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I watched XWYNSS youtube videos recently i realized that the "CyberBall" (Gatekeepers) has implemented very stupid AI decisions that many times hit own troops than targeting XCOM soldiers because they love raising zombies for all costs.
Maybe its worth make some AI changes and modify psi bomb targeting for at least 1 XCOM soldiers is in range of ability and no more than 1 own their troops.
Stupid example decision from last video, time 1:00:40
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77WaSWvf8x8

Bob_Green wrote:I watched XWYNSS youtube videos recently i realized that the "CyberBall" (Gatekeepers) has implemented very stupid AI decisions that many times hit own troops than targeting XCOM soldiers because they love raising zombies for all costs.
Maybe its worth make some AI changes and modify psi bomb targeting for at least 1 XCOM soldiers is in range of ability and no more than 1 own their troops.
Stupid example decision from last video, time 1:00:40
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77WaSWvf8x8

What's funny is that in vanilla XCOM 2 the cyberball AI is MUCH better at using that mass res. it will just about never hit its own team unless there are enough XCOM there to justify it. I don't know what happened in LW2 but the AI for the Cyberball got SUPER dumb.

JM01 wrote:

Bob_Green wrote:I watched XWYNSS youtube videos recently i realized that the "CyberBall" (Gatekeepers) has implemented very stupid AI decisions that many times hit own troops than targeting XCOM soldiers because they love raising zombies for all costs.
Maybe its worth make some AI changes and modify psi bomb targeting for at least 1 XCOM soldiers is in range of ability and no more than 1 own their troops.
Stupid example decision from last video, time 1:00:40
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77WaSWvf8x8

What's funny is that in vanilla XCOM 2 the cyberball AI is MUCH better at using that mass res. it will just about never hit its own team unless there are enough XCOM there to justify it. I don't know what happened in LW2 but the AI for the Cyberball got SUPER dumb.

Not actually true. Both the Gatekeeper Behavior Tree and the AoE profiles for Anima Inversion (the Gatekeeper mass reanimation ability) are the same in LW2 and Vanilla.

faket15 wrote:

JM01 wrote:

Bob_Green wrote:I watched XWYNSS youtube videos recently i realized that the "CyberBall" (Gatekeepers) has implemented very stupid AI decisions that many times hit own troops than targeting XCOM soldiers because they love raising zombies for all costs.
Maybe its worth make some AI changes and modify psi bomb targeting for at least 1 XCOM soldiers is in range of ability and no more than 1 own their troops.
Stupid example decision from last video, time 1:00:40
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77WaSWvf8x8

What's funny is that in vanilla XCOM 2 the cyberball AI is MUCH better at using that mass res. it will just about never hit its own team unless there are enough XCOM there to justify it. I don't know what happened in LW2 but the AI for the Cyberball got SUPER dumb.

Not actually true. Both the Gatekeeper Behavior Tree and the AoE profiles for Anima Inversion (the Gatekeeper mass reanimation ability) are the same in LW2 and Vanilla.

I still think this is a fault of LW2 but in a very peculiar manner: The composition and volume of enemies and allies, the particular missions in Xavier's game where the Gatekeeper bombs their own team or, in the particular case of the latest case, itself is because it is much more likely to be a large pile of corpses in the same general area where the enemies are clustered on than it is in vanilla.
I mean I didn't look at the link yet but if that is the supply raid then there was definitely a literal pile of bodies building up in that area, too juicy a target for zombie raising. The Gatekeeper uses Anima Inversion (thanks for the name I thought it was Open Gate) to make zombies, not deal damage (which is sorta dumb but otherwise with it's gigantic AoE the size of Psi Bomb you'd be facing half a wounded team every time a Gatekeeper appears and you can't kubikiri it, so it's slightly fairer that way)

faket15 wrote:

JM01 wrote:

Bob_Green wrote:I watched XWYNSS youtube videos recently i realized that the "CyberBall" (Gatekeepers) has implemented very stupid AI decisions that many times hit own troops than targeting XCOM soldiers because they love raising zombies for all costs.
Maybe its worth make some AI changes and modify psi bomb targeting for at least 1 XCOM soldiers is in range of ability and no more than 1 own their troops.
Stupid example decision from last video, time 1:00:40
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77WaSWvf8x8

What's funny is that in vanilla XCOM 2 the cyberball AI is MUCH better at using that mass res. it will just about never hit its own team unless there are enough XCOM there to justify it. I don't know what happened in LW2 but the AI for the Cyberball got SUPER dumb.

Not actually true. Both the Gatekeeper Behavior Tree and the AoE profiles for Anima Inversion (the Gatekeeper mass reanimation ability) are the same in LW2 and Vanilla.

If that is the case it might still be an LW2 issue but not because of any changes made to the AI but maybe because of the on average larger number of enemies you have to fight on a given mission in LW2. In vanilla you don't typically fight as many enemies and usually they are closer to XCOM when you have killed them so the cyberball will cast Anima Inversion toward XCOM more often. It does seem that the LW2 behavior is a little on the dumb side for Cyberball.

