rules have caused me to disregard any soldiers with a strength score of less than 36. The weaklings just can't handle real armor and a weapon, combat armor is worse than useless against particle beam weapons. If a soldier can't handle nano armor, a weapon (plasma rifle or sniper rifle and a reload is the minimum acceptable), and a med-kit then what is he doing on the field? Dying, that's what.

Bases:
Do you see that ring of eight AA defences around the workshop base in China? That base was attacked eight times. My first base was attacked once, some other base was attacked twice, and that one workshop base just pissed the aliens off somehow. I only up-gunned it after the fifth attack, after the improvements that base must have accounted for 30%+ of the ufos that were shot down.

I also need to specialize my bases more, turning the first base into a full research/combat base is still OK, but no more combining an active workshop base with a combat squad. The hospital and large hanger reduce the available workshop space too much. Plus those stupid doors in the workshops favor a more kamikaze approach to base defence.

The entrance is still an ungodly pain in the butt to defend or attack, still a horrid OSHA violation that must be a right nuisance to carry fragile laboratory equipment or heavy aircraft weapons up and down. It's a good design for a dangerous tactical shooter set-up, but it really bad as an actual useful entrance. At the minimum that little wire cattle gate is idiotic and there ought to be a helicopter landing pad there.

Base defence consists of (for non-combat bases) expendable weaklings and a couple of snipers. I started the mooks with shotguns and slug ammo, which worked pretty well until medium alien armor came along. I tried giving them plasma blasters but that didn't work out, the blasters are too inaccurate to be effective even at close base defence ranges. Plasma rifles and plasma blades are where it's at, unless you want to spring for the enhanced ammo for assault rifles but that ties up production man-hours while plasma ammo just falls out of the sky. Set your command post right next to your entrance and lock a sniper rifle guy in the room with the security cameras, give him IR goggles just for something to do. Sniper guy is there to shoot through walls and ceilings when he's the last defender, plus the security camera views are useful. The other sniper gets to go to the ground level of an enclosed building, living quarters, small hanger, or power plant(?) and shoot through walls to wound as many aliens as possible. You'll lose two to five guys defending your entrance and another couple of guys clearing workshops or blind corners of ground level. That's why you use the weak mooks. Expendables.

Weapons:
This is what I used.
Assault rifle -> Plasma Rifle -> Particle Beam Rifle
Sniper Rifle -> Coil Gun or SR with enhanced ammo
Grenade Launcher, upgrade ammo as appropriate

I tried the following.
Plasma Blaster: too inaccurate, I missed 4/5 shots at a range of 4 squares with the Ball mode.
Particle Beam Cannon: enormous damage potential, crap accuracy. A one hit kill isn't worth the other 50 misses.
Shotgun: OK until aliens started wearing armor, needs enhanced ammo (slugs are bigger than AR rounds anyways).
Bolter: the TU, weight, and ammo issues make this not enough of an upgrade to adopt. Does the anti-matter enhanced ammo make it an area explosion? That might be worth it on a specialized support sniper, but that's still iffy.
Rocket Launcher: fun but too situational to dedicate a soldier to.
Flamers: the 12 TUs for the candle setting and the short range make this a suicide-by-alien weapon, and sometimes the tougher aliens survive.

Pacing:
Early game is still slow, waiting for aliens so you can sell some stuff for that next building or to replace a shot down interceptor. Late game is... interesting. If you play the save be prepared for waves, a week or ten days with eight to twelve ufos then a week to ten days of quiet. It's going to harsh up team 3 pretty regularly, that's why there are so many of them.

Last thoughts:
Good times, still some smoothing out to do, the AI is still in it's infancy. Implementing the dropship inventory will help with situational weapons, it'll happen someday. I don't know if 100% close weapon skill helps the plasma blaster or PB cannon, I don't know of it's worth carrying a close weapons guy long enough for him to get good enough to try. Close needs something, flamers need something, and I still don't know if the first two researched interceptors are worth the effort.

H-Hour:
Thanks for the feedback Telok. I don't have any time at the moment to check out your save but will definitely do so before 2.5 ships, as we still need to tune the stats growth.

Can you tell us how many missions you had? What was the date when you finished?

And lastly: no lasers? They were my go-to assault rifle for much of the game.

Telok:

--- Quote from: H-Hour on October 23, 2013, 11:02:53 am ---Can you tell us how many missions you had? What was the date when you finished?

And lastly: no lasers? They were my go-to assault rifle for much of the game.

--- End quote ---

It finished at (OK: shot out the mothership ufo on) April 1st 2085 with 137 missions.

I knew I missed something in the weapons. Having looked at the stats in the code I totally skipped the laser pistols, the effort isn't worth the return. I did try laser rifles and heavy lasers a couple of times (the Electrolaser got used until I had 10 aliens captured, it's a fine tool). The lasers are a moderate improvement in accuracy in exchange for more TUs, weight, and slightly less damage. Significantly less damage against armored aliens. While they compare decently to plasma rifles I felt that the heavier punch, lower TUs for reaction fire, and more shots of the plasma was a better fit for the role that assault skill weapon play in my squads.

That's an important sentence there, I'll say it again and explain in more detail.

--- Quote ---While they compare decently to plasma rifles I felt that the heavier punch, lower TUs for reaction fire, and more shots of the plasma was a better fit for the role that assault skill weapon play in my squads.
--- End quote ---
In my squads Snipers fill the offensive role. They have good accuracy, high damage, and can penetrate some walls and ceilings (the Solar Power map is really easy once you realize this). Grenadiers are multi-task specialists, trick shots around corners and over cover are where they get kills but they fill more roles than that. They scout, IR goggle scout, are the primary medics, carry more smoke grenades than others, and are the first people issued plasma blades once their strength is high enough (GLs are heavy).

This leaves the defensive role to Assault soldiers, the Close skill weapons don't have the punch to stop or dissuade aliens from walking up to soldiers and gutting them with a kerrblade. While lasers are comparable in an offensive role they suffer in a defensive role. The laser rifle is not damaging enough to armored aliens and the heavy laser is to heavier and 50% slower than a plasma rifle. To further complicate things particle beam rifles appear on the scene and effectively obsolete both other rifles. If you have the production capacity to spare* you can have the enhanced AR ammo that ignores armor (fear the aliens if they ever figure this out) but that still ignores the lasers.

*I didn't have production capacity to spare in this game, too little money early on and too long to build infrastructure at the late game. Plus late game workshops were being built to supply armors, PB grenade launcher ammo, and advanced aircraft.

Wolls:
Congrats man!! Nice win.  :D

Damage over distance, waIT;no.. no.. just stand there while I  ><  in yer general direction...

In terms of close combat I like the Monomolecular Knife, you can get it early, and it rox right up to needlers, when you can get it just switch yer close shotguns/blasters over.

its a 37 min strength just to get combat armour and the monomolecular blade... bat man Rambo? so worth it

Honestly I must have way better luck with the Blaster, no way I've ever missed to that degree.  But the Flamer? yeah thats no upgrade.

This is standart diff?  AFAIK its all balanced within standard difficulty.

edit.. looks at topic.. er hard mode... you should be floating in money..
also did I congratulate you on yer win yet??//

Wolls:

--- Quote from: Wolls on October 24, 2013, 07:30:41 am ---Damage over distance, waIT;no.. no.. just stand there while I  ><  in yer general direction...

--- End quote ---

To be clear this is me mocking plasma ( no masta blasta here.. weak?)  : cause with lazers if you blink your dead.  No need to go heavy laser but the rifle is better than good.

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