The GREMLIN and Concealment

[Zyrrashijn]

Hi folks,

i don't know if this has been addressed already, but a search on the topic did not render any results. In Vanilla, there was an issue with Specialists, GREMLINS specifically, and re-Concealment. It was addressed in the May-Patch, resulting in Specialists unable to gain Phantom from the AWC. Has this changed somehow in LW2?

[laestic]

I don't know of that bug, but I remember in vanilla when I tried to hack a Sectopod and than cancelled the hack it would break concealment, as if the sectopod had detected the gremlins.

In LW2 concealment is not broken by just sending the gremlin. I hope it'd stay that way.

[trihero]

Hi folks,

i don't know if this has been addressed already, but a search on the topic did not render any results. In Vanilla, there was an issue with Specialists, GREMLINS specifically, and re-Concealment. It was addressed in the May-Patch, resulting in Specialists unable to gain Phantom from the AWC. Has this changed somehow in LW2?

Can you spell out what issue you are referring to? Has "what" changed in LW2?

[Zyrrashijn]

The issue was that after squad concealment was lost, but the Specialist stayed concealed or somehow regained concealment, the gremlin would trigger enemy pods, without revealing the specialist itself. The enemy pods just activate on sight.
Therefore, Firaxis prevented Specialists to get Phantom via the AWC in the may patch.
I haven't had any issues ever, but it is a possible issue now with the custom class i'm participating on.

[Mavoc]

...Therefore, Firaxis prevented Specialists to get Phantom via the AWC in the may patch. ...

What about Conceal or the shadowkeeper? Seems like they went for the bandaid instead of the real fix.

[Zyrrashijn]

Well, Conceal is not a perk you got from vanilla AWC and the Shadowkeeper is not usable by Specialists in vanilla. It seems like a bandaid, yes, but that is not the question.
The question is, if LW2 overhauled the behaviour somehow, considering there are now myriad of possibilities for a Specialist to reenter concealment. Ghost grenade, Shadowkeeper, AWC perks and what not.

[Zyrrashijn]

Maybe there's someone out there who has the answer?

[Phantom]

Hi, I am the mod author of the custom soldier class called tank class and this soldier also uses a gremlin as secondary. Gremlins work different than other secondary weapons in xcom. This is because gremlins are coded as units (like soldiers for example...) and not as items. So there are some bugs with gremlins and concealment. I do not know all bugs, but for example a gremlin will still activate an enemy pod, if the unit with the gremlin was reconcealed by a stealth ability. These concealment bugs were never fixed by fireaxis/2k... they did the easy way and said okay, the specialist is the only unit with gremlin, so we just say specialist can not get the phantom ability by awc anymore (so they fixed it, but not really, more then a fast hotfix i would say). So in vanilla there is only the stealth ability left and the stealth ability is not avaiable for awc in vanilla. What they probably forgot was the situation where squadmembers gain individual concealment from hacks or the tower mission where you can spend intel for individual concealment. I am pretty sure that these concealment bugs are still in the game, but they are so rarely that nobody care about it. (correct me if you know more...)

I could not find anything about it, but i think long war 2 also did not fixed these bugs. They just did the same as the vanilla devs. Restrict the phantom ability for specialists.

And I did the same too. the tank can not get phantom or stealth from awc. When these bugs are fixed i will make these abilities avaiable again. I would fix it but I do not know how to do it, maybe its hard coded. That does also mean every mod that give the opportunity to conceal a unit with gremlin can cause this bug.

[Zyrrashijn]

Thanks, Phantom. That confirms what i found out so far. The thing is, testing with the Fixer class mod, a class that relies on reconcealment and the gremlin, i was not able to reproduce the issue whatever i tried. Therefore i wanted to ask here if something was changed during the development of LW2.

[Tuhalu]

In LW2, gremlin does not reveal at all. You can send a gremlin from a revealed specialist to snipe hack a robot (squadsight from shinobi) and the pod won't react to a shutdown effect. If you control it, they'll react of course (because now they have an enemy robot next to them).

This leads to hilarious combination with Trojan, where you can shutdown a Drone in a pod and it'll die after the Shutdown wears off... but the rest of the pod notices nothing (if you are still stealthed anyway)

[trihero]

I think there's something weird with Trojan; recently I haywire stunned a drone, and on the turn that trojan hit, it got reduced to one hp. Then the game lagged, then it blew up, and then I was unable to hack a post in the same turn, but I could hack a post in the next turn. And I think it started the reinforcement counter even though I had concealment since I had RNFS coming down a few turns later, while I was in concealment. So weird.

There is one plausible explanation for the RNFs which is another patrol might have seen the drone's body and went on yellow, and there being pods on yellow/red alert is required for RNFs to come.

[nightwyrm]

I think there's something weird with Trojan; recently I haywire stunned a drone, and on the turn that trojan hit, it got reduced to one hp. Then the game lagged, then it blew up, and then I was unable to hack a post in the same turn, but I could hack a post in the next turn. And I think it started the reinforcement counter even though I had concealment since I had RNFS coming down a few turns later, while I was in concealment. So weird.

There is one plausible explanation for the RNFs which is another patrol might have seen the drone's body and went on yellow, and there being pods on yellow/red alert is required for RNFs to come.

I've seen similar weird Trojan interactions in my games as well. Sometimes Trojan would cause the hacked robot to not do anything for the rest of the game. I'm not sure if it was actually dead or not coz it didn't have the dying animation but just stood there and not do anything. I once hacked a drone that was in a pod while my Spec was still in concealment. After Trojan proc'd and killed that drone, that pod did their activation animation and acted as if it was activated even though I was still concealed. And once I had my Spec hack a 1 hp turret to stun it and thought Trojan would surely kill it afterwards but it didn't so I don't know if Trojan didn't proc'd or what happened. Trojan is just buggy as heck in general.

[Zyrrashijn]

Guys, there's plenty a thread about trojan weirdness. please stay on topic.

[trihero]

Stay on topic? Someone already answered your question, maybe you should stop bumping your thread.

[Zyrrashijn]

no need to get aggressive there, really. I've had one answer, yes. But that's no confirmation.

[trihero]

Aggressive? I could have said the same of your "stay on topic" comment.

[wei270]

i can confirm that is not an issue in lw2 i had my specialist re enter concealment from hacking a lamp post and his gremlin did not break concealment from other hacking attempt. that would not break concealment, IE disable MEC