LWOTC 1.2 feedback & question

[76561199793289788]

Guys, I've just finished my first 1.2 quick run, and I must say, that this is the best ever turn-based tactical/strategy game ever!
I really like the update to xcom classes, specialist & grenadier especially (though chain jolt for spt is op as **** I think either splash dmg should be 50% or cd increased, now I have capacitor discharge every 2 turns, what is this?). And also Spark rework have great trajectory as well, 1.1 spark shooter was OP beyond any measure, but I think shooter build it is still too op in 1.2, but very interesting anyway.

Important things I've noticed, and didn't understand was:

- chosen is very weak now, especially the warlock. What happens to this poor guy? I think in 1.1 he was nearly perfect. Yes he was Op a little if he summon andro or archon as bff, but so what? this makes him powerful & interesting. It was frustrating, yet nothing that could not be tackled. Now what? 3 ♥♥♥♥♥♥ zombies or lancers, and what are these followers? some naga & capitain? no one wants to follow this guy anymore. I think 1.1 warlock was exactly advent is needed to kick xcom ass. And now this guy insta ♥♥♥♥ his pants once appears.

- in mid game, for some reason non of contacted regions after 2 strength level dropped anywhere below 4-5-6 level it started from, although vigilance dropped to 1 as in 1.1. I'm not sure is this a bug or taking in account weak chosen, new strategy layer design? I don't know if I could close the game this time, if I didn't get couple of supply raids in 1st region early, which just hard snowballed me to the end. Did anyone else had this problem?

- reaper shooter no more in 1.2. and why reaper shooter is important? I'm not aware how anyone plays the game beside me, but I think snipers are overall just useless. I make only 2 of them to babysit for late storyline missions which they hard carry. And Reaper shooter is the build that adds this missing sniper vibe to regular xcom squad, that guy would cover boys from above, from behind, from any unexpected ♥♥♥♥ that could happen. I think it was never op in 1.1: it still was weaker than typical ranger (3 shots every turn, much cheaper, strong early, has shorty) or gunner (just a power house, & can control via supprs, still cheaper than a reaper).

Thanks for work guys, its outstanding!

[76561199793289788]

Why Spark shooter 1.2 seems op? Because with tanky low mobile armor it seems he does not have weak spots anymore. And he still has kinetic strike, with channel & sacrifice he also would perfectly tank if needed. He looks more like muton or naga now - he is a universal soldier. And Xcom guys - they work as a team.

[Iron Horse]

I've found that mid-late game, contacted regions, they hit strength seven or so, especially looking for Avatar bases. I contact a few region ahead of time, and had them recruit/hide. Getting a recruit every 4-5 days there is a fall off. The strength in the region went down when I wasn't active there, doing any missions, and having resistance fighters hide....and after taking out any Hidden Facilities or story missions..

I never played 1.1. The Warlock was way harder to fight than than the Hunter. His phantoms would spawn at random places, and be annoying.

[76561199793289788]

I'm a huge fan of Chosen Avenger assault nerf, this was way out of hand. But at the time, with Chosen also being so weak now, there is no real possibility to loose the game (at least vs 1.1). My concern that its becoming more routine, less spicy?

This is one of the issues of balancing things out "to be fair" to the extent when it makes the whole thing boring. In 1.1 I genuinely hated each Chosen appears on my screen, and now I just feel sorry for them))

[Heau]

The 1.0 and 1.1 meta was to beat the clock on CADs altogether by killing the chosens just before they could launch their first CAD. Mostly because failing to do so was edging to a death spiral due to the CADs basically lining up once per month from then on leaving very little room to continue chasing the golden path.

The timing change to CAD was a small nerf for newer players but a bit of a buff for old timers that hadn't seen a CAD in ages. It brdiged the extremes. It's not a deliberate nerf per se. It's mostly just that the early CADs arrive at much earlier FLs than in the past and the schedules are built according to FL. But they're really not trivial for new players still.

