Long War in a nutshell
Long War at its best:
Oh goodie, an Abductor is landing in the US, and I've got... is this my B team? No, wait, this is my C team. Yeah, this is going to end well. Oh well, let's give it a shot anyway, see how it goes.
Yeah, they're doomed. There's way too many Alie- is that a 5-Alien pod of Heavy Floaters?!? I only just met my first Heavy Floater last mission! Oh god, I thought they were doomed before I saw that!
(Much combat ensues, with Aliens freaking out and fleeing as I steamroll segments of them, among other things leading to the Heavy Floater pod retreating. When the pod comes back for another go, Overwatch fire takes out the remainder)
(Then many paranoid turns pass in which the Alien turn happens very briefly in between reloading and going on Overwatch)
Wait. I think it's just the Command Pod left. But... nobody's died! I've got two injured. How did this happen? Holy crap, this is awesome. This is an amazing experience and I love this game.
(I did suffer two casualties from the Command Pod, one of which was a death, but wow)
Long War at its worst:
Why is your soldier out of position and about to die because they didn't take cover? Because even though the game displayed your current movement destination as the tile you wanted them to go to, the soldier inexplicably went to a different tile that visually overlaps. Have fun losing a soldier to buggy UI.
Yes, you did just activate a pod by virtue of attempting to issue a move order to one end of the screen and this somehow being interpreted as 'open the door at the opposite end of the screen, even though that requires a left click and movement orders are right click'. Have fun having everyone die due to buggy UI.
Yes, that Alien can see and shoot you through a solid wall, somehow. Yes, you can neither see nor shoot it back, because why not. Good luck.
Yes, your plan hinges on some piece of the game behavior working out a certain way. Yes, that behavior actually does work the way you think it does 99% of the time. Welcome to the 1% of the time it doesn't work that way because... I dunno. Maybe the game just hates you. Yeah, everything is going to fall apart because why not.
Yes, you did have this situation under control. Yes, in any sane reality you would've hit with the 98% shot. Or at least hit on the second 98% shot. Or at least any of the four follow-up shots at 80% each could've hit. Or, if the RNG is going to do this inanity in the first place, maybe it could not have the surviving Alien promptly instantly crit-kill someone who's on high ground behind Full Cover in good Armor and benefiting from perks like Damn Good Ground? Oh, of course not. Gee, thanks.
Yes, the grenade strike zone is highlighting those Aliens at the edge. Yes, those Aliens have 1 HP apiece. Yes, the grenade will do no damage to any of them. No, the game won't claim it was due to Damage Reduction. The game is just lying to you about the strike zone in the first place.
Yes, that is three pods all refusing to move that more-or-less can't be activated separately as a result of their closeness. Yes, this is a game in which managing pod activation is a critical skill. Have fun with the game design not properly accounting for how small the maps are!
Yes, even though you moved someone through literally that lane of movement just earlier this turn and no terrain has changed in the time between, that second or third or fourth soldier is still going to activate a pod this time. Yes, that does mean your careful planning is about to fall apart because of just plain inconsistent mechanics.
Yes, that Alien did somehow know exactly how to flank and instantly kill that one soldier of yours that no Alien could see.
Yes, that Alien did choose to take the long odds shot even though the AI normally avoids those. Yes, it hit, crit, and thus instantly killed a soldier it shouldn't have wanted to risk shooting at in the first place. No, the AI doesn't cheat and see the rolls, stop thinking that.
Yes, that insane EXALT rocket dude did decide to fire a rocket at point-blank, killing himself and five of his brothers all so your Covert Operative could die. And taking out the Encoder while he was at it, just to make a stupid event even more problematic.
Yes, that EXALT guy you thought was a Medic and thus harmless during a hack was actually the nearly-identical Operative, and so he blew up your Covert Operative with an Alien Grenade.
