Single Player Instant Action Difficulty

[ODM | Monz]

I think the Instant action is very difficult for me. I am definitely a noob to the game. I'm not complaining, I love the challenge, but does anyone else think instant action is tough, even on easy?

I played and beat the campaign on Medium and had no problems.

I love the game, keep it up!

[PNB]

I find many of the IA campaigns ridiculously difficult, and I've been playing this game for 15 years. Either I'm a crappy player, or they are very difficult missions. The original game had a sequel of sorts named Forgotten Enemies. I was never even able to get past the first mission. I think sometimes the advancement triggers are too obscure to find. It probably helps to have friends who can help with the difficult missions.

[Anquietas]

I've never really had too much trouble with IA, but it probably helps to be familiar with the particular map you're playing on and where the biometal pools are and what defenses spawn there and such (gun spires and the like if you're fighting scions). A good way to check that is to enable the editor and have a look around the map. To do that:
1) press ctrl + ` (key left of 1, possibly depends on keyboard layout) to open the console
2) type "game.cheat bzeditor" to enable the editor (type it again to disable it)
3) press ctrl + E to open the editor (this will pause the game while it's open)
try not to edit the map accidentally; the editor controls are a little cumbersome. It's also critical that you get as many scrap pools as possible as quickly as possible, and prevent the AI from getting their own if you can; there's nothing worse than fighting an uphill battle with a resource shortage. You can use your starting units to guard them until you get better defenses up.

You can always give the computer a disadvantage too via the computer/player force settings; you can call it levelling the playing field if it makes you feel better seeing as the AI usually starts with free gun spires or turrets guarding a lot of the pools :P

The "high and low" and "chill" maps are fairly easy, I think because they're symmetrical and the AI doesn't get too much of an advantage from the gun spires. There are definitely some harder ones though like alien dunes or iceberg

Originally posted by Monz:

I played and beat the campaign on Medium and had no problems.

Funnily enough I find the campaign considerably harder than IA. Especially Payback and Fanning the Fire, just because you get attacked with heavy units fairly early before you really get a chance to establish your base. I guess it depends on how you approach them. They definitely seem harder than in the original game though.

[Arcamis]

-The most important thing to know is how resources work (the gathering etc).
-You can distract enemy units with scavangers as you destroy them.
-Getting out a gun tower quikcly is a good idea if you are not that skilled.
-Late game you can perhaps make assult tanks instead of more gun towers. A lot of them will be a good defense and offense. This way you can counter enemy assult tanks and walkers, more gun towers might not be the best option in those cases.

As for those Rend ISDF missions if I am correct then the difficulty of the game solely depends on where you set up your recycler. I think if you set it up at the back, then it confuses the AI and it doesn't attack you with heavy units. This has been consistent in multiple playthroughs in the old version.

[Anquietas]

Originally posted by Arcamis:

I think if you set it up at the back, then it confuses the AI and it doesn't attack you with heavy units. This has been consistent in multiple playthroughs in the old version.

Yeah, that doesn't work anymore :P I put my recycler as far back as possible and still had to deal with regular assaults of titans, maulers and archers in payback, and titans and maulers in fanning the fire, starting roughly around the time I got a second gun tower up, without having 3 pools (in both cases because #3 was guarded by a gun spire and in payback's case, several titans). Curiously the AI seemed to have very little interest in collecting burns in fanning the fire. it sent a couple sentries once and then left it at that.

[Arcamis]

The first Rend mission is easy. You collect the recycler and set it up in the middle (you snipe the vechiles there, take the warrior with sonic, use morphed multilock weapons to kill the titans that arrive shortly). After that the game is won.

Second one seems weird compared to the one in original version. In the old version it consistently sent a hauler and an escort to get the guy. In this one it just sends a hauler (in my case). I think it was only one time somewhere in between where I saw two sentries near it.

[ODM | Monz]

Interesting to hear about your difficulty with the campaign. I feel the campaign the enemies will hold back much more and stay in the defensive. Which then allows me to build a massive army to swarm and destroy.

