tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36564289752012720422024-03-18T02:48:22.026-07:00VigaroeVideo (&) Games Are Our Only EducationVigaroehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02405424233776571308noreply@blogger.comBlogger704125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656428975201272042.post-65874998900618169772024-02-14T16:56:00.000-08:002024-02-14T16:56:01.396-08:00Apartment Situation Update<div style="text-align: left;"> I've already talked about this on the <a href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/me-to-escape-this-nightmare-apartment" target="_blank">GoFundMe page</a>, but...</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">A: As yet, I have not gotten moved due to difficulties arranging a place to actually move <i>to</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;">and B: Today it was announced that everybody in my building is being evicted because the owners don't think they can affect repairs while tenants are on-site. (Never mind that this is eviction-without-cause and is <i>explicitly illegal</i> in this area) Specifically at the end of the next month, so I have <i>some</i> time to try to arrange a new place, but this is still asinine and means I definitely can't spare time and energy on updating this site; I really don't want to end up homeless <i>again</i>.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I'm in disbelief that this is happening at all, honestly, but there you go. You're updated on the stupidity on my current meatspace conditions.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Back to trying to make things actually <i>work</i>...</div>Ghoul Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15165232279081041131noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656428975201272042.post-12488845789710389382023-12-20T22:03:00.000-08:002023-12-20T22:03:36.800-08:00Update: Thank you<div style="text-align: left;">I'm shocked to find the <a href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/me-to-escape-this-nightmare-apartment">GoFundMe</a> has met its goal, so... site updates are still on pause while I work to make the move happen, but once that's done I will absolutely refocus on Vigaroe.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Thank you so much.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">See you again soon.</div>Ghoul Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15165232279081041131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656428975201272042.post-41925131678623055312023-12-17T19:42:00.000-08:002023-12-18T18:44:39.466-08:00Site updates on pause for... I don't knowI've avoided talking about this for a variety of reasons, but for almost the entirety of Vigaroe's meaningful existence I've been struggling with health problems <i>heavily</i> exacerbated by the disaster state of the apartment complex I've been living in. Over the years these problems have increasingly sapped my time and energy, which has visibly manifested site-side by me scaling back my update schedule and discontinuing assorted projects (Such as a still-incomplete <a href="https://www.vigaroe.com/p/lets-play-fire-emblem-monster-quest.html">Let's Play</a>) because I simply <i>can't</i>. Nonetheless, I've kept at it because I hoped that conditions would improve one way or another; that my Patreon would grow enough I could sock away money in preparation to move elsewhere, that the apartment complex would improve enough that I wouldn't be constantly fighting against mold and bedbugs and so on, or something truly unexpected would occur and be a solution.<div><br /></div><div>Unfortunately, in the last month things have reached a breaking point for me; I've only barely been able to keep up my weekly updates, and in fact was not able to spare the time and energy to finish this week's update at all. Things with my apartment situation very much look to be just getting worse, and I just need to get moved somewhere that doesn't leave me unable to function day in and day out for most of my waking hours. Rather than just leave people hanging without explanation, I've made this post, as well as a <a href="https://gofund.me/70eed50e">GoFundMe page</a>. (If you don't want to use GoFundMe, reminder that I have a <a href="http://patreon.com/user?u=4178527">Patreon</a> and <a href="https://ko-fi.com/ghoulking">Ko-Fi</a>: if you prefer those but still wish to be visibly counted on the GoFundMe, you can just tell me so when contributing via Patreon or Ko-Fi and I can manually add your contribution to GoFundMe's goal tracker, with whatever name you prefer even)</div><div><br /></div><div>Unfortunately, I don't know when I'll be able to resume site updates: I really do just need to get moved, and I won't be able to get back to the site until that's been arranged somehow. So... site hiatus, duration indefinite.