Milestone 1 Balance Thread

[Pun Pundit]

1 hour ago, DaviddesJ said:

I don't think it's a "no-brainer to skip the first stage". If you mean that it would be dumb to research accelerated weapons. It's not. You said you literally don't even know which is better, so why are you so certain you've been "trapped"? In any case, if you want this kind of information on your first playthrough, it's all on the wiki. Not everyone wants to know everything before they play, though.

I do know now, after reading through this thread(and researching both and looking at the stat differences). Accelerated weapons is a trap choice.

[Kaien]

- Tutorial mission : I lost one solier and I kill fews aliens. I had achiements for something I totally dont control. And ingame, there is no indication after the mission that I did it (no soldier have the kill, my planes have 0 kill also). If you want a achievement for the tutorial mission, give one specifically for the turial mission, and desactivate the others ones.

- I have a mission about find some data on computers. I send my plane with soldiers. It arrive there and I have a message showing a fly figther. I was confuse and I was thinking I send a fighter. We should have a picture of soldiers or a picture of a transporting fly.

- Screen victory : Most of my soldiers have theirs names in yellow and a yellow arrow to the top. I guess that means they increase their rank. But it is not clear and there is no explanation there about how important it is. So, a small tooltip there could be great.

- During mission, on the top, you have the life of yours soldiers. Red and gray. On the bottom, you have details of yours soldiers. You have the life again, but here, you have strong red, dark red and gray. You should keep the dark red on the top too. It is an usefull information and that dont take more place.

 

Edited July 18, 2023 by Kaien

[Emily_F]

I think there's meant to be pros and cons to the accelerated vs laser weapons. The laser machine gun is more powerful but doesn't hit the broad side of a barn. But the differentiation between the two types isn't clear (you can compare stats, but I've never wrapped my head around what the difference is between them)

[DaviddesJ]

2 hours ago, Pun Pundit said:

I do know now, after reading through this thread(and researching both and looking at the stat differences). Accelerated weapons is a trap choice.

You're just wrong.

[Dren608]

Accelerated Rifles get +1.5% per square so if you fire at max range of 30 that's +30 to hit making a 60 Accuracy soldier have a 90% hit chance, Regular Soldiers become pseudo Snipers at range,

You have to change tactics based on what the Weapons do. There is a lot of that in this Game, You can't keep doing the same thing when  the Weapons change, It requires you to alter how you do missions based on what you have. That is something only extended play shows you.

 

[DaviddesJ]

1 hour ago, Dren608 said:

Accelerated Rifles get +1.5% per square so if you fire at max range of 30 that's +30 to hit making a 60 Accuracy soldier have a 90% hit chance, Regular Soldiers become pseudo Snipers at range,

No, that's not how range bonus works. +1.5% per square means that if it has range 30 then you get +1.5% for every square *less* than 30 the actual range is. It doesn't get *more* accurate if the target is *farther* away!

[Skitso]

New recruits get good a bit too fast IMO. While the original crew is suffering from diminishing returns, these new rookies gain abilities so fast they are soon as good as the best veterans. Maybe slow the training rate a little and restrict stat improving to just TU, STR, ACC and REF?

Edited July 20, 2023 by Skitso

[Dren608]

13 hours ago, DaviddesJ said:

No, that's not how range bonus works. +1.5% per square means that if it has range 30 then you get +1.5% for every square *less* than 30 the actual range is. It doesn't get *more* accurate if the target is *farther* away!

OK, sorry it isn't clear in the description to me, maybe I just can't read it right, That still would give you a +15% chance at Half Range 10 squares (range on the Rifles is 20) and for the most part that is usually where I am when shooting because that's where I first see the bad guy Making a 65% accuracy up to an 80% is kind of a big deal.

[Irishguy117]

I actually missed the existence of Accelerated Weapons entirely my first go through, because I wasn't looking for them. Laser weapons are the classic first upgrade in X-Com descended games, so thats what I was keeping an eye out for. The Research title "Alien Mag Weapons" didn't intuitively suggest to me that it would unlock weapons for my own manufacture, and by the time I had research space to dedicate to soldier's equipment Laser was already unlocked. I think that at a minimum the title isn't a good fit for explaining to players what it will do.

[DaviddesJ]

If you read the research result it's certainly clearly stated.

It's kind of in the nature of research that you don't know what it will do for you until you do it. If you knew, it wouldn't be research.

