2298 replies to this topic

[Hazapuza]

Which part of Human Shield is causing you problems, Solais? It was aggravating at first (on Normal), but IMHO it's not too difficult after you get the gist of it.

 

Also, how did you get access to the rulesmo.ini?

[Tyhednus]

Uh, where is the Pandora's Hub in the base in Memory Dealer? I think it got destroyed in the intro. Also, I think the given arsenal is too small without the hub to take on the Soviet base. That thing is heavily defended and they have their full T3 arsenal already. Mastermind at the first part is pretty fun, though. Especially with the three repair Stingers.

[Solais]

Which part of Human Shield is causing you problems, Solais? It was aggravating at first (on Normal), but IMHO it's not too difficult after you get the gist of it.

Its very existence. There's not a single point that I find acceptable design-wise. Besides the Soviet-themed Lashers. That's a nice touch.

 

Landlocked: Rulesmo.ini doesn't affect the mission. Skipping it. No tactic works. This is probably the one mission I tried the most times, due to its length, but it's just not possible.

Edited by Solais, 26 December 2016 - 05:49 PM.

[Tyhednus]

Landlocked is difficult. I followed Martinoz' tactic to go east from where the mission begins, set my units on the cliffs east of the base and lure out enemies. The paradrop needs to be taken care of perfectly or you will lose essential units.

[Handepsilon]

I tried not to aggravate the Allied at all. A single structure loss in Landlocked will make them angry

This also includes the gates, but not walls

Also, the virus is a nice kiter. Use her on tanks to lure them in one by one. But don't forget to D your repairing stinger or you'll lose your mantis like I did

[Solais]

The gate will only trigger the paradrop, not the whole base, but handling that is difficult. Even so, what you're left is not enough. I'll try the virus tactic, but she barely survives.

Edited by Solais, 26 December 2016 - 06:30 PM.

[Handepsilon]

As long as she can avoid the Abrams, she'll live. The gun turret is terrible with infantries

[Solais]

Alright, did it! I punched a hole in the wall, instead of destroying the gates, so the paradrop wasn't triggered. Then managed to kite some units with the virus, but unfortunately she fell to a second Abrams that appeared out of nowhere (and here I thought as Epsilon, I won't have problems with units appearing out of thin air). So as my last gamble, since due to lower unit count, the firepower was lowered too, I sent all my units against the Abrams guarding the conyard, and while distracted I sent my stinger in with the engineer.

 

Anyways, while I succeeded, unfortunately I still think that this mission "stinks" of "designer-itis" as most of the Epsilon missions; by that, I mean that this mission was obviously designed in a way that it can only really be completed the way its designer intended it to be. Which is a large mistake in level design. An interesting solution for this would be if after the player maybe alerts the allied base, instead of them sending everything at you, they would try to move the PCV to a new location, which would enable your strike force to probably get at the PCV in the open.

 

Going back to Human Shield, I have been thinking about what could be done for it to be more Easy friendly, so here are my suggestions:

 

- More PsiCorps Troopers at start, so players have more than a single chance of survival.

- Cut the "Chaos Drone" puzzle. From what I seen, Chaos Drones are not present on Easy, and this part just serves as a cheap roadblock. While it serves as a test to set up the "theme" of the mission, it often doesn't work right, as enemies that kill mindcontrolled units often just randomly go after the unit that controlled it. Not to mention, there's a deception in this as well: Obviously you have to control that one conscript to blow the barrels, but the mission tells you to control civilian vehicles. Which then often triggers the drones hunting you down.

- If it was me, I'd just cut the sniper part of the mission. However, if it's kept in, then change all those "conscripts" to be all spies and make them have sniper-resistant armor. It happened to me that I mindcontrolled one of the snipers and it INSTANTLY sniped one of the spies, ending the mission. With not having to worry about them being sniped and in general having more spies than the 3 required one, I think it would allow at least Easy players a degree of relief, and maybe even a little more freedom in execution.

Edited by Solais, 26 December 2016 - 06:54 PM.

[Handepsilon]

Just tried Singularity, stuck at the Ivan phase for more than an hour (tesla coil killed him so much it gained veterancy) and failed because my Psi Corps Trooper randomly dies. All those gate destroying for nuthin'

I'm going to look at the walkthrough video... tomorrow...

[X1Destroy]

Anybody tried Moonlight? That one was completely winnable but I never got around to finish it in 3.0 because it was too damn long. There are enemy bases all across the maps and getting through them are just so time consuming since they just keep rebuilding defenses.

I'll see if that is changed in 3.3 or not. Things need to be more enjoyable and less hardworking required.

Edited by X1Destroy, 26 December 2016 - 08:15 PM.