In the instant action, I am constantly attacked by Archers, or by Mortar Bikes, which is very frustrating and time consuming (its a great CPU enemy tactic).

[Anquietas]

Originally posted by Arcamis:

The first Rend mission is easy. You collect the recycler and set it up in the middle (you snipe the vechiles there, take the warrior with sonic, use morphed multilock weapons to kill the titans that arrive shortly). After that the game is won.

What warrior? One of the ones in the scion base? The scion base that has like 3 gun spires in range of you at that time that won't be occupied for long? Seems like a suicidal tactic, but if it works it's cheesing the mission tbh. There are definitely no warriors outside of the base though, just a pair of sonic-equipped titans that follow you to the recycler spawn point shortly after you leave their base; those'll tend to stay there while the scions build more arc titans that'll go all the way to your actual base every 5-10 minutes or so.

Originally posted by Monz:

Interesting to hear about your difficulty with the campaign. I feel the campaign the enemies will hold back much more and stay in the defensive. Which then allows me to build a massive army to swarm and destroy.

Yeah I've noticed the same behaviour for most of them. The particular issue with those missions is being hit with heavy units before you're really in a position to deal with them, and then you're stuck desperately trying to prevent your defenses being blown up while building more, without having the resources to do it quickly. On my first run on payback I actually had archers shelling my base from the very top of the huge mountain there. Since you can't "fly" anymore (or at least, I can't figure out how to do it in the remaster; the old way doesn't work), you can't get to the top to deal with them; not handy when there's also titans attacking the same part of the base :(. Moving the gun towers back a couple tiles fixed that by forcing the archers to go somewhere I could actually get to them.

Originally posted by Monz:

In the instant action, I am constantly attacked by Archers, or by Mortar Bikes, which is very frustrating and time consuming (its a great CPU enemy tactic).

Archers can be a pain but rocket tanks are pretty good at shooting them down if you position them along their flight path. Mortar bikes go down super easily with a pair of well-placed guardians though, and gun spires make mincemeat of them if you can afford to build them. Depending on placement and terrain of course.

[Arcamis]

Archers are weak units pretty sure you can just jetpack to them and take them out.

And the units I mentioned arrive to outside of the scion base to the center of the map where the scrap pools are. The enemy sends turrets there too.

[GepardenK]

Interesting... I just played the first two Rend missions and I'm noticing some discrepancies with your experiences.

In payback I never got attacked by a single Titan (they just hung out at the rec spawn) and no Maulers either, just Archers and swarms of Warrior/Lancer/Drone. I also had no trouble climbing the big mountain by the scrap field to take those Archers out - in fact I have no trouble climbing anywhere really with a Scout, Bike or Tank.

As for Fanning the Fire they were definitely very interested in getting to Burns in my playthrough. It was wave after wave of Sentry/Warrior/Lancer and the occasional hauler going for the crash site.

And I swear there used to be Titans in Counterattack (last Bane mission) in classic BZ2. Yet I didn't encounter a single one this time around.

[Anquietas]

Originally posted by Arcamis:

Archers are weak units pretty sure you can just jetpack to them and take them out.

They might be weak, but they're not that weak. if you try that they'll shoot you, and it only takes one or two mortar hits to kill a pilot. It'll take longer than it takes them to do that to kill both with just the pilot's gun. Might work on easy though. Also keep in mind most of the time when those attacked, I also had titans attacking my gun towers or various hover units attacking the extractor on the other side of the base - sometimes all 3 at the same time.

Originally posted by Arcamis:

And the units I mentioned arrive to outside of the scion base to the center of the map where the scrap pools are. The enemy sends turrets there too.

Hmm okay. When I did that mission a builder comes and builds a spire pretty quickly, certainly before I've even got the recy deployed. I still think that's kinda cheesing it but eh, if it works whatever.

Originally posted by GepardenK:

Interesting... I just played the first two Rend missions and I'm noticing some discrepancies with your experiences.