[Judy]

The Dock mission (2nd mission with cleaners) is hard.  I was on Soldier difficulty and my guys die even behind cover from 1 or 2 burst fires from enemies!!!  As for the stun guns, I had 3 guys shoot from range 0-3 and they all missed in one mission.  You should really improve the melee and extremely short range weapon accuracy and add more ammo to the stun gun.  Most of them had the accuracy booster module too.  I think the difficulty is way too far up there for the cleaner mission.  9 units vs 9 enemies that have  unlimited reinforcements is too much.  I was getting flanked.  My guys had Warden armor and were dying to long range burst fire by the cleaners. 2 burst would kill most since their accuracy we so good even with crouching behind cover.  MY guys only had like 5 mission prior to engaging the Cleaners at the Docks.  The game implied that I had to get the Docks fast or I will get overwhelmed.

Edited July 22, 2023 by Judy

[Novadea]

On 7/18/2023 at 5:53 PM, Pun Pundit said:

I do know now, after reading through this thread(and researching both and looking at the stat differences). Accelerated weapons is a trap choice.

I do have to agree with this statement partially, there're few more "trap" sciences that aren't worth it _at least for how I was playing_. If I'd start again now I'd totally skip a bunch of researches because they'll get obsolete the moment you have them produced.

[Vitruviansquid]

My findings playing on Veteran are that accelerated weapons is a wayyyyyy worse research than warden armor and it's kind of a no-brainer to research Warden Armor as soon as possible after you bag your first aliens in that initial research team battle. Then, by the time you're done fielding your warden armor, you might as well skip accelerated weapons and go straight for laser weapons. 

I think the problem is that the niche that Accelerated Weapons are supposed to fill is itself very problematic and you can't meaningfully make the accelerated weapons tech feel good without reworking its niche. It seems pretty clear to me that accelerated weapons is designed as a stopgap so that you have some kind of weapons development you can opt to get before you incorporate the alien tech into your weapons and make laser weapons. But even playing in the hard mode, I'm not scared enough of Sectons, Sebilians, or Psyons, to feel that I need to upgun my soldiers to handle them. Of course, you can't make accelerated weapons necessary by nerfing ballistic weapons so badly that players come out the gate having no effectiveness against the early game enemies either. Besides, if I get accelerated weapons to prevent some loss of life in the early game, well Warden Armor is already ridiculously superb at doing that. In fact, Warden Armor is such a massive upgrade over Defender Armor, I would probably opt for the Warden Armor even if instead of researching accelerated weapons, I could directly research laser weapons at that place in the tech tree.

So here's what I'd propose for the subject of making Accelerated Weapons a more desirable research:

1. The new niche for Accelerated Weapons is a cheap and easily produced weapon that is more okay to lose on top of being soon to research and quick to research. Cut the research time for Accelerated Weapons in half. Eliminate the money cost for building Accelerated Weapons, just retain an alloy cost - then slash the alloy cost of Accelerated Weapons to something like 1 per pistol, 3 per bigger gun.

2. Retool the rule of armor destruction on death to be armor and weapon destruction. When your soldier dies, you lose his armor AND his weapon.

Consider now how much it costs to lose a soldier:

10k for the man

~47k for the warden armor

~131k for a laser rifle OR 41k for a post-buff accelerated rifle (currently, an accelerated rifle costs ~66k a pop)

or you can say about ~188k is the cost of losing an armored soldier armed with a laser rifle and ~98k for an armored soldier armed with an accelerated rifle. Even more woe to you if your soldier was carrying multiple laser weapons, like a laser shotgun and a laser pistol both. Of course, some players are not playing with any armor loss, so this is just one suggestion - the main idea is that Accelerated Weapons need some niche.

That said, I think the game might also benefit from a bigger discussion about the overwhelming power of Warden Armor, too.

Warden armor has no tradeoffs because it is lighter than Defender Armor and more protective. And it's fine for something you have to research and then buy to have no tradeoffs, but perhaps it also shouldn't be quite so good and cost effective (we're sitting here discussing how to make Accelerated Weapons a bit stronger of a choice, and the entire time, Warden armor is even cheaper to make than a current-patch accelerated rifle!). If the option for equipment destruction is still only applicable to the soldier's armor, I'd push for a balance pass that systematically makes armor be a bigger portion of the cost to equip a soldier.

[doubleskulls]

11 hours ago, Vitruviansquid said:

 you might as well skip accelerated weapons and go straight for laser weapons. 

