Ash

Thanks

Why do they exist? Lorewise, the alien weaponry is already sufficiently advanced that they wouldn't be making iterative upgrades on it over the timespan of several months, especially when you stop to consider some of their amazing sci-fi spoilery technology. And gameplay-wise, they're impossible to counterplay. The AI has something like a 90% perfect accuracy rating when throwing the (AAG's) through smoke at me (yeah, the higher up elites do that, maybe psions give vision?). Couple this with the elites all having 100+ time units, and ANY grouping grouping of 2+ units you have on the entire map (tanks count as 4 automatically) will cause the elites to bumrush your cluster of people and instakill most of them (sentinel armored people with ~75hp can still be consistently one-shot from direct hits on EASY). Repeat until you ragequit the game. Suggested fixes : -No AAG's, just give the alien grenades scaling armor pen. (later months, greater %), but have them deal a constant damage number. (Call it momentum transfer or hydrostatic shock- power armor may stop projectiles, but it can't stop the force of what is basically a fusion reaction.) -Give AAG's a huge tile blast radius(5?/6?), but explode on the end of the player's turn (Alien C4!) -Increase the TU's required to throw AAG's so that aliens can only move one or two spaces before throwing them. (lazy solution, but will work since only the elites have them) -Change the TU's required to throw them into a flat % (original xcom was 75? from backpack) to allow for alien civvies to use them and be REALLY dangerous (those late-game light scout missions of doom), while not causing a single elite to possibly ruin an entire campaign. Why Advanced Alien Grenades are so Broken: -Situation 1: late-game large alien base attack, you move out into the first empty hall with several shields with support in overwatch, and end your turn. 2 elites round a corner, your overwatch goes off, they facetank 200+ damage and live, then chuck 'nades directly on top of your units. The first one direct impacts and explodes, killing two people. The second kills a third, and destroys the first two's equipment. Your second turn begins, and you have lost not only several colonels, but several suits of power armor and plasma casters to go along with them. RIP 40 hours because of a single shitty gameplay mechanic. (Original XCom wasn't even this artificially difficult unless you count the ai using blaster bomb map hacks) -Situation 2: Terror mission, your troops are clearing the water fountain and the park benches. An elite wraith teleports in behind your tank, throws an AAG, and one-shots it. Balanced. I love the game so far, despite its flaws and bugs it's amazing, but this issue needs fixing before people start actually playing this game on iron-man mode, or you might just be responsible some broken computer equipment. I've been tempted.