This game is worse than Xcom...

[Sart]

I really love this game but when you have around 70% chance to hit and then miss 2-3 times in a row with a handgun, or miss a 95% with a sniper rifle, well... Lady Luck has abandoned my team November.

[Dæmon]

In the first X-Com from the 90's, my guy with the Egg launcher(200 dmg and you can set waypoints for it - but he hit a guy 1 square in front of him instead) failed so hard he wiped out my whole squad; those who didn't die initially panicked and ran off into enemy fire. I'd choose Wasteland 3 over that :-P

[ElPrezCBF]

The combat mechanics might be similar to Xcom but they are not comparable due to two significant differences: single vs multiple projectiles per shot and attributes. Xcom gives your soldiers a huge accuracy buff each time you advance from conventional to lasers to plasma. It's a linear progression such that if you ever miss a high percentage shot, it's mainly due to bad luck from a poor RNG roll since you only have one projectile per shot regardless of what weapon type you use (even multiple shot weapons are collectively abstracted into a single burst for RNG calculation). Furthermore, attributes, the leadership skill and mods in WL3 give your soldiers a ton of ways to buff up your hit/crit chance under the RNG mechanic, unlike Xcom where the only way to beat single shot RNG for guaranteed hits (apart from maxing out accuracy to 100%) is to bypass it with special abilities. For example, you can get free AP refunds in the same turn if your luck attribute is high enough, something that Xcom doesn't have.

The hand gun and sniper examples you gave for WL3 work similarly to Xcom because they only have one projectile per shot but this does not reflect the entire combat mechanic of the game. Even these 2 examples don't take into account the other ways to buff hit/crit chance mentioned above. For multiple projectile weapons in WL3 like auto weapons and heavy machine guns, their hit/crit chances are calculated for each burst and not collectively abstracted into a single burst for calculating RNG unlike Xcom. For example, an auto weapon with 3 bursts per shot will have RNG calculated for each burst separately. This means that even if your first burst misses at 95% hit chance, your second and third bursts might still hit because RNG is calculated separately for them.

[Sart]

True. As far as I remember, Wasteland 2 had a similar way of calculating RNG. Both Xcom and Wasteland can be really mean to the player at times though. Nothing new here.

[ElPrezCBF]

Overall though, I'd consider Xcom's combat system superior to WL3's because its armor and damage mechanics are clear to the player and decently balanced compared with WL3. Even Phoenix Point is better than WL3 in this aspect because how actual damage is calculated after subtracting armor value is clear to the player.

In WL3, rangers get downed in one shot too easily and to fix it, you have to settle for sub-optimization just to buff up con and armor to a decent level and even then, it's often not enough. I think this is due to the presence of extremely high penetration elemental weapons like explosives and fire that bypass armor completely. And the game also doesn't explain what armor levels mean. For example, you want a lower level armor because it gives lots of bonus elemental resistance but are not sure if you should upgrade to a higher level armor that gives a pure armor bonus and nothing else. WL3 is a great RPG game with nice lore, but I wouldn't consider it a competitor to Xcom since its combat balance needs improvement. It's telling when many WL3 players say they often need to ignore everything and just focus on extreme damage to take out the enemy in 1 turn or get downed in one shot the next.

[EolSunder]

wasteland 3 armor system is junk. At least in wasteland 2 it functioned, but in wasteland 3 there are too many ways to bypass armor, and even normal shots enemies have high pen value making armor useless. You'll survive with no armor just as easy with 70 armor. Best way in wasteland 3 is to kill enemies fast so you don't get hurt. Easy.

At least percentages in wasteland 3 are much better than wasteland 2, where calculations were so off it was laughable. Its still a litttle wonky where my snipers with 80% chances to hit always seem to never hit, but at least the mechanics aren't broken like they were in wasteland 2's combat and weaponsmith calculations.

Oh, i have to break down a pickaxe, 55% chance for grip, 45% chance for parts.. grip, grip, grip, grip, grip, grip x7.. mmm seems a 95% instead of 55%. Oh i want to break down and get weights.. 5% chance.. will take a while.. ok after 200 tries, still 0.. that isn't 5%, that is 0%.

[Sart]

As a new Wasteland 3 player, this has been my experience as well. I play on SJ. Armor doesn't seem to matter much at all. If most enemies survive the first turn, pray to RNG gods they miss most of their shots. Or die. Also, I liked using assault rifles in Wasteland 2. Here, they seem kinda meh. My sniper and heavy gunner seem to be carrying the whole team. Replaced my 2 assault rifles with a crossbow and SMG. Should even things out a bit.

[ElPrezCBF]

The thing about crossbows is their ammo effect is delayed to the next turn to do extra damage. But you don't want to let the enemy live to the next turn if possible, so you'd rather use armor piercing weapons or assault rifles/pistols with high charisma to charge up the special attack quickly for 75% armor reduction in the target. This standard rinse and repeat style happens the entire game and I don't like it but that's what you need to do since armor doesn't help much.

[EolSunder]

some crossbows just shoot they aren't explosive, so instead of shooting a burst of bullets they just shoot a strong bolt, which is pretty good and does good damage, i use them myself until i get higher level automatic weapons.

[JonDonWayne]

for me the hit chances were pretty ok the whole game....its just the first quarter of the game that feels like xcom since your hit chance is like 60-75% for most chars and the enemy has his dodge chance + cover bonus = 50% miss...as soon as you reach lvl 10 and got some of the skills the hit chance feels pretty well balanced...sure sometimes there is this "miss on 95%" but remember that the enemy also has a 5-25% dodge chance....

