Post-Cruiser Dificulty Spike still there. Might be game-breaking..

[ADederer]

7.xxx  Am sliding through 2nd level difficulty with few issues.  Am caught up on Tech, only lacking the last dropship.  Improved Gauss and fusion grenades.  

 

Get a Terror mission and am losing over half my force (tried some variations).  Combination of near one-shots due to fusion weaponry and Andons and Wraiths playing bullet sponge (theoretically, gauss should be up to this, in practice, I think the damage spread is so wide, about half the hits do nothing).  And this is in a game where I have been dominating.  Losing this many upper-rank troops in a higher-level game (or even a squad wipe) doesn't bear thinking about.

What's the cause?  I think a combination of things.

1.  Gauss is narrow-banded.  It mostly keeps up, but when the enemies start getting REALLY spongy, it doesn't do enough damage often enough.  Too many aliens hang around with a handful of points left.

2.  Fusion guns are LETHAL, and with power armor moved VERY deep into the game, there is no tanking this.  One-shots are common, two hits are near certain death..  Hurt troops and you must play careful for the rest of the mission.  Dead troops lead to spiraling failure.  Andons can't be stunned and Wraiths never seem to miss.

3.  Numbers are off, 10 troops can deal with a crash, IF you don't walk into a mob.  Terror missions find you outnumbered and having to spread out.  This makes the aliens even MORE difficult to kill, (Sometimes it takes 4-6 troops to get a single kill).  Getting a Pegasus MIGHT help a little, but the numbers are not good.

4.  Balance is on knife-edge.  Small changes (or non-changes) are boosting losses by two or even three hundred percent.  I think you are going to have to check your spikes very carefully, otherwise late-game stompings may cause players to turn off and drop playing.  There is NO way to "get ahead" of this spike, it's built into the game progression as running, and that could wreck immersion.  

5.  Rule of "N" and "Fuzzy Wuzzy" numbers really put the game balance on edge.  If I can kill everything every turn (at most leaving 1-2 suppressed aliens), the situation is manageable.  An alien that ALMOST dies, but then KILLS one of mine is a BIG swap.  Once is bad fortune, 2-3 times and it can spiral into a wipe.   

6.  Grenades late are mostly a stun weapon (and maybe for destroying armor).  Their efficiency via-a-vis breaking armor or doing significant damage considering the time required mean that gangs are HARD to handle.  If I have a MARS with multiple rockets I might deal with a pack, grenades won't cut it, especially versus mech. 

 

This was an issue back in November, if anything it's worse now.

[Chris]

4 hours ago, ADederer said:

7.xxx  Am sliding through 2nd level difficulty with few issues.  Am caught up on Tech, only lacking the last dropship.  Improved Gauss and fusion grenades.  

 

Get a Terror mission and am losing over half my force (tried some variations).  Combination of near one-shots due to fusion weaponry and Andons and Wraiths playing bullet sponge (theoretically, gauss should be up to this, in practice, I think the damage spread is so wide, about half the hits do nothing).  And this is in a game where I have been dominating.  Losing this many upper-rank troops in a higher-level game (or even a squad wipe) doesn't bear thinking about.

What's the cause?  I think a combination of things.

1.  Gauss is narrow-banded.  It mostly keeps up, but when the enemies start getting REALLY spongy, it doesn't do enough damage often enough.  Too many aliens hang around with a handful of points left.

2.  Fusion guns are LETHAL, and with power armor moved VERY deep into the game, there is no tanking this.  One-shots are common, two hits are near certain death..  Hurt troops and you must play careful for the rest of the mission.  Dead troops lead to spiraling failure.  Andons can't be stunned and Wraiths never seem to miss.

3.  Numbers are off, 10 troops can deal with a crash, IF you don't walk into a mob.  Terror missions find you outnumbered and having to spread out.  This makes the aliens even MORE difficult to kill, (Sometimes it takes 4-6 troops to get a single kill).  Getting a Pegasus MIGHT help a little, but the numbers are not good.

4.  Balance is on knife-edge.  Small changes (or non-changes) are boosting losses by two or even three hundred percent.  I think you are going to have to check your spikes very carefully, otherwise late-game stompings may cause players to turn off and drop playing.  There is NO way to "get ahead" of this spike, it's built into the game progression as running, and that could wreck immersion.  