The problem comes from waves not number of enemies, pods in XCOM2 aren't that much attracted by sounds, in LW2 it's systematic, and there's very often waves patterns. So often you don't have the time to move forward when there's two successive waves, if you had the time, the corpse would be where your team is or in its back.

I don't see much the problem, CyberBall is obviously stupid, don't use covers, rush on enemies blindly, so it's coherent it hurts allies to revive a lot of corpse.

Zork wrote:I don't see much the problem, CyberBall is obviously stupid, don't use covers, rush on enemies blindly, so it's coherent it hurts allies to revive a lot of corpse.

For what's worth given the sheer amount of armor and defense it has coupled with the innate damage reduction (it has 30% damage reduction when closed, it literally takes less damage from everything) it would be stupid to use cover, it presents enough of a threat that you want it down first thing, it rushes right on ahead making itself an even bigger threat due to flanks and it's able to absorb a lot of damage, it's basically an alien mimic beacon more or less. It's function is that of a tank.

In XCOM 2 I never allowed a gatekeeper to take a single action across several playthrus. In LW2 it seems if you encounter one without all your god-tier troops, you are completely screwed. Stupid AI or not.

MacroNova wrote:In XCOM 2 I never allowed a gatekeeper to take a single action across several playthrus. In LW2 it seems if you encounter one without all your god-tier troops, you are completely screwed. Stupid AI or not.

Na, they are entirely handlable, you just need a high amount of shred for them. By the time you are seeing them you should have multi-shot people with Shredder perks, so that you can shred 4-6 (or 6-9, if you have reached Plasma) armor per shredder soldier.

JulianSkies wrote:

Zork wrote:I don't see much the problem, CyberBall is obviously stupid, don't use covers, rush on enemies blindly, so it's coherent it hurts allies to revive a lot of corpse.

For what's worth given the sheer amount of armor and defense it has coupled with the innate damage reduction (it has 30% damage reduction when closed, it literally takes less damage from everything) it would be stupid to use cover, it presents enough of a threat that you want it down first thing, it rushes right on ahead making itself an even bigger threat due to flanks and it's able to absorb a lot of damage, it's basically an alien mimic beacon more or less. It's function is that of a tank.

Mmm so you would play a Gatekeeper like that? I wouldn't do such useless sacrifice totally pointless with a long range unit.

Steelflame wrote:

MacroNova wrote:In XCOM 2 I never allowed a gatekeeper to take a single action across several playthrus. In LW2 it seems if you encounter one without all your god-tier troops, you are completely screwed. Stupid AI or not.

Na, they are entirely handlable, you just need a high amount of shred for them. By the time you are seeing them you should have multi-shot people with Shredder perks, so that you can shred 4-6 (or 6-9, if you have reached Plasma) armor per shredder soldier.

They have a high defense and high armor and a lot of HP and explode at death, it's probably the unit the harder to kill but yeah they are kill-able at first turn as soon as you have tools to shred armor.

Zork wrote:

JulianSkies wrote: For what's worth given the sheer amount of armor and defense it has coupled with the innate damage reduction (it has 30% damage reduction when closed, it literally takes less damage from everything) it would be stupid to use cover, it presents enough of a threat that you want it down first thing, it rushes right on ahead making itself an even bigger threat due to flanks and it's able to absorb a lot of damage, it's basically an alien mimic beacon more or less. It's function is that of a tank.

Mmm so you would play a Gatekeeper like that? I wouldn't do such useless sacrifice totally pointless with a long range unit.

It's neither useless nor pointless to rush a bullet sponge ahead to protect the rest of your troops. Any shot that have to be used on a Gatekeeper is a shot that won't hit a Naja, Advent Rocketeer, Shocktrooper, Muton (elite), Archon ... and they are built to absorb an absurd amount of shots (in theory)
If i was ADVENT with an endless supply of troops and i was playing a Gatekeeper i think i might also bomb my own troops if it allowed me to rez a ton of Zombies but then i wouldn't stay in the middle of the fight to be killed easily and have all the zombies die as well. A Gatekeeper who prepares to raise a large army of zombies should move as far away from XCOM as possible, especially considering it's no longer a good bullet sponge in open form.

Re : Killing them. Actually you just need 2 guys to kill a Gatekeeper or a Sectopod : a Sharpshooter with Kubikiri and another soldier. The sharpshooter need to be steadied so you have to know the turn before you'll be facing them (which requires good scouting) but it's pretty easy to reach 100% crit (or close to) even on those enemies with a steadied crit-build sharpshooter.

Please don't nerf Kubikiri !
It's a GSGT skill with a solid cooldown, requires a specific biuld:
sacrificing deadeye for not so impressive agression and at least 2 targets in sight,
talon round
laser instead of scope
an officer with "get some" ready nearby
And all of that will give you only 90% crit on unflankable targets until plasma.
And those bosses could only appear in the very late game GOP and in a couple of GP missions. By that time you should have multi-shoting GSGT rangers/gunners with sredder ammo.
And to be completely honest - there is so much better way to deal with Sectopod ))

I've not had a campaign last long enough to see a Gatekeeper in LW2. Want to meet one to see what happens when I point a T2 stun gun at it.

