Minerva is too OP.

[Young Erusean Officer]

I guess they didn't learn from VC1 at all. You can one turn most of these expert skirmishes with plenty of CP to spare. Can't wait until Selvaria and Alicia are playable I suppose.

[DoomyDoom]

They removed Caution order, so technically they learned something. But yea.

Somebody looked at Direct Command and said: "This is fine".
Somebody looked at Resist Crossfire and said: "This is fine".
Somebody looked at almost every Def buff giving enough to make MG damage into almost straight 1s and said: "This is fine".
Somebody looked at APC and said: "This is fine".
Somebody looked at crit modifiers and said: "This is fine".
Somebody looked at potentials that completely deny movement/attacking and said: "This is fine".

The list could go on, but bottom line is - VC was never intended to be "hard" as in "requiring skill", because it's an RPG, so the player must be able to outscale the game without getting better at it (not my words).

On the bright side, I like that they made potential activations that depend on proximity to particular units not disappear when you leave range anymore. And the morale being a one-unit but almost surefire potential activation is nice. Not the inspire turn extension though.

As far as valkyrian invulnerability goes, eeh. It's about as good as your desire to stand still and let enemies murder each other with interception. You can do that with tanks anyway. Which they kinda nerfed into extremely long times with friendly fire damage reduction. Whenever I do that I just kinda have to go make some food or other household stuff for each unit I want dead that way...

[Lanzagranadas]

I can't seriously imagine what are you doing to 1-turn the first Expert Skirmish with Minerva when your goal is to move the Hafen to its destination through a sh¡tload of enemy barricades, Grenadiers, etc.

Anyway, don't tell me. I've just played the first Expert Skirmish so far so I can't tell about the other five yet, but the difficulty looks reasonable to me so far, and it took me 4 turns. But I guess no matter what Sega does, some people will allways find their way to rush, then rush, then complain because rushing is possible.

[jeffers0329]

Originally posted by DoomyDoom:

Somebody looked at Resist Crossfire and said: "This is fine".

For what it's worth, Resist Crossfire got a minor adjustment/nerf in that it halves the "damage taken" value from interception fire, rather than the enemies vsPer or vsArm stat. If it was like VC1's case, Claude proccing it would make him immune from AT cannon interception fire :P

[DoomyDoom]

Originally posted by Lanzagranadas:

I can't seriously imagine what are you doing to 1-turn the first Expert Skirmish with Minerva

I would imagine it involves Defense Boost, then a bunch of Double Movement procs to run around killing all the barrels (and maybe some unfortunate souls for morale to get DM), Direct Command AP reset, then Fortify threads, full AP setup on Hafen and with enough AP+interception reduction procs it can make the run.

And mortars can be avoided by abusing invulnerability frames on turn cancel dialogue (yes, that's a thing, you can even prevent thin ice from cracking under your unit that way).

Originally posted by jeffers0329:

For what it's worth, Resist Crossfire got a minor adjustment/nerf in that it halves the "damage taken" value from interception fire, rather than the enemies vsPer or vsArm stat. If it was like VC1's case, Claude proccing it would make him immune from AT cannon interception fire :P

Yes, straight Def buffs are stronger than RC now. I guess devs figuring out that modifiers can be applied in the place that makes more sense is undeniably a step forward.

[Young Erusean Officer]

I actually didn't one turn the first one yet but I'll try later. Also, the Centurion Bombardment is pretty handy against those mortar groups. It might even spare you from using fortify thread for a turn.

[Experiment1]

You can't 1-turn the first expert skirmish. Earliest is 3, with all the barricades and loads of enemy ATs.

[DoomyDoom]

Originally posted by Tassadarmaster:

You can't 1-turn the first expert skirmish.

Uh-huh.
https://postimg.cc/DWbymzGH

Now, it does require stars to align real hard if you want to do it without save-scumming, but it IS possible. Specifically, you need 4 procs of A Friend's Legacy (Hafen's AP boost) in a row and at least one Double Movement proc in exactly 3 Scout moves without morale buff. I'd say it requires about as much luck as 4-turning Chapter 7 on NG in VC1.

[Lanzagranadas]

May be possible but not plausible. Anything that requires a sh¡tload of specific Potentials, save scumming and insane luck just isn't a viable strategy anymore (or even a strategy period).

You can test how far your luck could possible go and how fast you can possibly clear a mission for the lulz, but that's not how you'd normally play or how things would normally go. For the record: I used Minerva at least once in pretty much every mission and so far she only triggered Double movement 3 times (and were useless because it happened at times I didn't need it), so for me it's a pretty pointless potential, since if you "need" it, you're most likely screwed up.

