Are sparks good in LW2?

[Robob]

I've been thinking of buying the DLC pack solely because "haha big mech go pew pew" but there have been a lot of complaints about them being underpowered in vanilla

[oldcrankyman]

They're essentially useless.

[Sabaithal]

They're quite useful if you know what you're doing with them.

They may look exposed, but spark BITS all provide them with innate defense. Higher tier BITS provide more obviously. And they may not be that accurate, but they can carry weapons, tank damage, and some of their abilities can make them, quite frankly, extremely broken.

Plasma blaster for example, combined with the rainmaker perk will outright delete entire pods, and completely destroy giant swathes of the map. Shredstorm cannon has a similar effect to say the least. Seriously, its a bit broken with how powerful it can get...

And if you find them too squishy, use specialists. Specifically, put a specialist somewhere nearby in full cover, then use defense protocol on the spark. And hey presto, the spark is damn near untouchable. Then just use them aggressively, get in close, finish enemies off at close range. Then laugh as the remaining enemies completely miss shots they really shouldn't (seriously, you'd think these things would get hit more often...).

My most useful and versatile squad consists of 4 specialists, and 2 sparks, and that's it. And they rarely ever take damage and stampede through the map like its a bad joke. Again, just depends on if you're playing smart with them. Obviously stamping into 5 heavily armed pods won't end well for any squad combination (I mean unless there's 2 sectopods, because I have 4 specialists with high hacking ability).

[nephilimnexus]

If you've got the Enhancing Objects mod you can turn any SPARK into a one-robot Dolemite. It ain't cheap, though, and you'll need to cough up five Shieldbearer corpses to reach that Level 5 Shield Generator. What's it do? +5 Ablative HP and +25% on all defense checks. You're no longer just a damage sponge - you're actually hard to hit, now.

And if you're really fond of cheese you can take the PsiFocuser from that same mod and slot that instead. Which seems stupid because SPARKS don't have psionics, but a Level 5 PsiFocuser regenerates 3 hit points per turn for whoever is carrying it even if they aren't psionic (probably an oversight from the creator). Now organic units have a medical rule that says if you have 12 HP, get hit down to 8 HP, then head back up to 12 HP you're still considered wounded at the end of the mission and will need to go to the hospital. SPARKs don't have that. If you're SPARK gets knocked down from 20 HP to 1 HP and somehow repairs itself back to 20 HP before exiting the map then it's considered undamaged and requires no downtime in engineering. The L5 PsiFocuser basically says if the enemy can't do more than 3 damage to your SPARK (after armor reduction) every turn then it's walking out of that mission looking brand new. Naturally this thing isn't cheap either, but Sectroid corpses are way easier to come by than Shiledbearers, so this may be the easier option.

There's also mods that let you stick regular gun mods on those big old SPARK cannons and let me tell ya, a Superior Scope on a Helix Cannon is game over against pretty anything you point it at.

Honestly, the only real unsolvable downside to SPARKs is their huge penalty to infiltration times. I haven't found a way around that, and frankly I'm not looking for one because that seems like a pretty fair trade-off for being a walking tank.

[Heau]

Originally posted by Sabaithal:

My most useful and versatile squad consists of 4 specialists, and 2 sparks, and that's it. And they rarely ever take damage and stampede through the map like its a bad joke. Again, just depends on if you're playing smart with them. Obviously stamping into 5 heavily armed pods won't end well for any squad combination (I mean unless there's 2 sectopods, because I have 4 specialists with high hacking ability).

That sounds like a very funny build. I can't imagine having so many specialists that I'd ever want to play that since I still want one on every other crew, but certainly sounds like something worth to force for the fun of it. What specialist builds do you run? Also, what difficulty do you play on if you don't mind?

As for the OP question. They feel good but not OP in the mid game and weak in the late game. But since they are pricy in the midgame, where you are resource starved, they really don't feel all that great overall. I've built the first one for 50 supplies and saw they jumped to 80 supplies after and felt this was far too much to commit to more when you recruit humans for free through guerilla ops missions. I don't have any to suggest but I'd recommend looking into extra mods if you really have a craving for mech play.

In particular, I feel they fall off when you have good weapon mods / good PCS for your human crews.

