So, post chimera squad, I’m interested to know how the aliens will be incorporated into xcom main squad.
Will Mutons, Vipers etc. be like how the factions are in xcom 2 or just another soldier customisation.
I’m leaning towards factions, because surely a full team of Mutons just wouldn’t work balance-wise.
And realistically, surely most members of xcom would be xenophobic anyways, as many of their comrades would’ve died fighting the aliens.
What do you think?
I feel something like Phoenix Point's faction system would work well for it, just make it so a war between two factions isn't an endgame scenario and peace can be brokered either by force or diplomacy. In fact you could continue the hippie bullshit in XCOMSWAT and do the opposite of Phoenix Point where war is the endgame and make it so the factions START at war and you need to wrangle them into an alliance to stop [antagonist]
As an aside, Phoneix Point's class system would work well for the various ayys as recruitable classes in XCOM.
I’d like that wrangling of the factions, to face the bigger foe from the deep.
I also think regarding the old factions, the Templar’s will be enemies in the next game, the skirmishers disbanded/absorbed into normal life and the reapers could be one of those factions to wrangle as they struggle to adjust to alien/human life (xenophobes pm)
I do think it is silly tho with some of the alien integration, I hope we don’t see like a Muton with a pet Chryssalid for example
In Chimera Squad some alien species are thankfully played straight and live in quarantine. Chrysalids, Archons, Berserkers and faulty models of the other aliens species are kept far away from civilized society.
Because they are either wild animals that proliferate and feed exclusively on living things with no off button. Or are in immense pain and on so much gene and psychic conditioning that other then dying they will never know any peace.
The Archons are worse Floaters, they aren't just sloppy skinless cyborgs, their exposed nerves are covered by a metal chassis that augments them with a special psychotic field, it helps steady them to a target and amplifies the high they get from combat so they want to fight, because they can't dull their pain otherwise.
In the one DLC for 2 it seems like the Elders/ADVENT have lost control of the Chrysalids entirely and rely on control nodes to even pacify them, they're literally depopulating the entire ocean. Honestly "XCOM 3- OH FRICK CHRYSALIDS STARTED MUTATING" could be a fine sequel, not every game needs to be Dragonball Z where the EVEN BIGGER world destroying threat appears every 2 weeks.
Hell maybe Julian managed to get a copy of himself out somewhere and now it's time for Mann Vs Machine XCOM edition.
I wonder what they will do with Faceless and the alien in Andromedons and Gatekeepers. They aren’t on the scale as you’ve mentioned beastwise, but not like sectoids and the others
I think Andromedons can integrate and Faceless are infiltration units, not ingame, mind you. But in lore they should be intelligent enough to actually be salvageable as citizens.
I think Gatekeepers are part of the Engine of War class of aliens and must also receive special care on a planet without the Psy Network. I don't remember
Also Codices and Specters are in general hard to adapt in society. Specters especially cause they, most likely, aren't actually nanomachine constructs but something similar to the Elders. Maybe interdimensional consciousness devourers (since they possess people and suck their souls...)
I’m not certain with the spectres and codices, because bluescreen rounds and EMPs both do extra damage to them implies they are both robotic. However with the Codex I thought it was implied that it is the more advanced UFO guy from EW, so I dunno
maybe they will try and make jane kelly the new bradford. she seemed really bland in chimera squad though
I can’t see her being the new Bradford. Bradford will remain Bradford and I think Jane maybe the new mediator between the factions perhaps? I can’t see them getting rid of Bradford, he’s just as iconic as the commander tbh
Anyone would be better at this point. I can't even explain how many times I've wanted to fricking kill Bradford. "We have to blah blah commander". Yeah I know, I'm the fricking supreme leader of this whole shit. You sat around jerking off drunk out of your mind for 20 years before you acted. Shut up Bradford. Speak when spoken to.
