ADVENT role clarity

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hewhoispale
Posts: 62
Joined: Thu Feb 23, 2017 1:27 pm

ADVENT role clarity

Post by hewhoispale »

So, I've been listening to JoInrbs' L/I 1.2 run and he hit on a thing that I wanted to talk about (maybe not so) briefly from my own experience with V/I games.

Enemy distinction. LW1 had relatively few alien types in it. As such, they each had a distinct niche and role and where there was overlap it was usually due to upgrades and tiering. LW2, both as a result of the base game having more as well as the relative ease of extending the base units, has many more types (though not near to the extent that ABA has gone). I feel like there's some murkiness in the distinction between all of them now. A lot of threat types are projected by multiple enemies, leaving some of them feeling a bit samey.
  • Troopers: I actually feel that their blandness works, particularly early on, their role is to be unremarkable. That being said, they end up feeling kinda like filler later in the game where everything else has perks and active skills and they are just there.
  • Officers: These guys are mostly good, their single active ability is distinct. Though after looking at the ADVENT General, I wouldn't mind seeing some of GTS (or unique ADVENT) officer perks on them and watching them shout orders at all the troopers. Make them feel more like officers and less like "jerks with tacsense".
  • Grenadiers: Giving these guys the utility grenade types helps here as HE nades are everywhere on tier 2 & 3 ADVENT. Though, I often see the Engineers shooting instead of flashbanging XCOM. Apparently ADVENT hasn't caught on to the flashbang pro-strat yet.
  • Gunners: Probably the least defined of the ADVENT soldiers. Since the main feature of gunners is suppression and MECs and Mutons can also suppress, the gunner kinda lacks distinction until they start getting more gunner perks at higher tiers. Especially since it feels like they don't actually even suppress that often compared to other enemy types and just take a lot of shots at units in high cover, like troopers with bigger guns.
  • Rocketeers: Super-clear role and threat. Perhaps the threat of environmental damage from the rockets is a bit too oppressive when a pod spawns with two of these puppies, but having the rockets limited to yellow moves gives options to work around them.
  • Sentries: This is probably one of the most defined ADVENT units. RFA and all of the overwatch perks gives them a clear enemy role with a narrowness that can be planned around.
  • Sergeants: I'm not actually sure what this guy's role is supposed to be other than "that jerk BAMF with tacsense". They sorta feel like a trooper decided he wanted to be a Muton when he grew up.
  • Scouts: These shadow-step jerks would actually be a real clear role if Sidewinders didn't exist. They make sense and they fit into the lore and feeling of the ADVENT forces, but I don't get what they're supposed to do that isn't also done by a Sidewinders (which have similar FL deployments).
  • Commandos: Sorta like bigger scouts, but with some AP? I stared at the stats and perks for these guys for a while trying to puzzle out what their tactical niche was supposed to be. Maybe these guys could get HEAT grenades or some other sort of perks to make them dedicated anti-armor skirmishers. Other than basically having AP rounds, all they have are defensive perks, which just makes them hard to kill, but not particularly interesting.
  • Stun lancers: Less suicidal than vanilla, still jerks though. That being said, unless already close, the tweaks to their AI that make them less suicidal, also make them more like troopers with poor aim when they don't lightning reflexes YOLO charge.
  • Shieldbearer: Their active gives them enough of a niche that being otherwise just a beefy trooper is forgivable.
  • Vanguard/Shocktrooper: I like these guys from a design perspective, their perks give them clear roles as to what their threat is projected as. (Though the crit-stacking shocktrooper may be the biggest jerk ever.)
  • MECs: Low tier mecs are basically robot Mutons in terms of the tools available to them, while the high tier ones stack so much armor they start to bleed over with Andromedans. Personally, I think they could afford to lose suppression. ADVENT has several sources of it and the MEC is the least reliable source since they can be hit so easily.
  • MEC Longbows: "Fragile artillery MECs" I like the idea of what these are trying to do, but I never actually see them do it really. Since they are so easy to kill and don't have even limited squadsight (i.e. snapshot range), they don't stay far enough away from the guns to not get blown up right away. In my experience they tend to just overwatch on reveal and prey to the machine spirit that they don't get shot.
So, internally, ADVENT is mostly fine. The problem is that they get a lot of overlap with the actual Alien forces.
  • Sergeants and Mutons - Tough, heavier infantry w/grenades
  • Gunners, MECS, and Mutons - Suppression
  • Scouts, Commandos, and Sidewinders - Shadowstep flankers
  • Heavy MECS and Andromedans - Superheavy armored artillery
This all wouldn't be as bad if the ADVENT units were the low tier versions of a threat class and the Aliens replaced them at higher force levels. As it is though, it just feels like there's redundancy in the ADVENT vs Alien line up. Each side has a complete combined arms force, but the point of having that gets kinda lost if they get mixed together. Some of this are really just redundancy problems from vanilla that have been exacerbated by the tier extensions in LW2 (as in vanilla, ADVENT would start disappearing at high force levels, replaced almost entirely by Alien forces). Personally, I think the better resolution than vanilla's replacement approach would be to tweak the perks and skills so that everything has something unique that it does. Granted, such a thing does get tricky with the volume of enemy types. Or, alternatively, keep the redundancy of forces and separating ADVENT and Alien schedules such that forces will be mostly ADVENT or mostly Alien.

A lot of these concerns tie back into some of the discussion about the universal effectiveness of flashbangs in turning off units and their abilities, but that conversation is elsewhere.