5.  Rule of "N" and "Fuzzy Wuzzy" numbers really put the game balance on edge.  If I can kill everything every turn (at most leaving 1-2 suppressed aliens), the situation is manageable.  An alien that ALMOST dies, but then KILLS one of mine is a BIG swap.  Once is bad fortune, 2-3 times and it can spiral into a wipe.   

6.  Grenades late are mostly a stun weapon (and maybe for destroying armor).  Their efficiency via-a-vis breaking armor or doing significant damage considering the time required mean that gangs are HARD to handle.  If I have a MARS with multiple rockets I might deal with a pack, grenades won't cut it, especially versus mech. 

 

This was an issue back in November, if anything it's worse now.

The point where fusion weapons start appearing is meant to be a difficulty spike, but it's not meant to be a "lose more than half your team" spike.

What day did you encounter the Terror Site? I had a look at the files and I noticed that the Terror Sites spawned from UFOs (i.e. when a Terror UFO spawns and is not shot down) are significantly harder than they should be. There isn't actually a non-UFO terror site for some time after the Cruisers start spawning so I suspect that might be the issue, as it sounds like it's just the Terror Site mission that was a problem rather than being a general thing? I'll fix that issue in the next patch anyway.

That said, Colossus Armour is pretty beefy these days - and that should be unlockable from Abductors, so I think you can get decent protection against Fusion weapons before they even spawn if everything is going your way.

[ADederer]

It was a loose UFO that turned into a Terror site, Andons and Wraiths.  Just too many to handle (too much armor and HPs, and even improved Guardian Armor is one-shot able).

I had 2 suits of Colossus armor, but was short a 3rd MG so only deployed 1,  he tanked reasonably well, but the MG was just NOT doing the business (doesn't seem to like armor, and doesn't destroy it enough to make up).

I had Gauss cannons on the MARS (only real source of ranged damage), and they were helping, but they go POOF awful fast against Fusion.

Both times things have gone THIS bad this fast, it was terror mission (don't know if the other was a random landing).  There was a period where the Satellite missions were similar.  ARES and 2 Colossi seem to make these doable (triple rockets and enough MG fire to suppress most everything).

I think the lesson coming out of this is that balance is often on a razor's edge.  Small differences can lead to outsized outcomes.  There isn't much space between (dealt with, no problem, won lost 2-3 guys and "barely won, half the team gone the rest OOA for a month).  Small advantages STACK (losses beget more losses).

 

[Bookshelf11]

The Fusion era after Cruisers are always much harder when you first start, with the close quarters of harvesters turning into slaughterhouses or the wide open spaces of terror missions with Wraiths making any soldier out of position a dead man being both difficulty spikes of themselves, but far from gamebreaking. Heavy Guardian clad pointmen with shields and armoured MARS are what I used as spearheads for breaching UFOs with snipers instead of shields for terror missions, the MARS has a cannon so it can actually take out Androns pretty consistently and the pointmen can have assaults behind them ready to take out enemies they supress with flashbangs/electroshocks. Plus snipers can take out enemies via squadsight while your spotter is shrouded in smoke and sniper rifles do better against higher health and armour enemies. 

 

Abuse smoke grenades, flashbangs and suppression, all enemies are rendered far more safe with smoke grenades to the degree that you should ditch fragmentations for more smokes. Wraiths can be supressed and smoked, Androns cannot be supressed but can be smoked, keep your troops out of visual range of the enemy and only appear to fire and vanish back into the shadows. Each tile of smoke decreases accuracy by 20% I'm pretty sure, so make layers of smoke like a creeping barrage and then supress at close range while in good cover and potentially still in smoke, at close range a Wraith should always be supressed because it stops them from throwing grenades, and they're crack shots. If the MARS had more options for suppression like stun grenade launchers and light machine guns, I'd take those in a heart beat, but it's got a lower TU costing smoke launcher so you can use a MARS as a relatively expendable scout with cheap smoke and stick some rockets on it to destroy cover and force Wraiths out of cloak.