</div><div><br /></div><div>I wish it hadn't come to this.</div><div><br /></div><div>See you next update, whenever that might be.</div>Ghoul Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15165232279081041131noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656428975201272042.post-5045955417875226952023-12-11T00:25:00.000-08:002023-12-11T00:25:41.885-08:00Chimera Squad Enemy Analysis: Gray Phoenix Praetorian<div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4SY1-k9V-utOR895u0SOLWo0cEpXpaEFMNu5D8On4cWBL6jt0l2tJtRJVarScMPpiHR265dCqUB7UWaMc1DyFlHjCAs-wR6Gt2SFV-Sk78Xl_5pQUzr_rGNoh4yNHclM7cZ7phTFUC-9v/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4SY1-k9V-utOR895u0SOLWo0cEpXpaEFMNu5D8On4cWBL6jt0l2tJtRJVarScMPpiHR265dCqUB7UWaMc1DyFlHjCAs-wR6Gt2SFV-Sk78Xl_5pQUzr_rGNoh4yNHclM7cZ7phTFUC-9v/w640-h360/20200429015859_1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div>HP: 10/10/11/12 (+2/+4)</div>Armor: 1 (+0/+1)<br />Aim: 80/80/85/85 (+2/+5)<br />Mobility: 10<br />Damage: 4-5 (+1/+2)<br />Will: 60 (+10/+20)<br />Initiative: 50<div><br /></div><div><i>It always weirds me out that one of the most-obviously-armored enemies in the game has... 1 Armor. Their abilities make this misleading, mind, but its still </i><i>viscerally</i><i> weird.</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Alert Actions: Move to a better position, Hunker Down.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>In spite of having a <b>lot</b> of interesting abilities, I've never seen a Praetorian use any of them as an Alert action. I'm mostly-certain they just can't use them and are genuinely restricted to repositioning and to Hunkering Down. It makes Alert Praetorians surprisingly underwhelming given they're pretty firmly the apex Gray Phoenix unit.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><div><img alt="" data-original-height="27" data-original-width="27" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvSQEvKaHIU6lYrX6MavCMvlUxccPA-UOyEGYhNTIThTe8t8IQRHc3rPCGFS_kgDn_8NGA966v4_1bnIaXH2-Da4BxxRUktDj3FnbjRbNpH_qNuKIh0ff5Xfk7f81HAH8Kcp_3WJ7Xvqo_/s16000/Holy+Warrior+cleaner+icon.jpg" />Bolster</div><div><b>Passive</b>: When a Praetorian is damaged, if it is not currently disabled (Being on fire counts as disabled) it immediately gains 1 point of Armor. This effect can stack unlimitedly, but all Armor provided by this effect vanishes at the start of the Praetorian's next turn.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>This has no icon in-game, nor a name, nor an explicit pop-up announcement. Just an animation, an Armor pip being added, and there you go. The name is from the SoldierSkills config file, while the icon is me repurposing Holy Warrior from ADVENT Priests.</i></div></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Bolster itself is an interesting experiment, being more or less the only example of Chimera Squad trying out being <b>freer</b> with enemy Armor than XCOM 2 was. I think it was probably a bit too cautious in its implementation, honestly; if you have Mastercrafted weapons by the time you're fighting Praetorians, the free Shred on Mastercrafted weapons suppresses the Armor growth anyway, in which case Bolster is more like a weird </i><i>resistance to</i><i> Shred than anything else.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>It admittedly triggers in response to damaging special abilities that don't have Shred, but a lot of those don't respect Armor anyway; a team heavy on such effects is very likely to not care about repeatedly triggering Bolster. Since it also goes away completely at the start of the Praetorian's turn, even significant Bolster stacking can end up not mattering, such as if the Praetorian gets a turn an agent who reliably cares about Armor turns their attention on the Praetorian. The overall low HP scale in Chimera Squad also keeps its impact low; high numbers of Bolster triggers are unlikely to happen simply because hitting a Praetorian 4+ times without downing it is tricky to arrange.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>The introduction of Subdue also contributes here; even with infinite Armor, the player can always force 2-3 damage through per agent turn. Potentially more if Cherub is on the team, or if any agents have Impact Frames. Note that the highest possible HP on a Praetorian is exactly 16, which Impact Frame Subdues take out in 4 hits without regard for Armor.