All of that being said, and not particularly well I'm sure, I've been having a blast playing LW2 and look forward to many more hours of getting all my soldiers killed by dumb mistakes.
fowlJ
Posts: 198
Joined: Thu Jan 21, 2016 1:45 pm

Re: ADVENT role clarity

Post by fowlJ »

A note about Gunners - while other enemies can use Suppression, I don't believe there are any others that can use Area Suppression, which is what Gunners do. Their AI could perhaps prioritise it a little bit more (though care needs to be taken to ensure they aren't doing it in situations where it makes no sense), but suppressing your entire squad with one action is definitely something I would consider pretty distinct compared to what Mutons and MECs do.
hewhoispale
Posts: 62
Joined: Thu Feb 23, 2017 1:27 pm

Re: ADVENT role clarity

Post by hewhoispale »

fowlJ wrote:A note about Gunners - while other enemies can use Suppression, I don't believe there are any others that can use Area Suppression, which is what Gunners do. Their AI could perhaps prioritise it a little bit more (though care needs to be taken to ensure they aren't doing it in situations where it makes no sense), but suppressing your entire squad with one action is definitely something I would consider pretty distinct compared to what Mutons and MECs do.
I had just meant suppression in general, but yeah. They could do that more, I see MECs suppress more than I see gunners do any kind of suppression.
chrisb
Pavonis Dev
Posts: 364
Joined: Mon Feb 27, 2017 8:43 pm

Re: ADVENT role clarity

Post by chrisb »

hewhoispale wrote:
fowlJ wrote:A note about Gunners - while other enemies can use Suppression, I don't believe there are any others that can use Area Suppression, which is what Gunners do. Their AI could perhaps prioritise it a little bit more (though care needs to be taken to ensure they aren't doing it in situations where it makes no sense), but suppressing your entire squad with one action is definitely something I would consider pretty distinct compared to what Mutons and MECs do.
I had just meant suppression in general, but yeah. They could do that more, I see MECs suppress more than I see gunners do any kind of suppression.
Gunner supression is easy to control. A flashbang shuts off their supression. I also don't think they will suppress unless they have 2+ targets to hit with it. Otherwise they decide to shoot usually.
Fizzwick
Posts: 26
Joined: Wed Mar 15, 2017 8:48 pm

Re: ADVENT role clarity

Post by Fizzwick »

I actually see Gunners suppress far more than anyone else. Mutons seem to do it occasionally but MECs hardly ever do. But then, when a MEC shows itself, it either gets ded real quick or becomes the new toy of my Specialists. So maybe that's just lack of opportunity? :D
pacotaco
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed Mar 22, 2017 4:49 pm

Re: ADVENT role clarity

Post by pacotaco »

I have seen Gunners do more area suppression on a lone target than I have even shot at
LeaderEnemyBoss
Posts: 106
Joined: Wed Jan 18, 2017 5:27 pm

Re: ADVENT role clarity

Post by LeaderEnemyBoss »

pacotaco wrote:I have seen Gunners do more area suppression on a lone target than I have even shot at
I agree with some of it, but not all. I have learned to respect gunners. When they hit, they hit hard, especially when they get traverse fire later on. Also sometimes they use area suppression as a defensive action on reveal, which can really mess with your plans.

As for long bows: dont they have squadsight? I distinctly remember being bombarded from long range by these without being able to answer appropiatly.
hewhoispale
Posts: 62
Joined: Thu Feb 23, 2017 1:27 pm

Re: ADVENT role clarity

Post by hewhoispale »

LeaderEnemyBoss wrote:
pacotaco wrote:I have seen Gunners do more area suppression on a lone target than I have even shot at
I agree with some of it, but not all. I have learned to respect gunners. When they hit, they hit hard, especially when they get traverse fire later on. Also sometimes they use area suppression as a defensive action on reveal, which can really mess with your plans.

As for long bows: dont they have squadsight? I distinctly remember being bombarded from long range by these without being able to answer appropiatly.
My understanding is that their bombard range is unlimited and doesn't require line of sight. Which functionally lets them blind fire on units across the map without a spotter. The issue is that even if they have unlimited or boosted range with their launcher, they don't appear to have squadsight for their primary mag-cannon, which is what determines where they position. As a result they don't try to keep safe and get blown up fairly easy. I feel the MEC Archer needs something to help it position defensively, a snap-shot squadsight so they stay just out of range like the Naja seems like a low-cost way to effect that.

Re: Gunners. It isn't that I feel that gunners aren't a threat, it's just that until they hit high tier and start racking up gunner-based perks, their threat doesn't feel special.
Goldenmonkey
Posts: 64
Joined: Mon Feb 13, 2017 2:35 pm

Re: ADVENT role clarity

Post by Goldenmonkey »

Yes, give us, err, I mean them more abilities please. They need help.
Sincelerely,
a human (totally not a faceless)
darkerevent
Posts: 103
Joined: Sat Mar 04, 2017 12:12 pm

Re: ADVENT role clarity

Post by darkerevent »

They really ought to have at least one organic unit in their roster that's completely immune to flashbangs (possibly go all the way and outright give them Fortress) and at least mildly threatening as a shooter, but not loaded with crowd control abilities or AoE threats. That's definitely something that feels like it's missing.

As the OP said, I still can't tell the difference between a Trooper and a Sergeant for the most part, and I just finished my first (completed) campaign. I also agree with Officers mostly feeling like meat sponges with Tac Sense as the game goes on -- and that grenade I always forget they have because they use it so rarely.
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