If we'll get LW for WoTC, can we have (much) less concealment in it?

LordYanaek
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Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2017 1:34 pm

Re: If we'll get LW for WoTC, can we have (much) less concealment in it?

Post by LordYanaek »

Musashi's mods are a mixed bag. The throwing knife is interesting in giving you a few uses of silent kill per mission but the melee Combat Knife implements Slient kill in a weird and extremely abusable way. The suppressors are not too bad but much much stronger than WotCs Reaper which i consider the fine line for silent kill due to the low base damage of the Vektor. The Katana pack is totally stupidly overpowered once you get your hands on the vortex ninjato.

True concealment is fine if you reduce the timer to compensate but otherwise makes tactical missions much easier. I would still like to have some missions in LW2 play by those rules but not all : more mission diversity would make the game (even) more enjoyable and it would help make multiple squads viable. The WotC order just makes the entire game easier if you draw it and since it's totally random i think it's a bad idea.

The concealment mod i use is Peak from Concealment. It's just a very simple change but one that makes a huge difference for me as stealth becomes much more natural. You definitely don't play a stealth mission the same way when you can take a look around a corner to see if the way is clear or skulk on a roof without the goons in the street spotting you. I think part of what makes stealth unfun for many players is that it's so far away from the images we've all seen in movies. Nobody tries to stealthy infiltrate an hostile area by walking in the middle of the street but that's what XCOM2 gives us for stealth since approaching LoS blocking from full cover is the best way to get spotted without PfC :roll:
Greslin
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Joined: Mon Aug 28, 2017 5:02 pm

Re: If we'll get LW for WoTC, can we have (much) less concealment in it?

Post by Greslin »

LordYanaek wrote: The concealment mod i use is Peak from Concealment. It's just a very simple change but one that makes a huge difference for me as stealth becomes much more natural.
Absolutely. I'd love to see PfC functionality built directly into LW2.
Phaseless
Posts: 225
Joined: Wed Aug 30, 2017 9:06 am

Re: If we'll get LW for WoTC, can we have (much) less concealment in it?

Post by Phaseless »

LordYanaek wrote:Musashi's mods are a mixed bag. The throwing knife is interesting in giving you a few uses of silent kill per mission but the melee Combat Knife implements Slient kill in a weird and extremely abusable way. The suppressors are not too bad but much much stronger than WotCs Reaper which i consider the fine line for silent kill due to the low base damage of the Vektor. The Katana pack is totally stupidly overpowered once you get your hands on the vortex ninjato.

True concealment is fine if you reduce the timer to compensate but otherwise makes tactical missions much easier. I would still like to have some missions in LW2 play by those rules but not all : more mission diversity would make the game (even) more enjoyable and it would help make multiple squads viable. The WotC order just makes the entire game easier if you draw it and since it's totally random i think it's a bad idea.

The concealment mod i use is Peak from Concealment. It's just a very simple change but one that makes a huge difference for me as stealth becomes much more natural. You definitely don't play a stealth mission the same way when you can take a look around a corner to see if the way is clear or skulk on a roof without the goons in the street spotting you. I think part of what makes stealth unfun for many players is that it's so far away from the images we've all seen in movies. Nobody tries to stealthy infiltrate an hostile area by walking in the middle of the street but that's what XCOM2 gives us for stealth since approaching LoS blocking from full cover is the best way to get spotted without PfC :roll:
Yes I also use peek from concealment for the exact same reasons.
justdont
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Re: If we'll get LW for WoTC, can we have (much) less concealment in it?

Post by justdont »

Yeah, I get it that other approach to stealth might be "make it more interesting", but remember, that someone has to implement all the extras. And then balance them. Mods like "better stealth" only highlight one of the biggest problem further: the AI can't fight concealment, and all extra concealment features (such as "True concealment", knifes, and so on) simply tend to make game cakewalk-easy even if you won't particularly abuse it.

Of course you can say that it all can be balanced - but again, someone has to do the balancing. And it's not like Pavonis (or modders in general) has a infinite amount of work-hours they'll be willing to throw at it. Furthermore, if you include interesting stealth play in the game and then somehow counterbalance it by making it hard to use and rare, and AI reacting to it - wouldn't the situation go back to step 1 where you simply had one of your soldiers doing nothing but running around and scouting?

Yes, in a perfect and ideal world I too would say that it's better to improve stealth rather than to ax it. However, we're not living in ideal world, and there's not much in the core game to work with - Firaxis concealment implementation is very simple and primitive.
LordYanaek wrote:When did that nerf occur? It was still incredibly powerful when i played LW1 and i think there was only 1 final patch after the version i played.
It was much more powerful in earlier versions of LW1. It it still powerful as of right now, but it's pretty late-game thing, and it's not more powerful than other late-game things you can have at this stage (like MSGT MECs).
Psieye
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Re: If we'll get LW for WoTC, can we have (much) less concealment in it?

