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I view Beta Strike as little more than a bandaid that can mask some of the weaknesses in the vanilla game's design. I have my own ideas on how to fix these issues and those are definetely not compatible with Beta Strike.
Grenadiers are great because you can suppress whenever you like, which has been very effective in preventing me from taking hits. Their grenades also allow you to smash cover, and that's just as effective as it is in vanilla--flank shots let you focus fire the important baddies to death on the first turn.
Specialists--well, I can sympathize with that complaint. Manual healing could use some kind of buff, and maybe specialists in general. Hacking is still really bad, since it has actual penalties in addition to opportunity costs. That said, I think you might just be dealing with bad RNG; I got Medical Protocol on both of my first two specialists, and Field Medic on one of them. Every Specialist has a 75% chance to get one or both of Medical Protocol and Field Medic, both of which are usable on their own.
I don't fully understand your complaint with the Ranger--I've found that they have MORE time to single reload than in the regular mode. With the upcoming autoloader change, that's going to be a non-issue. Plus, you know, you have a sword.
I put my Snipers on the high ground and they kick ass. I get high hit chance, high crit chance, and high base damage. Pistols do start out bad, especially if you don't roll their abilities, but that can probably be rebalanced.
@DerBK, I disagree about Beta Strike being a bandaid. It makes alpha striking harder. You have to prioritize high value targets like Sectoids instead of ignoring them. By giving your own soldiers more health, it also gives the game a smoother difficulty curve--bad players are still punished with wound times (at least, in theory), but their soldiers aren't instakilled. I guess I just don't see the problems with it.
Also the problem with grenades is that it runs out after the first 2 pods. Or one pod if that pod has important enemies. Not because they're bad in general. It's just that they run out. Very quickly too.
My first 3 specialists rolled combat protocol and the 2 I trained another rank in rolled haywire. Instantly ditched both of them after taking massive wounds in the first Supply Raid, where I had to rush everyone because the enemy still extracts 2 crates per turn with their high hp. The grenadier i brought in that map was entirely useless too. Suppress did nothing because they simply needed to survive to obstruct you.
With rangers, in Alpha strike, you need 1 ammo for 1 kill. With the number of enemies, you easily have enough time to reload between battles (since they are in front, they dont need to move much between fights), and even if they trigger another pod, they'd have half their ammo left. In beta strike, fights are so dragged out that often, another pod appears while fighting a pod. Furthermore, you need more turns, and hence more ammo to kill enemies. This means that after a pod, you'd have 1 or 0 ammo on the ranger, and he becomes crippled.
Snipers are annoying because of the squadsight penalties. Solvable by covert actions, yes, but it's still the core issue why I find him useless. Might as well bring another ranger. Does more crit damage, has better crit change, and has better range tables. Pistol sharpshooters are terrible without their abilities and just OK with, tbh. Faceoff is good, Fanfire is good, still rather have a ranger or Skirmisher in their place.
Also DerBK is right as in Beta Strike is a small bandaid to fix some of the base game's issues. It is not a bandaid in the sense of making the game easier, of course. The game is definitely harder and more chaotic. But it is simply the devs slapping something mostly incompactible to try and solve some of the larger complaints of the community. Hence, a bandaid.
sad that derbk's not designing for beta strike though.
I've played with Beta Strike on since before I tried any of the AB_ mods, and now I'm running them all, so I'll trust DerBK's balance insight and fire up a regular campaign, in the hopes that all these changes together open up new viable strategies that aren't just proccing a pod on your first soldier's blue move and killing it before it gets a turn. Rather pessimistic, though, since that seems to be the gameplay pattern modders encourage.