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Notably, since Bolster only triggers in response to taking damage, and Praetorians only have 1 Armor at base (2 if they've got Act 3 bonuses), it's actually fairly difficult to trigger Bolster repeatedly without having done a respectable chunk of damage in the process, which connects to all this Armor-bypassing stuff fairly neatly; if you get a Praetorian down to 4 HP while having an Impact Frame on an agent (Or any number of other offensive tools that bypass Armor and do at least 4 damage, which there's a decent number of), even if they have so much Armor your agents only do damage with their firearms because of pity damage, you can still down the Praetorian in one action rather than four.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>To be clear, it <b>is</b> possible to construct a team and take a series of actions that results in a Praetorian shrugging off a shocking amount of firepower. It's even possible for this to occur in a mission where that's an actual problem to be faced with, because of some time limit issue; I imagine there are a few players out there who genuinely had a bad time the first time they encountered a Praetorian.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>But overall, Bolster is surprisingly easy to play around, and it's entirely possible to end up bypassing it as a gimmick without actually meaning to. In conjunction with disables shutting it off, it's possible for a player to bypass it without <b>realizing</b> they did so!</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>So if XCOM 3 brings back Bolster as an idea, I hope it's either a little less cautious with it, or has a design that isn't so heavy on Great Tools That Happen To Bypass Armor As One Of Their Benefits.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><div>AI Pistol</div><div><b>Passive</b>: Primary weapon is buggy and has an inconsistent response to ammo drain effects.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><i>Notably, Praetorians actually have <b>eight</b> shots in their pistol, which is basically the same thing as unlimited ammo in normal conditions, making it particularly stand out the bugginess of ammo drain effects on enemy Pistol-users; ammo drain really <b>ought </b>to be moderately appealing against Praetorians, and... it is, aside the risk that the game misbehaves and lets them shoot without reloading anyway.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Praetorians are in fact probably the most unfortunate example of the AI Pistol bugginess in terms of how it can randomly make a Cease Fire Grenade worthless and all. They don't have another option for attacking at range (Whereas eg Acolyte and Sorcerers can still do damage at a distance without needing their firearm), and one of the main ways of protecting against regular ranged shots (Stacking Defense boosts and/or Aim penalties) is actually useless against Praetorians due to Duel; if pistol ammo behaved correctly on a consistent basis, draining their ammo would be probably the best form of protection against being shot short of an actual hard-disable. But since pistol ammo is buggy... it's easy to do The Smart Thing amd get randomly punished by janky coding.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Nnnnot ideal.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR0LaJh1UV3TpxUsVbseWDLimG0cy2-Brar_UWNy2ihybl0fggneSrhO56Xs9rnoP8SeY1uttgU5M7gG9YMpCE1ADfOm-k9ypE5PH2s2pVP0QaFlft-Xx7CLWLDbfmwGltemXhdSLWyUZh/s1600/Charged+Bash+Icon.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR0LaJh1UV3TpxUsVbseWDLimG0cy2-Brar_UWNy2ihybl0fggneSrhO56Xs9rnoP8SeY1uttgU5M7gG9YMpCE1ADfOm-k9ypE5PH2s2pVP0QaFlft-Xx7CLWLDbfmwGltemXhdSLWyUZh/s400/Charged+Bash+Icon.jpg" /></a>Bash<br /><b>Turn ending action</b>: The Praetorian moves-and-melees a single enemy for 3 damage, knocking them Unconscious if this reduces them to 0 HP. This attack cannot miss and ignores Armor.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>I have never actually seen the AI perform Bash of their own initiative; if you Puppeteer a Praetorian it is in their action list, but I've only ever seen the AI perform...