Pavonis Interactive Forums

LordYanaek wrote:If you're interested, there is a new custom class mod on steam that focuses on using those weapons. They start with the ability to reload for free after a kill. It's called Alien Hunter

I found the Alien Hunter mod makes the boltcaster an ok weapon again. It does not give the weapon enough bonuses to make this a auto include in your A team but the free reload is a much needed element.

Currently, I have three Alien hunters and I'm going to see if I get anything good with the AWC but it works well for all the DLC weapons but the Axe as I think it still works better on a shinobi or samurai.

8wayz wrote:Yep, 85 Aim is fine, just do not expect miracles like a Sharpshooter having 100% against someone in high cover.

If you still try to flank your target, you should be fine. And usually with the Stun Soldier you are aiming for big targets which do not need or use cover anyway.

P.S. Make sure that you train your pistol perks with said Assault and give him a proper gun. Sometimes you would need and want to have some crowd-control ability or pack a punch and the pistol will give you just that. You can even equip some Viper or Dragon rounds to make it even more nasty.

So uh, I don't have Alien Hunters. But he's generally getting a Mag rifle (for reference, right now they're almost always reserved for Rangers) and being told to nuke the crap out of anything that scares me...

...on a separate note since you mentioned pistols- I'm currently trying to run a Destroy the Monument mission with 2 stealth Shinobis b/c it had 1 day 16 hours left when it appeared... I'm pretty certain this mission type requires you to kill everything, so wish them luck XD One is a pistol master with a mag pistol so hopefully that's enough.

Ithuriel wrote: ...on a separate note since you mentioned pistols- I'm currently trying to run a Destroy the Monument mission with 2 stealth Shinobis b/c it had 1 day 16 hours left when it appeared... I'm pretty certain this mission type requires you to kill everything, so wish them luck XD One is a pistol master with a mag pistol so hopefully that's enough.

Well ... "good luck commander", i think you'll need it
Tell us how it ended.

I've got an assault guy using boltcaster, works just fine. His run & gun is on a timer anyway, so reloading isn't a problem for him.

My main issue with the DLC weapons, as in vanilla, is that you can't produce any more of them. This makes spending the resources to upgrade them pointless and that, in turn, is what eventually renders them useless. A tier 3 boltcaster is devastating, but you'll never see one, because it's not worth the price for just one weapon.

If the weapons could be constructed then the upgrades would worth it and they wouldn't be such a joke.

On golden path and supply raids, I like the bolt caster. My strategy relies on setting up camp, engaging the nearby pod and destroying all cover while waiting for alerted pods to come up to me.
In those cases, having the bolt caster on a technical or grenadier with decent aim gives me a fair chance of shredding pod leaders armor on their turn. This is awesome on sectopods and advanced mutons.

NephilimNexus wrote:I've got an assault guy using boltcaster, works just fine. His run & gun is on a timer anyway, so reloading isn't a problem for him.

I had not ever really considered an assault, but I'll give it some thought when the Bolt Caster is first introduced. It would give him some decent ranged power early on until he levels up a little. I take it you skip early perks like Trench Gun?

NephilimNexus wrote:My main issue with the DLC weapons, as in vanilla, is that you can't produce any more of them. This makes spending the resources to upgrade them pointless and that, in turn, is what eventually renders them useless. A tier 3 boltcaster is devastating, but you'll never see one, because it's not worth the price for just one weapon.

I would wait until near the end until I had a magi ready to roll out. In LW2, I haven't gotten that far, but given the supplies limitations compared to vanilla, it's hard to imaging upgrading it for one weapon until I'm swimming in resources.

NephilimNexus wrote:If the weapons could be constructed then the upgrades would worth it and they wouldn't be such a joke.

I think this is more viable in LW2. In vanilla, they were strong, but the limited quantities helped balance them. In LW2, there are so many enemies on bigger missions that it dilutes the strength of the weapon. In my opinion, this makes it easier to justify making it a constructed weapon, perhaps after some research or something.

moroniccinamun wrote:Kind of off topic, but the entire Alien Hunters dlc is garbage with LW2.

I'm playing on rookie even, doing very well. The instant Viper King shows up, total squad wipe.

We made the Rulers less crazy in LW2... they don't get a reaction every XCOM turn any more. O_o

mattprice516 wrote: We made the Rulers less crazy in LW2... they don't get a reaction every XCOM turn any more. O_o

Oh, speaking of this, can you explain when they get a reaction? From what i saw it seems they only react when you don't fire on them (as if trying to take you by surprise when you don't focus on them) but that might just be a coincidence. The only reaction they ever had after i fire at them was to summon their gate.

