Thanks everyone for the critiques and suggestions. I'm currently on save 30 of this Commander 1.5 Gi Joe campaign and am around July 15th. I am 10 days from Coil and have disregarded Sci so far. I have liberated the start zone, but now it's surrounded by Strength 8 hot zones. I've built the GTS, AWC, WS, Lab (on Pwr Coil), Power, and Comm in that order. All tubes are unlocked and stocked. Ive expanded to right next to the zone with the Blacksite, but we're still only at 5 pips on avatar. Venom Rounds is worse Dark Event atm. So all in all it's going pretty good.
But there are some things I have learned with this campaign's builds and squads. First, I love Implacable on left side "Rifleman" Rangers. I thought they were good before, but being able to shoot (usually a yolo injured from owerwatches), move to flank, then rapid fire kill has turned Stalker godly. He can easily get 1/2 the kills on a mission now. Center Mass is definitely an option here instead of crit spec, good suggestion. Obviously, snipers are OP so are doing great. Thanks for the tip on Snap Shot, Psieye. I will try to incoroporate that into an AMF build I think, for the escort squad problably. Also, Ace and Scarlett, my Overwatch Specialists, are killing it with Sentinel where I can scout with Snake Eyes and the other Shinobis to set up Overwatch ambushes.
Disappointments have been Gunners, Grenadiers, and Assaults:
Even with moderate amounts of aim the Gunners always seem to fall behind the other classes in their ability to hit/kill. Sargent Slaughter is a Staff Sergeant with ~80 aim and Chain Shot is almost always at best a 50/50. However, Lady Jaye is holding her own as a Suppressor, but nowhere near the level of OW capability to the Specialists. Also, I feel that not being able to get Cool Under Pressure and Danger Zone makes a Suppressor build not quite as strong as other Overwatch builds. But the suppression has come in handy to control late round activations and such.
gimrah wrote:
Grenadiers. I've concluded there's basically one good build, which is a hybrid that uses flashbangs and incendiaries: RD, HO, Form, Tandem, Sting, VM, FK. Although if you go plasma early and have airdrop on specialists, then you could plan on giving him free plasma grens and so picking up HEAT and combat engineer.
Yeah, pretty much. Sapper was great in weeks one and two to blow up 1/2 cover trash cans, but walls, floors, and machinery are out of the question. Even with Plasma it still sucks. I've even dropped a Plasma directly on a car grazing two aliens and all I got was the car exploding next turn. What's the point? Incendiaries do just as much damage and give crowd control. And they are great for activations when they are all bunched up together. Also, unless I get a high roll on the mobility stat my grenadiers are always lagging behind. Sure I can SMG them but then that makes them even more worthless than before.
Assaults have been lackluster. The only time they seems to be able to do anything is when I R&G to adjacent flanks, which leave me open to unwanted activations. And R&G never seems to be off cool down, so they usually sit around for a few rounds failing stun rolls. Flint the Stungunner has taken forever to be relevant. I find I'd much rather just have another Rifleman Ranger or an OW Specialist to get 3 good shots instead of his 70-80% stun shot on an enemy that I'll have to have Stalker come over next round and kill anyway. My one exception is that Gung Ho has excelled by activating with the trench gun. And I love having the trench to wipe whole pods on the Tower Mission. But again he usually has to sit around watching people fight ranged battles the rest of the mission till his R&G is up.
I've had the same activations issue with my Shotgun spec Rangers. And without R&G its hard to get them into position often enough without dumping all your mobility rolls and PCS chips on them. Stocking SMG makes them OW worthless and even with the Shuttermag the range penalty is atrocious. I know you can take care of the activations issue with a Shinobi, but they can't scout all sides all the time, and that means I'm having to bring two soldiers just to make one of them relevant and the other hiding the entire time.
Technicals are godly early but are beginning to fall off on damage at this point with M2 advent. The roust has come in handy more than once due to controlling an activated pod 10 tiles away behind full cover. Missles are never accurate, even with FITW, but at least they'll blow up the stuff they do hit, unlike Grenadiers.
The SEAL shinobi (shooter spec) has not reached the level of dominance Storm Shadow and Bladmasters have. SEALS damage is low with SMG style weapons and wont be able to Rapid Fire till MSGT. While Blademasters are Fleche one-shotting M2 Officers with crits +Bladestorm + Reaper, I mean, come on, no contest. Combatives works great to control melees too.
I did use 4 Sharpshooters, Snake Eyes, Scarlett and Lady Jaye for the HQ, and it was more than I needed. Scarlett and Lady Jaye barely fired a shot. And when they did it was just to clean up. Snipers with concealed shinobi is so OP.
Psieye wrote:
Actually I prefer sniper officers. 100 Aim, Lead By Example, Firing Discipline officers. If anything with Lightning Reflexes gets sniped early, OW guys become silly with that kind of officer watching them.
Nice tip. I'm gunna try that next campaign instead of shinobis. Maybe each squad with 2 sharpshooters, one holospec/officer with pistol.
gimrah wrote:
Squads. Your GOp squads have too many soldier in them! You'll rarely have room (or need) for 7. It will be 4-6 generally.
The "ALT" designation on the spreadsheet stands for Alternate, meaning they only go if there is enough infiltration time.
In case it isn't obvious, I am trying to do something other than Sniper camp the whole campaign. Sniper camping with a concealed shinobi every mission gets old. And watching Xwynn's Season 3 he seems to have come away with the same conclusion: Snipers are too OP, so let's try and win one campaign without relying on them so much. Plus, while I find the idea of Psieye's Eight-man ops awesome, I don't know that my rig can handle 30+ enemy maps every couple missions. HQs already are murder with lag so they take forever to finish. I also like your idea of a tank with massive defense to take AI rolls away, but it just seems to kind of break the game for me.
I'd rather use all the classes in the best way possible to come up with different, and definitely unequal, ways to kill Advent. That's the purpose behind the specialized squads, to focus on one particular skill set: Close Combat, Explosives, Overwatch, or Fighting on the Move. Then matching those with mission types that support that skill set: Close Combat - Cell extractions in cities with close quarters, Explosives - S&G Facilities to break down walls and gain entry quickly, Overwatch - Ambush Troop Columns and RNF heavy missions, Fighting on the Move - Escorts and Raids where you're move all the time. But it's true, some builds and classes are just inherently better than others, and would obviously be a better choice most times. So, inevitably on each mission, usually right after I activate in the middle of my turn and advent is 20 tiles away behind full cover, I think, "Man, it sure would be nice to be able to shoot with high accuracy all the way across the map right now!"