Coffee Potato

While not a mod, a thought came to mind today. If you've ever looked at Darkest Dungeon, they lean very heavily on their stress mechanic. Generally, 2/3 times, if driven to panic, they start acting weird, like trying to get themselves killed, refusing healing, panicking everyone around them, or just babbling like a loon. 1/3 times, instead of being broken, they become heroic, maybe shrugging off some wounds, or inspiring the people around them, or taking a guaranteed crit free action, etc. Is there any way to apply something similar, where a panicking rookie might so something amazing besides just getting lucky with a Berserk shot?

Nope, but the air game isn't finished yet.

Auto Resolve, they come back fine every time.

Unable to recreate it, but this was the location and rough setup. Several reactions triggered at once, and the game just kept going into reaction mode over and over. So yeah, will report better if I can make it happen again.

So after their iffy earlier versions, upon seeing my LMG squad taking reaction shots and suppressing a Psyon on his own turn before he could shoot, I just wanted to say:

XD has mechs, for what it's worth. I only asked them to add Armored Cores about 800 times, hahaha

So one thing that rarely came up in base game, but gets used all the time in XD is the speed up/slow down/dodge mechanics. If you speed up, your dodge rolls get like 8x their distance, while slowing down gives you much tighter turning. So the idea with some of those early ones is to know they'll be using the normal "leash" yours do when targeting, and so you can take a diagonal to them, exposing the side, and doing a quick dodge when just about in their firing range to get on their flank. From there, you can turn off afterburner mid-flip and use the slowdown to do a quick turn onto their side, before speeding up to keep up pace and get the kill. It's tricky, but you eventually develop this sort of circular movement map in your head. Good luck on Your CE run!

If there's different transition screens for vehicles, and the Valkyrie makes a comeback, I hope it looks a bit like the Armored Core 2 drop pods (that the game surprisingly never actually used).

You can't target through smoke now? Interesting, sounds like it'll be viable for Insane this time around. Yeah, since the last patch, suppression has really changed the game, it feels fantastic at the moment. Also, really appreciating that you can miss a shot and hit behind them now, and it actually lets you know. Also, grenade rushing a high TU team from the drop ship makes for A-one hell of a stylish first turn, and B-some really safe landings.

I can try to recreate it then.

OH hell yes to all the above! Also, could always try the XDiv thing and just give LMGs 1 extra shot. While using different calculations, it made them just reliable enough to suppress in two directions. Sounds like it might work for X2. Our of curiosity, how does Suppression actually calculate now? Is it when bullets apply, they do Bravery damage, and suppress if bypassed, or...?

XDiv's airgame takes little practice, but ultimately becomes as strategic as the ground game. They do have an Easy Air Game mode in the mod settings, though. In general, like the ground game, it revolves around assuming for what you'll run into, and using the types that work for you. While some are very effective counters (like Heavy Fighters w/AntiMissiles vs Battleships), and can get away with barely a scratch, in many cases you can even plan around stuff that shouldn't work, like my preferred method of dealing with most medium UFOs: just send fighters with longevity loadouts to plink it in the butt forever till it dies. Optimal? No. Convenient? Yes. But yeah, XDiv has so many different approaches to everything that you generally want to be thinking more about what can be abused in what situation, rather than what is directly "supposed" to counter anything. More examples: Smoke is for safety, but might as well be an off switch for Androns, since they will almost always move to get away from it for better shots. Using identical weapons on fighters is recommended, but I like using a sonar/laser combo sometimes, because it gives them options for dealing with faster planes by firing in all directions after the initial attack. Axes are a desperation weapon, but I've been loving their command room clearing utility. Missile planes are supposed to actually make it back, but I usually just leave them to dump their 4-20 missiles and hope they consider coming back. Anti missiles aren't supposed to be a weapon, but work just fine for auto resolve calculations if you retreat your expended planes from a damaged UFO.

Another thing from XDiv, as well as something I've seen in other places, would more interesting progression in weapon types as the game goes on. Using XDiv as an example, the Division Cannon starts off as a clunky rifle with an AoE hit. Then it evolves to do more damage, but also has more power and armor mitigation. Then, it starts evolving into a rapid-fire variant, firing times per round. Ammo counts go up and down as the scientists figure out how to make the thing either stronger, lighter, more accurate, or easier to use over time. It feels a lot more organic than just a flat damage increase, and ammo decrease.

Even bullets are scared of spiders.