[ElPrezCBF]

Originally posted by EolSunder:

some crossbows just shoot they aren't explosive, so instead of shooting a burst of bullets they just shoot a strong bolt, which is pretty good and does good damage, i use them myself until i get higher level automatic weapons.

If you're referring to the level 18 one, it's obsolete by the time you get it with above level 20 enemies. In any case, crossbow ammo is very limited, not all vendors sell them and you'll have to spend precious materials to craft them that could have been used to craft end-game weapons.

[ElPrezCBF]

Originally posted by JonDonWayne:

for me the hit chances were pretty ok the whole game....its just the first quarter of the game that feels like xcom since your hit chance is like 60-75% for most chars and the enemy has his dodge chance + cover bonus = 50% miss...as soon as you reach lvl 10 and got some of the skills the hit chance feels pretty well balanced...sure sometimes there is this "miss on 95%" but remember that the enemy also has a 5-25% dodge chance....

Bonuses and attributes aside, my experience has been you'll need at least level 5 weapon skill for a decent hit chance. Anything less and you'll feel that you miss much more than you hit. That's why I try to get at least this level of weapon skill before I do missions outside Colorado Springs.

[JonDonWayne]

Originally posted by ElPrezCBF:

Originally posted by JonDonWayne:

for me the hit chances were pretty ok the whole game....its just the first quarter of the game that feels like xcom since your hit chance is like 60-75% for most chars and the enemy has his dodge chance + cover bonus = 50% miss...as soon as you reach lvl 10 and got some of the skills the hit chance feels pretty well balanced...sure sometimes there is this "miss on 95%" but remember that the enemy also has a 5-25% dodge chance....

Bonuses and attributes aside, my experience has been you'll need at least level 5 weapon skill for a decent hit chance. Anything less and you'll feel that you miss much more than you hit. That's why I try to get at least this level of weapon skill before I do missions outside Colorado Springs.

agree! But to your crossbow statement: there are more than just the lvl 18 one cross bow, i used crossbows a long time for my leader (i had the first cb with llvl 12 or so..) since it only needs 2ap per shot = perfect for getting the leadership bonus of kill 2 enemys in one turn. That weapon was pretty nice for triggering this skill and for finishing enemys with only a few hp instead of wasting a full attack of the other characters

[ElPrezCBF]

Originally posted by JonDonWayne:

Originally posted by ElPrezCBF:

Bonuses and attributes aside, my experience has been you'll need at least level 5 weapon skill for a decent hit chance. Anything less and you'll feel that you miss much more than you hit. That's why I try to get at least this level of weapon skill before I do missions outside Colorado Springs.

agree! But to your crossbow statement: there are more than just the lvl 18 one cross bow, i used crossbows a long time for my leader (i had the first cb with llvl 12 or so..) since it only needs 2ap per shot = perfect for getting the leadership bonus of kill 2 enemys in one turn. That weapon was pretty nice for triggering this skill and for finishing enemys with only a few hp instead of wasting a full attack of the other characters

Afaik, there are only 3 crossbow types: Crossboom, Meat Maker and Plasma Bolter. Crossboom is great at mission levels similar to where it's found at the Bizarre but its relatively small firepower makes it obsolete rather quickly against heavily armored enemies, even after the explosive ammo goes off next turn.

The 2 AP per shot is great in itself if not for the meager firepower it yields in return and extra APs needed to reload each time. And it's not worth modding because the Crossboom becomes obsolete rather quickly. You can achieve a much more devastating result with a Level 21 Guardian pistol found at the Patriarch's Palace relatively early if you have Weird Science 7. Add in quickfire mag, high coordination, intel and charisma and you can pull off low AP shots with high firepower per shot, without the magazine and ammo constraints of a crossbow. I once accidentally modded a level 9 army revolver using this combo and even then, it yielded more immediate and substantial firepower than the Crossboom.

By the time I found the Meat Maker, I was already wielding end-game weapons like Blaster Master and Spike Driver. And I hardly used the Plasma Bolter since human enemies are way more common than robots. If the delayed explosive ammo in crossbows were changed to immediate damage on the same turn and buffed up, I'd highly recommend crossbows despite the mag and ammo constraints. As you know, taking out the enemy on the same turn has (unfortunately) become a common trend in this game due to fragile armor.

[Grifman]

Originally posted by Sart:

As a new Wasteland 3 player, this has been my experience as well. I play on SJ. Armor doesn't seem to matter much at all. If most enemies survive the first turn, pray to RNG gods they miss most of their shots. Or die. Also, I liked using assault rifles in Wasteland 2. Here, they seem kinda meh. My sniper and heavy gunner seem to be carrying the whole team. Replaced my 2 assault rifles with a crossbow and SMG. Should even things out a bit.

Assault rifles in WL2 were overpowered, making all other weapons builds worthless. WL3 is much improved, in that almost any weapon build is now viable. You can create/use much more varied teams in WL3 with regards to weapons.

[EolSunder]

yep wasteland 2 was normally just snipers and assault rifles. Perks and changes in DC made other weapons viable (except heavy weapons maybe). Wasteland 3 is decent with all weapons i guess but i still like snipers/assault rifles in wasteland 3. At least in wasteland 3 they combined weapons so you didn't have to just pick 1 type, you could be shotgun/pistols or assault/smgs, or heavy/flamers, etc. Much more variety and ease of use.