Monster spawn scaling makes it too difficult to fully complete missions especially on the new maps

[Neobaka]

I understand that monster spawns were increased in response to the Engi class but it feels the capabilities of the UBAS (giant robot engi can get) is far outstripped by the increase in mobs especially with the number of higher tier mobs. This is however the opinion of someone that doesn't have access to the Engi class; the UBAS operating time doesn't support a team that has to go to multiple objectives across the map, so your basically using it in holdout positions. It feels as if we're overwhelmed by mobs even with a coordinated team and the UBAS isn't being utilized to the extent that it makes sense for these spawn numbers

I appreciate having new maps, it does feel more difficult to get around or that may be because of all the extra mobs i have to fight off.

What's others' opinion on this?

[Bonzai101]

I can't say too much for skirmish as I have been soloing w/bots for campaign & only a little skirmish, but I do feel the difficulty is a bit overtuned in the new campaign, yes.

@Neobaka have you had a chance to play skirmish with someone else using the UBAS?
I'm just wondering how it's speed compares to a player.
Slower ---> Longer deployment ---> More likely to hit the higher waves with the top tier enemies

[Neobaka]

it's slower then my assault with 4 speed but it can make up some of that with a dash it can use. But i had an engi try to leap frog across the map using his placeable batteries and frankly it was a waste of time and dangerous for the engi without someone to back them up.

For any objective that's a distance away (which they always seem to place one across the map from your previous one) your better off leaving it unless your going to bunker in place there. But i don't think the mobs will attack unpiloted UBAS and according to the ability description you can't call another down till it's destroyed. So it's a one time use ability unless you pilot it until your dead or destroy it with explosives. But we all know that ability descriptions don't always work as advertised so maybe you can call down another after the cooldown is finished?

[Bonzai101]

It doesn't cooldown, if it's still in one piece, unfortunately.
Noticed that while I was mucking around with it on a very hard skirmish run.

As a strategy, I was trying to use it for a bit, then leave it somewhere central & charging to come back to. Only kinda worked.

I wonder if there is a way to cause it to self destruct.... or if not, maybe it could do with one?

[Bonzai101]

Just found this on another thread from @Katitoff
"To resummon UBAS, you need to remove all points from the skill, that'll destroy existing UBAS and you can summon new one once cooldown is"

[xayl]

Jeah the spawn is way off at the moment. i had the mission with the flyers now 3 times in a row as the very first nonscripted missions of the playthrough. for starters, without an engi you can flat out forget it. you run out of ammo before you finish the mission because they are bulletsponges to the max. only help here was a sniperbot in cover so he permanently shoots with his sniperrifle...if there is enough cover on the way of the vehicle. with engi it was managable but still realy hard for normal difficulty. and the amount of midline-enemytypes (atrocity and brutes) isnt funny.
Later in the game, ok, i get it. but not the very first thing that happens.

Please dont balance around one class forcing us to play it to deliver enough ammo. dont know if the engibot will be able to take over the ammospam since i didnt have time to lvl him high enough in the 3 missions so far.

why are the energypylons in the very first map placed slightly to the side of the gates if i basicaly have to park the ubas on it to continue fighting for the time it takes for the objective. and dont think about firing the rockets, 400 energy takes AGES to restore even with all 4 beams on you.

[Neobaka]

Originally posted by Bonzai101:

Just found this on another thread from @Katitoff
"To resummon UBAS, you need to remove all points from the skill, that'll destroy existing UBAS and you can summon new one once cooldown is"

Ah neat, well at least someone has figured out how to get around that problem. I still think there are problems with the balance of its operation time. I've seen so some pretty annoyingly quick spawns; a swarm of holers/etaph/fluffy/slasher + speci spawning just after you finish the previous one (we had in this one match) i can't imagine being able to kite without running out of battery which may be why i haven't seen UBAS in later waves

Even assuming you can manage it's battery time I also don't know how well it would fares with a team striping armor off higher tier mobs which you get in droves in later waves. I'm assuming it takes damage from friendly explosives just like the rest of the Engi placeables and if it does, it will take some friendly fire since it's big on top of being hit by mobs since it's slower.

[Neobaka]

Originally posted by xayl:

Jeah the spawn is way off at the moment. i had the mission with the flyers now 3 times in a row as the very first nonscripted missions of the playthrough. for starters, without an engi you can flat out forget it. you run out of ammo before you finish the mission because they are bulletsponges to the max...

...Please dont balance around one class forcing us to play it to deliver enough ammo.

And that is the crux of the thread here, it feels like they are balancing the mob spawn on a single class

And again i also wonder if the the new map size is also increases the difficult quite a bit too. So not only do you end up fighting across a large map leading to ammo problems but also biomass builds up since it takes ages to work your way to where it may have spawned out of the way leading to even more mobs.

It would be interesting if they intended some maps to be played with a mobile class like recon to get around quickly. if so the dropship size also needs to be increased

[Bonzai101]

Right, so I just tried very hard skirmish (solo w/bots) on one of the new maps (nochis, I think), & comparing it to the same settings on an older map earlier today ...... BIG difference, & ouch.....

