thoughts from a total noob

[quiescat]

so i guess i will start this off by saying i am playing 19 stable on easy and don't use vehicles so some of the stuff i say may have changed or not be true for other settings ( i did read most of the old balance posts but that stuff drags on),if so feel free to ignore the hell out of me. also i am save scumming like a scaredy cat, some of this is for when the game hangs( its beta not a complaint ) but most of it is just me cheating. i like how the AI kinda seems to save scum with you which is kinda cool IE they attack threw doors they did not the turn before

so the game has this massive flip for me based on if i have wolf armor or not. some weapons look like they should still be effective seeing how aliens bring so many but they not. main culprit here the plasma cannon* a 5x5 or so area explosion blows up cover like no tomorrow, but i have guys sitting there no joke taking 30 shots to the face from this thing with little to no damage or suppression ( a funny side story had a andron kill him self from me being in close range when it shot my guy doing no damage to my unit while killing itself). pistols and the first type of rifle the stuff that still shows up on scouts still have a chance to do some damage even if it takes a few shots this comparison just feels very off. all this may be because i am playing on easy settings which is fine but an internal logic would be nice.

then there is the heavy plasma* the autofire sniper shotgun this thing has killed more guys then the rest of the plasma arsenal combined, that and my favorite of when i forget to make the guy up front kneel so i auto fire into the back of his head. not sure what to say about them other then holy crap its scary if you make cannons lethal at all then this thing might need to get toned down. if i see one all 8 guys turn and try to kill him a 4% chance to drop them is always better then a 95 chance to hit an alien with something else(other then reapers) ok so that is a bit exaggerated there not so bad if there sitting on the edge or just over line of sight but any closer and holy crap.

this one is a bit more of a open question are the disk things broken AI wise, as they don't seem to every really shoot at any thing other then civilians(this mostly applies two big types i never saw many of the small ones really) and i just so far view them as great ways to blow up cover so my snipers have a clear shots.

chances are its not be said as often as it needs to be great game so far i am loving the hell out of it almost as much as it makes me rage a good sign i think when coming from the original

*i may be mistaken on the name of the weapons in question i tried say how shot to better define them

the heavy plasma i am talking about shoots little needle like things with a 3 way spread like the shotgun

and the plasma cannon is just one big blob.

[Sapare]

I will agree that the wolf is EXTREMELY powerful, and the high explosive shots of the aliens actually seem to do no damage to units in wolf armor.(That is on the highest difficulty too) But I tend to assume that is the way it is supposed to be balanced(maybe make armor less durable, but I feel that if you wearing wolf it should actually do its job of protecting you, but slowly wear down over the course of the fight).

I don't find the shotguns of the aliens too powerful, it balances out the fact that some of the alien weapons can't even scratch your troops.(just don't get a guy close to that alien without a combat shield, and dont end your turn close to one.

(this is v19 for me. I know this is the v20 topic but I believe OP was referring to version 19 himself)