</i></div><div><br /></div><div><img alt="" data-original-height="39" data-original-width="39" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAPANf8xw5utO_dqBlOfHstLEkE3MhHnL2IxqsPsZH60riKWiHn9zCm6_zdlgkQTliT3yiEDClLBSQtQVd6-s3ZE9lV3Z0FZffyBnruAdmoi4Jo1jnl-UinORcEcfBybkZ-fQatuj010qZ/s16000/Fist+Strike+Chimera+Squad.jpg" />Melee Strike</div><div><b>Turn-ending action</b>: The Praetorian move-and-melees a single enemy for 4-5 (+1/+2) damage, using their base Aim for accuracy.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>...this.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><i>Yes, Praetorians have <b>two</b> melee attacks. Yes, this is weird and probably not truly intended; I assume some funny development history underlies this where nobody noticed they'd caused this to be true.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Melee Strike itself is technically not strictly superior to Bash, but for AI purposes it functionally basically is because of...</i></div><div><br /></div><div><img alt="" data-original-height="40" data-original-width="40" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMfB9R4U_IIq4NcXqNbDVA0cUKGInpunCpPYKN1YyardDQVvWmKv1PpUiAroJcSqS0KtJCly59PYwPE2ZXyOWrCPLmFgg_56_fEvY7BqokLZnjXnq-sB_u02_q3KZqzH3nOQvMSMzQG2Tn/s16000/Dual+Icon.jpg" />Duel</div><div><b>1 action point</b>: The Praetorian targets a single visible enemy. The Praetorian is unable to miss the Duel target, but the Duel target is also unable to miss the Praetorian. This effect lasts until the Praetorian is downed or disabled, or until their target is downed.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Weirdly, Duel can't be used if the Praetorian is currently Mind Controlled. I'm not sure why.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>While Duel is active, both the target and the Praetorian are marked with an effect that's unfortunateley easy to overlook; rippling red circles toward the base of their models. This gets particularly unfortunate if multple Praetorians are about and get turns, as these visuals don't strongly communicate <b>which</b> Praetorian is Dueling <b>which</b> target. (There's an effect of red lines going from each Duel participant toward the other participant, but they're pretty easy to overlook) It's overall not a big deal since you'll be able to see your accuracy before committing to an attack and Duel does in fact alter the displayed accuracy to 100% if Duel is affecting that particular attack's accuracy, but can be unfortunate if you're moving through a turn quickly while having lost track of who Dueled who.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Anyway, Duel functionally renders Melee Strike's possibility of missing moot; this is why Bash is functionally inferior. Bash only comes out ahead against a target that has enough Armor to knock Melee Strike below Bash -which itself doesn't really matter as a scenario, because Melee Strike's base damage is higher and then Bash does <b>not</b> get Act bonuses while Melee Strike <b>does</b>. As such, if you hit Gray Phoenix last to give yourself time to cap out all the Armor bonuses you can stack up and get eg Axiom sitting on 3 Armor, Melee Strike will <b>still</b> do better damage. (3 subtracted from 6-7 damage results in 3-4 damage, which is worse than a flat 3 damage) Even with 4 Armor, Bash is actually only barely behind. (2-3 damage vs 3 damage)</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>In theory an enemy Praetorian might prefer to break out Bash on a non-Dueled target while Duel is active on a different target, but the AI pretty clearly has Duel define the Praetorian's preferred target; I've literally never seen a Praetorian attack a target other than their Duel target unless I arranged for it to be physically impossible for them to attack their Duel target that turn. It's possible there's some other condition in which their Duel-based prioritization can be overruled I just have never run across, but it's clearly a <b>very </b>high priority for them -they will ignore opportunities to down an agent in favor of focusing on their Dueled target, for example.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Funnily enough, Duel itself is largely <b>dis</b>advangeous for the Praetorian to actually use. Their base Aim is high, they tend to advance aggressively, and they don't prioritize dropping Duel on agents in High Cover; while it does matter that they can't miss their Duel target, it often creates results like 'so now Axiom can fire his Shotgun on the Praetorian from long range through High Cover and be guaranteed to hit anyway'. It's not a <b>big</b> disadvantage on average; as I've pointed out repeatedly, Chimera Squad gives the player a <b>lot</b> of tools that bypass Aim and Defense...