Sparks on Legendary

[Plüschtier]

Honestly, what's their point? They can't shoot for ♥♥♥♥ and go down in two hits. I'm mid-game now and I can't see why I wouldn't just bring a gunner for armour shredding or a couple exo suits for rocket launchers. Maybe I've myself to blame cause my early Sparks kept dying on me and the two I have now are both just on their second level. Looking for a mod to fix their preposterous aim, so maybe at least they can replace the gunner. Are their higher-tier skills worth it on Legendary?

[Kunovega]

There's a lot of mods for SPARKs. Without them, no they are virtually useless on Legendary.

Even with the mods the SPARKs additional costs (having to pay for an armor upgrade seperately) on Legend difficulty makes them a massive resource drain.

I wouldn't even recomend trying to use SPARKs with the mods unless you can beat legendary without them. Once you do decide to use them you will need to babysit them and waste tons getting them upgraded.

After adding weapon mods and additional proving grounds projects to upgrade the SPARK, he's now almost as good as a regular soldier. But he cost 10 times as much to get upgraded just to be mediocre.

[Sky Marshall Sanders]

Sparks are mediocre unless you use a bunch of mods, even then they only rise to good and (by default) cost thousands of supplies to get there. I can't imagine using them on legendary.

Though I guess that you do get the small benefit of any new spark having all the proving grounds projects.

You can get broken interactions with mods though. I got a grimy loot bit that added a one point shield every time intmidate activates and the upgradable spark mod allows a utility item that prevents damage to a shield from spilling over to normal hp. Together they make a spark tougher than it has any right to be, but it's a specific bit of random luck.

[Plüschtier]

I hear y'all. Seems nobody at Firaxis bothered to playtest the DLC on Legendary. :-/

[76561198034396398]

someone's doing a conversion so they're more like MEC's from the previous game still a WIP but they're pretty useless unless you fit them with a long range blaster launcher

[gcp3000]

They still kick ass in Month 2, I don't care what any of ya'll say.

[Sky Marshall Sanders]

Originally posted by gcp3000:

They still kick ass in Month 2, I don't care what any of ya'll say.

80+ hp sectopod in month 2 sounds real easy to beat with my balistics and kevlar. I mean if you got super lucky and had an advent mec corpse researched and finished bluescree protocol then sure, but otherwise you won't have them in the second month.

[Kunovega]

Originally posted by gcp3000:

They still kick ass in Month 2, I don't care what any of ya'll say.

And you beat the sectopod on that mission on Legend difficulty in month 2?

Dude if you pulled that off, you didn't need the SPARK you already had some magical kick ass soldiers working for you

Maybe on a lower difficulty, but pulling that off on Legend with the added research times would be baller

[learnedhand]

On my last LI campaign I used the spark the whole way through till the end. Sure, it was never the star of the squad, but it was certainly not a liability and offered some novel utility. Granted I was using grimy's loot mod, so I was able to add some welcome accuracy boosts to it. But in my opinion the spark adds a couple of useful tactical possibilities:

1)Most important is the ability to use spark whether they are injured or not. This is huge on legendary when an injured soldier can really set you back. Now, stray hits here or there can be shrugged off because you still have a decent squad member you can use. The longer times for repairing the spark seem to me to be a fair tradeoff. They aren't a tank, but they can take a hit no problem.

2) I went with bombard, so never tried the melee spec'd spark. Bombard is awesome. Again on Legendary, bombard gives you early access to a heavy weapons. And on top of that, bombard has unlimited range. Anything visual can be targeted by bombard.

3) Being able to use spark as full cover is undervalued. Lots of tactical possibilities are opened up by mobile source of cover that can take a hit or two.

4) While not overpowered, overdrive can occasionally lay down some serious hurt.

One of the biggest drawbacks of spark as noted by others is the extra cost in developing it. But the dirty secret of a regular campaign is that there really is no strategic time limit. Hence, the only time you feel pinched for resources is the ramp up from tier 2 to tier 3 gear when you are juggling multiple demands. Once you know how to handle the avatar meter, resources are no longer a problem.

So aside from the poor accuracy and unmodability, I felt spark was fine for what it offered. Besides, if the spark was a top tier class I think people would complain about being forced to pay for an "I win" class. From a business stand point rather than a balance standpoint, it would make more sense for them to make spark op.

[Temper]

Originally posted by Kunovega:

Originally posted by gcp3000:

They still kick ass in Month 2, I don't care what any of ya'll say.

And you beat the sectopod on that mission on Legend difficulty in month 2?

Dude if you pulled that off, you didn't need the SPARK you already had some magical kick ass soldiers working for you

Maybe on a lower difficulty, but pulling that off on Legend with the added research times would be baller

The key to that mission using standard weapons with SGTs & Corps on Legendry is crowd control,rather than damage output of the squad.Bring combat Specialists,as many as you got.

The only enemies one really need go after and destroy with standard weapons are the enemies guarding the entrance of the mission,a couple of select turrets and the sectopod,everything else can be shutdown or controlled to do the hard work.Save the combat protocols on your normal troops and make sure lilly's Capacitator Discharge is up for the Sectopod fight

In the gas chamber room there is a huge patch of dead ground on the bottom floor at the elevator's side of the room which the turrets are completely blind to,it also has a lot of full cover.Once you've taken down the two turrets closest to the elevator the team can move up to the ledge and use the height advantage for line of sight on crowd controlling.