LordYanaek wrote:Oh, speaking of this, can you explain when they get a reaction? From what i saw it seems they only react when you don't fire on them (as if trying to take you by surprise when you don't focus on them) but that might just be a coincidence. The only reaction they ever had after i fire at them was to summon their gate.

Judging by config files having a "ruler chance to act" entry, it seems like they act on a dice roll (50% by default).

They certainly didn't react to 50% of my actions so either i was very lucky or there are other factors. That's why i'm asking rather then try to guess

I saw the entry as 25%, not 50%.

Yeah, it's just a die roll on each reaction opportunity, plus an automatic turn on the alien turn. I think they also might get extra turns on the alien turn if you leave Xcom actions unspent.

25% jives more with what I remember, though we may have made it difficulty dependent or something. I turned that DLC off for my latest playthrough so I don't really remember, heh.

The one round clip and no mods makes it useless in my book.

Zerikin wrote:The one round clip and no mods makes it useless in my book.

I assume that the no-mods limitation was why they gave it stun and +15 to hit in vanilla. That made it worth the one shot limitation there, so I am a little perplexed as to why Pavonis nerfed it, at least with the quantities of enemies that are often on the missions and even in individual pods now. It wasn't exactly op with one shot per round, or every other if you need to move.

RapidFire wrote:

Zerikin wrote:The one round clip and no mods makes it useless in my book.

I assume that the no-mods limitation was why they gave it stun and +15 to hit in vanilla. That made it worth the one shot limitation there, so I am a little perplexed as to why Pavonis nerfed it, at least with the quantities of enemies that are often on the missions and even in individual pods now. It wasn't exactly op with one shot per round, or every other if you need to move.

What's even more perplexing is you can't have the boltcaster on every mission due to infiltration, so nerfing its stats on top of that is a double whammy that was completely unwarranted.

trihero wrote:

RapidFire wrote:

Zerikin wrote:The one round clip and no mods makes it useless in my book.

I assume that the no-mods limitation was why they gave it stun and +15 to hit in vanilla. That made it worth the one shot limitation there, so I am a little perplexed as to why Pavonis nerfed it, at least with the quantities of enemies that are often on the missions and even in individual pods now. It wasn't exactly op with one shot per round, or every other if you need to move.

What's even more perplexing is you can't have the boltcaster on every mission due to infiltration, so nerfing its stats on top of that is a double whammy that was completely unwarranted.

That's a good point. It's utility is even further diluted by the number of simultaneous missions that wait.

Does anyone know why we cannot change the Bolt Caster? I read someone's post to that effect.

It probably cannot be changed because their wasn't any config settings created for it.

Anyway it does feel it becomes obsolete once lasers roll out. It really should have an aim that is competitive with a lazer weapon with a scope attached to it. It should have a minimum of +15 aim.

Eh, I've actually given my boltcaster to a Technical and they do very well with it usually. They have good aim which is augmented with the extra aim, and it hits HARD, its basically the marksman rifle people keep crowing on about LW2 needing so I don't get the flak its getting.

RapidFire wrote:

trihero wrote:

RapidFire wrote: I assume that the no-mods limitation was why they gave it stun and +15 to hit in vanilla. That made it worth the one shot limitation there, so I am a little perplexed as to why Pavonis nerfed it, at least with the quantities of enemies that are often on the missions and even in individual pods now. It wasn't exactly op with one shot per round, or every other if you need to move.

What's even more perplexing is you can't have the boltcaster on every mission due to infiltration, so nerfing its stats on top of that is a double whammy that was completely unwarranted.

That's a good point. It's utility is even further diluted by the number of simultaneous missions that wait.

Does anyone know why we cannot change the Bolt Caster? I read someone's post to that effect.

You can adjust the Bolt Caster's Aim Buff in the LW Weapons Ini. I've been playing with +10 Aim at Conv, +15 at Mag, and +20 at Plasma. The +10 has elevated it from "never" to "sometimes on that one guy with decent Aim." After 1.2 drops I'll be tempted to bump everything up by 5 points and see how that fares.

LordYanaek wrote:

Ithuriel wrote: ...on a separate note since you mentioned pistols- I'm currently trying to run a Destroy the Monument mission with 2 stealth Shinobis b/c it had 1 day 16 hours left when it appeared... I'm pretty certain this mission type requires you to kill everything, so wish them luck XD One is a pistol master with a mag pistol so hopefully that's enough.