I left 3 units watching a corner when a Psyon walker walked around the corner, one fired, but it seemed like it couldn't decide what to do, as it kept flashing Enemy Activity and Hidden activity over and over. Logs and Save attached. Issue happened when hiding behind the southern trough. 3 were behind it, 1 was behind the hedge. The two that seemed to be, and should have been reacting were behind the hedge, and middle of the trough. output.log output.log_1.7ba5c06dec005d82d31db45b6bf95214 Autosave01.json

Definitely true. XDiv has that rule where Terror Missions have all aliens start outside of the immediate houses, which tends to lead to this interesting "oh crap, where are they, hide, hide!" situation, that, in reality, just makes that first less likely to ruin the player so hard they quit the game. I kinda feel like we needed to either be able to send more people to take those hits (See XCOM Rookie Cloud Cover), or improved armor that can take a couple hits, even if the enemy count goes way up as a result.

Should be this one. Autosave03.json

Any odds of more indoor areas, though? Malls and such?

All of the CE mods make for a fantastic experience, however.. X-Division has been hands down the best experience I've had with the genre in general. Reasons: Armor- Armor feels like it does what it says it does. When early armors can only resist ballistic, and successfully negates a couple shots from a Sebillian ballistic pistol, it feels fantastic. When the Wolf description says it can survive a 50 cal, and successfully does so when you test it on accident, it feels fantastic. When you get a suit of Predator, and they can survive 3 rounds of fire from all over the map, it feels FANTASTIC (incidentally, those two predator units still died on stream yesterday, but dang it, they did great until I tried to capture a Xeno Queen in the middle of a Terror Mission). Point being, you knew roughly how much of what kind of punishment your armor loadouts could take, and it allowed for more offensive defense, if that makes sense. Weapons- Everything fires more, at worse accuracy, but for more damage. There are more considerations for damage types, and each weapon has a role it fits very well. HMGs can fire two Suppression bursts, Miniguns dedicate a whole turn to firing 40-120 times, shotguns shred armor and can hit TUs, SMGs can shoot into TUs as well, but can use a shield, pistols are super cheap and portable, rifles can handle sniping or suppression, while snipers mostly just miss and get insulted, but do a ton if they ever do hit. Fights feel very active and alive, plus bypassing armor is a major part of gameplay, resulting in more varied loadouts. This leads to random experimentation, and the likely effectiveness of some fantastically weird builds. Research- The slight randomization of the tech tree unlocks every round is used to great effect here. Every different class, weapon, ufo type, component, etc has different pieces of different puzzles, and it creates a constant reward loop of capture and discovery. Random missions don't feel like you're there for another corvette and 65k, you're there because they might have some new tech, or some components for a new jet, or you want more fibres to upgrade your vehicles. It's a fantastic feeling loop, and probably my favorite part of the mod after armor doing it's job. AI and Randos- The AI is improved in some fun ways, and tends to be, while still predictable, more surprising in it's approaches. They tend to find more reasonable hiding spots, and almost feel coordinated at times. On top of this, there's up to 4x and many civilians and other locals running around, which leads to some amazing moments where you get to see the rest of the earth keeping things together. One of my favorite moments was the other day, when a base gets attacked, and the rifle guys are there taking turns suppressing shielded ceseans over and over, ultimately keeping half the map pinned until we got there and promptly electrocuted everything. You see cops clearing floors during terror missions, and most of the locals pouring into your dropship, trying to leave. It feels so alive. Air Game- Every UFO has different types, different loadouts, and these update for every phase of the invasion. They feel like they came ready, and the kinds of options of planes you can make feels like two sides adapting to each other. Early scouts are fast, so you make maneuverable planes. They start to dodge and get side guns, so you make faster ones. They get air mines, and suddenly dedicated rapid fire dps builds that can get them through their defense gaps feel appropriate, etc. Changing loadouts constantly feels great if the enemies do it too. In summary: It addressed every problem I had with the original. Units dying one step out of a drop ship? Armor does its job. Maps feel dead sometimes? Locals everywhere. Advanced tanks dying to a single shot? Nope, they can take some serious punishment from the front. Units panicking in optimal positions? Noticeable Leadership bonuses. High HP units? Sensible health, but in armor. Air game consisting of being able to survive entirely on Corvettes until Marauders? Nope, you need to adapt to a lot of different UFO styles, and this whole bit is crazy expansive. Plus who can say no to having Robot T-Rexes?

Alt-Print Screen

Save game I can do, originally I had a screenshot with this post, but it timed out and I got distracted afterward.

That's what I mean, though, this one shows 6.3, and it updated to it before I saw the above.

It just had an update, that's weird. Any word on when the Steam stuffs might be going out?

Reality doesn't need to make special rules to code them in, though. The problem sounds mechanical.