[DoomyDoom]

Speedrunning does not care about "viable", "being a strategy" and such though. Nor it cares about the failure rate. It's just a thing you have to accept - it's a separate world from "playing the game normally" (for various definitions of "normally"), where obtaining the result is what matters. I'm no fan of speedruns in general but I accept them for what they are and that there are people interested in playing that way. It's not badwrongfun. It's just different goals, means and rules.

FWIW, here's a "not viable" recording of a 4-turn Batomys fight from VC1, which relies on rng for about 30 out of 40 CP spent. That is A LOT more than 5 CP worth of rng this Expert Skirmish requires (about 6 times more?). And yet it exists, because someone cared to try and get a no-save-load execution of that. No idea how many attempts that took. Probably a lot more than a successful save-less run of my approach above would take. And careful prep, research and testing before that. Idk about anyone else, but I can respect that, even if I won't normally put it in practice.
https://youtu.be/E0Sz6c2E5SU

[Lanzagranadas]

I don't think the concept of speedrunning has anything to do here with attempting the minimum turns possible. Speedruns are about actual completion time, and most if not all speedrunners I've seen just restart the whole thing if it fails, since the time-loss penalty for dying is oftentimes irreparable.

A "minimum turns" VC rush with save-scumming might still take actually more time than just regularly playing through the mission, but will succeed anyway as long as the result screen shows a low turn count.

Anyway, you and anyone can play whatever way they want and do whatever makes them happy and enjoy the game. But if this is about enjoying, then whoever actively allways seeks for the way to rush because they enjoy playing that way wouldn't be blaming the game because rushing is somehow possible, because that's pretty contradictory.

The gameplay doesn't inherently force anyone to rush at all, you just can find the way if you're really asking for it just like you have the option to cheese difficult boss battles in lots of games. Do it if you like it, don't do it if you think it's a bad thing.

[Young Erusean Officer]

Speedruns do save scum unless they are doing a kind of run that explicity state otherwise.

What I'd like to see in the future is RNG battles where you go in and you have no idea of the enemy layout and even if the same map is technically used, there's random variations. Also we need more missions you need to kill more enemies or survive X turns or waves of enemies.

[[rori] Nade]

Originally posted by Huemaster:

Speedruns do save scum unless they are doing a kind of run that explicity state otherwise.

What I'd like to see in the future is RNG battles where you go in and you have no idea of the enemy layout and even if the same map is technically used, there's random variations. Also we need more missions you need to kill more enemies or survive X turns or waves of enemies.

Or you can remove the required A rank achievment/rewards so I can enjoy the battles at my pace.

[Young Erusean Officer]

Originally posted by rori Nade:

Or you can remove the required A rank achievment/rewards so I can enjoy the battles at my pace.

I'd like that too. They promised long ago, scout rushing would be gone but they just made it harder too. What we got was just more forgiving A-ranks. I'd like to do things at my own pace too. Treat every action with a squaddie could be her last. The element of surprise.

[limith]

There's nothing saying you have to abuse RNG, reload for potentials, and rush flags. From a game design perspective, it is actually very bad and dangerous to follow suggestions from players who suggest changing the game based on abuse of mechanics and RNG. I've seen games listen to such players end up with really really horrible balance considerations and completly broken suspension of disbelief. Games balanced around the minority (but vocal) min-maxers tend to turn out to be unfun for the majority of players. In fact such games, even for players who can win (since they understand min-maxing) tend to turn out to be a chore (since it then becomes a question of perfect execution), and not a game.

Some quicker and simpler solutions is to make optional objectives more visible which discourages just blindly rushing objectives. V4 already has optional objectives but they aren't visible/discoverable. Nor are they in every map. Simply adding additional objectives/challenges into the game itself means that rush strategies won't be so one dimensioned. This provides greater challenge for players who do rush without going down bad balancing.

____
I don't really use Minerva that often on maps (Switch version). I actually use Alicia and Azusa more, and Alicia's not that OP (far worse statss than Minerva and negative potentials pretty much every turn). I tend to use snipers and troopers much more myself. I still get A ranks while managing to capture all flag and kill all enemies. No base rushing required. It's more challenging this way.

[Lanzagranadas]

Originally posted by rori Nade:

Or you can remove the required A rank achievment/rewards so I can enjoy the battles at my pace.

It doesn't have to be removed. Efficient use of your units is still an important part of the gameplay and if we had no turn limit at all we could just take all the time we need to dispatch every enemy the safe way, then move when it's all clean.

It just shouldn't be the only aspect taken into consideration. They should also considerate other aspects such as important targets (tanks, turrets, leaders) killed, damage taken by your units, and camps captured.

This is a good example of what I think would be a better rank system, one that rates different aspects of the gameplay then averages together and gives you the rank, which could be max rank even if you failed to get perfect score in some of those categories:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1560461252