Difficulty is way too hard.

[Shadooow]

Ok so I replayed the game on lowest difficulty settings, because I got into dead end on Soldier difficulty in the cleaner cell mission where I am supposed to capture the leader in 7 rounds.

And I don't really see any differences. Now I am trying to win this same mission which I postponed and get bit better tech, but I already reloaded over 10 times and all my attempts ended up with half of my team dead, rest wounded and the cleaner leader at 95hp. I doubt this mission is doable in any other way than on second attempt once you know where all soldiers are and where the leader is and taking advantage of that knowhow.

- enemies have insane CtH, both aliens and humans, they are hitting way too much given that they should have CtH penalty on lowest difficulty - this is related to cover not working very well, anything but total cover feels useless and kneeling doesn't seem to impact enemy CtH either so is just waste of time units

- enemies are oneshotting my soldiers regularly with rifles. If I get hit by several shots from some burst fire be it alien weapon or heavy MG so be it, but single fire?. Now this can be understandable for aliens as their weapons are superior, but still getting oneshots at recruit feels way too harsh. I can't imagine how this scales with difficulties, will that shot be for 74 instead of 54 damage into warden armor?

- the round threshold is identical between soldier and lowest difficulty. I would expect this to scale. Those 7 rounds in the said mission are hardly enough, I barely broken into the room where leader is in both gameplays (not knowing which building it is and by enemies surrounding me from all sides which had to be dealt with first doesn't make it easy to just bruteforce inside).

- reinforces are spawning endlessly even on lowest difficulty as well immediately once the duo gets eliminated. And they spawn in same numbers despite the recruits should have reduced amount of enemies.

To be clear I managed to complete the mission, but escaping with 3 soldiers from 9 at lowest difficulty seems a bit too low to me. All the strongest soldiers with best equipment got oneshot or two-shot by the leader so I don't want to accept this result and will try to replay it from scratch (maybe with the stun baton this time) once again...

Tl'dr. I know I am probably not good player and I am doing many things wrong, but so far no mission was doable without reloading many times - if I didn't want to leave with 3+ bodybags. I understand that this game isn't Jagged Alliance and the soldiers are expendable, but I would expect the lowest difficulty to be a bit more forgiving. I honestly don't see difference at tactical battles between Recruit and Soldier.

Edited July 24, 2023 by Shadooow

[Shadeth]

There is another thread where someone suggested that they should give you SOME HINT as to where the leader is on this mission, and I totally agree.  Right now it encourages just exploring haphazardly until you find him, then reloading so you can bee-line to him to make it out in time.  I did it on normal and reloading once to the start I knew where he was is the ONLY way I could complete it.

I do also find it strange that the turn limit for this mission is the same on the easiest game mode.  Should have one extra turn at least I would think. 

[Mr.Xia]

2 hours ago, Shadooow said:

Ok so I replayed the game on lowest difficulty settings, because I got into dead end on Soldier difficulty in the cleaner cell mission where I am supposed to capture the leader in 7 rounds.

And I don't really see any differences. Now I am trying to win this same mission which I postponed and get bit better tech, but I already reloaded over 10 times and all my attempts ended up with half of my team dead, rest wounded and the cleaner leader at 95hp. I doubt this mission is doable in any other way than on second attempt once you know where all soldiers are and where the leader is and taking advantage of that knowhow.

- enemies have insane CtH, both aliens and humans, they are hitting way too much given that they should have CtH penalty on lowest difficulty - this is related to cover not working very well, anything but total cover feels useless and kneeling doesn't seem to impact enemy CtH either so is just waste of time units

- enemies are oneshotting my soldiers regularly with rifles. If I get hit by several shots from some burst fire be it alien weapon or heavy MG so be it, but single fire?. Now this can be understandable for aliens as their weapons are superior, but still getting oneshots at recruit feels way too harsh. I can't imagine how this scales with difficulties, will that shot be for 74 instead of 54 damage into warden armor?