I would prefer XCOM 3 to either follow the XCOM 1 timeline or create another new timeline entirely
I think they may go ahead making Chimera squad uncanon, as the Templar post credit scene was hinting something would happen immediately after the events of Xcom 2
Considering the team working on these games doesn't really like Terror from the Deep (who can blame them to be honest) I imagine that despite the teaser at the end of WotC the sequel is gonna take more from Apocalypse than TftD
There's no real indication of when that cutscene happens, it could easily be 10 years in the future
So why did the tease TfD originally? I agree tho I don’t want TfD adapted, apocalypse would be much better and I guess yeah there’s no confirmation of the time but all of the other cutscenes surely happen straight after, at least that’s what I’ve always thought lol
>now the real war begins
I think it's supposed to take place soon after. Chimera Squad is basically fanfiction and certainly has fanfiction quality.
I just hope they make the game less buggy. There are still legit 2 whole pages of bugs, row after row. That's unacceptable in a game where a mistake can quadruple how difficult a campaign will be. As for your actual question: I'm pretty sure that there is a greater threat than the aliens. The elders imply as much in XCOM:2012, and the warlock also implies similar things in WOTC. A greater threat is a great way to get people who are otherwise enemies to join forces. Also, it'd be kinda easy to create a bunch of sob stories for the aliens to justify why they've been fighting for the elders. Kinda like the skirmishers.
Yeah the bugs are unacceptable tbh. Fireaxis are awful for it. Civ and Xcom on the console are worst offenders. I tried to do an Ironman save on xcom 2 for so long but when it crashes it deletes the save. Same with Civ coop multiplayer saves
Regarding the reconciliation of the aliens, I agree it’ll be pretty easy. For example the sectiods could have been on that psionic network and have been heavily genetically modified and when the elders died, just like ADVENT, all switched.
Yeah, I have something like 2500 hours in WOTC and most of it is in L/I. I lose between half a dozen and a dozen soldiers each campaign, and it's almost always to bugs. Not always of course, I frick up like everyone else. Get flanked, wake too many pods, bad rng, etc. But most of them are to shit like LOS bugs, alien precognition, bad stealth, movement glitches etc.
You could legit make the elders good guys after their destruction. Aliens are freed, and most of them are mad at you. Not waging war against you, just angry. You go on a few missions to find out why, and find out the elders legit saved all of those species because their home planets were wiped out by something else (sentient machines maybe? Horror-esque Dead Space necromorphs maybe? Possibilities are endless). Their genetic modifications were voluntary because they all know the score: sacrifices must be made to stop the Void. Genetic integrity goes down as acceptable losses. Whole star systems were sacrificed just to give the elders enough time to go search the universe for psionically strong species.
That sounds really cool! I just hope they do it well, but knowing fireaxis it will be a buggy mess at the start, but hopefully there will be innovation.(I like the breach system from CS, so hopefully that can be incorporated into more covert ops sort of stuff)
Yeah, I'm kinda leaning on modders to fix stuff. I've abandoned all hope that game developers will start releasing functioning games.
Ehhh I feel the Elders being c**ts just trying to prolong their own lives with no care for suffering is their entire characterization.
That said you could maybe have a second sect of Elders opposed to the ones we fight, after all isn't the MC a "good" Elder in the arguably non-canon shooter?
Wasn’t there a good elder in declassified although I’m not certain if that’s canon
The one doesn't have to exclude the other. They may very well want to prolong their own lives, but that doesn't mean there isn't a greater threat out there. It's implied in many dialogues.
The ethereals can't really be "good" by their very nature
That being said they did try to imply that there was a greater threat they were trying to oppose, like the Emperor building the Death Star for the Yuuzhan Vong (which was dumb)
Theres an absurdly long fanfiction with basically that premise
>how the aliens will be incorporated into xcom main squad.
Dont care, wont use them
I will run 100% pure white human squad just like in Xcom2 and Xcom1, and if i will have to mod it in myself i will do so, so help me G-d.
There should be an achievement “Xenophobe” use no aliens and “Xenophilia” only use aliens but I doubt they will implement that
I hope they expand on the idea of an antagonist that evolves with you that the Chosen were supposed to be. That idea was half baked but there's a mod called MOCX that does what I think they were going for with a nega-XCOM that follows its own rules when it comes to recruitment and upgrades and has persistent soldiers like you do.
>mocx
Looks cool.
Yeah, I'd prefer a new take as well.
Having aliens on the team is stupid and gay
Having aliens work with humans in Chimera Squad is just bad lore. The main reason why I hate that game and never got it.
