ovoron

4 by day 200? I had 4 by Day 35. There is no other critical stuff. 2nd base? Not important because losing the game by panic is no longer a thing. Armor? I already have full Warden by day 55. Weapons? Got 2 accel snipers in mid 30s, you can postpone that to get laser, but then again, Gauss is not that far off either and the only thing that's tough to beat with bad weapons is the Cyberdrone, but even that can be smoked so it wouldn't hit the broad side of a barn and then grinded down with grenades and focus fire. Air? I've tried Sidewinder and Accel Autocannon. Both are meh, I've got myself a 2nd autocannon instead of armor and fuel. It's funny how you don't need as much fuel if you just double your damage output... 2nd Angel isn't a priority either, just 1 with basic twin Autocannons takes care of business if you know what you're doing in manual combat.

Yeah, I've tried another playthrough, this time starting with a full shield squad, and it works, and the more close quarters it gets the smoother it goes, meaning this loadout dominates base assaults. 1st mission I've captured literally everyone without breaking a sweat. 1st Abduction? Got all the tubes and captured 8 out of 9, didn't have enough soldiers close to the last Secton to take care of him as well. Perhaps most impressively, this even worked on the jungle VIP extraction, I've had 1 sniper rifle and the rest started with batons. I've switched 3 soldiers to pistols towards later stages due to how open the map was and since this was still early game I didn't have enough STR to carry as many consumables as I wanted. Even so, I've brought 3 Cleaner captives and 2 SMGs to the evac zone. Eliminate VIP: I've farmed this one extensively, brought back bodies and SMGs to Skyhawk 24x7. Got all the bonus data, The Leader, 4 Soldiers and 7 Agents brought back as captives, along with all data, 15 SMGs and 35 Cleaner corpses. Total profit was a bit short of $700K. And it obviously instantly revealed the Cleaner HQ mission on Day 32. Entire squad got 2 medals, 1 for eliminating 5 enemies total and the other for 4 during a single mission. Commander has become so easy that basically any reasonable strategy works. You can play a very short range squad like this one, you can play a very long range squad like 3 Shields + 6 Snipers I've tried before and that works too, even on base Assaults it's manageable. By day 35 I had 4 labs fully manned (including adjacency bonuses). and by Day 55 I had 5 Labs fully manned and everyone in Warden armor with 2 Accel Sniper rifles. 2nd Workshop is done as well, although new hires would have to be delayed until day 60 to save on salaries. The game is so trivial nowadays with its Flashbang + Smoke grenade meta I feel like Cleaner HQ can be done with basic weapons if you don't go crazy with the captures in the final room. The biggest problem is the AI, when enemies just walk back and forth only to end their turn in an open door frame with no cover.

This mission is so easy it's essentially free money even on Commander. Just give everyone a Shotgun and Heavy Armor, all the Cleaners fold in 1 turn.

You want reality? Go serve in the army then. This game is entertainment. Speaking of entertainment, Here's a scene from a film about sniping. Note how the sniper in this video easily kills the driver and then at 3:57 instantly lands an overwatch headshot.

Aimed fire of sniper rifle is authentic AF.

At the start? Sure. But it really falls off hard after Cleaner HQ. In fact, I'd argue that might be the time to trade all of its HP for 2 Cleaner Leaders as captives for sale. While rockets and wallbreaking retain usefulness, its accuracy and TU are no longer impressive compared to well-trained soldiers.

Oh, I agree with that. That one should be used sparingly as you have to visit that screen very often.

I do not think this is a good idea. X1 had a funny ending text, and it was funny primarily because the scientist was the one who delivered it. All his prior dialogue built him up for that climactic delivery. Sure, his high horse remarks are sometime annoying, but If a rando character would have said it out of nowhere the humor would not have worked. I say keep the scientist as he is.

Have you ever heard of a detective story that kept something like a villain unmasking counter on every page?

I agree, using the word "endgame" is breaking both the immersion and the 4th wall. Neither should be done without a very good reason.

How is that different from TFTD though? Not only did the cover go poof, but also the damage was over the top. If demo is too good, perhaps it's time for a 3rd grenade type, that's good at shredding, and demo should be -5 armor instead of -10. Lower all grenade weight from 6 to 5 to compensate.

Except it doesn't do it well. I've played HEVY since v 27.4 and back then HEVY was like 35 dmg and 10 shred, which was very good, perhaps too good. Then it got to 25 dmg, no shred, but at least it had cheap fixed TUs per shot, so you could spam shots and still get the job done even if you've missed. Today's HEVY is the worst of both worlds: While it does shred, the accuracy is still terrible, but you can no longer spam in case you miss once. The shredding is also insufficient, since a Demo charge is much more reliable and is immune to smoke aim penalty. So the problem is twofold: 1)Early on you have no accuracy to hit anything reliably, and enemies do not have armor so shredding does nothing. You can't waste TUs willy-nilly, so Demo Charges are vastly superior, not only for their innate accuracy, but also being immune to smoke penalties. 2)Later on you have the accuracy, but why would you use a HEVY to shred when you can land a Laser Sniper shot from downtown instead to do the same amount of shred, as well as do a lot more damage a lot more reliably on top of that? Aim bonus would have to be MUCH bigger than 1.05 for the present HEVY to make sense. Either that or it has to ignore smoke penalties.

It's funny because it seems like Commander has more money than Veteran (unless there's difficulty adjusted prices, which I don't think there are). More enemies -> More Loot -> More sales. Lab spam is as powerful as it was in v1.xx, so when I read these threads (here and on Steam) of people struggling to make ends meet I'm very perplexed. Perhaps the game needs to make it clearer that captures are a very good way to make money.

I've done a few commander playthroughs over different patches and it seems like a squad with 5-6 shieldbearers could be really strong, perhaps owing to how weak the AI in the game currently is, i.e. it doesn't try to match your numbers, while you can move like the ancient phalanx formation, shielding every vulnerable side. It would also be quite easy to rotate full HP shields in front of the most dangerous side. So this is what I came up with after thinking about the meta a bit. Enemies DO NOT get any AoE attacks outside of Cleaner burst fire for a very long time, so everyone getting suppressed is not going to be that big of a concern. As for the other 3-4 members it would probably be 1 MG, 2 Snipers and perhaps 1 Shotgunner for extra surgical DPS, though close range DPS with this many shields probably isn't something you'd lack. What seems promising about this strat: 1)You can reliably tank shots, meaning you can close the distance. You can get Lots of captures, meaning lots of $$$, meaning you can get the extra labs early and snowball to Dragonfly/Phantoms quickly. 2)It actually gets stronger and stronger (both in the literal, as well as soldier attribute sense) as you begin the game with barely being able to carry anything aside from the shield and pistol/baton, but you get more and more consumables as your soldiers gain more Strength, and the vital Assault Shield upgrade is very timely in the tech tree to keep using this squad composition. More TUs also mean you can close the distance faster, which is of obvious importance with a very short range focused squad. 3)It is very, very cheap to fully equip this squad: Batons are free, while pistols are the cheapest weapons to manufacture.