Predator armor

[forumcrybaby]

I just researched it on a first playthrough. I don't like it. Not just because it is ugly but most of my soldiers have over 12 HPs now. Is it OP? I am crushing the game even with an increased pod sized mod. Do you really need it late game? I dont want a bunch of soldiers with 16 hps...

[Lemdoran]

It's almost useless for your own soldiers in the 3 lower difficulty levels, Especialy considering it don't stack with other armors (king / queens, ghost, specter, etc) but it work as the guns upgrades "for all soldiers" that include the resistant fighters you can see using guns in WOTC during the ennemy raids of resistance camps, making them basicaly 2 hit to die instead of one shoted by almost anything. It can also buff buff your allies spawned in mission start you if you have the required perk in the resistance faction room.

On top of it, in veteran / iron man mods, it's a cool and cheap way to gain some survavibility in case things goes bad, and it can go bad pretty quick in legendary if you're distracted or have bad luck with some rng events ^^

[gimmethegepgun]

Crushing everything doesn't have a whole lot to do with how much health your soldiers have. After all, health is meaningless when the enemy never gets to attack you.
On that note the reason for Predator armor's existence is to give you a second utility slot that you can use to crush everything more effectively.
Also 12 hp is barely enough to survive certain late game units, and sometimes isn't enough to prevent a one shot. 8 hp would just be one shot by a lot of things.

[forumcrybaby]

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

Crushing everything doesn't have a whole lot to do with how much health your soldiers have. After all, health is meaningless when the enemy never gets to attack you.
On that note the reason for Predator armor's existence is to give you a second utility slot that you can use to crush everything more effectively.
Also 12 hp is barely enough to survive certain late game units, and sometimes isn't enough to prevent a one shot. 8 hp would just be one shot by a lot of things.

So you are saying if I want to keep my campaign with increased alien pod size as hard as possible I should just skip the upgrade? I want it to be as hard as it can be. I have almost 17 hrs into the campaign and still havent lost a single soldier.

[gimmethegepgun]

If you want to make it hard then you should skip the weapon upgrades. The armor doesn't do squat by comparison.

[Lemdoran]

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

If you want to make it hard then you should skip the weapon upgrades. The armor doesn't do squat by comparison.

was wat i thinked too but it make the game almost impossible regardless of skills once ennemies all have 3 armor and you have 25 units to kill with a dozen grenades and 3 -6 dmg weapons ;p

[forumcrybaby]

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

If you want to make it hard then you should skip the weapon upgrades. The armor doesn't do squat by comparison.

Yeah the regular assault rifle would only do 1-2 damage against an ADVENT mec if you went down that path beside the mag rifle is too cool to pass up...

[General Malaise]

You don't have to wear it if you don't want. I've just researched it, and I'm very pleased to have it.

[Stardustfire]

In Legendary many of my soldiers are still one shot victims even with predator armor (we are talking about the first armor upgrade that comes with the plate armor research right? ) in vanilla wotc, so i wonder if this "more pods mod" weakens the enemy as well or TS plays on easy?

[Fringehunter7719]

As far as I'm aware one of the few things legend difficulty doesn't change is enemy weapon damage, lower difficulties do give soldiers an extra hitpoint or two, although that's not tremendously noticeable after predator armor.

But still, end game enemies do up to 15 or 16 damage at the top of their crit range in the vanilla game, so it's strange that bigger pods are never threatening soldiers with over 12HP. Well, unless bigger pods also gives more soldiers, which would radically alter game balance.

[forumcrybaby]

Originally posted by Stardustfire:

In Legendary many of my soldiers are still one shot victims even with predator armor (we are talking about the first armor upgrade that comes with the plate armor research right? ) in vanilla wotc, so i wonder if this "more pods mod" weakens the enemy as well or TS plays on easy?

I am just playing on Commander. Its my first playthrough. The more pods mod just adds 2-3 aliens to each pod. So if a pod would have 2 it will have 3-5 instead. It doesn't affect enemies stats.

[gimmethegepgun]

The issue with larger pods with no other changes is that other than right at the start of the game it's actually rather going to make things easier, for 2 simple reasons: more enemies means more exp, and more enemies means more corpses. So you get more experienced soldiers and you have the cash to make anything you want by selling the corpses.
Frankly, for experienced soldiers, a few extra enemies isn't a very big deal because with aoe or multishot attacks you can kill them all regardless of how many there were. The most memorable turns I've had are ones where I ended up fighting the entire map at once and killed all of them in one turn thanks to Serial, Reaper, and Faceoff.

[forumcrybaby]

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

The issue with larger pods with no other changes is that other than right at the start of the game it's actually rather going to make things easier, for 2 simple reasons: more enemies means more exp, and more enemies means more corpses. So you get more experienced soldiers and you have the cash to make anything you want by selling the corpses.
Frankly, for experienced soldiers, a few extra enemies isn't a very big deal because with aoe or multishot attacks you can kill them all regardless of how many there were. The most memorable turns I've had are ones where I ended up fighting the entire map at once and killed all of them in one turn thanks to Serial, Reaper, and Faceoff.

I have noticed...they are starting to get easier even though they are composed of higher tier enemies and not just grunt troopers...I will probably just play legendary when i finish this game. Commander seems not very hard at all...

[Lemdoran]

yep the 3 first difficulty level aren't honestly much a threat, thei're a notable jump in difficulty Legendary that may pose issues non the first run but xcom 2 is globaly an easy game. The story and design is cool, but definetly not a turn based axed on difficulty. If graphics don't stop you and you want some challenge, xenonauts with the mod Xdivision is definetly the way to go ^^