I don’t necessarily think it’s bad lore tbh. The Sectoids I think definitely would, they are already half human from the DNA splicing and we’re all mind controlled by the elders, so snapping out of it you can assume they’d be passive/friendly towards the humans.
Mutons, similar circumstances
Vipers yeah not much sense. Chimera squad pins her being a reformed war criminal, but still doesn’t work for me as vipers are more beastlike.
I don’t mind CS as it’s more of a fixer upper, and I liked the breach mechanic
Do snakes even have any kind of established culture? Mutoids are tribal violence-prone morons, Sectoids are sadistic little c**ts, (in older games, I assume THEY DIN DO NUFFIN in the new pozzcom), but Sneks don't seem to have any real lore about their culture besides "one male and lots of females".
None of the ayy lmaos, outside the mutons, seem to have much in the way of intrinsic culture. Whether this is because the Elders forcibly stripped it from them or because the games simply don't bother trying to give them any is unclear. As for the sectoid thing, continuous contact with human minds backfired pretty horribly and caused at least some of them to gain humane traits.
Vipers have an alpha (in the actual sense, not the mongoloid hurr durr PUA sense) culture, where the King rules a vast harem of female drones. If you couple that with intelligence, you probably get some kind of Warhammer-like cult behavior where the King is seen as everything important with the culture, and self sacrifice for the alpha is the only important trait for the rest.
Andromedons do not seem to be a consequence of the elder's meddling (because why keep the inability to sustain themselves in our atmosphere if they are, all the others are able to handle our level of oxygen). My guess, coupled with the ominous "there's a bigger enemy" dialogue is that andromedons are volunteer fighters in the elder's army. No idea about culture though.
There is no reason to think most of those aliens even had a human-level intelligence to begin with by the time Ethereals are done modyfing them. If anything when the network goes down the more likely scenario would be the one described in Mass Effect 1, where once the Reapers frick off the remaining husks and indocrinated servants just mindlessly wander about until they die off from starvation and exposure. Except in this case the humanity will help speed up the process.
The entire premise of the series was "kill the alien". Even in 2 they all talk about how killing aliens is awesome, yes even the Skirmishers. Skirmishers being able to go back kinda makes sense since they are still in the early phases of whatever final form Ethereals intended for humanity. A fricking Berserker can't go and work at the grocery store once the war is over. Going back to the Mass Effect analogy, the Ethereal army is more like Collectors than geth.
I don't know where you got the idea that the ayys are just mindless drones. Even back in EU they talk about the ayys having distinct mental traits and capabilities that wouldn't exist if they were just remote control puppets. In 2 when they discover the psionic network and how to disable it they don't think it'll render the ADVENT forces inert, just greatly reduce their combat acumen. Your comparison is pretty wrong.
Just the comparison with Apocalypse take on human-alien integration shows differences between 90's and clown world 2010's.
>mutons & sectoids
exterminated just after end of war
>snakemen
not-waifu, hunted down to the last
>alien hybrids
welcomed to the city after sterilization and strict daily control
Still I like the different gameplay with the Aliens in the squad, even tho most people don’t like it
Okay shadow the hedgehog. kys
I hope they are integrated because they are mechanically distinct, and giving players new tools to play with is the #1 thing the game needs. Out of the box, it's too shallow. I do not need to once again play as a squad of jarheads + some psionics and a mech. I would replay either of the previous games for that experience.
They don't have to integrate aliens to scratch that itch, but it's an easy way to do so.
Yeah that timeline is done. Don't stick with it. New xcom needs a new setting.
Honestly I agree. MAYBE you could toss together a "terror from the deep" game, but at this point I feel it's best to start from square one from a gameplay, narrative, and "cultural" perspective. (By that I mean if you want to push the whole "ayys DIN DO NUFFIN dey slaves an shit" angle, play it up from "episode 1", don't try to shoehorn it in AFTER you establish they're bloodthirsty sadists.)
arent we due a TFTD theme next? like the undersea threat? they could make it that those are a different set of aliens
I think as mentioned, the devs don’t like terror from the deep, so nothing will ever come of that most likely
I want to fite the aliens in space and on their home planet. That's what the sequel should do. Should be an entire new timeline.