Weirdly enough, the one thing I feel would help them be substantially more potent and "find their niche" is if they had something to prevent damage intake from removing their overwatch state. Which strikes me as reasonable for a mech (albeit I'd hate advent mechs get the same).

Originally posted by nephilimnexus:

If you've got the Enhancing Objects mod you can turn any SPARK into a one-robot Dolemite. It ain't cheap, though, and you'll need to cough up five Shieldbearer corpses to reach that Level 5 Shield Generator. What's it do? +5 Ablative HP and +25% on all defense checks. You're no longer just a damage sponge - you're actually hard to hit, now.

The numbers in this mod look downright broken. Some of the T5 items have like 3-5 superior PCS value worth. Seems way over the top without rebalancing enemy power levels. Don't get me wrong I like the idea of bringing some Shadowrun cyber flavour to xcom but I feel this mod decreases game difficulty too much on its own.

Also, the mod description does not cover adding utility slots to Sparks. Does it also do it or do you have another mod doing that part? I'm more interested in that specific addition.


*Edit* my comment is WRT LWOTC, not LW2 strictly.

[Sabaithal]

Originally posted by Heau:

That sounds like a very funny build. I can't imagine having so many specialists that I'd ever want to play that since I still want one on every other crew, but certainly sounds like something worth to force for the fun of it. What specialist builds do you run? Also, what difficulty do you play on if you don't mind?

I first started this loadout on "normal" difficulty without mods. You wouldn't think a 4 man team of specialists with 2 SPARKs would be very effective, but I was dead wrong about that. The specialists of course have high hacking score, but I made all of them overwatch units (except one which has some medic perks, in case of emergency). With ever vigilant, and sentinel, they provide all the covering fire I need for the SPARKs even without a high base aim score. I don't even need to give the specialists armor, its extremely rare for them to ever take fire with SPARKs on the field, and them being in high cover (having ever vigilant and prioritizing going on overwatch means you can go pretty much anywhere with impunity, AND the squad is highly mobile). I just need to give them half-decent weapons. Laser or magnetic guns work pretty well for a while.

The SPARKs of course I give heavy armor and weapons. They're the tanks drawing attention, and with specialists constantly buffing them with "defense protocol" they rarely even get hit. And they can take a number of hits if they do. Generally I compliment the specialists with "warrior" sparks (I think? The tree with rainmaker in it). Give the SPARKs rainmaker and either a plasma blaster or shredstorm cannon, and they're now broken. They can delete giant swathes of area and do a ridiculous amount of damage, far exceeding technical rockets even with all their perks, in a single turn. The rest is just finishing off the wounded.

Add to that, the specialists can hack any number of things per turn, what with there being four of them, and this is basically the cyber warfare squadron. I play with red fog on by the way (strongly recommend) so the heavily wounded units may as well be already dead.

Again, just give it a shot, I thought it was gonna be a bust, but its by far my most effective "Standard' unit. I even send them out in heavy combat missions, and maybe one of the sparks gets a little banged up.

[nephilimnexus]

Originally posted by Sabaithal:

The numbers in this mod look downright broken. Some of the T5 items have like 3-5 superior PCS value worth.

Indeed they are rather OP at top level... but keep in mind making a single L5 item is going to require 5 matching corpses and well over 250 supplies. Compare that PCSs which drop out of landposts like vending machine candy. So I'm getting what I paid for.

[Heau]

Originally posted by nephilimnexus:

Originally posted by Sabaithal:

The numbers in this mod look downright broken. Some of the T5 items have like 3-5 superior PCS value worth.

Indeed they are rather OP at top level... but keep in mind making a single L5 item is going to require 5 matching corpses and well over 250 supplies. Compare that PCSs which drop out of landposts like vending machine candy. So I'm getting what I paid for.

Oh no doubt it takes a grind before it's really OP. It just changes the difficulty dynamics. It leaves the early game rather unchanged but severely alters the late game difficulty by substantially improving your top end scaling.

[nephilimnexus]

True, but by that point I'm facing Advent troops with 15+ hitpoints on the low end. I need every advantage I can get!

[Sabaithal]

Yeah fully upgraded sparks with endgame perks and gear are mobile heavy weapons platforms, as well as the only "hard targets" really available to XCOM. Definitely worth the investment though.

Again, plasma blaster + Make it rain = Half the map is on fire now