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I really enjoy Long War when the game isn't being utterly insane/inane, but for whatever reason this stuff clusters. I'll have three missions without running into any wackiness, and they'll be fun, fair challenges where I accept casualties as an appropriate consequence to the situation by some metric or another, if they crop up at all. Then I'll beat my head against the wall restarting the same mission literally ten times in a row not because I have a team in over their head, or because I keep slipping up, but rather because bugginess gets people killed, or the AI does something I can't really make sense of without assuming they're flat-out cheating, or the RNG just starts being gratuitously ridiculous, or most often some combination of these.
Just recently I ran into my first Sectopods. Plural. In a single pod. With a Seeker and three Drones thrown in just for giggles. I was using a C-team, too. First attempt at the mission? Everything went fantastic, I killed the Sectopods with one casualty (Which itself was unarguably a mistake on my part: I was pretty sure the Sectopod was going for the Cluster Bomb, but not completely sure and let myself be seduced by Ready for Anything instead of doing the sensible thing and moving) and managed to take out everything except the Command Pod with, again, no further casualties. Then I play carefully, activate the Command Pod, I'm intending to capture an Outsider... and then an Outsider circles around behind my soldier and fires from a position that when I try to do the same to the AI always turns out to be an invalid firing arc because I guess it's being blocked by the floor or something. She goes down in one shot, of course, and everything comes apart at the seams after that. Two Sectopods, with help from Mutons and Sectoids? Manageable, but tense. Four Outsiders and a Sectoid Commander with help from the game being wildly inconsistent and the AI knowing exactly how to exploit the game world? Boom, instant death and the situation spirals out of control. Sure, that makes sense.
In general, playing Long War is making me hyper-aware of the wonkiness of a lot of the decisions in the base game. It's only in playing Long War that it really dawned on me that the base game
-Primarily decides whether something is Partial Cover or Full Cover on the basis of height, with zero regard for material durability. And also sometimes a thing that's more than head height still isn't Full Cover and sometimes a thing that's waist-high is Full Cover. So actually it's just arbitrary, and of course the game won't let you check Cover possibilities unless they're in the current movement range of a unit that can use Cover. Long-term planning? Worthless if you don't have everything memorized already. Which I suppose isn't surprising, given that the base game's combat is fairly short-term/shallow in design.
-Is utterly arbitrary on whether a given object can be climbed/stood on or not. Shoulder-height chunk of rock? Yeah, that's Partial Cover you can climb up. Knee-high perfectly flat construction material? Also Partial Cover, but completely impossible for mere mortals to place their feet upon for even a nanosecond.
The latter issue gets particularly frustrating when it comes to Muscle Fiber Density -I've had cases where I couldn't figure out why my soldier couldn't hop up some relatively trivial-by-such-standards height, and eventually realized that even with Muscle Fiber Density your soldiers are just flatly unable to ever spend even a single second atop certain objects.
I increasingly suspect I'm not going to sink anywhere near as many hours as I first thought I might because while Long War is great when you ignore the various ways for things to go wrong that make no sense, those things are pervasive enough that's a pretty big if.
Oh goodie, an Abductor is landing in the US, and I've got... is this my B team? No, wait, this is my C team. Yeah, this is going to end well. Oh well, let's give it a shot anyway, see how it goes.
Yeah, they're doomed. There's way too many Alie- is that a 5-Alien pod of Heavy Floaters?!? I only just met my first Heavy Floater last mission! Oh god, I thought they were doomed before I saw that!
(Much combat ensues, with Aliens freaking out and fleeing as I steamroll segments of them, among other things leading to the Heavy Floater pod retreating. When the pod comes back for another go, Overwatch fire takes out the remainder)
(Then many paranoid turns pass in which the Alien turn happens very briefly in between reloading and going on Overwatch)
Wait. I think it's just the Command Pod left. But... nobody's died! I've got two injured. How did this happen? Holy crap, this is awesome. This is an amazing experience and I love this game.