>Post chimera squad XCOM
Disgusting
After playing the original UFO defense, I don't have a desire to play any new xcom games from firaxis or 2k or whatever the company is. Like thanks for introducing me to the concept but I'm not messing with that. I would like to see a well done version of the loss scenario from UFO defense about an actual guerilla war, and maybe trying to fix the genetically fricked humans that are left. Something terminator esque mixed with a rebellion against a vast space empire. I just don't know what to do with gameplay that would be different. I guess I think it would be neat to see something with simultaneous turns such as combat mission, but that doesn't really fit the vibe. Then again, apocalypse experimented with real time so, I donno.
Alternatively a proper sequel to the original that doesn't go into weird pessimistic retcon mode to make tftd work would be neat.
>inb4 x-piratez
Shut up, if I want to coom I'll go coom, not play a mod reeeing about baseline humans existing and wishing to preserve their species.
X-Piratez barely clings to the original XCOM lore but it’d be a shame if you missed out on it just because of the nudity anon (and meh plot), I made that mistake at first and missed out on this glut of tactical content for years. I’m just assuming you haven’t touched the mod but I looove tackling B-horror movie villains with my special squad of amazons, goblins, and catgirls; donning absolutely ridiculous outfits and backed by an arsenal encompassing the 1500s to the near future. I don’t play to coom—I’m leading a band of savages straight from Blood Meridian.
You nearly sold me till you mentioned it's done with a squad of amazons, goblins, and catgirls. I'd like to play with a band of savages, but I'd like them to have that look, rather than look like coombait. If that's what you like that's fine, even if you're not tryina coom, that's what you find aesthetically pleasing, whatever, but it's not my thing. How am I supposed to immerse myself in a setting I dislike both aesthetically and plotwise.
You can play with literally just dudes.
Well, it can’t be helped if the sticking issues are plot and aesthetics. Like
said you can play with just dudes and bugmen (actual bugs, not the chongs) but they’re considered different races and you’ll definitely find certain missions more difficult. I gave my pitch, and I’m glad I almost changed your mind.
If they are going to be incorporated in the same way as Chimaera Squad, then no. The aliens should get their own sets of skills and have some pieces of gear unique to them. They should be powerful force-multipliers, but they too should have their own weaknesses (like Mutons being easy to berserk if they get shot at one too many times). The aliens should be powerful, but they also should have some traits that would balance them. Not to mention they shouldn't be available constantly for recruitment for a gamut of things.
Also they should ignore Chimaera Squad as a spin-off because the writing is...meh. I don't feel the tension and such with humans and aliens living together.
I don't understand why Firaxis Xcom games are so utterly barren on the campaign map. Xcom 2 I would have already made with Skirmishers, Reapers, Templars, Exalt and Xcom being separate playable factions. I would remove Bradford and other talking heads and remove linear story in order to replace it with sandbox campaign. Player would need to liberate regions one by one or start global rebellion and ally or fight against other factions. I hate that design they chose is for player to simply survive until next linear story mission can be started. And that to win it's completely irrelevant what you did on campaign map and instead all that matters is to beat final, linear story mission. This is the main reason I don't feel like replaying their Xcom games. They are too linear and there are no decisions to make on campaign map
Next game being a merge of Apocalypse and TFTD would be great. Earth should be in a basically apocalyptic stage.
>Without Advent to keep them in check cities and areas of the world are overrun with those Zombies. New zombie units to fight against
>Primitive aliens like Chryssalids now without supervision are left to rampage all over the world too
>Flora and fauna are utterly fricked in general
>A more organized and bigger threat emerges out of oceans so you need to deal with other factions in order to have the means and allies to stop whatever is coming out of water
Multiple new factions, countries and organizations emerge out of the chaos. You select one and can indulge in typical 4x diplomacy with them
>Exalt - Gene-improving focused faction so a human faction in which you are supposed to modify humans to better perform their roles. Ironic
>Skirmishers - Former Advent units now fully playable basically
>Xcom - Human purity supremacist
>Templars - Psionic focused
>Sectoids - Mind control and high sci-fi tech
>Mutons - Orc barbarians basically
I'm running out letters, but tl;dr postapo game with multiple playable factions is what I want
I assume you’re going down the same route if making chimera squad uncanon?
