Experimental Weapons Research - What's the Deal? [WOTC]

[SerenityNow]

So as many of you may know that when you start a new campaign you have the option to integrate the Alien Hunters + Shen's Last Gift downloadable content when you start, which removes the story missions and scanning events. Although this feature makes sense to me as to why it's there, it seems to make the game harder in many ways.

The biggest issue for me is that in Alien Hunters you get the opportunity to scan for the experimental alien hunter weapons early in the game. They are provided to you essentially for free. But in the integrated campaign you must spend ~15 days researching them, then you must build them in the Proving Ground which you most likely won't have for a while.

Does anyone know why they did this or why it's justified? Is it meant to be more difficult or is this just an oversight? What are your opinions of this?

[Tamiore]

Because otherwise hunters weapons where "too good too soon".
I'm not sure how obvious it is, but this game is balanced almost to perfection so that no early/mid game gear is "clearly better with no opportunity cost".
Now you can actually use things OTHER than hunters weapons without feeling that you artificially limit yourself. This way hunters weapons are an actual choice, not a default no-brainer.

[talemore]

In vanilla playing with alien ruler meant you was given a couple of special equipment who is lost a month later because xcom is meatgrind and you're either playing at a too easy difficulty if not a single soldier dies at every mission and since missions are to leave all your wounded behind to save the squad equipment is lost before you even encountered the alien rulers.

[Mystical]

If you spend 15 days researching them you are doing it wrong. Going straight to the point, you should only research them when you already have your Proving Grounds, by that time the research time is around 4 days give or take.

[Supa]

They felt like cheating before. And even now they're kinda cheap. You lose a bit time but thats it. And many people say WOTC is easier than Vanilla after you get the hold of all the new things it brings.

[SerenityNow]

thanks for the comments; apparently it's a balance thing and I get that and most people seem to agree with it.

[KRON]

But for me the sheer fact that you have to research and build them doesn't seem logical, because in vanilla Tygan says that these weapons are experimental and he isn't smart enough to reverse-engineer them. Now that you actually research and build them, pretty much like any other gear, I don't see a reason why you can't build more than one of each. Also integrated DLC doesn't explain Dr. Vahlen's involvement. Like at all. So, balance-wise itnegration is pretty good, but story-wise? Not so much. That's why I prefer playing WotC without DLC integration and leave story missions enabled.

[Tamiore]

Frost grenade you can't replicate magically reassembles itself after each use, and yet you find the fact you have to research and develope before use the weird part about it?
I mean, maybe they were rusty and needed some high-tech cleaning. :D

[KRON]

Originally posted by Tamiore:

Frost grenade you can't replicate magically reassembles itself after each use, and yet you find the fact you have to research and develope before use the weird part about it?
I mean, maybe they were rusty and needed some high-tech cleaning. :D

In that regard the frost grenade is like any other experimental grenade or mimic beacon. There is only a few items that are actually one-time-use, like Overdrive Serum.

[Tamiore]

Originally posted by KRON:

Originally posted by Tamiore:

Frost grenade you can't replicate magically reassembles itself after each use, and yet you find the fact you have to research and develope before use the weird part about it?
I mean, maybe they were rusty and needed some high-tech cleaning. :D

In that regard the frost grenade is like any other experimental grenade or mimic beacon. There is only a few items that are actually one-time-use, like Overdrive Serum.

Well, to be fair, mimic beacon might actually just run out of charge.
But, yea, the way items work in XCOM was always a pure gameplay abstraction. Hunter weapons are in exactly the same boat here.

[KRON]

Originally posted by Tamiore:

Well, to be fair, mimic beacon might actually just run out of charge.
But, yea, the way items work in XCOM was always a pure gameplay abstraction. Hunter weapons are in exactly the same boat here.

They are not, really. Every other item can be built multiple times. Hunter weapons cannot.

[Tamiore]

Originally posted by KRON:

Originally posted by Tamiore:

Well, to be fair, mimic beacon might actually just run out of charge.
But, yea, the way items work in XCOM was always a pure gameplay abstraction. Hunter weapons are in exactly the same boat here.

They are not, really. Every other item can be built multiple times. Hunter weapons cannot.

Every other item, eh?
Chosen weapons and ruler armor say otherwise.

[KRON]

Originally posted by Tamiore:

Originally posted by KRON:

They are not, really. Every other item can be built multiple times. Hunter weapons cannot.

Every other item, eh?
Chosen weapons and ruler armor say otherwise.

Chosen weapons are not built and ruler armors require special alien corpses to be built. As far as I remember, to build hunter weapons you need nothing but materials.

[tulle040657]

If you do not like it that way don't have the option to integrate selected when you start a game and it will be like it was in vanilla

[SeriousCCIE]

I think it's a fair argument. The alien hunter weapons were aquired differently before, and with the subsequent changes, their utility is mostly the same but the method of acquisition is different. Due to that, it is... odd, because special one of a kind items suddenly are built but can't be built twice, as if they have the steam DRM on them and can only run for one logged in xcom2 soldier at a time.

In both cases, it is never explained what they have to do specifically with hunting aliens or if the Doctor was involved in some way in their introduction.

Then, the Chosen all have specific commentary to say about the weapons, as if they have some background detail about them. Yet the Commander's office, which describes various details of the Chosen, seems to indicate that there is no reason whatsoever for the Chosen to have any concept at all as to what makes the weapons different, considering their perceived humanity and personality traits unlike most mindless ADVENT soldiers is based on the fact that... hey I won't spoil it.

But the fact remains -- the weapons are special, everyone knows it, yet there are inconsistencies surrounding the nature and origin of them.

[Tamiore]

Originally posted by KRON:

Originally posted by Tamiore:

Every other item, eh?
Chosen weapons and ruler armor say otherwise.

Chosen weapons are not built and ruler armors require special alien corpses to be built. As far as I remember, to build hunter weapons you need nothing but materials.

I'm pretty sure the underlying assumption here is that the hunter weapons were found off-screen damaged to the point of non-functionality.
So first you research how to repair them and then repair one by one.
Yes, technically speaking PG project does not list a <broken weapon> as a component, but that's still the explanation that fits the situation.