For what its worth, with extremely aggressive play, its still possible to beat the clock on all CADs despite the change. But beating the first one was made much more difficult.

The mobility nerf of the warlock during reaction is already on the watch list for being buffed back. But devs and especially Tedster poured in way more

The reason for your midgame STR management issue is likely just bad RNG on how STR was flowing towards your high vigilance region (starting region). Sometimes you get the lucky break and you expand away from it the natural flow. Other times you expand into it and if you play aggressive enough early game you wind up without any STR<=4 while sitting on 3-5 regions contacted. It gets most noticeable on a start with only 2 adjacent regions. Tedster added some code to prevent them but they still exist.

[76561199793289788]

This run I beat first CAD timer by a wide margin still (a month at least), but as I said I got lucky with 2 supply raids early and manage to get 3st liber mission with boost in 1st region, so after second region, I liberated the 1st. I see your point about STR flow, but it never felt like it. The STR in any region beside first two literally never dropped below the level when I've contacted it (maybe once or twice decreased by 1 in some areas, but still never below 4-5-6 depending on region) so in mid game I got xp to unlock chosen finding missions via covert mostly and micro managing havens when VIG drop to 1 search for mission then hide, etc. That way it still actually playable, but need micro manage havens a lot.

In that regard I though it would be great that scan stops if in some region suddenly vigilance change from 1 to 2, or STR change from 2 to 3, and from 3 to 4 - this would help manage map a lot.

Not only warlock was weak, I got hunter as first chosen, and it felt even weaker. For some reason AI was acting weirdly all the time, if you not give him flank on first turn it would make stupid moves ending up with some dump single shot.

BTW, its only in the end of the game I noticed that weapon upgrades now can be removed. Wow, doesn't it just breaks the game? should the double loot be completely removed to compensate this somehow?

I also in my first post forgot to mention that 4th row perks are now very very appealing, very good job!

[michael]

I got to very late stage with over 40 MSgts all with top tier gear and all with Elite attachments and was basically stringing things along, managing the doom counter and experimenting with different builds and getting more and more promoted to the max - all of this on veteran.

I decided that on my next playthrough I would be much more selective about bondpairs. I decided I would do many of my usual Shinobi officer :: Specialist pairs and every other pair would be a Gunner paired with a different build of each other class. Gunners are just ridiculously powerful. Who needs consumables when Gunners can shred and destroy cover with cooldown abilities?

So, that's what I'm doing now - on Legendary. Just getting started on that now.

[Iron Horse]

I was playing on normal difficulty. In the middle game, I was able to get region strength down to three. One dropped all the way to one. I did this with people recruiting and hiding.

This was my first run into the late game. Late game being I killed all three Chosen, and am close to finish. I hit a wall where the enemy force level seemed to rise exponentially, and I had to save scum a lot to progress at all.

I noticed as I was getting magnetic weapons, that it was really easy to just skip them into the next weapon level. This seem to level up the enemy, and I didn't have the resources to equip soldiers fast enough.

[Heau]

Originally posted by 游戏:

BTW, its only in the end of the game I noticed that weapon upgrades now can be removed. Wow, doesn't it just breaks the game? should the double loot be completely removed to compensate this somehow?

This has always been the case. I think Ted just added a QoL button to remove all mods from all sheltered units at once in 1.2. For better or worse because unlike the utility remove all button, they don't auto reequip if you don't use them for another purpose right then and there.

[Heau]

Originally posted by Iron Horse:

I was playing on normal difficulty. In the middle game, I was able to get region strength down to three. One dropped all the way to one. I did this with people recruiting and hiding.

This was my first run into the late game. Late game being I killed all three Chosen, and am close to finish. I hit a wall where the enemy force level seemed to rise exponentially, and I had to save scum a lot to progress at all.

I noticed as I was getting magnetic weapons, that it was really easy to just skip them into the next weapon level. This seem to level up the enemy, and I didn't have the resources to equip soldiers fast enough.