I think that numbers would suggest that, generally speaking, Accelerated weapons are marginally better than Lasers. Even on Veteran. Once you've got advanced lasers, then they are clearly better. I think the primary discussion is whether, for research purposes, skipping accelerated is better as it is a dead-end tech, and living with the slightly worse lasers until the plasma upgrade is tolerable or not.  

[Vitruviansquid]

13 hours ago, doubleskulls said:

I think that numbers would suggest that, generally speaking, Accelerated weapons are marginally better than Lasers. Even on Veteran. Once you've got advanced lasers, then they are clearly better. I think the primary discussion is whether, for research purposes, skipping accelerated is better as it is a dead-end tech, and living with the slightly worse lasers until the plasma upgrade is tolerable or not.  

Quote

Besides, if I get accelerated weapons to prevent some loss of life in the early game, well Warden Armor is already ridiculously superb at doing that. In fact, Warden Armor is such a massive upgrade over Defender Armor, I would probably opt for the Warden Armor even if instead of researching accelerated weapons, I could directly research laser weapons at that place in the tech tree...

 ...the main idea is that Accelerated Weapons need some niche.

 

[Judy]

I disagree with your statement that Warden armor is too powerful.  I have all Warden armor for the Cleaner Dock base.  My guys probably did like 3 missions each before docks showed up.   1 guy in the building back wall shot through the window across like 15 squares and at my guy behind the concrete (kneeling) with burst fire 2 times in one turn and killed him.  Tried the reload and same death.  I gave up on the mission and decided to restart the game.  I don't know if the cleaners can be delayed but those cleaners hit Warden armor like nothing is there and they are really accurate.  I think i was either soldier or recruit.  Plus if they get reinforced every single turn after 7, it is near impossible once turn 8 arrives.

Another thing is that the shield only takes like 3 hits and breaks.

[bonerstorm]

I'm a long-time player of XCom and Xenonauts... my first playthrough sucked and felt extremely annoying.

My second playthrough went better.

My third and beyond were fairly comfortable.

Part of the problem is that the early game is counter-intuitive. There's this whole "all strategies are valid" thing but that is a total crock. In order to survive, a player has to rush 3 bases, rush interceptor tech and rush Dragonfly/MARS while their soldiers drop like flies in order to not lose 2 regions to panic by the time the current content ends.

You should have a little dialogue cutscene after the first month or so where there's a "mission" or "order" or whatever telling you to build a new base because regions are complaining that you're not protecting them. That way we don't have to find out the hard way that we screwed ourselves at the outset because we couldn't see the future.

Here are my big takeaways:

1. Air Combat is a piping hot mug of bull semen. Once I figured out I could change the positioning of the planes and kite the UFO's, life got a lot easier... but it's still completely unbalanced. The squadrons of 3 "Interceptor" UFO's in particular are 110 billion percent bullshit. There is absolutely nothing in the game as it exists right now that can survive that fight.... you just have to eat shit while it blasts around raising panic everywhere, while you only have the faintest opportunities to snipe an abductor or maybe two before the "Air Superiority" mission ends. Also even aside from the armor upgrade bug, it takes forever to regenerate armor on a plane. Bolting armor plates on a plane should be practically instantaneous compared to repairing hull damage.
2. Panic is completely unbalanced. There are precious few opportunities to reduce panic - and apparently COMPLETING A TERROR MISSION doesn't affect it at all. It appears that the average UFO will cause 3-5 panic before I can destroy it, which appears to only reduce panic by 2. So, inevitably, panic creeps up to max over time even in regions you've got locked down.
3. Explosives are ridiculously underpowered. In a more balanced game, they would be the most powerful option and the trade-off would be less loot/research-items. If shooting with a rifle does more damage than a literal direct hit with a 40mm HE grenade, you screwed up and broke verisimilitude. If you guys thought this was "balanced", you forgot to remember this is a gritty tactical game - not a fantasy RPG where you have to balance fireball against acid arrow or something. Look at the forum posts for "grenadier" and you'll see that this is flying like a lead zeppelin.

In conclusion:

1. Dialogue scene after month 1 telling players to start a new base.
2. Get rid of "Interceptor" UFO's and make interceptor armor regenerate FAST. Like, as fast as refueling.
3. Increase panic reductions from downing UFO's and make panic reductions for completing missions in-theatre.
4. Increase grenade and especially grenade launcher damage. If that creates balance issues, make grenades trigger Overwatch BEFORE you throw - with a penalty to accuracy based on damage.