(I did suffer two casualties from the Command Pod, one of which was a death, but wow)
Long War at its worst:
Why is your soldier out of position and about to die because they didn't take cover? Because even though the game displayed your current movement destination as the tile you wanted them to go to, the soldier inexplicably went to a different tile that visually overlaps. Have fun losing a soldier to buggy UI.
Yes, you did just activate a pod by virtue of attempting to issue a move order to one end of the screen and this somehow being interpreted as 'open the door at the opposite end of the screen, even though that requires a left click and movement orders are right click'. Have fun having everyone die due to buggy UI.
Yes, that Alien can see and shoot you through a solid wall, somehow. Yes, you can neither see nor shoot it back, because why not. Good luck.
Yes, your plan hinges on some piece of the game behavior working out a certain way. Yes, that behavior actually does work the way you think it does 99% of the time. Welcome to the 1% of the time it doesn't work that way because... I dunno. Maybe the game just hates you. Yeah, everything is going to fall apart because why not.
Yes, you did have this situation under control. Yes, in any sane reality you would've hit with the 98% shot. Or at least hit on the second 98% shot. Or at least any of the four follow-up shots at 80% each could've hit. Or, if the RNG is going to do this inanity in the first place, maybe it could not have the surviving Alien promptly instantly crit-kill someone who's on high ground behind Full Cover in good Armor and benefiting from perks like Damn Good Ground? Oh, of course not. Gee, thanks.
Yes, the grenade strike zone is highlighting those Aliens at the edge. Yes, those Aliens have 1 HP apiece. Yes, the grenade will do no damage to any of them. No, the game won't claim it was due to Damage Reduction. The game is just lying to you about the strike zone in the first place.
Yes, that is three pods all refusing to move that more-or-less can't be activated separately as a result of their closeness. Yes, this is a game in which managing pod activation is a critical skill. Have fun with the game design not properly accounting for how small the maps are!
Yes, even though you moved someone through literally that lane of movement just earlier this turn and no terrain has changed in the time between, that second or third or fourth soldier is still going to activate a pod this time. Yes, that does mean your careful planning is about to fall apart because of just plain inconsistent mechanics.
Yes, that Alien did somehow know exactly how to flank and instantly kill that one soldier of yours that no Alien could see.
Yes, that Alien did choose to take the long odds shot even though the AI normally avoids those. Yes, it hit, crit, and thus instantly killed a soldier it shouldn't have wanted to risk shooting at in the first place. No, the AI doesn't cheat and see the rolls, stop thinking that.
Yes, that insane EXALT rocket dude did decide to fire a rocket at point-blank, killing himself and five of his brothers all so your Covert Operative could die. And taking out the Encoder while he was at it, just to make a stupid event even more problematic.
Yes, that EXALT guy you thought was a Medic and thus harmless during a hack was actually the nearly-identical Operative, and so he blew up your Covert Operative with an Alien Grenade.
--------------------------------
I really enjoy Long War when the game isn't being utterly insane/inane, but for whatever reason this stuff clusters. I'll have three missions without running into any wackiness, and they'll be fun, fair challenges where I accept casualties as an appropriate consequence to the situation by some metric or another, if they crop up at all. Then I'll beat my head against the wall restarting the same mission literally ten times in a row not because I have a team in over their head, or because I keep slipping up, but rather because bugginess gets people killed, or the AI does something I can't really make sense of without assuming they're flat-out cheating, or the RNG just starts being gratuitously ridiculous, or most often some combination of these.