- the round threshold is identical between soldier and lowest difficulty. I would expect this to scale. Those 7 rounds in the said mission are hardly enough, I barely broken into the room where leader is in both gameplays (not knowing which building it is and by enemies surrounding me from all sides which had to be dealt with first doesn't make it easy to just bruteforce inside).

- reinforces are spawning endlessly even on lowest difficulty as well immediately once the duo gets eliminated. And they spawn in same numbers despite the recruits should have reduced amount of enemies.

To be clear I managed to complete the mission, but escaping with 3 soldiers from 9 at lowest difficulty seems a bit too low to me. All the strongest soldiers with best equipment got oneshot or two-shot by the leader so I don't want to accept this result and will try to replay it from scratch (maybe with the stun baton this time) once again...

Tl'dr. I know I am probably not good player and I am doing many things wrong, but so far no mission was doable without reloading many times - if I didn't want to leave with 3+ bodybags. I understand that this game isn't Jagged Alliance and the soldiers are expendable, but I would expect the lowest difficulty to be a bit more forgiving. I honestly don't see difference at tactical battles between Recruit and Soldier.

I cant relate to your situation since I'm a hardcore fan of turn based games, and I used to play X1 religiously so these missions tend to be a breeze for me, but I can emphasise with bad RNG whenever I see one, Xenonauts are never known to give an evenly fair game, and even the new cleaner missions from X2 needs alot of work, and I do find the turns before reinforcements to be frustrating too.

So yeah, a general nudge at the general direction of the alien would help at least.

Would you like to share your tactics on tackling the mission? I'm not sure how familiar are you with the mechanics, but I've always tried these tactics on every mission that I had to bumrush.

- Shielders to tank reaction fire

- Chest high wall cover as a rule, is useless if I'm rushing. It's walls and large cover for me always

- Not sure about this, but taking cover from corners doesnt work for me(No indication that I have cover from enemies firing diagonally while I'm on cover corner) hide your troops away from corners.

- Flashbangs to prevent enemy units from reacting fire at your troops

- Throwing Demolition Charges to break obstacles/walls to flank enemies or reach an area faster

- Taking note of enemy abilities: Sectons will have HIGH accuracy when they are bunched up together.

- There is no shame in loadscumming from bad RNG

- MARs robot armed with autocannons and accuracy modules are excellent high mobility snipers, that could help you deal with reaction fire gung-ho aliens from afar.

 

Edited July 24, 2023 by Mr.Xia

[Skyfire]

Which patch are you playing on? Cleaner reinforcements should have been nerfed in v1.22, specifically to help with this kind of thing. It should be 7 turns, a wave of reinforcements, and then 5 more turns (12 total) before more arrive. The idea was to make 'fight through the reinforcements' actually somewhat viable, rather than the 7-turn marker being a hard 'you have to leave now'.

[Shadooow]

7 hours ago, Skyfire said:

Which patch are you playing on

1.25

I ended up with 3 soldiers only so was hard to figure out how exactly the reinforcements works. I could swear that in previous gameplay on Soldier they spawned every turn despite not killed, but I am not sure now. I loaded turn 7 again and killed the reinforcements on one side by the time of 8th round and they didn't respawn from that side and they respawned in round 12. So I was wrong. And this is now totally fine.

Still, one would expect that all these timers and also reinforcement counts will differ difficulty by difficulty. There are actually 6 new cleaners in the reinforcements, not 4 as I though, and this seems to be the same no matter which difficulty is selected.

Idk, I slept for it and today when I replayed it from round 7 enemy had bad RNG they missed most hits and the cleaner reinforcements that hit me just for 22/25 damage and I was able to complete the mission without losing any more soldier from that point which is an acceptable result (6 soldiers survived out of 9). I guess I got good RNG this time as the leader missed both of his shots?

[Shadooow]

8 hours ago, Mr.Xia said:

Would you like to share your tactics on tackling the mission?

I admit I am not using flashbangs much, In fact not at all, somehow they were missing in my soldier loadouts (I guess I had no weight and wanted to give them this nanite module and better armor).

