[General Feedback] Strategic layer and class balance
Posted: Sat Feb 11, 2017 5:50 pm
So, currently midway through my second LW campaign on Veteran (first one wiped twice on the Network Tower, this one is looking like a win) and thought I'd put up a thread with my feedback.
Main takeaway is that the mod is really good! I'm thoroughly enjoying it and planning to do another playthrough on Commander difficulty as soon as I'm done with this one. Most of this post is going to be criticism/stuff to improve of one kind or another, but overall, I think the mod's great (especially given how early it is in its cycle).
UI/Strategic layer
Several people have posted on this already, so I'm not going to harp on it too much, but far and away the biggest problem with the mod as it stands: CLUNKY STRATEGIC LAYER. In particular:
1) When I'm scanning and a GTS officer training finishes, I get two options: 'carry on' and 'view soldier'. Both are useless. What I really want is a 'put new soldier in the GTS' button, instead of having to click through five screens to do it.
2) AWC perk training: same deal. 'Carry on' is useless, 'view soldier' is useless. I want a 'put new soldier in the AWC' button. It would also be nice to be able to preview a soldier's AWS perks when you mouse over them for placing them in the AWC, rather than having to click on them to see the options, then have to re-click three more times if you don't like the choices.
3) GTS rookie training: similar deal. Please let us see a rookie's stats when we're selecting them for GTS training. It's annoying as hell to have to look through your soldier roster, figure out who should be which class, then go to the GTS screen and see their names and not their stats and have to remember their names. As someone said: they're rookies, no-one remembers their names.
All three of the above problems would be greatly mitigated if it were possible to put a soldier in the GTS/AWC/psilab directly from the view soldier screen. View a soldier's abilities, click one button -> soldier goes in the pod. Would be a really nice QOL feature!
4) Weapon mods: trying to swap these around is excruciating. Hopefully the existing 1.2 change will help with this.
5) Haven management: Please let players change the gear of Haven Adviser soldiers while they're on duty. As things are, you have to remove the adviser, then re-equip them, then re-assign them (hope you didn't forget where they were supposed to go). It's pointless busywork. On a similar note, it would be great if you had a 'next Haven/previous Haven' button in the Haven management screen.
Okay, so I guess I did kind of end up harping a bit. On to the classes.
Class Balance
IMO, class balance is pretty good so far. With one exception, all of the classes are well-designed and have a role to play. That said, I do think there could be a few tweaks. My experience from my game so far:
Tier 0 (brokenly overpowered): none
Tier 1 (slightly overpowered): Gunner, Grenadier
Tier 2 (generally balanced): Sniper, Specialist, Shinobi
Tier 3 (slightly underpowered): Ranger, Technical, Assault
Tier 4 (bad): Psi Ops
Gunner: Just does everything at the moment. Enemy in the open? Chain Shot/Cyclic Fire. Enemy in too much cover? Demolition/Hail of Bullets. Group of enemies? Saturation Fire/Area Suppression. I never even looked at the suppression perks since building a gunner as a super-Ranger seemed so strong already. I honestly think you could beat most non-stealth missions with a team of all Gunners.
Grenadier: The thing about Grenadiers is that they can place AoE attacks at long range reliably, which makes them far superior to the other crowd-control choices. Once they get Incendiary Grenades they can basically auto-kill any cluster of bio-enemies with no chance of failure.
Sniper: Death from Above snipers are very strong but dependent on good positioning – Snipers need a good perch, Gunners and Grenadiers don't care. My snipers usually get the most kills in the squad, but that only works because the whole squad positions around them. Holo-Targeting snipers are force multipliers, they're weak early on but get pretty nice once they start stacking up the holo bonuses and once you can afford a big enough squad to take advantage of them. Snap Shot snipers are awful, but that's okay, you have two good build paths already.
Specialist: Not much to be said about these guys, they do their job and they do it well. They're a well-designed support class, occasionally overpowered (when you pull off that clutch Haywire), occasionally underpowered (when there are no robots or things to hack) but never useless.
Shinobi: Like Specialists, they're very good at what they do, namely stealth and slicy-dicy. Only thing that I'd like to see is a better choice at Master Sergeant (can't really see any reason to pick anything except Reaper at the moment since the other two require you to build a shooty Shinobi, which isn't what they're good at).
Ranger: Gunner does their job better. The one niche that Rangers have going for them is that they make really good Overwatchers, but the OW build doesn't take off until Gunnery Sergeant (where you get Rapid Reaction) which is a really long time to wait. Lance Corporal and Corporal perks feel rather weak.
Technical: Grenadier does their job better. Can't really build them as Rocketeers because you only get one rocket (and Concussion Rocket is terrible), fireman build works but requires enemies to co-operate with positioning, so why not use a Grenadier instead, who can do it more reliably and at range? Technicals do get a brief time to shine in the early game where they're the only ones who can apply the Burn status, but once Incendiary Grenades come into play the Technicals fall off hard.