Well ... "good luck commander", i think you'll need it
Tell us how it ended.

.....LSAEJKFLSKEFJ: LASEKFJSEK:LFJA:SLEKFJS:LKEFJK:LSEFJS:ELFKJ. ...this is a reasonable summary.

More detailed version:
So... I discovered that Long War 2 has a hard enrage timer. As background, a Destroy the Monument mission popped up (I think this is mid-August) with 1 day 16 hours left. I was feeling brave, so I attempted to have 2 stealth-specialized Shinobi Tech Sergeants infiltrate the mission. One had a Stuttermag, gas grenade, and incendiary grenade; the other an arc blade, smg, and mag pistol (he has Fan Fire, Return Fire, Lightning Hands, Gunslinger, and Clutch Shot). Both were wearing chameleon vests, reducing infiltration time down to 1 day 15 hours. Both are in Predator armor, which was the best I had at the time.

To my damn pride, I'd managed to almost run through the entire mission. 3 pods- one Advanced Officer/Advanced Trooper/Trooper, one Advanced Officer/Shieldbearer, and one Archon/2xMuton/Heavy Rocketeer. I did this through a combination of Conceal and breaking line-of-sight shenanigans. There's 1 Muton left, burning and at half hp and... then I found out that Long War 2 has a hard enrage timer. Long story short, this was the result.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =868768405

This was also a screenshot: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =868781486 (ignore the pdf icon, my computer is doing weird things rn)

(By the way, goddamn it sucks when an Archon takes a potshot at your Shinobi in full cover, Return Fire procs and grazes the Archon for 2 damage- promptly enraging him).

NoDebate wrote:You can adjust the Bolt Caster's Aim Buff in the LW Weapons Ini. I've been playing with +10 Aim at Conv, +15 at Mag, and +20 at Plasma. The +10 has elevated it from "never" to "sometimes on that one guy with decent Aim." After 1.2 drops I'll be tempted to bump everything up by 5 points and see how that fares.

Of course, I realized after I posted that they had to have the code somewhere since they modded it down. I'll probably change it back to vanilla status and try it out again.

@Ithuriel -

Seems you encountered the Doom reinforcements.
As a rule of thumb I would always take 3 soldiers on any stealthy mission, just in case. You can always boost using Intel to make for the extra infiltration time.

@RapidFire

The file is XComGameData_WeaponData.ini. Look for [DLC_2.X2Item_DLC_Day60Weapons].

All of the stats are there, you can even adjust the stun chance.

Ithuriel wrote:Long story short, this was the result.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =868768405

This was also a screenshot: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =868781486 (ignore the pdf icon, my computer is doing weird things rn)

Damn! That's a lot of enemy!

And that second picture, it's just too bad the Shinobi can't duck at the exact moment they open fire on him. Looks like ADVENT would wipe itself out from "friendly" fire.

8wayz wrote:@Ithuriel -

Seems you encountered the Doom reinforcements.
As a rule of thumb I would always take 3 soldiers on any stealthy mission, just in case. You can always boost using Intel to make for the extra infiltration time.

What does taking 3 soldiers give you? Frankly I'm not sure they would help the timing that much- the reason I took so long was that I spent 15+ turns scouting pod patrol patterns XD Something about having 2 guys meaning that more than one pod is suicide...

And what are these "doom" reinforcements? ...honestly when I saw this crap the only thing that seemed to fit was the idea of hard enrage timers from WoW- if you take too long the boss effectively decides you are dead. I felt like the game was going "You take too long, time to die."

And for the record- they killed all 10 original enemies. Two Shinobis. Both purely stealth-specced, without a single perk otherwise.

Ithuriel wrote:

8wayz wrote:@Ithuriel -

Seems you encountered the Doom reinforcements.
As a rule of thumb I would always take 3 soldiers on any stealthy mission, just in case. You can always boost using Intel to make for the extra infiltration time.

What does taking 3 soldiers give you? Frankly I'm not sure they would help the timing that much- the reason I took so long was that I spent 15+ turns scouting pod patrol patterns XD Something about having 2 guys meaning that more than one pod is suicide...

For each soldier, the experience from the number of enemies faced is divided by the larger of 3 and the number of soldiers in the squad. So if you take less than 3 soldiers, you're losing out on experience that mission could provide. Of course, you still have to handle the larger infiltration time.