I sent some soldiers on a sides to complete the secondary objective and to deal with hidden cleaners there and moved 5 soldiers including heavy MG and sniper into main objective building, there I used explosives on a wall and hidden my mercs behind the desk. Unfortunately they didn't have clear line of sight, too many objects in path so I just tried to suppress them with MG and went inside with assault soldier who got oneshotted by leader the moment I stepped inside the room.

And by the time I kill the guards inside that room by flanking them from a side with another assault soldier, the 7th round hits.

Well it is impossible to describe all my actions using words. I admit my strategy was suboptimal. My point is that the differences between difficulties are not visible.

[doubleskulls]

Flashbangs are crucial to reducing losses, as is smoke. Much more so than 3 points of armour. That would rarely ever make the difference between surviving or not.

Moving soldiers into vulnerable positions late in your turn often costs lives. You need to think about where the enemy could move and how well protected your soldiers are if they do. If you can don't leave soldiers where they can be shot at all, and always move MARS/Shield units first - they can soak up the reaction shot, revealing the enemy to be killed. 

[Judy]

I moved my soldiers to the concrete barrier in front of the building, but burst fire makes the concrete worthless.  I don't understand how cover works, I thought I was under cover.  I may try the mission again with tons of explosives and blow my way through to the leader.  You can't use flashbangs unless you get close and probably breach the building on the side rather than the front, but then that will waste an extra turn or two and risk getting overwhelmed.  Cleaners have good accuracy vs my green troops (3 missions at most).  Grenades weight quite a bit too so you can't carry much.  Even my shield guy barely has any weapons because the shield is so heavy even with warden armor.

[doubleskulls]

Tornis does a good video which may help - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmaQDfUSlQE&t=2079s with understanding cover. 

Also about 4 hours into this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOhwAOlPxlw&t=31597s he does the mission too. The video pacing is quite slow, but he's very good at explaining why he's doing things and what he's worried about. This is on the hardest difficulty and he manages to assassinate the VIP. 

 

 

 

 

[Alienkiller]

The Difficulty is very easy. You have the 4 Standard-Difficultys or can customise it manually. If that nobody of the young Generation can´t do anymore, then the World is in the next 50 Years completly lost.

[Judy]

I noticed that in the video he was at day 38 and already had accelerated weapons.  When the Docks showed up for me.  I only had lasers.  Mag weapons were not even available for research yet. 

=============================================

Whati noticed in his docks mission.

Turn 1 he got lucky and killed 2 guys.

Turn 2.  He lost first guy at from enemy long range 20+ burst fire in one burst.   (Even the vidoe guy said it was stupid accurate)

Turn 3. He lost 2nd guy at from enemy that just walks out and fires at long range 20+ burst fire in one burst.  (Now the guy is saying this is crazy accuracy.)

In the end he was 9 units vs 17 enemies by the time he killed the VIP.   That was with only 1 reinforcement.

He lost like 1/2 the soldiers.  

 

22 hours ago, doubleskulls said:

Tornis does a good video which may help - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmaQDfUSlQE&t=2079s with understanding cover. 

Also about 4 hours into this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOhwAOlPxlw&t=31597s he does the mission too. The video pacing is quite slow, but he's very good at explaining why he's doing things and what he's worried about. This is on the hardest difficulty and he manages to assassinate the VIP. 

 

 

 

 

 

[Skyfire]

2 hours ago, Judy said:

When the Docks showed up for me.  I only had lasers.  Mag weapons were not even available for research yet.

I didn't think that was even possible - did you skip a mission or something?

The Mag weapons research should become available after the first mission - the 'alien research team' one that pops on around day 3. I've had it available as an option for my second research project literally every time on Milestone 1.

[doubleskulls]

2 hours ago, Judy said:

He lost like 1/2 the soldiers.  

He's on the hardest difficulty level, and I think he was a bit unlucky with it too. They are tough missions, even when you know what you are doing, and losing soldiers is an expected part of the game. For me, that's okay. 