So yes, 100% agree that this scaling needs to be looked into.

[Neyreyan_Youtube]

Oh yeah, there is a difficulty problem in the new content. For campaign singleplayer they seem to have forgotten to gradually introduce big enemies, i got swarmed by 2 fluffies in the first mission on Normal:) Normal now seems to be the hard from the previous campaign.
The enemies seem to spawn like zerg balls of death that circle and overwhelm now.
I saw AI terminator Ubas complety locked by enemies, like the blocking with units from warcraft 3.
I did play skirmish on nightmare with some very high level players. The enemy spawns were off the charts, we didnt have time to catch a break.
After wave 16 we specimens, hunters and worms like they were defending their queen/overlord:)
I played with neobaka so he knows:D
We had 2 engineers who seem to go for drones and reaper turets. The ubas is too cluncky to be usefull and turret building is a luxury so they might need a balance patch.
The egineer class seems to suffer from the same problem as other classes, there is only 1 or 2 ways to play it. You basically use the same skills every time because they are op compared to the rest
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bCFQFHtBOrE

[Sovereign Star]

The campaign is indeed being made hard on purpose by dev, because they want players to give newly added Engie class a squeeze, with the repair + battery, and sentry gun spams due to they give WAY too much "Stay here, defend few minutes, then move" missions. Not to mention, Engineers can recharge UBAS and repair them, which no other classes can do, other than recharge pads.

Then after your first story is done, you're then rewarded with 3 followers, especially one of them is a Hellfire with the signature flamethrower. if you can't handle it, just have the Hellfire handle it, which really sucks for players, because we have rocket ammo generate ability, yet no access to any explosive 2ndary from the start.

[Nyx (She/Her)]

Originally posted by Sovereign Star:

The campaign is indeed being made hard on purpose by dev, because they want players to give newly added Engie class a squeeze, with the repair + battery, and sentry gun spams due to they give WAY too much "Stay here, defend few minutes, then move" missions. Not to mention, Engineers can recharge UBAS and repair them, which no other classes can do, other than recharge pads.

Then after your first story is done, you're then rewarded with 3 followers, especially one of them is a Hellfire with the signature flamethrower. if you can't handle it, just have the Hellfire handle it, which really sucks for players, because we have rocket ammo generate ability, yet no access to any explosive 2ndary from the start.

the problem with this is the scaling is often far, far too much to even get there. A friend and I have lost nearly every since mission in the new campaign at least twice, even abusing Arclite + fire immunity, even abusing recharging UBAS'
the enemies come far too much, far too fast. We lost one mission, a non-story mission, to six Fluffies at the same time, with some Behemoths ready to follow up if we did somehow magically get out of that

[Kreed]

Hey,
just wanted to let you know that we're working on the difficulty. Both for Campaign as for skirmish, especially scaling.
Fun fact for skirmish: Spawns have not been changed from 1.9x to 2.0.

[Neyreyan_Youtube]

Originally posted by ✿Vael✿:

Originally posted by Sovereign Star:

The campaign is indeed being made hard on purpose by dev, because they want players to give newly added Engie class a squeeze, with the repair + battery, and sentry gun spams due to they give WAY too much "Stay here, defend few minutes, then move" missions. Not to mention, Engineers can recharge UBAS and repair them, which no other classes can do, other than recharge pads.

Then after your first story is done, you're then rewarded with 3 followers, especially one of them is a Hellfire with the signature flamethrower. if you can't handle it, just have the Hellfire handle it, which really sucks for players, because we have rocket ammo generate ability, yet no access to any explosive 2ndary from the start.

the problem with this is the scaling is often far, far too much to even get there. A friend and I have lost nearly every since mission in the new campaign at least twice, even abusing Arclite + fire immunity, even abusing recharging UBAS'
the enemies come far too much, far too fast. We lost one mission, a non-story mission, to six Fluffies at the same time, with some Behemoths ready to follow up if we did somehow magically get out of that

Its your fault, you didnt have 12 minigun turrets:D was that on hard? I dont think the campaign can be played like the previous since they throw high threats at you.
I think the devs forgot that the main point was always to not take on the strol on a boxing match, you have to move around to get items, do objectives and extract.
In my original campaign i think i reached the highest difficulty possible, not couting the actual map difficulty.
It got so bad that i couldnt move 1 meter without enemies attacking me but i never got flufffies that early or constant groups of elities like i was geting here on normal difficulty:D

Not to mention the terminator ubas 1shot your followers with their rockets wich means standing still or using the ubas is out of the question. It takes a long time to get the speed bonuses so the base speed for engineer is going to kill you more often than you would like

Btw, does anyone know if the engineer gun has an upgrade you can find in missions?

[Shroud]

It is a shame that everything has been balanced around the new class and the new mech suits... which if u have no interest in playing alot and sticking to your old favourites it is indeed quite a bit harder.

[HunterGerhart]

The only problems I've been running into are the waves of 100% Boss Atrocities in campaign.