Psieye wrote:I've not had a campaign last long enough to see a Gatekeeper in LW2. Want to meet one to see what happens when I point a T2 stun gun at it.

Well it was in 1.2
But a T3 stun gun can basically keep literally anything locked down forever. Even a Gatekeeper. I did that once, there were a lot of enemies (HQ) and I did not have the firepower to tear down a Gatekeeper while a bunch of smaller things ran around hurting me, so I just used my stun assault to keep that thing locked down forever until I had killed everything else.
I admit it was super funny.

Noober wrote:It's a GSGT skill with a solid cooldown, requires a specific biuld:

That specific build is a Crit sniper and it works pretty well even without Kubikiri so you're not actually sacrificing anything to make it work. Kubikiri however totally trivializes any miniboss encounter, making some items/perks supposed to counter those completely useless. Who ever used an acid grenade/bomb? Those combine high armor shredding and rupture and supposedly exist to deal with the big armored enemies such as Gatekeeper, Sectopods and Superheavy MECs. Honstely in my experience only the MECs can be an issue because you can face several of them in the same mission.

And to be completely honest - there is so much better way to deal with Sectopod ))

If you're taling about hacking, sure it can be fun, but it's also extremely unreliable. My best hacker with T3 Gremlin, Skulljack and double Enemy Protocol never had more than ~55% chance to hack them (after Redscreen/Bluescreen) and actually never managed to succeed. Sure i tried, but only because i had a Kubikiri Sniper ready to "shut them down" in case of failure.

It's not really the best thread to discuss this thought Here for Kubikiri discussion

EDIT 2+ : Stupidly formatted my link on 1st edit

I'm mostly ok with the current cyberball design, they're a very high end game threat that are difficult to kill in one turn. They have very few specific counters: stun gun, kubikiri, and stasis. Of those only stasis is really 100% reliable. The other counter I suppose is to just runaway, entirely reasonable for a 5 man GOP.

The only thing I hate is the mass res AOE, it's nearly impossible to avoid, the size of it results in goofy things like it hitting all of its own allies, or putting wounds on every soldier in the mission.

JulianSkies wrote:

Psieye wrote:I've not had a campaign last long enough to see a Gatekeeper in LW2. Want to meet one to see what happens when I point a T2 stun gun at it.

Well it was in 1.2
But a T3 stun gun can basically keep literally anything locked down forever. Even a Gatekeeper. I did that once, there were a lot of enemies (HQ) and I did not have the firepower to tear down a Gatekeeper while a bunch of smaller things ran around hurting me, so I just used my stun assault to keep that thing locked down forever until I had killed everything else.
I admit it was super funny.

T2 should do the trick already it's 3 turns stun.

stefan3iii wrote:I'm mostly ok with the current cyberball design, they're a very high end game threat that are difficult to kill in one turn. They have very few specific counters: stun gun, kubikiri, and stasis. Of those only stasis is really 100% reliable. The other counter I suppose is to just runaway, entirely reasonable for a 5 man GOP.

The only thing I hate is the mass res AOE, it's nearly impossible to avoid, the size of it results in goofy things like it hitting all of its own allies, or putting wounds on every soldier in the mission.

Agree it's just too much, but it's wounds that have something wrong in their design.

Zork wrote:

JulianSkies wrote:

Psieye wrote:I've not had a campaign last long enough to see a Gatekeeper in LW2. Want to meet one to see what happens when I point a T2 stun gun at it.

Well it was in 1.2
But a T3 stun gun can basically keep literally anything locked down forever. Even a Gatekeeper. I did that once, there were a lot of enemies (HQ) and I did not have the firepower to tear down a Gatekeeper while a bunch of smaller things ran around hurting me, so I just used my stun assault to keep that thing locked down forever until I had killed everything else.
I admit it was super funny.

T2 should do the trick already it's 3 turns stun.

Not really, it stuns for 3 actions, not turns, and units get two actions a turn, so the T2 stuns for a turn and a half and the stun gun has s one turn cooldown. So with a T2 enemy gets phone action ever other turn.

JulianSkies wrote:

Zork wrote:

JulianSkies wrote:
Well it was in 1.2
But a T3 stun gun can basically keep literally anything locked down forever. Even a Gatekeeper. I did that once, there were a lot of enemies (HQ) and I did not have the firepower to tear down a Gatekeeper while a bunch of smaller things ran around hurting me, so I just used my stun assault to keep that thing locked down forever until I had killed everything else.
I admit it was super funny.

T2 should do the trick already it's 3 turns stun.

Not really, it stuns for 3 actions, not turns, and units get two actions a turn, so the T2 stuns for a turn and a half and the stun gun has s one turn cooldown. So with a T2 enemy gets phone action ever other turn.

OK thanks for the explication, one more bug, the text shown briefly says 3 turns in my language.

Zork wrote: OK thanks for the explication, one more bug, the text shown briefly says 3 turns in my language.

Translations are handled by community volunteers here on the forum. Each time a new patch is close to release (usually 2-3 weeks away) JL posts a thread here asking for translations. When the next one appears try contacting the person doing the translation for your language and see if he can change it, or alternatively post in the thread with your proposed translation.