The Good Place. What in the hell?

[Plinto]

Just spent like 40 mins working my way through the entire map for the prison (combat triggered on sight of an enemy corpse and enemies proceeded to not go out and look for me so I sent my mercs aaaall the way around the complex to avoid the sniper nest in the main building), got to the building where most of the enemies were hanging out...and then these guys with machetes come rushing out from upstairs, dealing 80-90 damage per swing, and down my entire team in like three rounds.

Im talking, two swings and my highest level merc was DEAD dead. Everyone else died similarly.

Did I mess something up here? Did I come to the prison too early, or were my mercs underleveled (they were all like 3-4 I think)? Are the machete guys supposed to be that dangerous? I had a mix of armor on my mercs and it did not seem to matter at all in terms of damage negation.

[[NcK]MasterShake|CM]

Yeah, the knifey guys can get on top of you really quickly, very dangerous if they get the drop on you. I entered the dungeon/cellars from the courtyard [near the broken perimeter wall irc]... inside I had a legit butcher moment... so uh, be careful in there. From inside the cellars, there is an exit that leads to the compound building where a bulk of the trash are. This allows you to engage them essentially at your leisure and with highly favorable overwatch cones and melee opportunities. Be sure to bring a machine gun... you did bring a machine gun, right?

3-4 is about right, maybe slightly low... depending on equipment, party and exactly how you've leveled your guys.

What were you loaded out with?

[\\F.A.B.// Lucius]

I gave up on the basement. Those guys can run 10hexes and one-knife your mercs. Not only that, but they HP is ridiculously high. I defeated Jackhammer and already felt that was above my level. The basement was even harder. No idea how to deal with enemies that can run the map and kill my mercs while sponging bullets all the way.

[Dre G Writer]

A couple tips you should know.

1. Melee penetrates armor, so your armor is useless against melee damage. The only thing that will save you from melee attacks is just simply having high HP(100+)

2. The prison that jackhammer chills in, the walls and floors are destructible. Put holes in the walls with grenades and rockets, and shoot melee enemies from afar and stay out of close range with them.

3. Have LIVEWIRE in your team. Seriously. She has a unique skill where if you have intel for that sector, then all enemies in that sector are highlighted and visible through walls.

4. Use overwatch to keep melee enemies in check. This is why its important to have livewire on the team so you know exactly where the melee enemies are and set someone to ambush the paths they have to take to get to you with overwatch. ESPECIALLY machine gun overwatch, it's stupidly overpowered. This one tip will eliminate any melee character problems you will have.

5. Enemies do not attack hidden mercs. If the enemy has not discovered your hidden mercs before they start their turn, they will not attack you, even if they run right up to you and discover you during their turn. Take advantage of this by using stealth in battle and go hidden.

6. DO NOT attack melee targets when your in their melee attack range. They WILL automatically retaliate. Step a square away from them, and then shoot.

7. Modify the hell out of your weapons. This is how you doing better in combat when your gun is able to hit more consistently when your weapon has a lot of accuracy mods installed on it. You do not want to be missin when theirs a dude swinging his stab stick in your face.

[\\F.A.B.// Lucius]

Regarding the prison basement, I am planning on making everyone wear masks and bomb myself with tear gas while the melee attackers come. I wanna see if they hit me while blinded.

[Multihog]

Yeah, this level is terribly designed. Tedious movement in turn-based mode around a huge map plus enemies that can one-shot you when you finally find them is a terrible combination. You're so bored from slowly trudging through the level that you can't be bothered to play super carefully after a while. Then you randomly run into one of these enemies—whose AI is seemingly turned off until they get a visual on you—and they 1-shot your mercs in a single turn despite having run absurd distances. Very fun, very good design indeed. This is in the same category of broken as Rocket Men in this game.

A lot of this would be remedied if the game reverted back to real-time mode upon not having seen enemies for a couple of turns, like JA2 does. At least then it would not be boring to retry.

I just downloaded the cheat mod and deleted all the enemies on the map because this level is absolute sh!t.

[some guy]

the prison fight is one of the hardest fights in the game i would say. i did the same thing having to walk all around. i tried the combat a couple times in the early games and decided to come back later. i did it after i was done with about 2/3 of the game and it was still challenging. the combat is supposed to go that way tho.

[Aegmar]

i ended up silently killing everyone outside, then use Mustard Gas and Timed C4 Charges to kill the remaining ones in the bulding while covering the roof and entrances with Sniper and LMG...

Silently killing the 4 enemies patrolling in and out the two prison pits was pretty difficult tho. Basically the only time in this game anything was pretty difficult sadly...