Just recently I ran into my first Sectopods. Plural. In a single pod. With a Seeker and three Drones thrown in just for giggles. I was using a C-team, too. First attempt at the mission? Everything went fantastic, I killed the Sectopods with one casualty (Which itself was unarguably a mistake on my part: I was pretty sure the Sectopod was going for the Cluster Bomb, but not completely sure and let myself be seduced by Ready for Anything instead of doing the sensible thing and moving) and managed to take out everything except the Command Pod with, again, no further casualties. Then I play carefully, activate the Command Pod, I'm intending to capture an Outsider... and then an Outsider circles around behind my soldier and fires from a position that when I try to do the same to the AI always turns out to be an invalid firing arc because I guess it's being blocked by the floor or something. She goes down in one shot, of course, and everything comes apart at the seams after that. Two Sectopods, with help from Mutons and Sectoids? Manageable, but tense. Four Outsiders and a Sectoid Commander with help from the game being wildly inconsistent and the AI knowing exactly how to exploit the game world? Boom, instant death and the situation spirals out of control. Sure, that makes sense.
In general, playing Long War is making me hyper-aware of the wonkiness of a lot of the decisions in the base game. It's only in playing Long War that it really dawned on me that the base game
-Primarily decides whether something is Partial Cover or Full Cover on the basis of height, with zero regard for material durability. And also sometimes a thing that's more than head height still isn't Full Cover and sometimes a thing that's waist-high is Full Cover. So actually it's just arbitrary, and of course the game won't let you check Cover possibilities unless they're in the current movement range of a unit that can use Cover. Long-term planning? Worthless if you don't have everything memorized already. Which I suppose isn't surprising, given that the base game's combat is fairly short-term/shallow in design.
-Is utterly arbitrary on whether a given object can be climbed/stood on or not. Shoulder-height chunk of rock? Yeah, that's Partial Cover you can climb up. Knee-high perfectly flat construction material? Also Partial Cover, but completely impossible for mere mortals to place their feet upon for even a nanosecond.
The latter issue gets particularly frustrating when it comes to Muscle Fiber Density -I've had cases where I couldn't figure out why my soldier couldn't hop up some relatively trivial-by-such-standards height, and eventually realized that even with Muscle Fiber Density your soldiers are just flatly unable to ever spend even a single second atop certain objects.
I increasingly suspect I'm not going to sink anywhere near as many hours as I first thought I might because while Long War is great when you ignore the various ways for things to go wrong that make no sense, those things are pervasive enough that's a pretty big if.
Some of this can be mitigated with mods: a good one is firing arc indication, which highlights what aliens can be shot from the position you're considering sending a soldier to.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I found a mod that does that, and recommended on this site in fact.
DeleteI... have still basically dropped the game though. I like a lot of the things Long War does, but the deeper I got into the game the more I realized Long War has design goals that are frustrating in their contradictory-ness, or are decent ideas in theory but in actual practice don't really apply. My favorite example being the 'retreat has a chance of collecting loot' mechanic: with all the mechanics like Fatigue and Items wearing out, trying to do a raid like that isn't really worthwhile. You should save beforehand and reload if your team can't successfully clear the map, and simply ignore the UFO or whatever.
Ultimately the biggest dissuading factor for me being the pod activation mechanic was just... central to basically everything wrong with the experience. Mechtoids are insanely dangerous, and at first I thought it was for the obvious reasons: their high HP, high damage, double-shooting, the psi shield, and Damage Reduction. In actuality the big thing is that they stop moving and go into Overwatch when their pod activates, making them one of a handful of enemies you generally can't bait into eating a bunch of Overwatch fire and in fact if you don't have a Scout/Lightning Reflexes Assault or some way of disabling their Overwatch without triggering it trying to get in and attack it is likely to get someone killed. Which then opens the way for their other features to matter.
By contrast, I found Sectopods basically easy. The only caveat to that was that their Cluster Bomb is essentially unfair when it can easily be combined with stuff like Seekers acting as invisible spotters, since Sectopods can fire the Cluster Bomb from outside your line of sight with zero warning. This is supposed to be the ultimate enemy (Well, just below Ethereals I guess), and I found it easier than Mechtoids because of pod activation mechanics!
I could -maybe should, even- write up an entire post of all the ways pod activation mechanics screw over the player in Long War.
Anyway, I do appreciate you trying to help, though.