Assault: The Assault actually is good at their job, which is getting in close and doing lots of damage. Their problem is that the pod mechanics of XCOM, and the enemy density of LW, mean that running up close to shoot an enemy in the face is usually a really really bad idea, since activating an 8-man pod as you run in can easily lose you the mission if not the entire campaign. This tends to leave the Assault sitting in the middle of the battle line because they're too scared to advance. I think the way LW works means that the Assault is just inevitably going to be one of the less useful classes once you get out of the early game, and that's that. Having Close Combat Specialist arrive so late in the tree also hurts.
Psi Ops: Okay, so I'm going to take a bit more time on this one, since this is the only class which as things stand is just bad. Psi troops require a research investment (not only techs, but you need a permanent scientist on psi lab duty if you don't want the training to take all year, which effectively means every other one of your techs is researching that much slower), a resource investment (time, alloys, and elerium to build the Psi Lab and their gear), and a time investment (months and months to train them up). To make that worth it, Psi soldiers need to be slightly better than vanilla soldiers. Instead, they're worse. Half the Psi skills suck – Mind Merge is completely bloody useless, Solace doesn't actually cure panic, Insanity most of the time ends up being a single-target flashbang that might not even work, Stasis Shield is garbage, Soul Healing is garbage, etc – and due to the RNG nature of Psi training, you've got no guarantee of getting the good ones. A squaddie Assault will always have Run and Gun and shotgun proficiency, so no matter what, he's never going to be completely useless. My second Psi, on the other hand? Fortress, Insanity, and Mind Merge for powers. Then he promoted and got a choice of three powers of which the cheapest would have taken him 21 days (with a scientist boosting). My best Psi trooper, on the other hand, has Soulfire, with which she can do a guaranteed . . . 4-6 damage. After which she has to lie down for four turns. Meanwhile, my gunners are doing twice that much with Hail of Bullets, except they just need a reload and they're right back in the fight. The power I've actually ended up getting the most use out of is Fuse, even though it's strictly worse than having a good Grenadier of your own, simply because having my Psi be a mediocre Grenadier is an above-average result for her. Hey, maybe in about two more months of training I might have a Psi trooper with Domination. Then I'll be able to take control of enemies sometimes. You know, that thing my Specialists have been doing since level 1.
So yeah. As things stand, you'll actually end up with a stronger barracks if you avoid/ignore psi completely. This makes me sad, since I really enjoyed Psi troops in XCOM 1 and 2, but if I ever end up playing the higher difficulties I think I'll have to give up on building a psi lab, since it's just not worth the investment.
Anyway, that's all I can think of for the moment. Good work on the mod!
Main takeaway is that the mod is really good! I'm thoroughly enjoying it and planning to do another playthrough on Commander difficulty as soon as I'm done with this one. Most of this post is going to be criticism/stuff to improve of one kind or another, but overall, I think the mod's great (especially given how early it is in its cycle).
UI/Strategic layer
Several people have posted on this already, so I'm not going to harp on it too much, but far and away the biggest problem with the mod as it stands: CLUNKY STRATEGIC LAYER. In particular:
1) When I'm scanning and a GTS officer training finishes, I get two options: 'carry on' and 'view soldier'. Both are useless. What I really want is a 'put new soldier in the GTS' button, instead of having to click through five screens to do it.
2) AWC perk training: same deal. 'Carry on' is useless, 'view soldier' is useless. I want a 'put new soldier in the AWC' button. It would also be nice to be able to preview a soldier's AWS perks when you mouse over them for placing them in the AWC, rather than having to click on them to see the options, then have to re-click three more times if you don't like the choices.
3) GTS rookie training: similar deal. Please let us see a rookie's stats when we're selecting them for GTS training. It's annoying as hell to have to look through your soldier roster, figure out who should be which class, then go to the GTS screen and see their names and not their stats and have to remember their names. As someone said: they're rookies, no-one remembers their names.
All three of the above problems would be greatly mitigated if it were possible to put a soldier in the GTS/AWC/psilab directly from the view soldier screen. View a soldier's abilities, click one button -> soldier goes in the pod. Would be a really nice QOL feature!
4) Weapon mods: trying to swap these around is excruciating. Hopefully the existing 1.2 change will help with this.
5) Haven management: Please let players change the gear of Haven Adviser soldiers while they're on duty. As things are, you have to remove the adviser, then re-equip them, then re-assign them (hope you didn't forget where they were supposed to go). It's pointless busywork. On a similar note, it would be great if you had a 'next Haven/previous Haven' button in the Haven management screen.
Okay, so I guess I did kind of end up harping a bit. On to the classes.