[Akadai]

I think this was the mission where I had my first save scum moment (which is pretty rare for me to do, because I'm not a fan of save scumming). Mainly because the AI acted in a way that was very different to the rest of the game. I felt like a lot of the enemies were bugged or something that were in the main building, seeing that they refused to come out and face my mercs. When I moved in a certain distance, they suddenly "activated" and rushed out melee killing 2 of my mercs in a single turn. That's where I reloaded, as I thought it was odd behavior or bugged AI

I came at it with a different tactic which worked well enough

I did have Livewire with me, which made finding where all the enemies were easy, so I didn't have the issue some had about not knowing where the last enemies were

Jackhammer I felt was actually pretty easy to deal with, because he too wanted to just be in his room. So I kept chucking grenades in there. I also eventually saw a hole in the wall to just shoot at him. Was pretty uneventful

I had zero issues with the basement part, however combat ended telling me it was clear, when actually there was 1 more guard that wasn't marked by Livewire that I ran into in a hallway. I delt with him easy enough, but it was odd the game didn't seem to register him

This whole mission seemed buggy to me, and it was certainly my least favorite part so far

[BearEssentials]

Yeah recommend explosives to blow up walls to create easier fields of fire, sniper rifles or just rifles with suppressors and accuracy mods to kill butchers from a distance, and machine gun overwatch from 3 or more people to handle rushing in machete guys.

Having said that, yes the second floor in the good place central building is legit ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. When you are at the top of the staircase they can rush from not visible to right in front of you and down you in one turn.

I spent many rockets, grenades and shaped charges blowing holes in the second floor walls so i could snipe those ♥♥♥♥♥ from far away.

[Multihog]

Originally posted by Akadai:

I think this was the mission where I had my first save scum moment (which is pretty rare for me to do, because I'm not a fan of save scumming). Mainly because the AI acted in a way that was very different to the rest of the game. I felt like a lot of the enemies were bugged or something that were in the main building, seeing that they refused to come out and face my mercs. When I moved in a certain distance, they suddenly "activated" and rushed out melee killing 2 of my mercs in a single turn.

Yup, exactly the same here. The AI cheeses you hard here. They don't move until they have line of sight, and the only way for them to get line of sight is for your mercs to get close to them, which is when they run an absurd distance to said merc and 1-shot them with a knife. There are like 5 enemies that activate at once, which means that they will nuke your entire team in 1-2 turns.

This game is full of problems like this. Rocket Men are another case, with the ability to shoot from off-screen (literally across the entire map) with 100% accuracy. When it comes to the player, sniper rifles are massively overpowered as are explosives. It's just a mess. Balance fixes are direly needed.

[Rhapsody]

Originally posted by Multihog:

The AI cheeses you hard here.

There's no cheese, they are mostly doing the logical thing when under siege.

Here's an easy how-to video on how to handle the Good Place:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lLt1XFAG84

[oxide]

Originally posted by Dre G Writer:

A couple tips you should know.

1. Melee penetrates armor, so your armor is useless against melee damage. The only thing that will save you from melee attacks is just simply having high HP(100+)

2. The prison that jackhammer chills in, the walls and floors are destructible. Put holes in the walls with grenades and rockets, and shoot melee enemies from afar and stay out of close range with them.

3. Have LIVEWIRE in your team. Seriously. She has a unique skill where if you have intel for that sector, then all enemies in that sector are highlighted and visible through walls.

4. Use overwatch to keep melee enemies in check. This is why its important to have livewire on the team so you know exactly where the melee enemies are and set someone to ambush the paths they have to take to get to you with overwatch. ESPECIALLY machine gun overwatch, it's stupidly overpowered. This one tip will eliminate any melee character problems you will have.

5. Enemies do not attack hidden mercs. If the enemy has not discovered your hidden mercs before they start their turn, they will not attack you, even if they run right up to you and discover you during their turn. Take advantage of this by using stealth in battle and go hidden.

6. DO NOT attack melee targets when your in their melee attack range. They WILL automatically retaliate. Step a square away from them, and then shoot.

7. Modify the hell out of your weapons. This is how you doing better in combat when your gun is able to hit more consistently when your weapon has a lot of accuracy mods installed on it. You do not want to be missin when theirs a dude swinging his stab stick in your face.

livewire is cheating to me.

[Tordaddy]

Overwatch is the key here. You should have a shotgun that can burst from the boss upstairs. Overwatch with that shotgun and a machine gun. Make sure the shotgun overwatch will only fire at very close range (like 1 tile).

[HozzMidnight]

For the underground once you aggro them, in my experience all but 1 enemy will run towards the gunfire and you can just set up an LMG and kill them all over the course of 7-8 turns.

[\\F.A.B.// Lucius]

Originally posted by HozzMidnight:

For the underground once you aggro them, in my experience all but 1 enemy will run towards the gunfire and you can just set up an LMG and kill them all over the course of 7-8 turns.

In my experience, each one has more than 100hp and don't die to even 3 mercs overwatching.