Don't dilly dally,shilly shally.Get up the elevators asap.The longer you take the more enemies you'll have to deal with.

Look at the enemies killed per turn in this screenshot.I destroyed around total of 8-10 enemies all up ... including the Sectopod.This was my first playthrough the mission and I learnt very quickly in the first level of the facility (through loss of a soldier via being swamped) that crowd control and moving on to the next mission stage asap was key.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=721439575

[Temper]

Originally posted by learnedhand:

On my last LI campaign I used the spark the whole way through till the end. Sure, it was never the star of the squad, but it was certainly not a liability and offered some novel utility. Granted I was using grimy's loot mod, so I was able to add some welcome accuracy boosts to it. But in my opinion the spark adds a couple of useful tactical possibilities:

1)Most important is the ability to use spark whether they are injured or not. This is huge on legendary when an injured soldier can really set you back. Now, stray hits here or there can be shrugged off because you still have a decent squad member you can use. The longer times for repairing the spark seem to me to be a fair tradeoff. They aren't a tank, but they can take a hit no problem.

2) I went with bombard, so never tried the melee spec'd spark. Bombard is awesome. Again on Legendary, bombard gives you early access to a heavy weapons. And on top of that, bombard has unlimited range. Anything visual can be targeted by bombard.

3) Being able to use spark as full cover is undervalued. Lots of tactical possibilities are opened up by mobile source of cover that can take a hit or two.

4) While not overpowered, overdrive can occasionally lay down some serious hurt.

One of the biggest drawbacks of spark as noted by others is the extra cost in developing it. But the dirty secret of a regular campaign is that there really is no strategic time limit. Hence, the only time you feel pinched for resources is the ramp up from tier 2 to tier 3 gear when you are juggling multiple demands. Once you know how to handle the avatar meter, resources are no longer a problem.

So aside from the poor accuracy and unmodability, I felt spark was fine for what it offered. Besides, if the spark was a top tier class I think people would complain about being forced to pay for an "I win" class. From a business stand point rather than a balance standpoint, it would make more sense for them to make spark op.

Which is where the Spark falls flat on it's face.COST for return

Currently it's not a bad sub for an injured team mate early game,but to keep it at a relevant tech level to go on mission along side the troopers constantly is too costly.

There's a huge difference in what you get out of the MEC class in EW and Sparks for investment costs.From how they've been designed I don't think Firaxis wanted them to be a focal point of early game development like MECs in EW.

Investing the same amount of time and resources into a human squad get's the player a whole lot more bang for the buck.

[!?!]

Well there's your answer.
They're expensive, fragile (lol "tank class"), rank up slowly and can't be bought pre-ranked so forget about getting one later on if your early one died with 100% probability if their little health pool reaches 0.

If nothing happens to go wrong, they're okay 0 downtime squadmates since you can deploy them damaged and repair them in missions.

[76561198034396398]

give me a squad full of rangers anytime i'm actually happy when that thing gets killed, cause it keeps missing the damn targets

[Kunovega]

Originally posted by Temper:

Originally posted by Kunovega:

And you beat the sectopod on that mission on Legend difficulty in month 2?

Dude if you pulled that off, you didn't need the SPARK you already had some magical kick ass soldiers working for you

Maybe on a lower difficulty, but pulling that off on Legend with the added research times would be baller

The key to that mission using standard weapons with SGTs & Corps on Legendry is crowd control,rather than damage output of the squad.Bring combat Specialists,as many as you got.

The only enemies one really need go after and destroy with standard weapons are the enemies guarding the entrance of the mission,a couple of select turrets and the sectopod,everything else can be shutdown or controlled to do the hard work.Save the combat protocols on your normal troops and make sure lilly's Capacitator Discharge is up for the Sectopod fight

In the gas chamber room there is a huge patch of dead ground on the bottom floor at the elevator's side of the room which the turrets are completely blind to,it also has a lot of full cover.Once you've taken down the two turrets closest to the elevator the team can move up to the ledge and use the height advantage for line of sight on crowd controlling.

Don't dilly dally,shilly shally.Get up the elevators asap.The longer you take the more enemies you'll have to deal with.

Look at the enemies killed per turn in this screenshot.I destroyed around total of 8-10 enemies all up ... including the Sectopod.This was my first playthrough the mission and I learnt very quickly in the first level of the facility (through loss of a soldier via being swamped) that crowd control and moving on to the next mission stage asap was key.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=721439575

Yea I could see how the rest of the mission would go down; I'm just amazed at the sectopod being done that early, but I suppose I'm underestimating what Shen brings to the team as well.

I'll definately try that next legend play through, my current one I've really been going slow.

I do agree the best aspect of a SPARK is simply how early you could theoretically get one along with the rocket that soon.

They fall off in value later in a campaign, which has always been my major complaint.

I'm also going to be using some mods to beef them up a bit, let their weapons be modded and also get both sides of their skill tree for versatility.

Might make them a touch OP but I'll be adding in difficulty mods and more enemies anyway so if I'm going to use SPARK at all he needs to stay relevent.