[bonerstorm]

On 6/21/2023 at 5:16 AM, Skitso said:

@Chris, updated Cleaner cell mission (I only tried the European one) kinda still feels a tiny bit too difficult. 

*SNIP*

...or I just need to learn how to play.

The correct answer is "Don't attempt these missions until you have 2 MARS and a Dragonfly." Sorry.

[bonerstorm]

On 6/21/2023 at 1:57 PM, Kamehamehayes said:

What do you mean by "good chance to hit"?

I have repeatedly missed 98%, 97% and even ***100%*** hit chance shots. Tried again on reloads.... even on different tiles in case it's the same random seed each turn.

There is definitely something buggy with the hit chance calculation.

[bonerstorm]

Hey mods sorry for multi-post I'm new and didn't know where the multi-quote button was. plz no ban 

On 6/24/2023 at 6:09 PM, Chris said:

There being a lot of early-game research is intentional, it gives you the opportunity to try different ways to approach the game rather than it being a case of each UFO giving you 2-3 projects and you'll have completed them all by the time the next UFO rolls around. I think it's cool that once you've played the game a little, you can beeline straight for Lasers or Guardian Armour or the Phantom / Dragonfly, etc.

I dig the intent, but that's not how it plays out.

If you do anything except prioritize UFO interception above everything else at the start, then inevitably panic will rise at a rate that cannot be contained. And the worst part is that players won't realize this until making it deep into midgame where .

I think a constructive way to deliver hints about tech progression is for different officers to give you different advice.

For instance:

• Scientist tells you to focus on interceptors above everything else because it gives the best chance of succeeding at the mission. Soldiers are replaceable, but humanity as a whole is not.
• Engineer tells you to focus on drones, armor and explosives so your soldiers survive.
• Ops tells you to focus on weapons and stun so you can maximize the tech and resources you get, because your funders are demanding results.

On 6/26/2023 at 3:43 PM, Chris said:

I think you're right about the cost, though. I did the same on my own playthrough and I ended up short on Alloys - and I found the Warden a far more significant upgrade over the equivalent armour than Accelerated weapons were over the equivalent weapons. I think part of the issue is that Laser Weapons have the same Alloy cost as Lasers, so if Alloys are a bottleneck (and they probably will be given Warden Armour seems really solid) then there's no penalty to go for Lasers instead, whereas there should be because they're way more futureproof.

So I think I probably need to bump Lasers up in Alloy cost a bit, and reduce Accelerated weapons a bit too.

Honestly, unless there's a significant damage buff to Accelerated, it simply is not worth any cost in alloys. And it PAINS me to hear you talking about increasing the cost of lasers when alloys are already used in exorbitant amounts by most engineering techs.

I recommend one of three options:

1. Buff Accelerated to be equal to Laser, but make laser the "anti-armor" option or something.
2. Literally reduce the resource cost of Accelerated to zero, so it's only money.
3. Make Accelerated a permanent upgrade to infinitely-available ballistic weapons like it is for aircraft.

On 6/26/2023 at 5:15 PM, SoftwareSimian said:

Definitely. Nothing is more important than getting that upgraded armor ASAP. You can always shoot the alien several times with a lesser weapon, but only if you're not dead.

Honestly in my last playthrough I kept everybody on Guardian armor until the midgame, just two weeks before I researched exosuits. Having 3 bases loaded with interceptors (2 wings of Angels, 1 wing of Phantoms) is simply too valuable in terms of funding and panic to do anything else.

Like it's harsh but in X2 so far individual soldiers are just not valuable enough to heavily invest in their survival until deep into the midgame.

On 7/18/2023 at 8:51 AM, Pun Pundit said:

- It's very unclear whether it is safe to sell corpses. In XCOM 2 WOTC, a game many people are likely to come from into Xenonauts 2, alien corpses are important resources to build items and structures (even more so in Long War), but from the posts in this thread it seems like they exist to be sold in this game (like in OG XCOM UFO Defense). This could probably be made explicit.

We shouldn't have to manually sell corpses and captureds - it should be automatic as part of the mission complete screen. The extra step is annoying and doesn't add anything to the gameplay except confusion and a waste of storage space.