I don't care about Chimera, it doubled down on all Firaxis Xcom aspects I hate (linear story, now literally no campaign map at all, focus on characters and dialogues, capeshit aesthetics) and tbh I forgot it exists.
I enjoy it because I do like the variety in all the soldiers, but I see it as just a little thing they must have to just scrapped together as a side project, that’s why it’s not really all fleshed out and such.
But yeah I think they will change the formula slightly in 3 but just hoping no inspiration from Midnight Suns because that game looks shite
Overworld has always sucked in XCOM games - thankfully firaxis realized it and simplified it as much as possible.
Either make it good (not sure if possible, I'm here to get critted in full cover, not to click through layered menus).
Advent to keep them in check cities and areas of the world are overrun with those Zombies. New zombie units to fight against
aliens like Chryssalids now without supervision are left to rampage all over the world too
and fauna are utterly fricked in general
Funny enough, its implied this all happening in CS.
Do not suffer the xeno to live
Wish you were playing as the "bad guys" from the tutorial - actually protecting humanity from aliens not whatever that homosexual police force was.
Regarding integrating - humans are established as having great psionic capabilities, so could play it straight with humanity re-establishing the psionic network and cloning vats, and powerful casters controlling the alien remnants. Take the fight to space, maybe for the solar system. There you have one human controller and a bunch of disposable alien mooks on a spaceship fighting a similar force. Maybe add a new psionic layer, providing mind control protection, mind controlling the enemy, fighting between the controllers head on, a lot can be done there.
Have some kind of gene editing that levels up the more you use an alien type, and improves all aliens of that type going forward instead of individual ones leveling up. Kind of like professions in tactics ogre.
None of this will happen of course because it will be made by homosexuals. If you want to imagine what the next xcom will actually look like, just watch captain planet or GI Joe but replace half the minorities with aliens. The game ends when everyone claps as xcom learns the value of diversity.
I want a reboot with more grounded (human) power level and a ton of horror elements. XCOM usually is at its best when a guy fresh out of basic fights horrors beyond comprehension - and stats sucking when becomes a plasma wielding flying psionic demigod.
You played The X-Com Files? You start out only able to field very limited numbers, with a very limited arsenal, and rather than UFOs you start out responding to very vague calls. Creates great emergent horror-like situations.
Getting a 32-enemy "Strange Creatures" mission of Zombies in the first month of the game and winning
>Frick aliens
>Not all aliens
>Aliens are our friends
>I frick aliens
I sense hebrew involvement in these games.
>I frick aliens
I would lie if I said that I wouldn't take that option if possible
Never played Chimera squad, I thought the whole including aliens as the good guys defeats the purpose of us vs them. Xcom lore from the Thin men in the 1950's to WOTC was great, xcom3 should expand on it. also should have more waifu customization
I hope they fix the damn PRNG. Can you imagine choosing (without being forced at gunpoint) to use an LCG for your PRNG? And then out of all the "random" bits the LCG generates, they discard the top 9 bits and only use the absolutely least random of all the bits? It's so mongoloid it should have its own youtube channel. It results in streaks of similar numbers and everyone everywhere in the whole fricking world knows it. That is, over a whole game (say, 1000 shots taken by both sides) all the percentages will add up correctly. But they will often happen in streaks, much more than random distribution does. And then there are droolers who defend this going "well streaks happen" and no they fricking don't. Not the way they happen with an LCG where you choose the least random bits. If you have 1000 shots taken at 50% where the first 500 lands on A and the next 500 lands on B, then something is broken. That is not random distribution. Know those times where you seem to hit every fricking shot you ever take? Broken LCG. Know the times when every shot any alien takes always hits, regardless of your defense or measures taken against it? Also LCG. Missing a 90% shot happens all the time (well, 10% of the time). Missing five consecutive 90% shots in a row is so statistically improbable that it is not likely you will see it even if you play thousands of hours. Yet that is a common feature in these games, so common that there's whole videos dedicated to just this broken shit mechanics. All because Jake Solomon cannot fricking figure out how to make his code choose the most random bits of the morono-LCG he was never forced to use in the first place god damn it now I'm ranting. They figured this shit out in the 90's. The fricking 90's. 22+ years ago, they knew not to use the least random bits of an LCG and what does Solomon do? Fail at this most basic fricking thing.
