Alien Rulers in 1.3/1.4

[DerAva]

Let me start with saying that I realize that the Alien Rulers are optional DLC content, so spending time on them only benefits a small subsection of the players that actually has this content bought and enabled. That being said, I think they deserve another look. I also realize that this is anecdotal experience from a single campaign and I might have been incredibly lucky.

Current state of things:

• Alien Rulers get a 25% chance to trigger a ruler reaction after each action taken by XCOM - free actions and actions in concealment don't count for that.
• Alien Rulers can only appear in untimed, no evac missions (except Rendezvous, Intel Raid).
• Alien Rulers appear significantly later in the campaign then they would in vanilla if you disable the DLC mission - with the mission you obviously control when they start showing up.

My experience with the rulers in my current L/I campaign:
All rulers pretty much suffered the same fate: They showed up and were swiftly killed without getting any attack off and without having a chance to escape. Here are the encounters in detail:

• Viper King showed up in the First HQ Assault, September 14th
• Berserker Queen showed up on the 2nd HQ Assault, September 30th
• Archon King showed up during a landed UFO raid, October 19th

Some of the most powerful enemies being defeated that quickly seems wrong - on the other hand they have some pretty devastating attacks, so the pendulum can quickly swing the other way, so it's probably a delicate thing to balance.

Things that I feel worth considering:

• Bad luck protection for ruler reactions: each time the ruler doesn't take a reaction his chance to take a reaction increases by x%, resetting back to 25% when they get a reaction
• Increase ruler reaction chance while Frozen (to get them out of the Frost Bomb quicker)
• Allow rulers to appear slightly earlier in the campaign
• Reduce the time needed for the Autopsy/Proving Grounds project for the rulers/ruler armors - the reward for defeating the rulers is too disconnected from the actual success and there are already too many PG projects and techs to research as it is

I'm interested to hear others' experiences and suggestions on how the rulers can be a more challenging but still balanced part of the overall Long War experience.

[WanWhiteWolf]

I had the Archon king during the base defense missions. I lost 2 soldiers. Basically it was the Alien Ruller + another 8 guys or so.

Making a 100+ hp with high defense a priority whereas you have 8 other ayy waiting to nab you is not the best option. Ignoring it ....simply brings more problems.

I think Viper king is relatively easy to deal with.
I think the Berserker is OK
I think the Archon is rather hard to deal with.

I also find their gear very expensive. You need research + Pvg ground + Armor cost to equip a single soldier. So ...at least on higher difficulty ...beating the alien ruler doesn't give you anything in the near future as you lack the resources to do so.

I think Icarus armor should be balanced to tp only a specific range - e.g. not across the map. Besides that, I don't think there is anything game breaking or even worth bothering to much.

If you find them to easy, you can always increase the HP and/or the proc chance in inis.