On 7/18/2023 at 1:41 PM, Emily_F said:

I think there's meant to be pros and cons to the accelerated vs laser weapons. The laser machine gun is more powerful but doesn't hit the broad side of a barn. But the differentiation between the two types isn't clear (you can compare stats, but I've never wrapped my head around what the difference is between them)

At this point, every upgrade is clearly better with two exceptions:

1. Gauss vs Improved Laser - the latter is better for machinegun because it regenerates almost as fast as you can shoot it. I would say the same for Sniper Rifle, but the damage buff for Gauss is absolutely necessary when taking on deep-midgame enemies. Aside from the machinegun, I only use laser weapons for base defense (in my secondary bases).
2. Interceptor Gauss vs Laser Cannon - in order for flights of Angels to survive midgame medium dogfights, they need to kite. And in order to kite, they need the Laser Cannon's range. Unfortunately, I don't think that's reflected in autobattle which is extremely annoying because I have to do it manually each time.

On 7/19/2023 at 2:11 PM, Skitso said:

New recruits get good a bit too fast IMO. While the original crew is suffering from diminishing returns, these new rookies gain abilities so fast they are soon as good as the best veterans. Maybe slow the training rate a little and restrict stat improving to just TU, STR, ACC and REF?

Then what is the point of wasting valuable base space and power on training at all?

I try not to savescum too much, which means my guys die and get injured fairly often even with exosuits/stalker-suits. By the time I rotate in a recruit, they're usually Sgt, which isn't that much to write home about.

I could MAYBE MAYBE see putting a cap on training... like it won't take you past Captain.

On 7/22/2023 at 2:36 PM, Vitruviansquid said:

My findings playing on Veteran are that accelerated weapons is a wayyyyyy worse research than warden armor and it's kind of a no-brainer to research Warden Armor as soon as possible after you bag your first aliens in that initial research team battle. Then, by the time you're done fielding your warden armor, you might as well skip accelerated weapons and go straight for laser weapons. I think the problem is that the niche that Accelerated Weapons are supposed to fill

*SNIP*

That said, I think the game might also benefit from a bigger discussion about the overwhelming power of Warden Armor, too.

Warden armor has no tradeoffs because it is lighter than Defender Armor and more protective. And it's fine for something you have to research and then buy to have no tradeoffs, but perhaps it also shouldn't be quite so good and cost effective (we're sitting here discussing how to make Accelerated Weapons a bit stronger of a choice, and the entire time, Warden armor is even cheaper to make than a current-patch accelerated rifle!). If the option for equipment destruction is still only applicable to the soldier's armor, I'd push for a balance pass that systematically makes armor be a bigger portion of the cost to equip a soldier.

Hahaa I played through most of the game with Defender Armor and made it through just fine. Sure... my guys died a lot... but that's what they signed up for. And the survivors were righteous beasts.

Also for the love of Pete, plz no nerfs. For the cost of 10 warden suits, you can get two MARS or a Phantom interceptor which will both vastly improve the success of the mission compared to your soldiers being one-shotted a marginally lower percentage of the time (still happens even with exosuits!).

In my current playthrough, I'm just past day 200 and I have zero regions with panic over 50... three flights of three interceptors at three bases... two full squads of secondary guards with lasers and warden armor plus a couple basic dropships at my secondary bases (for base defense and additional looting while alpha team is busy/resting)... gauss, exosuits and and stalkersuits on all my main guys (who are almost all COL level)... and all techs research and maybe two or three non-trap engineering techs I haven't unlocked... and 16 spare troops for my Alpha team.

[Vitruviansquid]

19 hours ago, Judy said:

I disagree with your statement that Warden armor is too powerful.  I have all Warden armor for the Cleaner Dock base.  My guys probably did like 3 missions each before docks showed up.   1 guy in the building back wall shot through the window across like 15 squares and at my guy behind the concrete (kneeling) with burst fire 2 times in one turn and killed him.  Tried the reload and same death.  I gave up on the mission and decided to restart the game.  I don't know if the cleaners can be delayed but those cleaners hit Warden armor like nothing is there and they are really accurate.  I think i was either soldier or recruit.  Plus if they get reinforced every single turn after 7, it is near impossible once turn 8 arrives.

Another thing is that the shield only takes like 3 hits and breaks.

Of course, you can still die to taking two lucky hits despite Warden Armor.

But you can also have laser guns and fail to kill a Psyon in multiple hits because you rolled low.

The luck factor does not go away, and Warden Armor doesn't need to make your soldiers invincible to be a powerful tech.

[bonerstorm]

18 minutes ago, Vitruviansquid said:

Of course, you can still die to taking two lucky hits despite Warden Armor.