</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>... but it's still funny to me how often a Praetorian Dueling has the math against it, where eg Cherub trading Pistol fire with a Praetorian has Duel bumping up Cherub's chance to hit more than the Praetorian's chance to hit, even if they're in equivalent Cover and all.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Oh, and one caveat of actual significance to the Bash/Melee Strike point is that a Praetorian that is on fire or Disoriented can still Bash but can't use Melee Strike. Mind, as far as I can tell this only matters via Puppeteer; when on fire or disoriented, AI-controlled Praetorians simply don't use melee at all.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><img alt="" data-original-height="40" data-original-width="40" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCxKnbsl3gYx6THVZFZKgyMpjD-Uz2I_3ckMXEsAR87vwfWe6RuqQmZ1eMJNSIpz4KJQwY6qZaY2NWRwzKDDLxy-SoTxDs9lRY800gooNr0oBGsyLBKpJFTlSaY4HDa2OsY1EyyOOLRxCR/s16000/Warcry+Icon.jpg" />Warcry</div><div><b>Free action</b>: All Muton allies gain 1 point of Armor until the Praetorian goes down. 1 turn global cooldown.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>An awesome bit of attention to detail is that Axiom will benefit from Warcry if either he ends up Mind Controlled and an enemy Praetorian uses Warcry, or you use Puppeteer on a Praetorian and then have it use Warcry. This is even mechanically useful, given Axiom is a good choice for Armor-stacking!</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Conversely, there's a bit of an oopsy in that Crew Chief Yarvo <b>doesn't</b> benefit from Warcry. Whoops!</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>It's... also a bit buggy, where its Armor isn't always taken away when the Praetorian that put it up goes down. Mind Control is especially prone to breaking its logic, but the Armor will sometimes stick around for no clear reason; don't make knife's-edge plans that assume a Praetorian going down will take away the Warcry Armor if you can avoid it, because you might get screwed by this bit of bugginess.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Given how I've previously complained about Blood Call specifically boosting Mutons not making sense, you might expect me to complain about Warcry in a similar fashion.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Nope!</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>The key difference is positioning and presentation: Blood Call was part of a broader pattern of that game wanting to retain pretensions of realism, where you were broadly intended to take gameplay as a reasonably literal representation of in-universe reality aside that it was a turn-based game and reality of course is not turn-based. Chimera Squad is much more obviously and <b>heavily</b> game-ified, with many mechanics deliberately designed to flout or at least skirt realism, such as how your agents <b>never</b> straight-up die when shot. Warcry being Muton-specific is fine in that context -it's not like 'a verbal exhortation clads allies in a layer of steel' is even trying to make realistic sense in the first place, for one.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Anyway, Warcry itself has no limitations that I'm aware of; no range limit, perfectly able to affect allies even through solid walls, etc. So don't think positional shenanigans with Shelter will let you prevent it from being applied to a specific enemy, or anything of that sort.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Much like I noted with Bolster earlier, Warcry is lower-impact than you might expect, simply because Chimera Squad is so heavy on effects that bypass Armor, and has a low enough HP scale it's easy for a point of damage shaved per hit to not have a chance to matter; if you 2-shot a Legionnaire after Warcry, it's entirely possible you'd still need 2 shots without Warcry, at which point it didn't actually do anything.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>That said, it's worth pointing out that Warcry can give Bolster more of a chance to matter; a Praetorian acting early has noticeably better odds of ending up with a problematically high amount of Armor. So while Warcry's effect on other Mutons tends to be kind of whatever, it can be pretty impactful on the Praetorian.