Class Balance
IMO, class balance is pretty good so far. With one exception, all of the classes are well-designed and have a role to play. That said, I do think there could be a few tweaks. My experience from my game so far:
Tier 0 (brokenly overpowered): none
Tier 1 (slightly overpowered): Gunner, Grenadier
Tier 2 (generally balanced): Sniper, Specialist, Shinobi
Tier 3 (slightly underpowered): Ranger, Technical, Assault
Tier 4 (bad): Psi Ops
Gunner: Just does everything at the moment. Enemy in the open? Chain Shot/Cyclic Fire. Enemy in too much cover? Demolition/Hail of Bullets. Group of enemies? Saturation Fire/Area Suppression. I never even looked at the suppression perks since building a gunner as a super-Ranger seemed so strong already. I honestly think you could beat most non-stealth missions with a team of all Gunners.
Grenadier: The thing about Grenadiers is that they can place AoE attacks at long range reliably, which makes them far superior to the other crowd-control choices. Once they get Incendiary Grenades they can basically auto-kill any cluster of bio-enemies with no chance of failure.
Sniper: Death from Above snipers are very strong but dependent on good positioning – Snipers need a good perch, Gunners and Grenadiers don't care. My snipers usually get the most kills in the squad, but that only works because the whole squad positions around them. Holo-Targeting snipers are force multipliers, they're weak early on but get pretty nice once they start stacking up the holo bonuses and once you can afford a big enough squad to take advantage of them. Snap Shot snipers are awful, but that's okay, you have two good build paths already.
Specialist: Not much to be said about these guys, they do their job and they do it well. They're a well-designed support class, occasionally overpowered (when you pull off that clutch Haywire), occasionally underpowered (when there are no robots or things to hack) but never useless.
Shinobi: Like Specialists, they're very good at what they do, namely stealth and slicy-dicy. Only thing that I'd like to see is a better choice at Master Sergeant (can't really see any reason to pick anything except Reaper at the moment since the other two require you to build a shooty Shinobi, which isn't what they're good at).
Ranger: Gunner does their job better. The one niche that Rangers have going for them is that they make really good Overwatchers, but the OW build doesn't take off until Gunnery Sergeant (where you get Rapid Reaction) which is a really long time to wait. Lance Corporal and Corporal perks feel rather weak.
Technical: Grenadier does their job better. Can't really build them as Rocketeers because you only get one rocket (and Concussion Rocket is terrible), fireman build works but requires enemies to co-operate with positioning, so why not use a Grenadier instead, who can do it more reliably and at range? Technicals do get a brief time to shine in the early game where they're the only ones who can apply the Burn status, but once Incendiary Grenades come into play the Technicals fall off hard.
Assault: The Assault actually is good at their job, which is getting in close and doing lots of damage. Their problem is that the pod mechanics of XCOM, and the enemy density of LW, mean that running up close to shoot an enemy in the face is usually a really really bad idea, since activating an 8-man pod as you run in can easily lose you the mission if not the entire campaign. This tends to leave the Assault sitting in the middle of the battle line because they're too scared to advance. I think the way LW works means that the Assault is just inevitably going to be one of the less useful classes once you get out of the early game, and that's that. Having Close Combat Specialist arrive so late in the tree also hurts.
Psi Ops: Okay, so I'm going to take a bit more time on this one, since this is the only class which as things stand is just bad. Psi troops require a research investment (not only techs, but you need a permanent scientist on psi lab duty if you don't want the training to take all year, which effectively means every other one of your techs is researching that much slower), a resource investment (time, alloys, and elerium to build the Psi Lab and their gear), and a time investment (months and months to train them up). To make that worth it, Psi soldiers need to be slightly better than vanilla soldiers. Instead, they're worse. Half the Psi skills suck – Mind Merge is completely bloody useless, Solace doesn't actually cure panic, Insanity most of the time ends up being a single-target flashbang that might not even work, Stasis Shield is garbage, Soul Healing is garbage, etc – and due to the RNG nature of Psi training, you've got no guarantee of getting the good ones. A squaddie Assault will always have Run and Gun and shotgun proficiency, so no matter what, he's never going to be completely useless. My second Psi, on the other hand? Fortress, Insanity, and Mind Merge for powers. Then he promoted and got a choice of three powers of which the cheapest would have taken him 21 days (with a scientist boosting). My best Psi trooper, on the other hand, has Soulfire, with which she can do a guaranteed . . . 4-6 damage. After which she has to lie down for four turns. Meanwhile, my gunners are doing twice that much with Hail of Bullets, except they just need a reload and they're right back in the fight. The power I've actually ended up getting the most use out of is Fuse, even though it's strictly worse than having a good Grenadier of your own, simply because having my Psi be a mediocre Grenadier is an above-average result for her. Hey, maybe in about two more months of training I might have a Psi trooper with Domination. Then I'll be able to take control of enemies sometimes. You know, that thing my Specialists have been doing since level 1.
So yeah. As things stand, you'll actually end up with a stronger barracks if you avoid/ignore psi completely. This makes me sad, since I really enjoyed Psi troops in XCOM 1 and 2, but if I ever end up playing the higher difficulties I think I'll have to give up on building a psi lab, since it's just not worth the investment.
Anyway, that's all I can think of for the moment. Good work on the mod!