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Post by En1gma on May 29, 2015 22:08:16 GMT -5
I like the trump card of not allowing a counter attack when using a pistol or rifle at 1 range. Kinda makes up for the trade off of not having the extra parry and auto block.
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Post by Cory Trese on May 29, 2015 22:08:26 GMT -5
Yeah, when a skiterer comes from out of the black, moves next to your soldier and attacks doing a quarter of the soldier's HP as damage, then your soldier tries to punch it and it counter attacks twice and takes off half of the soldier's HP, it is kinda discouraging. Kinda feels like luck may be more important than tactics. You kinda say to yourself "WTF could I have done to avoid that?" Major bummer to hear that -- we've failed to communicate the game's intent and rules clearly. This post may be the most valid argument for not giving Soldiers and Scouts Grapple as a starting Talent yet. If my tactics have failed to the point where success hangs on a last-ditch attack like Grapple ... then it it might be luck that fails me, but it was my bad tactics that put me in place where luck was all I had to hope on. What we need to better communicate is ... 1) I should have seen that skitter coming (Scout Scan) 2) I should have shot that skitter (Overwatch) 3) I should have burned that skitter (Hydra) 4) I should not have punched that skitter (Raise Warrior, Equip War Gauntlet) 5) I should have a way to recover HP (Paladin) 6) I should have had a way to defeat the counter-attack (Auto-Block, Focus) EDIT: probably the most important here is #4 I suspect that if the game had properly informed you that you were looking at a 16% chance of success with the Gauntlet ... you would have applied a different tactic. |
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Post by Cory Trese on May 29, 2015 22:12:41 GMT -5
I like the trump card of not allowing a counter attack when using a pistol or rifle at 1 range. Kinda makes up for the trade off of not having the extra parry and auto block. Forcing the player to move every unique 1 square away for a "non-counterable range attack" put a huge premium on positioning and made some turns feel too hard to control. The HoS rules worked, but feel apart in corridors and with 10 Templars on the board it again picked up the too hard to control feeling. I think this current version is good, giving a slight edge to ranged warriors on the offense and an edge to melee on the defense. |
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Post by khearn on May 29, 2015 22:50:08 GMT -5
Yeah, when a skiterer comes from out of the black, moves next to your soldier and attacks doing a quarter of the soldier's HP as damage, then your soldier tries to punch it and it counter attacks twice and takes off half of the soldier's HP, it is kinda discouraging. Kinda feels like luck may be more important than tactics. You kinda say to yourself "WTF could I have done to avoid that?" Major bummer to hear that -- we've failed to communicate the game's intent and rules clearly. This post may be the most valid argument for not giving Soldiers and Scouts Grapple as a starting Talent yet. If my tactics have failed to the point where success hangs on a last-ditch attack like Grapple ... then it it might be luck that fails me, but it was my bad tactics that put me in place where luck was all I had to hope on. What we need to better communicate is ... 1) I should have seen that skitter coming (Scout Scan) 2) I should have shot that skitter (Overwatch) 3) I should have burned that skitter (Hydra) 4) I should not have punched that skitter (Raise Warrior, Equip War Gauntlet) 5) I should have a way to recover HP (Paladin) 6) I should have had a way to defeat the counter-attack (Auto-Block, Focus) EDIT: probably the most important here is #4 I suspect that if the game had properly informed you that you were looking at a 16% chance of success with the Gauntlet ... you would have applied a different tactic. Well, if I'm way up the requisition tree and have all those ooptions, sure. But early on, like we're experienceing now, they don't work. 1) I've got 4 troops and one scout, and the scout is off with the away team, guarding the engineer. 2) I've got one soldier guarding this TP, with 3 avenues of approach, I can't cover them all, so I have to guess which way the next xeno will come. 3) What is this Hydra of which you speak? I haven't seen any around yet.  4) But grapple gives a buff, so it seems to be something we're encouaged to do. What's the point in having an attack that buffs if the attack is a Bad Idea? Edit: yeah, having an idea how unlikely the grapple is to succeed would make it a lot easier to decide not to do it. 5) See #3. 6) Yeah, that would be nice. I guess I could raise focus, but is that really what you'd do with a low level soldier? I don't think auto-block is really an option. Many of those choices could be applicable sometimes, but they can't be applied all the time, and there have been lots of times when I've ended a turn with no xenos in sight, no scout, hydra, or paladin around and my overwatch placed to cover one area, and started the next turn down a bunch of HP because the xenos came from a different direction. Now to some extent that's realistic. That's kinda the way war works sometimes. But skitterers in particular seem like they should be doing the "death by a tousand cuts" thing, not the "slice off an arm and a leg before you can react" thing. |
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Post by warhog on May 30, 2015 1:48:37 GMT -5
I think that the scitterer dmg range is a bit too wide right now. I know there's a bunch of math involved like soak and perhaps crits, but I've seen them do -1 to -60 hp, which is a bit too much for the very basic xeno. I'm not feeling much difference between scitters and hunters in that regard
On second thought, this might also be a difficulty issue, as I'm seeing same kind of dmg on easy and hard.
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Post by contributor on May 30, 2015 4:51:30 GMT -5
I've had skitterers come out of the black and do 60 damage (two attacks for 25 and 35d) to my Corporal when he had both +parry buffs on him. Then when he attacks they still get a better counter attack. That was on level 2 on Hard. Maybe when we have more chance to level up a bit, things like that won't happen. Currently, early melee feels pretty chancy. It's not cool to have to play a level over and over until we get the right dice rolls.
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Post by jknut on May 30, 2015 8:03:24 GMT -5
I bet an all melee build would be interesting -- every time I defend I would be praying for a good roll.
In Phase I, ranged attack seems a much safer way to play.
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Post by Cory Trese on May 30, 2015 10:37:29 GMT -5
Great feedback. It is very important for us to identify gaps between player perception of the odds vs. the actual computed percentages generated when we simulate a million turns.
Couple of things ...
A) Phase 1 monster scaling for Skitters was dramatically bugged. In Phase 2 over the first 5.0 levels, have an average damage of 20.65 per attack pre-soak.
B) Grapple is ineffective because the Soldiers you are using probably have 1 Warrior and 3 Strength.
C) We are definitely not trying to structure the game so it requires multiple plays of the same level, nor are we attempting to design it to be about dice rolls. BF has a lot less random elements than HoS and we'll keep working on balancing and convincing the player to play the rules not the dice.
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