Balance: gunner secondary, chameleon suit

[trihero]

Maybe something that gives it utility instead of just damage?
Like debuffing enemy mobility/aim/will , in a way crippling the enemy.
Could be a free action with a cooldown that allows the gunner to fall back to a new shooting position.

Not sure how usefull that would be in practice, I didn't play much LW2 so far(currently waiting for the patch).

I thought about debuff utility, but then it feels too much like the archthrower. My suggestion is let the parry just come with the knife, and replace the perk with infighter. It would make it feel like the knife is not completely outclassed/unused as time goes on.

[Krzysztof z Bagien]

I'd rather get rid of gunner's knife and replace it with... I don't know, an ammo pack or something, that would grant additional slot for ammo mod and/or increase ammo count, something like that.

[moroniccinamun]

Gee, what a shame the gunner doesn't already have the biggest gun in terms of damage and ammo size, with abilities to cripple single guys or pin down hoards...

[johnnylump]

On the knife, you guys are mirroring internal discussions we had on it.

We thought about ammo packs, but in the end, it wasn't that interesting to me; it's just a tech-based upgrade path for the LMG (basically like the Psi Amp, but applied to the primary weapon), and between all the other ways you can upgrade your gun and add tools for it, there wasn't much to do there.

We thought about the sawed-off there, but in my mind that was too much gear for an automatic rifleman.

In the end, we went with the knife, as a sort of personal close-quarters defense weapon, and made the very powerful LMG not as strong at point-blank range. It's certainly not class-defining like some of the other secondaries, but in the end, that's okay with me. We talked about some special abilities for it but couldn't come up with anything that was thematic and workable by our deadlines. The knives do have pretty strong crit capabilities.

I have been testing some of the shinobi sword perks on the knife and they do work pretty well, so probably in 1.2 they'll be available as AWC abilities for some gunners.

[GavinRuneblade]

If you are including quick draw then knife gets three attacks (quick draw plus two knife stabs) pistol gets QuickDraw plus one pistol.

I hope you understand that just puts things in favor of the pistol, because a gunner with pistol gets pistol + 2 knives, vs a gunner without a pistol is just 2 knives.

No, I feel that QuickDraw is a separate action unrelated that can stack with either base pistol or base knife just as it can with the primary weapon. To put it another way, I was thinking " y(g) < y(k+k)" just divide both sides by y and therefore ignore it leaving "g < k + k". I do see where you are coming from on your side. I was exclusively looking at the base action side of the question which you may be right is too narrow a perspective.

And yes in so far as it goes pistol plus knife is better than knife alone. The question is after the free action if the guy is still alive do you shoot again once or stab twice? Which is better? I guess there's also stab once then shoot. So QuickDraw, stab, regular pistol might be optimal assuming a decent chance to hit. Hmm, I do need to watch for how often this scenario might apply.

I'm not good enough at math to know all the breakdowns where accuracy becomes more or less valuable than the +1 damage a base pistol has over a base knife, but in my experience I miss a lot with pistols and rarely with knives. 4 damage guts or kills many starting units and 8 from two stabs kills a chrysalid.

Sounds like you got a buggy situation since that should be a flank.

Not when there's cover, or it is a bug in the core xcom2 code as all my diagonal shots give the target cover, need to be past the line to flank from what I've experienced. If you are directly on the diagonal the enemy has cover.

A simple buff suggestion I have would be to give the gunner parry by default to make it feel like the knife is doing something without having to invest in a perk, and to replace that perk with in fighter (25 dodge within 4 tiles). Could do something boring like changing knife stats but I don't think that's necessarily a good route to go.

I think parry as a default might be too good unless it had a lower chance and the perk pumped it higher.

[JLtheking]

I for one, stand by my conviction that the Gunner class should be all about the cannon, and have little or nothing to do with the knife. It should be a backup melee weapon to guarantee a kill on the very last weakened enemy/melee enemy next to you whom suppressing does not help. The Gunner isn't the shinobi, who needs its sword to do damage when out of concealment, or the Assault, who needs a mid range secondary when its not 15 damage critting a poor trooper, or the Ranger, who needs a close range option complementing its mid range DPS role.

A gunner is specced into controlling the map, or doing heavy damage to hard targets, and should not excel at doing CQC (how do you do it while carrying a big ass cannon!?!). Leave that to the Shinobi/ranger/assault imo. The knife should be only considered when its main gun is out of ammo and you cannot afford to reload.

Gee, what a shame the gunner doesn't already have the biggest gun in terms of damage and ammo size, with abilities to cripple single guys or pin down hoards...

is my idea exactly. Secondaries don't have to be equal in power level, because the cannon is clearly a cut above the rest. Would you equip every single soldier you have with the cannon if you could? I would. (except the Shinobi, heh). So debating about how to power it up isn't really necessary, IMO. It already has it uses, and shouldn't outshine the main gun.