So this is proven? I always tried to avoid confirmation bias when dealing with xcom rng but alot now makes sense if this is legit
Yeah, but it's not acknowledged by Firaxis (they barely acknowledge that their new launcher fricked up the whole mod system). I have seen people trying to do statistics on the game (only counting XCOM taken shots, not alien shots, and only for about 100 shots, which is an unworkable small sample size). It wasn't until programmers went through the code they realized that the shit for brains used the least random bits of the LCG. It's not like an LCG will always frick up at all times either. Most of the time it produces pretty good strings, especially if you use the higher order bits (instead of XCOMs Downs Syndrome choice to use the lower order). But at times, it will produce strings of random bits (especially when you only use the least random bits) that are similar. So instead of getting a seed that goes 65 32 19 97 85 86 56 55 37 12, you might get a string that goes 65 32 19 97 96 95 91 92 91 94. Which is an absolute atrocity if you're playing on legendary. It doesn't happen all the time, it is rare. But rare doesn't matter when something happens a lot. How many turns do you take in a campaign, all missions? Each turn generates a new seed. Thousands of generated seeds. Each turn, there is a risk that the LCG will spaz out, and if it does it can frick up a critical mission. Like, imagine if you're doing an avenger defense mission and this shit happens. That might end your campaign. It's hard enough to manage Legendary Ironman without having to deal with a problem that they solved 20+ years ago, and in a game that punishes mistakes harshly, it should also reward good decisions. And it fricking would if they hadn't fricked up which order or bits they use.
I mean, technically is that a valid string of numbers for a random number generator and given enough time will occur.
My only real complaint about XCOM2's RNG is just how punishing it is for the first three or four missions and after that the game becomes quite easy. Early on, you're taking 65% and 75% shots because those are the absolute best you can take (Esepcially in Gatecrasher), your toolset pretty much consists of four grenades and maybe baiting enemies into charging you at high elevation.
Then again, I don't think you can decouple a reliance on RNG from XCOM's tactical layer without massively changing the game and what the challenge is, and RNG will always inherently have the flaw that eventually you will run into an unwinnable scenario where you literally cannot score a hit and your enemies are constantly landing their 15% chance to hit attacks. That can't be fixed unless you did something like having a way to reverse time like in the new Fire Emblem, which trivializes the tactical layer.
>valid string of numbers
With enough time, sure. But this happens more often than it should. The probability that a string of random seeds (let's say 10) all end up within a span of 10% is 0.1^10 which shakes out as 0.0000000001. That means you'd have to try a million times or more for it to just happen once, and youtube is literally riddled with videos of XCOM fricking this up. I have 2500 hours in this game, and it happens way more often than what is statistically sound.
> how punishing it is for the first three or four missions
I have always disagreed with this. The first 2 months or so, I almost never have losses (and I play exclusively on L/I). Gatecrasher for an example almost always have high elevation, and because pods have an autistic need to move in between you and the mission objective, you can almost always just sit around in higher elevation on overwatch and kill them. Exactly zero of the enemies the first few months can take a grenadier or ranger shot (4HP and the minimum damage is 4), and the number of pods are almost invariably less than 4, meaning you can almost always predict the pods and you always know what they will contain. Towards mid game on L/I, the enemies can take enough punishment that if you activate two pods at once (something that might happen when your reaper is resting), you literally can't produce enough damage even in a best case scenario to take both down. That means the aliens get to shoot back, and anytime they can shoot back, you have a slight probability that they will crit and kill. Yes, your toolbox goes up, but barring save scumming, at some point you're not fielding your best soldiers, meaning that tool box isn't necessarily saving you. I mean mimic beacons are nice, but given enough pod grouping on L/I, it might not be enough of a distraction.