[Damfoos]

To get past the coil, use waypoint mode. Make the planned moves so once you exit waypoint mode Virus will come into coil's range and take one bolt hit (assuming you had picked the armor crate) then retreat, while Ivan (which starts to move at the same time, but from a slightly longer distance) will have a window of opportunity to come close and rig it. Tho I consider this part of the mission unnecessary for Easy, it takes a lot to figure out the trick, especially for a casual player.

Edited by Damfoos, 26 December 2016 - 08:15 PM.

[Solais]

So I'm not the only one with units randomly dying!

[Terminal Velocity]

Okay, answer me this: Why the flying fuck Morales gets ambushed by rocketeers in Happy Birthday??? I don't know what happened to this mission, but I think it is completely broken now. Skipping it. I did it in 3.0 anyways, without these bugs.

Actually that happened to me once in 3.0 I saved myself by deploying Instant Shelter nearby,they started attacking it instead of Morales.With constant repairing it survived just enough for a new one to be ready.I had to keep doing that until the end of a mission.

It was on Easy or Medium, i think.

[Handepsilon]

To get past the coil, use waypoint mode. Make the planned moves so once you exit waypoint mode Virus will come into coil's range and take one bolt hit (assuming you had picked the armor crate) then retreat, while Ivan (which starts to move at the same time, but from a slightly longer distance) will have a window of opportunity to come close and rig it. Tho I consider this part of the mission unnecessary for Easy, it takes a lot to figure out the trick, especially for a casual player.

Well I'm going to assume I didn't pick the armor crate since my virus dies on a single uncharged coil hit.

[DjReplica]

Probably asked a lot, but when do the foehn revolt appear in the campaigns. As to when are the rest of act 2 campaigns gonna be finished?
3.4? Guess we gonna wait another 2 years

[Handepsilon]

The origins missions are listed already, so Soon™?

IMO, indeed Epsilon missions should be quite harder than the rest, pulling the strings in the war, shaping the flow of history, all with few people in secret, but there needs to be a good enough degree of (re-)playability, something that would make me say 'great, I finished this, now i should replay this on harder difficulty' instead of 'God, finally the torment is over... moving on'

[Damfoos]

Hmm... I guess the health of Virus have been nerfed after she was added back to the roster, and that's why you can't tank Tesla coils with her anymore. Either the map had to be updated accordingly but they forgot about it, or a different trick is intended to be used. It did work in 3.3, and I've almost completed the mission once by MCing a Nuwa and plowing through everything with ease, but that's with modified INIs (I gave Malver his veterancy which was missing because of a typo in the code, and also toxin immunity from BR2 changelog), and one of the critical units has been ambushed by fucking dogs after the Iron Curtain was destroyed, so I failed it in the very end, it was very disappointing.

And I totally agree with Handepsilon here. Act 2 missions are indeed Easy on Easy and it makes one want to re-play them on higher difficulty, to experience a new level of challenge. Missions where you have to do a lot of some boring work like scouting or promoting your remaining units to Elite or where you have very high chances to make a critical mistake and that's on Easy don't make you wish to play them again.

Edited by Damfoos, 27 December 2016 - 07:44 AM.

[Steelpoint]

The Epsilon missions help emphasise how weak Yuri and his organisations position is early on in the war, in the Allied and Soviet campaigns you have entire nations backing you but here you're working with very limited numbers and equipment, relying more on mind control and stealing other people's stuff to get by.

 

I also get a slight impression that in terms of difficulty it is ranked such as Allied is easier then Soviet is easier than Epsilon. 

 

I can only imagine, and maybe hope, that the Fohen missions will be even more harder, but hopefully in a fair way, not a way where you need clairvoyance to avoid quick defeats from unexpected angles. 

[Solais]

The problem with that theory is, first of all, the Soviet campaign was the easiest in 3.0, because they had a base in almost all missions. The only reason 3.3 Soviet campaign is somewhat harder than Allied is because I think some missions were updated "wrong", with retaining their difficulty for the first half, then just not doing anything in the second half of the mission. But even with that theory, the difficulty is more like Allied < Soviet <<<<<<< Epsilon right now.

Edited by Solais, 27 December 2016 - 11:10 AM.

[Speeder]

Morales gets attacked in Happy Birthday now because he has received a custom armor as a unit and in that mission he was previously immune to their attacks completely when he had a different armor type. Since there is a certain thing that I learned recently about modifying custom armors in mission files, an issue like this one and the one with Artillery Bunker attacking Epsilon Adepts in Accelerant has emerged after the "great armor type revision" that I did for 3.3. These issues will be fixed.

 

Foehn Origin missions take place after a certain moment in the Act Two campaign, which means that the missions for Allies, Soviets and Epsilon leading up to that moment need to be released first before "Nobody Home" is patched in.