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Post by drspendlove on Dec 20, 2017 11:17:01 GMT -5
I usually take a nice long time and play things quite defensively. This is less of a viable strategy on Brutal+ I'm guessing but it's worked for me up through Hard, and is fun for me. So my RP is much lower than yours I'm sure.
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Post by fusei on Jan 2, 2018 20:49:07 GMT -5
Just out of curiosity how would you play melee only?
I tried few month ago but because of the higher unit price I was always forced to take cheap ranged (soldiers/scouts).
On a side note would help melee aoe a great deal if you could target an empty tile (like for nades).
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Post by drspendlove on Jan 2, 2018 22:20:50 GMT -5
To do melee only you must never use scouts. Get a rank or two of sensor scan on your single engineer. Scouts are utterly useless as they will die immediately in melee. Soldiers can actually grapple very well if you invest in Grapple to a high rank and give them plenty of Warrior and Fortitude. Invest in Paladin and Berserkers. I used two Berserkers for longer missions, but could've been fine with one. I used two Paladins on longer missions as well, but would've been fine with just the sword + shield + medic combination on a single one. The Hydra you get briefly should have all points invested into grapple and he/she will do almost as well as a soldier.
Mostly, Soldiers punching lights out + Captain hewing down foes + Paladin/Medic to patch up + Engineer to scout distances and land killing (high-penetration!) blows. Once my Berserk was deployed it was time to scour the level of Xeno, and I could move more aggressively.
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Post by drspendlove on Jan 2, 2018 22:22:19 GMT -5
It is worth mentioning that the hydra shouldn't be used when you don't have one auto-deployed for you.
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Post by fusei on Jan 3, 2018 19:05:04 GMT -5
Righto meleedier. Allright might give it a go! Cheers.
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Post by drspendlove on Jan 14, 2018 18:43:20 GMT -5
Alright, I've started this up on Demanding. Almost through with the tutorial. I lost a scout being a little too greedy when re-starting power nodes but that was independent of the challenge, per se. I can say that I'm not going to use soldiers unless I have to. When I did melee only, Scouts were useless. Now it is Soldiers that will be replaced by Scouts!
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Post by drspendlove on Jan 14, 2018 18:43:43 GMT -5
Oh, and Ironman is enabled, fwiw.
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Post by drspendlove on Jan 23, 2018 13:55:48 GMT -5
Landing down outside of Tundeer almost resulted in a Soldier dying. They really aren't that sturdy without OW or tons of Warrior/Grapple. Tundeer itself was really easy. The Hydra does a ton of damage and deals with medium range threats just fine.
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Post by drspendlove on Jan 27, 2018 14:31:23 GMT -5
Lost a Soldier boarding the science vessel's wreck. I forgot to swap him out with another class at the beginning. No big loss. I'm phasing out the use of soldiers entirely in favor of Scouts + Paladins. I have a flame engineer as my only engineer right now. However, the flame turret is pretty weak as I'm focusing more on the buffs for that engineer atm. I need the bonus armor on my group more than a tanky fire turret. I just unlocked a Berserker but haven't had a chance to deploy her yet. I'm looking forward to some more interception for my squishy scouts, who I *really* don't want to lose.
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Post by drspendlove on Jan 30, 2018 10:33:55 GMT -5
I was feeling some serious pain getting the civs off of the science vessel but managed to do it with no losses. (I got pretty close to losing my captain though!) I'm looking forward to not missing OW as much while blasting some cultists for a few missions though.
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Post by fallen on Jan 30, 2018 14:49:15 GMT -5
I was feeling some serious pain getting the civs off of the science vessel but managed to do it with no losses. (I got pretty close to losing my captain though!) I'm looking forward to not missing OW as much while blasting some cultists for a few missions though. Wow, protecting humans without OW is extra hard! |
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Post by En1gma on Jan 30, 2018 17:09:19 GMT -5
What's your roster look like, drspendlove? Going with Paladins or Berserks for your melee? How are the Flamer Engineers working out? |
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Post by drspendlove on Jan 30, 2018 18:22:54 GMT -5
There was a time where I explicitly said "Civilian, you are to be my sacrifice" and used one to block the path of a Xeno so my VIP civilian didn't die. He most certainly died in her stead. It was a matter of providing juicier targets for the Xeno because I couldn't deter them with OW.
The Flame Engineer... I'm hoping it will work out. I desperately need a strong power field to give armor so I can melee as much as I have to. Additionally, I need the flamethrower to hit more than once in a blue moon. Because the stat growth on Direct Shot is so poor, that has meant a point or two in gunnery. This has summed up to be a rather weak flame turret. However, dropping it down to slow down enemies does still work to a degree. A few foes die in the flames behind me and attacking the turret itself takes some time as well.
I'm using one Paladin and one Berserk for my melee and a melee Captain, but I've only recently unlocked the Berserk so it has mostly been the two of them handling the melee foes. My scouts have had a bit of luck. I don't think I've ever seen a Scout parry as much as on this play-through.
Longer term I'd like to use Paladins in a mostly healing role and use 2 Berserks + Captain for melee. Then support this with 1-2 Scouts and Flame Engineer.
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Post by drspendlove on Feb 2, 2018 9:06:05 GMT -5
Using a Berserker as my primary form of AoE may be tricky. I had forgotten how bad they could be against ranged foes. I had a relatively low deflection but high armor point (for its RP) armor on mine and she was getting whittled down by plain ol' cultists. Luckily keeping a scout with her kept the nastiest ones not bunched together from being too big of a threat. Running back and forth is not ideal for any templar. I think I'm going to be hitting a rare Berserker niche here though: Melee AoE specialist. As I have no OW, groups of weak foes are a threat and I have only one Captain to bladeweave with. Further, the Captain spends 9 heat using that talent while the Berserker has an excellent skill at a price of 3 heat. This should make the shield + axe the right choice.
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Post by contributor on Feb 2, 2018 11:54:22 GMT -5
Your second to last post made me think about how much I love turrets just to distract and occupy xeno. Somewhere I started an Ode to a Turret thread. It would be fun to see some variation where you could get them really high armor but not necessarily good weaponry. Call it the Engineer's Chew Toy branch.
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