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>It's also worth noting that Warcry is allowed to <b>stack</b>. Praetorians are often alone and almost never have more than two on the field, and furthermore are unreliable about remembering they have Warcry so even having two Praetorians get turns won't necessarily result in two Warcries going off, but it <b>can </b>happen, and 2 more points of Armor is much more likely to result in your squad needing another shot or having to burn up a grenade or otherwise make your squad slower and/or less resource-efficient at downing the enemies. Furthermore, it makes Bolster a lot more relevant -a 16 HP Praetorian that's sitting on 4 Armor no matter how many times you shoot it with Mastercrafted weapons is something you can see happen on the highest difficulty if you hit Gray Phoenix last, and is generally doubling or more the firepower required to take them down if you're not simply ignoring the Armor.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>In conjunction with it sometimes buggily persisting even once the Praetorian that generated the Armor goes down, simply ignoring the Praetorians if there's more than one on the field can have a situation turn surprisingly rough!</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>But <b>usually</b> Warcry is pretty minor, even if you're not specifically making an effort to minimize its consequences.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>So like Bolster, I do hope that if XCOM 3 comes back to the idea that it will either be a little more aggressive in its impact (eg providing more Armor), or exist in a design that isn't so cavalier about passing out ways to ignore Armor. (And that it fixes the bugginessregardless, of course)</i></div><div><br /></div><div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtEKfkHN6Oc5QHEJct88Sx9-61tsM-bODp9tcE00gwVQmzfGIQPSapjEB7dSgT9J5HgiPpe46yaIcguskR-nqfO8UIlnb1Ol06fY2mQnKJPzXzHcYn4v7LdZdYJgOej8ZZADM4jxCVQ9J2/s1600/Guard+Icon.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtEKfkHN6Oc5QHEJct88Sx9-61tsM-bODp9tcE00gwVQmzfGIQPSapjEB7dSgT9J5HgiPpe46yaIcguskR-nqfO8UIlnb1Ol06fY2mQnKJPzXzHcYn4v7LdZdYJgOej8ZZADM4jxCVQ9J2/s400/Guard+Icon.jpg" /></a>Riot Guard</div><div><b>1 action point</b>: The Praetorian gains 1 point of Armor, is considered to be in Low Cover even when flanked, and acts as Low Cover to adjacent allies. Effect ends the first time damage is sustained.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><i>I have literally never seen a Praetorian actually use Riot Guard, even though it's their only special ability that isn't blocked by being on fire or Disoriented outside Bash.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>That said, it's possible Praetorians are willing to use Riot Guard in some circumstance I've just never managed to trip into. </i><i>I went a <b>really</b> long time without seeing a Shrike Bruiser use Riot Guard, after all; it would be very natural for this to be the same situation, what with it being literally the same ability.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>I do like the idea of Riot Guard as far as a Praetorian acting as mobile Cover for their allies, but even aside the AI's reluctance to use the ability Chimera Squad isn't particularly well-suited to getting to play out that dynamic. The Timeline system creates difficulties for such multi-unit coordination, and Chimera Squad puts sufficiently little focus on actions that run off standard shooting logic that mobile Cover wouldn't be that useful to the AI anyway; if you're going to have Torque spit Poison and then Subdue someone, she literally doesn't care about Low Cover on enemies in that turn, for example. It'd potentially be neat for XCOM 3 to return to the idea of some enemies acting as Cover for other enemies, assuming XCOM 3 doesn't itself end up with shooting-type actions a minority of what the player does (Or any other dynamic that would undermine the utility of mobile Cover), but Chimera Squad itself didn't end up being the game this had the potential to strut its stuff in.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Oh, and yes, where Cherub's version of Riot Guard triggers passively, the enemy version is an action point-spending thing. I suspect Cherub's version was identical originally, got (understandably) buffed, and the devs outright forgot enemies even have Riot Guard and so didn't align the mechanics.