Its definitely worth bearing in mind that you don't have to do those missions immediately, they are persistent and you can do them when you want. I waited until I'd fully upgraded to warden armour and lasers/accelerated before tackling them. 

[Shadooow]

On 7/25/2023 at 12:13 PM, Alienkiller said:

The Difficulty is very easy. You have the 4 Standard-Difficultys or can customise it manually. If that nobody of the young Generation can´t do anymore, then the World is in the next 50 Years completly lost.

Did you even read what I wrote?

I am complaining that there are almost no differences between difficulties when it comes to tactical battles.

I am replaying the game on lowest difficulty (Recruit), and the battles are just as hard as they were at Soldier. Enemies do same amount of damage, their defenses doesn't differ either (HP/armor) and I have a hunch that there are a same amount of them in the docks mission as there were at Soldier (I will try to confirm that later, I lost drive to play this game anymore). Reinforcements behave the same too. Number of rounds to complete the objective is exactly the same too.

The only thing I found different between the Soldier and Recruit is that at Recruit, enemies can actually miss sometimes. From my observation it feels like they have 75% accuracy with any gun and any range. At Soldier difficulty this was nearly 90%.

I am losing over half of my team in every mission, and that is with the unrealistic 25% chance of "resurrection" after completing the mission (Recruit difficulty setting). And I need to reload each mission at least 5-10 times - because I lose too many soldiers too early from enemies flanking me (or in night from enemies I can't see, but they can see me despite they use hazmat suit in night lol). Only after I know where enemies are I can finish the mission with losing only half of my team lol.

 

Sadly the game is way too hard and the super long loading doesn't make that any better. I completely lost mood to play further after I got into mission with flying oneshotting drones with 150hp and the reptilian ufos with crazy accuracy against my units. In 3 turns I was already in deep shits and about to lose half of my team from flanks, on top of that my soldiers were missing that big flying drone like it was a fly... Not fun experience sorry.

Edited July 26, 2023 by Shadooow

[Kirk]

I agree, the game needs to not just instapop your colonels when the RNG God scowls, some ability to recover ina  mission without save-scumming would be a good balance, but if you wipe a mission you kinda justwipe your whole game currently.

[Skyfire]

1 hour ago, Shadooow said:

The only thing I found different between the Soldier and Recruit is that at Recruit, enemies can actually miss sometimes. From my observation it feels like they have 75% accuracy with any gun and any range. At Soldier difficulty this was nearly 90%.

Yeah, those are pretty much the correct numbers for a Cleaner firing an aimed shot with an assault rifle with no penalties. 65 aim on a 1.2 acc shot is 78% to hit, and a 10% aim bonus because of difficulty would put that close to 90%.

This probably means that you need to position more defensively. Are you using a lot of single-tile cover pieces (or not using cover)? Cover in this game is more finicky than some games. Placing a unit next to a one-tile cover piece only actually provide cover for maybe a 90-degree cone, not the 180-degrees of something like new XCOM. On the other hand, you don't need to be next to it to benefit - a car between you and the enemy will still provide cover even if it's several tiles away.

Getting 40% cover would drop that 78% accuracy on Recruit to a bit under 50%, cover+smoke drops it even further. It's basically impossible to hit anything shooting through the middle of a full smoke-grenade cloud (5 tiles of smoke is -100% - literally impossible unless you can sneak in a bonus somewhere that skips the smoke penalty).

 

The good news is that all of that is 100% symmetrical. Once you get used to spotting free lines where you get get a shot past the enemy's cover, you also get 70-100% shots regularly - and an accelerated rifle one-shots Cleaners even more often than they do it to you. As they say, the enemy can't hit you if they're dead.

[Komandos]

The difficulty of missions is the easiest to adjust: by changing the number of aliens in the task or the number of soldiers in the player's transport. Why is it such an easy way to choose the difficulty of the game according to your abilities - not to give the player from the very beginning?