Okay, everyone, maybe ignore my last post.
-Tom
Hehe. That must be what happened. A landing party of 4 had no warnings but I added a space marine and disregarded those yellow warning labels. Silly warnings. I thought more the crew members, the merrier. Funny thing is I beat a mission with that loadout and warnings and figured no problem. I was wrong. :)
The enemies will chase hard but it’s definitely possible to get away. They will definitely chase for awhile though so maybe put some points in speed if you plan to hit and run.
Many enemies can use the doors so that will barely slow them down, but I almost got away via an elevator once - left behind almost all the mobs except for one guy that could teleport so I had to run for a couple rooms to leave him behind. The two times it worked only one of my guys managed to get away, but I also hadn’t put much points in speed and I often don’t realise things have gotten bad before almost everyone is dead - my vanguard is chronically in the red.
I am a bit annoyed I lost an entire party to the targeting bug - sometimes when you target the medic’s painkiller ability the cursor gets stuck on the friendly target mode and you can’t attack new enemies. I lost an entire party that way once. When it happened again I had my guys run away (hey that time running away did work!) and I managed to reset the cursor - I think I had to use the painkiller skill but targeted it on the icons on the top left. Anyways, maybe a good idea to not use that in combat until they fix the bug!
Engineer slow time bots are really life savers. Marines with flame throwers kick all types of alien ass too. Finally getting the hang of placing the different classes in formations and looking for synergies.
That said the discombobulator kicked me in the teeth again. Completely different spawn this time. And the event seems to level with you. Grrrrrrr.
I was relieved to discover the cloning facility is basically the resurrection option. Get your dead guy back by paying some of your matter. Phew. I thought there was some sorta rogue-like permadeath thing going on.
I also figured out that the order of the guys on your “send team” screen determines their order in the mission. You can drag and drop their names. Handy for making sure the vanguards are out front where they belong.
Still mystified about what’s going on with parts of the tech tree. That’s probably going to be the real killer for me in terms of sticking with this game. There’s nothing like having to make difficult choices based on inadequate information to make me want to move on to something else instead.
-Tom
Have you found a way to change mid-mission? I had that problem the other day (order fouled up). If you can’t do it on the fly, that would be nice. I also don’t see why they can’t auto select your previous away composition/order for you.
You can drag and drop units with their icons at the top left of the screen to change their position accordingly
Ah, so you can! I thought I’d tried that during the stream and it didn’t work. Grr.
-Tom
Cool, thanks!
I had no idea you could reposition your dudes like that. Thanks!
From what I can tell the tech tree basically offers a lot of combat passives/skill enhancers and has a block or two for ship/strategic passives. The unlock requirements are a little tricky. You have to select and pay for a sub item before you can select another major item in a block. You have to have X tech level ups to move on to the next block which follows the same pattern, select a major item and then select a sub item if you want to enable another major item in the block.
I’m experimenting with the engineer and his gas grenades. You apparently can add tech level ups that make enemies go to sleep etc.
Just as an aside with the loot chasing. Does anybody know the story of how the color coding for items evolved? White, Green, Blue, Purple etc. Who did that and when? Why is it that purple looks so cool and what neurochemical is it that fires off when I get a purple drop? Are there any gold/orange items in this game?
Think the original Diablo was a major factor there (though no purple).
While the game has pause, auto use of some skills would reduce micro without loosing much, particularly the combo skills which are lost anyway on change of target. A right click to automate some skills would go a long way, I mean their mission statement is a game with reduced micro…at which point it’s far from now.
That said , still fun this…
Vic, the problem I have with the tech tree isn’t the structure. It’s pretty clear about telling you why you can’t select something. The problem I’m having is with the techs themselves. They seem to be referencing things that aren’t even in the game. There’s some stuff in the very first Vanguard tech about Dual Strikes and Overload, or something along those lines. I don’t see those abilities or techs referenced anywhere else in the game.
Oh, speaking of techs, make sure to get the assault drones at tier 3. So cool!
-Tom
Agreed, more information here would be helpful.
Basically, these are class abilities that become available (in missions) based on a character’s load-out. For example, Dual Strike (Marine ability) requires dual-wielding melee weapons and Overload Shot (Marine) requires a single ranged weapon in hand. You’ll see these abilities in tactical combat only when wielding the proper weapon requirements.
Same goes for the specific class Tool you’re carrying into battle.
Ahh. Got you. I remember you picking a tech and then looking for an active ability to show up somewhere. I think I ran into this as well. Turns out there is a class misc item called a defibrillator for medics. It can resurrect a dead crew member. At least one of the techs let’s it do healing by siphoning from the medics health. It would have been really handy to know this before my hard mode permadeath game. I had no clue that you could even get a defibrillator until I saw it in the market place just by chance. Never had one drop on a mission at all.
Oh, wait, there is a permadeath mode? I thought so! It’s when you first start a game, right? I’m tempted to start over. With the cloning options, it’s a little too easy. You can even resurrect your guys during a mission by double-clicking on his icon. Just pay a pittance in mass and your guy is good to go again.
Another thing I’m wondering is how does the level scaling work? Do planets just autoscale to your guys’ level, like the crew marketplace?
-Tom
Yes, at the very beginning you can select the “hard” mode which means no crew cloning.
I’ve only got level 15ish guys but I’m pretty sure it scales with your level. There is one “quest” that has wiped me twice where you go for a discombobulator to help out a stranded pilot. The first time I was level 9 and they scaled to that level. The second time I was just 12 but they scaled to that one as well and were a lot tougher. They were these weird aliens called shriekers and they are really tough. I think I am just missing something though.
This game sort of reminds me of Grim Dawn a bit in that you can discover cool little synergies. I don’t think that I have scratched the surface yet. I’m itching to give the defibrillator a go.
I tried the defibrillator. It didn’t go well. It seems like a medic with a defibrillator isn’t healing anyone. So, maybe eventually, for a back-up medic?
-Tom
Yeah, I am using 2 medics. But the defib medic has the tech that lets them heal when they shoot their weapon past other team members and he doesn’t have the -75% damage penalty that the nanite gun healer has.
So basically he is an insurance policy so that I don’t lose many crew members.Replacing a crew member is really not that bad/expensive but I sort of grow attached to them. Plus you have a better chance to finish the mission if you are not down a member or two.
There is also a tech that lets the defib spend 15% of the medic’s hp to heal other crew members but I haven’t figured out how to use it yet.