This suggests you've played a little too passively early and fell behind the tech and experience curve but managed to skate by between save scumming and the normal or veteran difficulty. I want to say it's pretty common for newer players to the mod. At least my experience has also been to fall behind for the first few hundred hours and starting to more religiously stick to ironman rules.

Rule of thumb is the "good" window for a weapon tier is roughly 4 Force Level(FL), and its viability stretches close to an extra 4 FL behind, with the advanced tiers coming in and lasting 1 or 2 FL points later. But even on legend, many people's first win often stretched coil weapons all the way to FL20 (maximum level of enemy quality). Magnetic to coil transition is probably one of the hardest tech transition in the game due to elerium research and the many body-specific researches often being done then.

So like laser from 4-8 is amazing, falls off pretty hard by fl12, magnetic from 8-12 is amazing, falls off very hard by FL16, etc. And usually, if you have the resources to hit the better timings in both research and upgrade costs, you also have a adequate soldier XP growth to keep the pace.

[76561199793289788]

Originally posted by Heau:

Originally posted by 游戏:

BTW, its only in the end of the game I noticed that weapon upgrades now can be removed. Wow, doesn't it just breaks the game? should the double loot be completely removed to compensate this somehow?

This has always been the case. I think Ted just added a QoL button to remove all mods from all sheltered units at once in 1.2. For better or worse because unlike the utility remove all button, they don't auto reequip if you don't use them for another purpose right then and there.

So basically everybody playing with removable weapon upgrades? I though that loot was pretty ample anyway and upgrades are cheap, so the fixed upgrades IMO made a lot of sense, also taking also into account PG projects for those upgrades (in my strategy elite scopes & mags projects are essential).

Originally posted by Iron Horse:

I was playing on normal difficulty. In the middle game, I was able to get region strength down to three. One dropped all the way to one. I did this with people recruiting and hiding.

I see, may be I run into some bug. But anyway it still can be tackled, because with VIG 1 you can recruit, and once it stacked you still get a lot good mission timers, and if you have 3 regions like that + covert mission discovery its still enough. You have to remember to hide all before mission start.

Originally posted by Iron Horse:

I noticed as I was getting magnetic weapons, that it was really easy to just skip them into the next weapon level. This seem to level up the enemy, and I didn't have the resources to equip soldiers fast enough.

On legend this can never be done IMO, laser if anything can be skipped, but you'll never live up to coils this way.

Originally posted by michael:

I decided that on my next playthrough I would be much more selective about bondpairs.

My view that bond level 1 is already gives huge boost with additional movement action, almost doesn't matter what classes you are pairing, and also bond level 2 very important for covert. The rest I think not that important. I usually pair ranger+gunner, but so far this haven't proven to be that important imo.

[76561199793289788]

Heau, can you clarify why weapon upgrade are removable by default? it looks weird, since why do you have so many of them in the loot then, etc.

And about Warlock, I remember in 1.1 i had to shoot out my soldier, so I can reanimate & evacuate him, because he was mind controlled; and his mind scorch was aoe and caused panic, if i'm not mistaken, thats why I brought 5 mind shields into the chamber. In 1.2 seems non of that matter any more. I thought about this analogy of "playing fair": imagine you come to a boxing class and asking your opponent not to move, so you can hit him - thats way it would be fair match. Like this kind of "fair" is what I mean, my braindead strats are not working - because its not fair :D

[Heau]

I can't say why mod removal was always there. I wasn't part of the mod design team. I merely jumped in and participated in the 1.2 testing and loop feedback and found devs meaningfully engaging and using that feedback. I actually started playing LWOTC probably around the time that Tedster took development lead. So like the last legs of 1.0. I just poured a few thousands of hours over a few years playing.

But you were always able to go into the weapon mod interface with a button to strip mods from the current unit weapon. There just wasn't a strip all mods from all sheltered soldiers button before.