But you can also have laser guns and fail to kill a Psyon in multiple hits because you rolled low.

The luck factor does not go away, and Warden Armor doesn't need to make your soldiers invincible to be a powerful tech.

Bruh Warden will still give you a roughly 30% chance of getting one-shot instead of like a 40% chance with Defender armor.

If Warden were any crappier, then it pretty much wouldn't be worth getting at all - especially since you have to spend precious Alloys on it.

If you want to talk about a Warden-tier heavy armor that costs a little more and has penalties similar to Defender, then that's very reasonable.

At most... AT MOST... I could maybe concede that Warden should take another month or so to unlock. Maybe have an intermediate armor in between there. Because the next step up is Guardian and that's not remotely worth getting when you can unlock exosuits a week later.

 

Also this game is desperately missing a "light armor". We're just going to roll with jumpsuits well into the midgame... really?

Edited July 25, 2023 by bonerstorm

[Vitruviansquid]

Quote

Hahaa I played through most of the game with Defender Armor and made it through just fine. Sure... my guys died a lot... but that's what they signed up for. And the survivors were righteous beasts.

Well, he's got a point. Warden Armor definitely isn't powerful, and if you don't need to research it if you don't mind your soldiers dying a lot.

Quote

 

Also for the love of Pete, plz no nerfs. For the cost of 10 warden suits, you can get two MARS or a Phantom interceptor which will both vastly improve the success of the mission compared to your soldiers being one-shotted a marginally lower percentage of the time (still happens even with exosuits!).

In my current playthrough, I'm just past day 200 and I have zero regions with panic over 50... three flights of three interceptors at three bases... two full squads of secondary guards with lasers and warden armor plus a couple basic dropships at my secondary bases (for base defense and additional looting while alpha team is busy/resting)... gauss, exosuits and and stalkersuits on all my main guys (who are almost all COL level)... and all techs research and maybe two or three non-trap engineering techs I haven't unlocked... and 16 spare troops for my Alpha team.

 

Well, he's got a point there, too. Air combat is definitely too expensive, but also too effective at winning you the game, so it should probably be looked at for a nerf so that ground combat becomes something you need to do well to win the game.

[bonerstorm]

5 hours ago, Vitruviansquid said:

Well, he's got a point. Warden Armor definitely isn't powerful, and if you don't need to research it if you don't mind your soldiers dying a lot.

That is, unfortunately, the cost/benefit calculation I made. I didn't WANT to watch a bunch of my soldiers die but it's the only sensible option.

I tried other ways but I always reached the "end of content" point with 80-90+ panic in at least one region.

5 hours ago, Vitruviansquid said:

Well, he's got a point there, too. Air combat is definitely too expensive, but also too effective at winning you the game, so it should probably be looked at for a nerf so that ground combat becomes something you need to do well to win the game.

I wouldn't want a nerf of air combat, but I do want a nerf of how INTENSE air combat is and how INTEGRAL it is to winning.

I stopped savescumming ground combat ages ago because it became so easy, but I still often reload air combat even with optimized interceptors and cheesy kite tactics. Because losing a soldier is a statistic, but losing a whole squadron of interceptors is a tragedy that - if I were playing on Ironman - would prompt me to instantly restart from scratch. The incentives are all janked.

Two points:

1. It is literally impossible with any combination of techs to defeat the 3-Interceptor UFO squadron. What is even the point of that in this build but to annoy the player? 
2. I did the napkin math and the average UFO creates net 2-3 panic before I take it down.... IF I can take it down. If I can't, we're talking like 5-10 panic. And the ONLY ground combat mission that reduces panic AFAIK is timed hostage rescue, which I'm pretty good at but doesn't trigger more than like twice in an entire game.

So the Air Combat needs to be less like a warm mug of bull semen if "rush Laser Cannon Phantom" isn't going to be the ONLY sensible strategy.

And Ground Combat missions need to reduce Terror so you don't NEED insane air combat capability to keep from losing the game.

Bonus points: the Cleaner Base mission should reduce panic instead of just increase money. That accomplishes the same thing (giving the player money), but also gives a lot more breathing room for different strategies.

Edited July 26, 2023 by bonerstorm

[DaviddesJ]

11 hours ago, bonerstorm said:

In order to survive, a player has to rush 3 bases, rush interceptor tech and rush Dragonfly/MARS while their soldiers drop like flies in order to not lose 2 regions to panic by the time the current content ends.

That's not what I found.