kingsword

I don't. The result is the same WHEREVER I target. In front of cover, behind cover, on top of cover, target, the ground in front of cover. I reloaded 5 times trying every possible position and the grenade flies off the map.

IRL nobody would point the thing so that it goes off to 3KM away instead of hitting the stall. It's still the most useless weapon in the game aside from the obvious meme stuff like knifes. I'm amazed that it survived until now with no changes. I hope the design team isn't happy with how it works.

@SkyfireWeapons had been winning until the last 20-30 years, infantry hadn't been wearing armor for centuries while every respectable military and law enforcement service employs widespread armor now. If we apply alien techs on top of that, sure we will have railguns and lasers but also exotic alloys and other systems. So yeah, there's really no reason where 'less than a milimeter thick' heat shield can overcome atmospheric entry, suddenly it cannot be applied on a ballistic shield to shrug off many threats. Yeah this game has that one case and it has shields. It has shields period, to be employed. The designers thought the game is one where they can be utilized unlike 99% of the SRPGs, I can think of like one other example over the last decade. Modern era SRPGs avoid it so adding it already shows an intent in design. The intent that the combat is SWAT combat, not military combat. Heck, if this was military combat, we should have been using tanks, drones, copters etc, not blood and meat infantry. There we have the game tropes which are mostly necessary and some of them can be better or worse, I wouldn't say X2 is the best I've seen in its systems but among the better ones in these recent times where FXCOM is treated as a great game. This whataboutism is pretty pointless and the game already used this system so it has a proven track record that it's better gameplay while also being more realistic. The fact that soldier health system is basic is irrelevant to this. If it was up to me, I'd change the armor system too but it's still infinitely better than this HP = integrity non-sense. Alright, I understand that devs listened to bad feedback so it's an EA hazard. One solid reason why they should have released the full game. Moving on from this since they apparently didn't have the will to persist on their own new better design. Happens to many companies sadly. Can we mod back to the old system? I have seen HP change modding but that's obviously not what I care for.

@A_Magical_PotatoI just don't get this constantly oscillating argument. When I advocate it as a better system it's called overpowered, when I ask why people wanted the old system, it's being called underpowered. Which is it? It was already balanced, did anyone even see how it was in closed beta? It's being talked as if I'm talking about an imaginary system when people already tested it. No it didn't mean the soldier could go in Rambo, it could let in damage and it was already susceptible to armor shredding like any worn armor. However its benefit didn't entirely go away too fast, it rewarded careful approach and support by other units. Take more than 3-4 hits and the unit was probably in a similar situation to losing the shield, not to mention that big alpha damage always posed a threat. The difference is it's either ON or OFF now. When it's on, it's unrealistically, magically too powerful and when it's off it's nothing. Not to mention that it's incredibly unrealistic. If we don't care one bit about realism, we could just adopt FXCOM stuff like unlimited ammo or explosives as class skills as well. If I wanted that kind of non-sense, there are already too many games with that with magic abilities and armor = HP. It's not my system, I didn't tell the guys at Goldhawk to implement it. They did it, they defended it but somehow they bailed out. I'd like to see their rationalization to be honest. @GreyICEThey're alright with a shield. They're crappy without a shield. There's a reason why SWAT doesn't use pistols if they don't have a shield. I agree that the game should have several shields to go along with other techs. Like, we sprayed alloys on our armor but somehow we don't know how to do the same on a flat surface.

No, you didn't need to "never get shot" in closed beta. You could get shot and heal up, continue. It was possible to finish the mission with shielders remaining the point men till the end with careful and conservative play. The point of shields was leading the charge like in RL SWAT. It's not a "second HP pool" as obviously you don't comprehend how the system works. HP is protected by armor and can be healed with medikits which is not the case for X1 shields. It's a fixed point damage sponge that vaporizes and leaves you naked with a gimp pistol. Then they no longer have any purpose in the squad. They can't protect, they can't deal damage. They're effectively dead until the next mission. The game was balanced, shield and the rest of armor deteriorated but the level of protection had a gradual change rather than "completely immune -> naked" which is good gameplay vs bad gameplay. That's why TU system of Xenonauts series is good as TUs allow gradual movement and offense compared to ON/OFF action/move of Firaxis XCOM. That's why armor system of X2 is good. It's again a gradual change instead of "you're naked now" like in FXCOM. The same logic applies to shields. No it doesn't fulfill the design goal, shields are wasted bytes on the SSD now like in the first game. Worse gameplay altogether because no more breacher role in the squad. Now it's about moving from cover to cover like FXCOM. Altogether a much less realistic, much less tactical and a much less enjoyable game. The most ironic thing is that devs were defending that system in the forums back in February but somehow today we ended up with this garbage system for the release. It's a shame when devs don't ignore bad feedback that goes against their vision of the game.

Can we mod this? There's a massive difference in being able to rely on a 50 weight item through an entire mission versus it evaporating second turn and effectively losing a soldier since wielding a pistol you can as well load that troop back onto the helicopter. I don't really understand why armor and ballistic plates don't just change into HP = armor as well if this is really what people prefer. Gimping only shields is so arbitrary that I can't really fathom the logic here. In all of these situations weight and offense is traded for defense. I can't overstate how disappointed I'm to be honest. It's EXTREMELY rare nowadays to have a game where we don't see Firaxis' corruption of protection. X2 was going to be an oasis among the desert that is nowadays' "hide and never get shot" games.

Civilians should run away from the aliens instead of charging towards them and blocking the paths of fire. It should be a simple AI alteration.

You sometimes took damage and healed it, kept pressing on. Now you lose the shield after you open a door and then die because there is no more defense. I don't see how blocking 1-2 shots entirely, then losing your tank/mobile cover entirely is better than just healing when necessary. If the damage is already too high then that shield is gone to begin with now. Now it's no brainer to just dump the shield and play it like any other SRPG out there, hiding behind environmental cover. Shields are useless. Better to use powerful 2H weapons instead and kill them before they kill you as your shield won't be there to protect you and they're still so heavy that you can't carry a backup 2H weapon.

Hi there, long time player of the series but I had to come back 10 years after my last post because I've been told on Steam that "feedback from players resulted in shield change". I also couldn't find a thread about this change so here it is: The shield system in X1 was, frankly, terrible. Shields are inherently add-on armors carried by people as the first layer of armor. They aren't magical black holes that suck up any damage and then suddenly disintegrate at a set point. Ancient shields, modern shields, they all work through either blocking the attack attack entirely or if they got penetrated, reduce the energy that arrives on the body or the next layer of armor that is body armor. Hence I was ecstatic to see that X2 had the shields working as an add-on armor. They are in fact a ballistic plate that takes up a hand slot instead of inventory or armor slot. Gameplay-wise, the trade off is that you don't lose the shield entirely soon but it can let through powerful shots. It'll keep supplying gradually lessening amount of protection rather than vaporizing and leaving you with a pistol where the shield soldier is practically useless with neutered defense and already compromised offense. I don't know why this change was reverted to X1's inferior system where shields were fundamentally useless. It was the one thing I really thought X2 did great compared to the myriad games in the genre where we could have a breacher tank akin to SWAT officers that lead the teams. Why the change? Is there any thoughts of reverting back to the proper X2 system later? If not, is it moddable? Because I just don't feel like playing the game after I saw the regression in gameplay in EA version.

Excuse me but how do I prevent Steam from updating the game automatically when I launch the game? I set it to "don't update automatically" but it still began updating when I launched the game. I don't want to lose an ongoing game at the moment since I had it close to the finish.