[JLtheking]

I have been testing some of the shinobi sword perks on the knife and they do work pretty well, so probably in 1.2 they'll be available as AWC abilities for some gunners.

That sounds... extremely cool So infighter, blademaster, bladestorm? Yeahhh!

[trihero]

A gunner is specced into controlling the map, or doing heavy damage to hard targets, and should not excel at doing CQC (how do you do it while carrying a big ass cannon!?!). Leave that to the Shinobi/ranger/assault imo. The knife should be only considered when its main gun is out of ammo and you cannot afford to reload.

I totally agree the gunner shouldn't have the option to turn his knife into the blade quality of a shinobi. I'm not arguing for the knife to turn into an archthrower or holo targeter level of good. And I will admit I do too have some good early game usage of the knife (apparently you get the bonus melee damage against sectoids, which gave me a nice clean kill on a 5 hp sectoid I wasn't expecting), but come on, it should be better than what it is. Everyone else's secondary has some use that isn't replaced just by training a pistol to max.

[JLtheking]

but come on, it should be better than what it is. Everyone else's secondary has some use that isn't replaced just by training a pistol to max.

That's the thing. In those classes they have perks to improve the secondaries. The arc thrower isn't that good if it doesn't have 100% chance to disorient, or can't hit robots, for example.

Pistols have perks, and they take time to train, not to mention the resources that go into the AWC. There's an investment going into it so obviously it should be better than something you get right off the bat.

I wouldn't mind if there were more perks like Combatives to buff up the knife. Combatives is really good But I don't know if there should . That would mean replacing some of the Gunner's existing perks. I like the Gunner perks

Knife perks for AWC sounds like a brilliant idea then

[trihero]

That's the thing. In those classes they have perks to improve the secondaries. The arc thrower isn't that good if it doesn't have 100% chance to disorient, or can't hit robots, for example.

As per my suggestion, in fighter does improve the pistol parry in case you mess it up. The sawed off shotgun is plenty ok and doesn't have a specific perk to upgrade it.

And back to the cham suit, I did suspect the cham suit gives the same infiltration bonus as advanced suppressor, and that itself is problemtic in balance terms, because the advanced suppressor outright costs less ( no body, or elerium cost) and goes in a weapon slot which doesn't compete as much as the utility slots do, and doesn't give -1 mobility by installing it. Yeah sure you can equip both, but why does the cham suit cost so much more for the same effect?

[sambezi]

I too find combat knife useless albeit cool, I have used it once in about 3 (failed ) campaigns. It would've been nice to have something more akin to holotargeter that supplements ranged combat in some way, or maybe boosts defense like some kind of barrier . Anyway I don't think they are ever touching the combat knife but it's no big deal either way so it doesn't matter. I am hoping they improve suppresion abit though, it seems enemies will run it down almost every time and somehow I still manage to miss / not even try to hit at all most of the time despite having the +aim on reaction shots perk, a support pcs and hair trigger. It would be fine to not hit suppresion if the enemy didn't always ignore it and run anyway but they do.

[trihero]

Overwatch isn't nearly as useful as it was in vanilla due to AI tweaks, but you could argue that they somewhat buffed it with the grazing band. At the end of the day overwatching is free shots on patrols you haven't activated yet, and they did add specific moves (roust, flush) to force enemies to move into it.

[Goumindong]

On the knife, you guys are mirroring internal discussions we had on it.

We thought about ammo packs, but in the end, it wasn't that interesting to me; it's just a tech-based upgrade path for the LMG (basically like the Psi Amp, but applied to the primary weapon), and between all the other ways you can upgrade your gun and add tools for it, there wasn't much to do there.

We thought about the sawed-off there, but in my mind that was too much gear for an automatic rifleman.

In the end, we went with the knife, as a sort of personal close-quarters defense weapon, and made the very powerful LMG not as strong at point-blank range. It's certainly not class-defining like some of the other secondaries, but in the end, that's okay with me. We talked about some special abilities for it but couldn't come up with anything that was thematic and workable by our deadlines. The knives do have pretty strong crit capabilities.

I have been testing some of the shinobi sword perks on the knife and they do work pretty well, so probably in 1.2 they'll be available as AWC abilities for some gunners.

Thematically i like the knife better on the ranger or the sharpshooter. But i agree not sure what kind of secondary to give them. Maybe not having a secondary would work?

Alternately their secondary could be a unique armor item?

Overwatch isn't nearly as useful as it was in vanilla due to AI tweaks, but you could argue that they somewhat buffed it with the grazing band. At the end of the day overwatching is free shots on patrols you haven't activated yet, and they did add specific moves (roust, flush) to force enemies to move into it.