Post by Psieye »

LordYanaek wrote: Finally, some non-lethal, low sound, weapons that can disable ADVENT soldiers for some time without breaking concealment could also be interesting. They would give you an option to "buy some turns" without being noticed at the cost of only temporarily disabling enemies rather than removing them for good but breaking concealment (it could be justified by ADVENT psi network being alerted if a soldier dies).
Hmm... unless that disable is also meant to be combat-useful, I dislike that. Would prefer the equivalent of the Lost Lure for Advent: throw speakers, Advent walks to investigate the sounds, squad slips by. I had the idea of using Conc. Rockets like that once - never actually executed it (because there were better things to do). Claymore could perfectly fit that role (loud distraction) in LW2's sound system.
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LordYanaek
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Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2017 1:34 pm

Re: If we'll get LW for WoTC, can we have (much) less concealment in it?

Post by LordYanaek »

justdont wrote:Yes, in a perfect and ideal world I too would say that it's better to improve stealth rather than to ax it. However, we're not living in ideal world, and there's not much in the core game to work with - Firaxis concealment implementation is very simple and primitive.
But WotC brings some new tricks or at least from a player perspective it looks like it does (i didn't loot at the code) so if LWotC happens, it might be the right time to improve what might be the last weak point of the game in my view.
Obviously it's up to Pavonis to decide how much more work (if any) they are willing to put in that port.
Psieye wrote:Would prefer the equivalent of the Lost Lure for Advent
I was also considering this.

A bunch of ideas. As always in such situations i'm throwing a lot of things that comes to my mind in case some of those are not totally stupid and i'm not particularly attached to any of those but i'm attached to keeping some stealth in the game and if possible improve it.
  • Re-purpose the Reaper's worst skill Remote Trigger (it's bad because it's either OP or useless depending where enemies go but never balanced). Make it so it doesn't deal more damage or have a larger radius but makes a lot of sound so you can use it to draw ADVENT away from the rest of the squad so possibly non-concealed soldiers can have an escape route. This could be useful for instance in escort VIP missions if you didn't have time to bring a squad capable of effectively fighting everyone.
  • Take advantage of the "cooldown after being revealed" added to Shadow and back-port it to Conceal. Possibly increase the cooldown so it's harder to abuse it but make Conceal a cooldown rather than 1/mission skill to open "Sneak Attack" shinobi builds capable of scouting and fighting, but not both at the same time (this is the Reaper's job)
  • Re-use the Prison missions alert level UI to handle ADVENT being aware that there's more guys than what they see. Each time you take some stealthy actions (including squadsight kills, one of the biggest "abuses" of scouting) the alert increases which will increase detection range and possibly trigger some anti stealth measures (already discussed). Ideally i'd prefer little to no RNG there (no Musashi's style suspicion) that doesn't go down either so it becomes a real tactical choice when you want to use your tricks knowing you have a limited number of "uses" for the entire squad and mission.
  • On missions where it's easy to abuse Squadsight+scout (HQ is probably the most obvious) drop some RNFs near the snipers at some point (possibly tied to alert). Those can be explained easily as patrols that were called back to defend the HQ.
Mandena
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Joined: Sun Sep 17, 2017 12:58 am

Re: If we'll get LW for WoTC, can we have (much) less concealment in it?

Post by Mandena »

I always felt like concealment in X2 was weird/unsatisfying. Reapers are a step ahead but they are broken as hell and in most cases you don't want to dice roll a 50%/50% for a weak shot anyway so you take the perk that never reveals on kill. We all know that sort of perk will never make it into LWotC.

So with that I propose a different sort of 'scout' that leaves normal concealment alone but for shinobi/reapers it would give you the option to use them offensively every turn but tone down the 'lol I see every pod on the map and they can't do anything about it!' aspect.

Make the Phantom/Conceal/Ghost perks give a modified concealment that on every turn start will refresh your concealment. In return for this sight range for aliens/advent would be buffed by xxx% against these soldiers. My initial idea is for maybe something like double sight range. This would all but kill just running around spotting every pod on the map or stealthing missions unless maybe this only takes effect once squad concealment is broken. Also no more ignoring mechanics like overwatch/reaction shots with scouts unless you were essentially out of total vision range.

Initially I thought maybe to give this mechanic the ability to not be revealed on flanks/exposed so that you can leave them out in the open and not get spotted unless you move but that might be too broken.

Advantages of this on a soldier would be that you would no longer have 7 soldiers + 1 mobile battlescanner...you can actually take 2 full actions with them every turn and still have concealment. As they get concealment on turn start they would actually be threatened more than they would now. With this change I'd like something like the motion sensors from LW1 to make a return to sort of fill the void left over.
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