>cont
I always find it to be the opposite in difficulty, but I think that's because I play it differently than a lot of people. I actually don't take some early missions if I feel my chance of success is too low to appreciably do them, the only ones I at least attempt is terror missions where the price for failure is too high (And still, I don't shy away from abandoning mid mission if I feel like I'm going to take casualties.). On IL, I think the most important two things you can do is get to a six man squad which requires you to basically run your best soldiers continuously and feed them as much experience as humanly possible to rush it and to make contact with the reapers to get one of their soldiers to prevent multiple pods from triggering by having amazing intel.
There's bugs that cause stupid things to happen such as an alien having vision of you through a wall where you can't see them (Or the ever popular civilian three floors below you alerts the aliens) but I find in the case of RNG most of my actions are at 100% success after the first terror mission so RNG only really comes in on the side of aliens firing back. And that only happens about the first month mutons appear, afterwards I usually have a psion to stasis targets or explosives in backup as a last resort to finish targets off.
>Dragon Rounds only work on the first shot of gunslinger
I hate this shit too, I really wanted a cheap way to set everything on fire. At least bluescreen works against a single target.
>terror missions
I haven't thought about them for a long time. I don't play 2012 anymore. Retaliation missions in xcom2 can be ignored before you've contacted other regions, because you can never lose your home region. Otherwise, I also always attempt them. Losing a bunch of civilians might lower your income, but ignoring it always costs the region, and that's sometimes 100+ intel lost.
>take casualties
You have to be an butthole to play on L/I. Your soldiers and your civilians are not special or important. They are all acceptable losses and they all signed up for what you're doing. Being in command means that sometimes you have to give orders knowing your soldiers are going to die. That can't affect your decision. But of course, losing a colonel to gain a soldier reward is stupid, and you shouldn't.
>six man squad
I always lean on the ring. You can reliable rank up soldiers to get to captain through it.
>contact with the reapers
I've actually identified this as a flaw in my gameplay. I rely way too much on hero classes, and if they are even out of commission (tired, injured etc) my whole tactical layer suffers. I try to rush plated armor instead, and bring some battle scanners/phantom rangers.
>RNG only really comes in on the side of aliens firing back
Yup. Yesterday, I watched two mooks fire twice at a full cover ranger, killing her. The probability for two such consecutive shots to hit is (0.65-0.40)^2= roughly 6% probability. That isn't very likely. Most of the time, such things don't happen, but once the aliens start hitting, they don't stop - and that is sometimes due to the broken LCG. Which is why I'm griping about it. 6% probability? That's fine. It happened 3 times in 2 missions? Something is off.
>set everything on fire
If you don't have shoot them in the head, being able to set every lost in sight on fire is an impossibly useful trait.
Also I cannot overstate how good sparks are. Holy shit. I have seen people complaining that they're not very good, and I have no idea wtf they're on about because holy shit.
I mean, they're not as good relative to 2/WotC as MECs were relative to EW. Compared to your normal grenadiers they're glorified blaster bomb carriers, but sometimes a blaster bomb carrier you can take on 20 missions in a row is all you really need.
They have emergent properties. On their own in a group of humans, they're not very good. But in a group with other sparks, they become hilariously effective. Being able to almost always get an elevation bonus with 3 actions per turn doesn't do that much if it's just the one spark. But if you have three, then that's 12 actions taken from elevation. If you ever get 6 sparks together, then there is no army advent can field that can defeat you. You don't even have to be careful with pod activation, because the more pods active, the easier it is to blanket the combat theatre with heavy weapons and elevated heavy weapons. They can't have blue screen rounds and they can't take cover, but that's a cheap tradeoff for all their other abilities.
Sorry, I'm
9 actions, not 12. lol. It's 6 in the morning here.
I really like SPARKs but I'm biased for it being a sassy-killy robot that carries a lot of bombs and doesn't need cover.
>cont
> I don't think you can decouple a reliance on RNG
I don't either. You learn to take losses playing L/I, but taking losses to your own mistakes or RNJesus hating you is one thing. Taking losses because the drooler at Firaxis implemented code that makes dragon rounds only count on the first shot of a gunslingers abilities, or taking losses because some mook revealed your phantom ranger through two walls and a floor is another thing entirely. That included you surrounding and outflanking the enemy at four directions, yet missing all four 90+ shots because the Shakespearian Monkeys Firaxis hired to make the game don't know how to set up an LCG properly. I mean if that happens once in 100 missions, you can just shrug it off. If it happens twice every playthrough, there is something wrong with the probability distribution.