Overwatch is super buffed compared to vanilla. In Vanilla they best you could do would be "cover fire" plus "ever vigilant" OR "guardian" and "cool under pressure"

But sentinel and rapid reaction are stronger than guardian (Guardian increases expected DPS by 2 times at 100% hit rate) and the ability to get cover fire, and ever vigilant, and cool under pressure makes OW builds super strong.

[trihero]

But sentinel and rapid reaction are stronger than guardian (Guardian increases expected DPS by 2 times at 100% hit rate) and the ability to get cover fire, and ever vigilant, and cool under pressure makes OW builds super strong.

I feel like you have to build around other skills that forces enemy movement, because most of the time I go into overwatch the enemy doesn't run it. They like to sit behind high cover and pew pew at you.

[JLtheking]

Thematically i like the knife better on the ranger or the sharpshooter. But i agree not sure what kind of secondary to give them. Maybe not having a secondary would work?

That suggestion is gonna piss trihero off since he spent the entire thread arguing to buff the knife as it was useless

As per JL's comment, I think the knife was pretty much a "something is better than nothing" addition.

The gunner really doesn't really need a secondary to complement its role. It's main cannon does a lot of important things really really well by itself. You can see the team's philosophy in that in LW1, the gunner didn't even have a secondary Here they even nerfed the cannon's close range accuracy just to give the knife some use.




Regarding the camo suit I agree that in light of its stats it becomes a really questionable item to build. It's infiltration stats seem to suggest that it's special purpose seems to be having an armor weight of 0, whereas all other armors have weights ranging from 1.8-2.2. But as discussed in practice due to the weight of the mechanics they implemented it really doesn't do all that much.

In a game where resources are so scarce it probably needs a buff to make it more competitive?

[johnnylump]

Anything that provides infiltration bonuses doesn't need a buff.

[NephilimNexus]

I actually like the knife, at least in the early game (which is what I'm at). Gunners don't have amazing aim in the beginning (I haven't actually looked if their gun gets an accuracy boos at close range, but it feels like they don't), so even if I move in to flank an enemy point blank I might have like a 60% cth, which is... not good. .

Gunner actually get an accuracy penalty at very close range, just like snipers do (but less severe). Hence the knife. If you're so close that it's messing up your aim you may as well just stab them.

[trihero]

Anything that provides infiltration bonuses doesn't need a buff.

Can you explain by the advanced suppressor costs less than the cham suit yet they provide the same bonus? I wouldn't touch cham suits in a million years since $20 for advanced suppressors on all your troops provides you enough infiltration bonus and you have other priorities to spend your money on.

[johnnylump]

Because stacking is allowed and powerful. You're way more likely to see a nerf to the Suppressor projects, in any event.

[trihero]

All right I'll give it up, but I still don't think chameleon suits are anywhere near worth it. As I said, I tested how it stacks with suppressors and was not impressed. I await someone to prove me wrong on that one.

[xwynns]

Chameleon Suit is my 1st or 2nd PG unlock. It's one of the strongest items in the game right now imo.

[trihero]

Chameleon Suit is my 1st or 2nd PG unlock. It's one of the strongest items in the game right now imo.

The comparison isn't chameleon suit in a vaccuum, it's chameleon suit vs advanced suppressors. Advanced suppressors do the same for less resource cost, and no mobility penalty. I honestly don't know if you look at them side by side you would in your right mind make chameleon suits, unless you wanted to stack them on top of suppressors but like I said empirically the payoff is very small for doing so.

I'm not sure cham suit 1st or 2nd makes any sense - your first and second should be suppressors, advanced suppressors if you're interested in infiltration reduction because again adv suppressors cost less than cham suits (and cham suits are limited by faceless corpses, adv suppressors have no limit and have same supply cost). Can you explain logically why cham suits should be first or second over suppressors?

[xwynns]

Because I never build suppressors. Their primary use is on 1-2 soldier missions and those are over so quickly I only ever have 1-2 infiltrating at a time, so by the time I could get enough suppressors to even be able to build the project I basically have all I need.

The payoff is not 'very small' for stacking them. The payoff is shinobi's that can solo infiltrate a mission to 200% in 24 hours. Though this may be more when 1.1 goes live. Infiltration items are considerably more powerful in small squads.

[trihero]

The payoff is not 'very small' for stacking them.

It factually is small on a 6 man squad with 6 soldiers using suppressors. I feel like no one takes a second to look at the facts I'm looking at.

But I see that you use infiltration boosters on small squads where I'm looking at big ones, so now I finally am at peace with why we disagree.

[wizard1200]

It would've been nice to have something more akin to holotargeter that supplements ranged combat in some way, or maybe boosts defense like some kind of barrier

Yep, the gunner could have a barrier that gives him low cover as long as the gunner does not move. Activating the barrier could cost one action that does not end the turn of the gunner. The barrier could have a cooldown of three turns and the cover bonus could be increased to high cover with a perk. Another perk could extend the area of the barrier to adjacent soldiers.