Questions and suggestions

Post Reply
Darkrenown
Posts: 9
Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2017 7:37 pm

Questions and suggestions

Post by Darkrenown »

Questions first:

Rocket scatter is based on aim, yes? If so, do things like scopes or steady weapon also affect it?

Do the Shinobe's sword attacks depend on aim too, and if so, do scopes etc affect it?

I know Hair trigger's bonus to aim applies to reaction fire in suppression - does suppression count as Overwatch for other things? E.g. some PCS chips or abilities give you X while in Overwatch.

Suggestions:
When you detect a mission, would it be possible to show the time remaining in the popup? You can mouseover the icon in the lower bar, or you have to confirm the mission and look on the next screen.

On the Squad selection screen for a mission you can see the remaining time and the time needed to infiltrate with the current squad. Could you show what the Maximum Infiltration bonus would be there? Yeah, you can probably work it out, but that's really a task for the UI to do. Ideally show something like "Max (Max with Intel boost)" and maybe also the label, ie "Fortified" in like red if it's super low shading through to green if it'd be Vulnerable. I think it'd make it much clearer for new players which missions are just impossible due to being discovered too late, as well as making it easier to judge what effect different squad makeups would have.

Faceless infiltrators. I see 1.1 is making their theft % based, which seems like a good change. But I also wonder if there shouldn't be a delay until they start kicking in? Just thematically, it doesn't make sense that the aliens are on to Xcom from day 1 - it seems like it should be a reaction to Xcom's early gains, plus that would give the player a bit of time to find their feet before their income gets nuked. Also, can you ever end them as a threat? In vanilla you have battle scanners which can detect them, I have not unlocked them in LW yet, but I assume we still can, so we should be able to scan recruits. Even without scanners, in other settings with shape-changers, such as DS 9 or The Thing, you can do things like take blood samples to screen people. Could be interesting to start out with no infiltrators, get faceless, combat faceless threat, run free for a bit, get psi-controlled infiltrators, etc.
The way faceless are so prevalent seems to mean you always want to have a soldier adviser rather than an engineer or scientist, and indeed that soldier really needs to be an officer.

That's pretty much it for now, and overall I'm really happy to have Long War to play with again :)
User avatar
johnnylump
Site Admin
Posts: 1262
Joined: Wed Nov 11, 2015 4:12 am

Re: Questions and suggestions

Post by johnnylump »

Hey DarkRenown, good seeing you again.

Scopes and steady weapon do not affect Rocket Scatter. Innate "aim" to the soldier and aim from PCSes should. Weapon addons only apply to the weapon they are attached to.

For other perks it varies on a per-perk basis; perks that say they affect the "primary weapon" refer to the rifle, while others apply universally to the soldier. (Ideally at least, it's possible something is mis-documented.)

Scopes don't affect Shinobi aim with swords. For sword attacks, you can see the in-effect perks in the shotwings.

Time remaining will appear onscreen as soon as a mission is detected in our first patch, due out very soon.

On Squad Select %, those are good ideas we'll take a look at.

The Faceless % theft instead of additive really makes a big difference; they are just a nuisance at first, and then can grow back to major problem if you don't contain them. IIRC, one of the main reasons we have a Faceless in there at the start is to make it so one is *always* possible and the player doesn't need to externally track who is safe or not. (There may be cases where it's still possible but we tried to avoid it)

The Faceless strategic-level events (generation and detection) are orthogonal to the discovery of battlescanners and is possibly something of a narrative hole we should discuss.
Post Reply