In payback I never got attacked by a single Titan (they just hung out at the rec spawn) and no Maulers either, just Archers and swarms of Warrior/Lancer/Drone. I also had no trouble climbing the big mountain by the scrap field to take those Archers out - in fact I have no trouble climbing anywhere really with a Scout, Bike or Tank.

Hmm, the titans may be dependent on difficulty settings I guess; I played it on medium. It definitely sent lots of them; I watched it build several while sitting in the relay bunker once I'd secured the 3 pools in the middle, and before that they just kept coming every few minutes.

Originally posted by GepardenK:

As for Fanning the Fire they were definitely very interested in getting to Burns in my playthrough. It was wave after wave of Sentry/Warrior/Lancer and the occasional hauler going for the crash site.

And I swear there used to be Titans in Counterattack (last Bane mission) in classic BZ2. Yet I didn't encounter a single one this time around.

It took me several attempts to beat that one (titans and maulers wrecking my gun towers mainly). In one of them they did send several waves to attack the scout and tank I'd stationed beside Burns, but other than that they sent hardly anything. Maybe it depends on the precise placement of the units? e.g. if they're on the spire's radar they'll send more units, but ignore them otherwise? When I finally got to trashing their base I did find their units had gotten stuck against the cliff going in the general direction of Burns, so maybe it was just a pathing issue.

It's been too long since I played the original to remember if there were titans or not, but I didn't see any on my run either for that one

[Arcamis]

In the old version there were titans. I did not see them in this one.

About sending units to Burns, that is probably it. I didn't send any units there this time and only encountered haulers.

And also in the old version I remember succesfully killing archers with pulse gun, quickly and on max difficulty. Difficulty is a joke in this campaign, all missions are too easy. Cannot wait for the FE mod. Now that was actually very hard (or just very challenging maybe, the main difficulty came from the fact that the game would crash if you would try to save it on later missions).

Imo the campaign needs to be completely redone.

[Anquietas]

Well, I just tested trying to shoot an archer to death with the pulse gun: https://imgur.com/a/4FwLt
That's after emptying the clip once. It's not viable to kill them that way on medium difficulty, and I'd expect it to be worse on higher difficulty. (Test setup: ISDF playground map, spawned it in on team 5 via the editor. I also tested setting a group to make it turn red, but that made no difference besides the fact it started shooting back as expected).

As far as difficulty in general goes, it seems like there's some disparity in how difficult people are finding it and what is and is not occurring during the campaign levels - even outside of this thread. With a few exceptions it seems like the difficulty is about right for me; reasonably challenging but not so much so that it becomes an exercise in frustration min-maxing the setups to find one that works. From what I can tell it seems like the difficulty options mainly affect the damage dealt and received by player owned units, and some minor behaviour changes in which units the AI sends your way (not sending lancers as much on easy, for example)

[Bytesmee]

The biggest 'tip' is to understand scrap and scrap production. Scavengers are incredibly valuable with being able to provide you multiple units/buildings in quick succession thanks to loose scrap. Arcamis highlighted other key points.

Regarding campaign missions, it definitely seems that the AI gets hung up sometimes. During my playthrough on hard I never fought Titans during Fanning the Fire, only Lancers and Warriors, and only a handful of Haulers attempted to pick up the Scion.

[ODM | Monz]

On Fanning Fire on Medium I encountered Titans one by one, Maulers that would come in pairs, and Warriors/ Sentry in a group of 4. This would rotate in that order until they were defeated. Also during that rotation, about every 5 minutes a new pair of Archers would arrive and start shelling my defenses.

[Anquietas]

Originally posted by Monz:

On Fanning Fire on Medium I encountered Titans one by one, Maulers that would come in pairs, and Warriors/ Sentry in a group of 4. This would rotate in that order until they were defeated. Also during that rotation, about every 5 minutes a new pair of Archers would arrive and start shelling my defenses.

Yeah that seems similar to what I saw, except the titan typically came with the maulers (some 10-20 seconds later because they're slower; they left the scion base together based on what I saw scouting a little ahead of the defenses. I didn't see archers at all on that one though, only on payback.