Alien Rulers Worth It?

[Sines]

So, how're the Rulers in Long War 2? Getting three suits of armor for such a large number of soldiers seems a high price to pay for having a Ruler show up randomly on a stealth mission, or on an already difficult timed mission where you brought a small squad. They have a lot more potential to screw you up if they hit the right parties, while providing smaller rewards (proportionate to your number of active soldiers) for beating them.

The Hunter Weapons are potentially fine. Frost Bombs are fine, even if a bit boring, and the Axe and Pistol can help out the appropriate playstyles if you're willing to shell out the extra cash for them instead of their conventional equivalents (and the pistol can work well as an emergency conceal on a Shinobi who loses cover without upgrading it at all). Boltcaster sucks here, primarily because 3 weapon mods at all levels just worsens this weapons inability to get modded. Sure, upgrading the Axe and Pistol isn't cheap, and only helps out one out of a small number of soldiers, but unlike the Rulers, they don't also take research and PG time, along with having to fight the rulers in the first place. And Sword Shinobi and Gunslinger soldiers are unique and rare enough that I feel good about getting one single special weapon for them.

[Thrair]

I'm fond of giving the Boltcaster to Specialists. They've few shooting perks, and so they don't tend to need to shoot often (negating the baseline ammo problem). And it can be nice to give 'em that bigger single shot + stun chance for the rare times they are shooting instead of hacking or applying other forms of crowd control. Especially against dangerous biological enemies that they cannot hack. (Shame they can't stun Avatars, though. )

Plus, 1.1 added armor shred to the Boltcaster, which is extra icing on the cake. I don't view the Boltcaster as a primary weapon. I view it as a utility item that happens to fit in the Primary Weaon slot.


As for the Axes.... they're powerful. Overall damage boost + free action attack 1/mission is very nifty.

The Shadowkeeper... meh. Kinda situational. But Long War 2's AWC setup means any soldier can be an amazing Gunslinger. So it can be nifty to toss on the schmuck you train up for it. Bit of an aim boost, if nothing else.

[aimlessgun]

Three suits of armor? I thought you could build as many as you wanted.

The Axes are definitely good. I love my blade shinobi with them, he's up to 150 kills now. So much easier to sustain Reaper chains and get Implacable procs with the improved damage.

[Bantichai]

There are 2 mods on the workshop that are compatible with LW that allow you to replicate armors and weapons. It basically turns it into a new armor/weapon tier as opposed to being one offs. I then boosted alien ruler HP to 1000 to compensate

[Sines]

A lot of comments on the weapons, which I agree are fine. I'm not a huge fan of the Boltcaster, but I do make use of it. In Vanilla, it was the weapon of choice for Psi Ops, simply because they were only ever going to shoot when on Overwatch. However, I'm not so sure about Long War. The Boltcaster now has to compete with SMGs for the "I don't shoot that often" slot. And upgrading the Bolt Caster is rather more expensive than buying a new SMG. But I can certainly see the charm for many people.

Still, it was mostly asking about activating the Rulers. If nothing has changed about their rewards, it just seems like you risk way too much by activating them. Admittedly, a small party isn't at significantly more danger than a large party (due to their threat coming from free actions per soldier), but I'd hate to find one of these things on a stealth mission. And a smaller party will find themselves locked down by the Ruler for longer, which is a problem on any timed mission. And all you get for your trouble is three suits of armor (to be shared amongst your 15+ active soldiers) that you still have to research and pay for. Unless the armor has been buffed, it's not all that much better than what you currently have.

[nightwyrm]

Are the Alien Rulers disabled on certain missions in LW2? After doing the AH mission, I've done mini-Retals, full Retals, counter DE hacks, Find a Lead hacks, and Troop Columns but haven't seen them show up yet.

[aimlessgun]

I've done a ton of missions and I have seen them 3 times: 2 HQs and a Black Site. The 2 HQs I was set up to deal with them. The Black Site I had to restart because I found out you really needed to stealth for as long as possible, so I skipped the ruler (also it was the Archon guy who is ridiculous and seems to still use abilities while burning unlike the other two).

[JulianSkies]

I will state two things about rulers in LW2:
First, they don't have a Ruler Reaction with 100% chance, I think it's 25% chance. Maybe more depending on difficulty, but it's not 100% and thus they are far, far, FAR less deadly.
Second, I have yet to see them in timed missions, only encountered them on troop columns.

Taking into account i'm playing on Rookie, rules are pushovers, I can still 100% say they are a lot easier to deal with than they were in vanilla, lack of reactions makes them nothing but bullet sponges no worse than a sectopod and if they do show up only on untimed missions you're fielding a dozen soldiers able to burst them down.
Of course, if you're pulling the Berserker Queen as well as two rainbow advent pods then you're going to have a bad time, because she's going to utterly annihilate your face. But if you're doing those missions in a controlled manner then yeah, much easier than in vanilla.

The great source of danger in the Rulers was the fact that they could not be controlled, you had no defense against them and had to convince them to leave as fast as possible, without that they're... Not nearly as hard.

[LordYanaek]

Like JulianSkies said, i found them a lot easier in LW2 (veteran diff) than vanilla XCom2. I have never seen them in any timed mission so they are probably ruled out of those. The worst mission for them to show was the archon king on a UFO raid but the timer is more generous now.

As for the reactions, i found out that they never reacted at me shooting directly on them, but they did react each time i made something else (move, reload, shoot someone else) unless it was a free action or a concealed one (holotargetting with my phantom sniper officer) so maybe it's pure coincidence or maybe they are now coded to react "when you don't look at them". This means you must focus them until they die or leave (summoning the gate was the only reaction they did after i shot them) which can leave other pods relatively intact and you in a bad situation, but they should not wipe your squad on themselves. Trying to avoid activating them at the same time as another pod is key to fighting them.