Render Chimera Squad non-canon.
I'm not saying no Ayy teammates just dump all connections to how that game handeled it. Bring some actual tension between the humans and the people who enslaved and killed humans en masse, don't just wave your hands around and say your squad's ok with it because mind control lol.
In all reality it would just turn around. We’d 100% enslave the aliens, revenge
frick enslavement, kill them all
you know there will inevitably be some bleeding heart homosexual that will want to free them
It’ll be “we will be just as bad as the elders” sort of shit I bet
It would make us just as bad as the Elders. Mind you, the only thing the Elders did wrong was loose.
>loose
dumb phoneposter
Troon Squad is NOT canon
how about dropped like the shit idea they are and we return to fighting the bad guys?
or just let us be the bad guys as a team of eite alien commandos sabotaging humanity
who gives a frick about muh lore?
Cringe Squad is like a parody, why would you base your game on that lore?
If XCOM 3 follows anything along the lines of Pussy Squad I'm sticking to LWOTC for the rest of my life.
>Cringe Squad
Sissy pedophile squad.
The funniest part about Chemo Squad is that all the railing on the no-good xenophobes stuck in their old ways sounds exactly like what ADVENT was saying about XCOM. You're literally playing as ADVENT, down to everything being a "policing action" and all.
>Inb4 ADVENT falling and X-com succeeding was just a ploy to make the competent parts of the resistance fighters join up with the new world government, still under the elders
Would never happen and would probably be a retcon, but it's at least more sensible than ayys intigrating into society after genociding everyone for decades.
I remember that pre-release there was speculation about players actually playing as advent or CS being an in universe advent propaganda game.
It would be interesting spin but of course devs had to make it a boring, safe and dumbed down game
I thought Chimera Squad was OK
My guess is factions. If it was full integration, you'd wind up with stuff like you said (Full team of Mutons because they have the best accuracy, highest HP, etc) which would probably not send the message the devs wanted to and just lead to players min-maxing the best units by race. Either that or it'd have to be balanced very rigidly (You need to have at least one human for hacking, one sectoid for psionics, etc.) or you could have flavor bonuses for certain compositions (Making a full team of mutons gives you synergistic bonuses like access to their battle roar or whatever, sectoids can chain their psi powers together).
I feel like it's a logical step that the humans in X-COM would eventually incorporate aliens into their ranks since they literally throw everything including the kitchen sink into their kits if it gives them an edge and in XCOM2 not every alien you met was specifically hostile and lobotomized to serve the Ethereals like in X-COM itself, but I just don't know how to make it feel compelling instead of an exercise in modern diversity. I just hope they have an android faction like Apocalypse, I want to go a third route and run a squad full of robots with questionable ethics and loyalty.
I'd say, overall, it'll probably be factions that lightly mirror the enemy factions in Chimera Squad. So hybrids, psychics, and aliens are each their own faction. Possibly throw in the androids as well. Then use the system from War of the Chosen for building trust and recruiting units from outside your organization, maybe some are classed as "hero" units that you can only have so many of in total, while others just require you interacting with a different menu to recruit rookie-equivalents. Just like MECs in EW or Sparks in XC2, they can be balanced around expense and slower leveling.
Or hell, use WotC's training system to balance things. Humans get two trees for their class and can choose from a third tree that is a grab bag from other classes. Non-humans have their class tree and a pre-set racial tree that is locked in as the third for each species. Humans have at least four potential classes, non-humans are locked into two generic classes and one species specific one (an expanded version of their traditional abilities in previous games). This means humans are capable of really broken builds if you screen from a large enough pool, but the other species have dependable, static strategies that any particular unit could be relied on for.
The more I think about it, I want something interesting from any potential Android unit. MECs were great. Sparks were interesting but ultimately weak. SHIVs were a strong option but the lack of growth always put me off.
>Please note that, like Ganker, "Generals"—long-term, one-after-the-other, recurring threads about a specific game are not permitted on /vst/. Such threads belong on
Frick off with your shitty and generic boomer game general.
THe thread is long-term because the board is dead, not because this is a "general" kind, hysterical pussy.