Mind scorch had a longer cooldown and higher odds to set the target on fire in 1.1. Which felt somewhat miserable for resistance personel burning to their death with limited counterplay (medical protocol only). The CD reduction makes stall tactics more damaging. Mind scorch still has an innate chain/aoe effect. You're just positionning around it better. Off the top of my head there's still a chosen perk that extends the aoe range by 1 tile.

Mind shields on warlock HQ was mostly because of the full mind control aversion causing a smooth fight to go severely wrong. But he was easier to 1-turn in 1.1 with banish cheesing so the right comp could ignore mindshields altogether.

For what its worth, I've been taking more injuries on warlock HQ (from warlock alone) since 1.2 just because he gets to mind scorch a few times between the summons causing a lot of stall. Moreso if he hits the perk for -1 turn CD on mind scorch. In one of the beta builds, this perk made him cast scorch every turn IIRC and it was madness. I don't really feel threatened by it alone but I flawless the hunter(assuming no trigger bot perk) and assassin more often than I do the warlock.

[76561199793289788]

Ok, thanks, I believe i would still play with fixed upgrades, I think that ample loot (with bonus loot esp) + cheap black market sell prices + pg projects assumes that weapon upgrades should be fixed.

My final point & suggestion of this feedback, probably it already exists somewhere in the discord, but anyway, it would help haven management a ton if due to VIG or STR updates some region falls into intel/recruit/supply raid zone - the scanning would stop and on the map it would be highlighted with yellow frame somehow (and may be a message appears on the right: New Indonesia is in yellow zone), and if it falls into Full Retail - the same but Red zone. Then you can react and possibly prevent retail (not guaranteed ofc). In this way macro play would become much more comfortable, as of now I need frantically check those 2 digits everywhere all the time :D

[76561199793289788]

I'm finishing my 2nd run now, and the STR problem I've described not showing up, Everything looks as in 1.1, and since I was able to play in first 3 regions, somehow I've managed to kill first chosen even faster than in my first run. Despite of the fact that all first MSGT had average intelligence.

I've tried removable upgrades this time, and must admit its feels very fun and natural :D
But this is yet another nerf to Advent, XCOM in 1.2 received so much buff, Advent now definitely on the back foot :D
In this regard, maybe there could be an option to remove double loot on Legend & ellerium cores having wider stock in Black Market with more affordable prices? So much loot feels a little messy.

I've also tried this reaper build you have suggested, Heau, it is indeed very strong. But for some reason I just really don't like this way of executing a mission, it feels like cheating. And this circus jungler replaced the one and only spot I had for an assault in my squad builds. And Assault is the XCOM class with the best design imo. So I really hope reaper-shooter can be resurrected from the dead :D

UPD: I wanted to leave this idea here: imo "Stay with me" tactical school perk, should be much cheaper. Like 50 or even 30 supply. Its too expensive for what it does, and you really need only when you are behind. And when you are behind, do you have 150 supplies for a thing like that? even 50? Surely no, you can only buy it early, as an investment. And looked this way, how much should it cost? in early game? I bet closer to 30, than 50.

Thanks again guys, I really appreciate all the work that has been done in LWOTC. Cheers!

[Heau]

Originally posted by 游戏:

Despite of the fact that all first MSGT had average intelligence.

I'm not sure I understand this comment. Could this be a localization issue? Combat intelligence only increases the amount of ability points the character gains with every level up. It doesn't influence the rate at which experience is gained.

Originally posted by 游戏:

UPD: I wanted to leave this idea here: imo "Stay with me" tactical school perk, should be much cheaper.

I wholeheartedly agree with this and have felt the same for years but I don't think anyone brought that up during 1.2 development when Tedster decided to open up GTS-purchased perks to move vulture (chance for double loot) out of the GTS and make it baseline at FL3 to try to broaden opening facilities strategies.

I wouldn't expect any change to LWOTC for another long time.