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Anyone actually using Valkyrie?


dmholt

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My top complaint with the Valk: I have no clue which direction I'm heading after I place my troops. That's just a bit important. Using the Valk should mean you see more of the map around the drop zone. Actually (and I've said this before) I think the map should be visible but FOW'd when you land. You just flew over the site in a helicopter -- yet have no idea where the UFO is. Wat.

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Personally I have no issue with the Valkyrie.

Once you have the Sentinel, spotting the enemy first before their turn and taking them out is not a problem. Since Valkyrie can allow for so much troops, i dont have to agonize over whether to take a tank or not. Thanks to the increase in the carry capacity, i can usually take the initiative.

As for the problem of no cover, your tank solves the issue. Also have a few shield bearers helps too. But these movable covers for the rookies only since the experienced troops usually have enough TUs to move to a advantageous positions.

So to summarize how to use Valkryrie effectively:

- Have at least one person in Sentinel so he can act as spotter on your first turn, flying him up into the air.

- Have a tank and at least 2 guys with shields.

To be honset, i am happy with the Valkryrie as it is. In fact, having no cover is an advantage. The cover does not block your guys from shooting the enemy in your first turn; when I was using the other dropshops, i have move my guys out into the open first before shooting the enemy, wasting TUs.

So please do not have any cover for the Valkryie or if the general opinion is for it to be added, the cover should be as unobstructive as possible so the squad dont have to waste TUs getting out of it.

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My top complaint with the Valk: I have no clue which direction I'm heading after I place my troops. That's just a bit important. Using the Valk should mean you see more of the map around the drop zone. Actually (and I've said this before) I think the map should be visible but FOW'd when you land. You just flew over the site in a helicopter -- yet have no idea where the UFO is. Wat.

I have said this before as well:

There is no way I would fly over a hostile, technically superior, well armed, and hostile force in a fragile dropship.

The approach should be as low and fast as possible from a safe direction with very little time for sightseeing.

You should get to a distance that allows your soldiers to deploy from the dropship and advance on foot in a timely manner.

I can see a realism argument for pointing you towards the enemy ship but I personally feel it is outweighed by the gameplay argument that if you know exactly where to go then the map might as well be a straight line between dropship and target.

Especially if you know you can just hold the UFO for five turns to win, what would be the point in going anywhere else?

The Valkyrie has no windows and drops its troops in pods rather than by parachute so they would be unlikely to have increased visibility, in fact they likely see nothing at all until they hit the ground.

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I like the Valkyrie. That's all.

The issue with the other dropships is: You move and can instantly lose 3 or 4 soldiers by cannon reaction fire. That's why moving out of a dropship without letting one turn pass is kinda suicidal from time to time.

In v22.3 the Valkyrie is nice. I may finally increase the number of my soldiers to more than 8 per dropship, when the financial issues (not a game issue) are solved. 3 Bases is quite expensive if they all got ground combat personnal.

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I have said this before as well:

There is no way I would fly over a hostile, technically superior, well armed, and hostile force in a fragile dropship.

The approach should be as low and fast as possible from a safe direction with very little time for sightseeing.

You should get to a distance that allows your soldiers to deploy from the dropship and advance on foot in a timely manner.

True, but the planes that shot it down marked its location and even in the late 70s a sizable portion of the planet was mapped down to a scale usable for tactical operations. For example, terror missions, couldn't someone grab a street map before hustling everyone onto the dropship?

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The general location yes, not the layout of every tree and bush in the area though which is what you get if the level is visible from the start.

I wouldn't mind for terror missions to have more visibility as it doesn't really matter.

There is no target location to give away to the detriment of the rest of the map.

If you know there is a petrol station nearby then all you know is that there may be an alien over there.

I would prefer to leave the exploration aspect of the game intact though, it is much more atmospheric to me.

On a UFO mission once you know where the UFO is the rest of the map can be pretty much disregarded.

It doesn't matter if you have a 40x40 map with cunningly hand crafted buildings and well distributed cover if only the 20x6 strip between dropship and UFO is going to be used.

You are probably not going to bother with parts of the map not in the best path to the UFO.

Alien spawns that are not on or near that path are useless so either the map looks empty to the player as aliens are spread in areas they will never visit or you put them all in the main traffic area.

If you do that then you remove the last tiny trace of a reason to bother exploring the rest of the map, there will be nothing there to find.

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