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>--------------------------------------------------</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>The Praetorian's aesthetic is one of my favorite ones in Chimera Squad, in part because the game never spells out what's up with them but it's easy to guess from the broader context of the game info that Praetorians are really just wearing a space-age engineering outfit. That makes perfect sense as a way for a grassroots movement of space engineers to kit themselves for battle, and nicely ties together the older Muton concepts of 'bred for battle' with Chimera Squad's new info of 'served as the engineering teams for Ethereal ships' -which itself is a subtle callback to classic X-COM, where Mutons lacked most of the non-Soldier classes but <b>did</b> have the Engineer class!</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>On that note, I enjoy how Chimera Squad broadens the scope of Muton duties. The prior two games were narrowly insistent on Mutons being a dedicated soldier species in the Ethereal regime, where with other aliens the topic was either not clearly addressed or there were clear indications there was supposed to be more to them. (eg Thin Men being presented as 'infiltrators') It would've been so easy for Chimera Squad to unthinkingly carry this pattern forward, and it would've been very problematic on a number of levels; it would've pretty much inevitably resulted in Mutons ending up stereotyped by the game, it would've made it much harder to buy that Mutons were managing to integrate into the new largely-peaceful society, and the pop culture meme of 'a society made only of dedicated warriors' is fundamentally stupid and non-functional to boot. You have to have people making food, clothes, homes, weapons, armor, etc to even <b>have</b> people who can be dedicated warriors; there is no such thing as a society made solely of full-time soldiers.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>To be fair, it <b>would </b>be possible for all Mutons under the Ethereal regime to be purely soldiers, as other species could be covering other duties. But a Chimera Squad that thoughtlessly carried forward the 'Mutons are a dedicated soldier species' thing likely would've just as thoughtlessly claimed this was always so rather than being imposed by the Ethereals or otherwise only become true after the Mutons were conquered, going by general pop culture memes. Also, 'possible' isn't the same thing as 'sensible' or 'believable'; if I were an evil Ethereal overlord spending years or decades at a time crossing the stars with no enemies to fight, I'd want my soldiers to be busy with day-to-day work, rather than boredly waiting for an opportunity to fight, or worse yet using the downtime to plot a coup of my evil regime. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>So that's another layer to me appreciating the Muton engineering culture; something to have historically kept the Mutons busy back when they were laboring under Ethereal control!</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>On a different note, I'm curious if Praetorians are meant to be female-by-default. I'd sort of assumed male-by-default because the one Praetorian <b>character</b> is consistently referred to with masculine pronouns and Praetorians are one of Chimera Squad's many units that as far as I'm aware has no random chatter to signal gender with, but Axiom has a conversation where he describes 'fighting like a woman' as meaning 'inspiring others and leading from the front' -which very much describes Praetorian mechanics, and conspicuously fits to absolutely no other Muton unit type in the game. This is really the only point that could be taken as an indication of such, so it's completely ambiguous, alas. Perhaps XCOM 3 will build on things in a manner that clarifies this point.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Narratively, something fitting-but-funny to me about Praetorians is that a notable fraction of the Mutons wanting to go back to Planet Muton and live out their lives on <b>that</b> ball of dirt are apparently people who consider spaceships religiously significant and have much of their 'job identity' tied up in being ship engineers. Gray Phoenix would really need a good number of experts on ship maintenance and so on for their plan to have any chance of getting off the ground (So to speak), so it certainly makes sense on that layer, and there almost certainly would be people who'd want to Go Back Home without necessarily fully thinking out the implications of actually getting what they want. And to be fair, given the Ethereal regime, there'd probably be a non-trivial fraction of people who'd have the expertise where it was kind of foisted upon them rather than an interest they pursued, so I'd also expect there to be spaceship engineering experts that would be <b>genuinely </b>happy to put that life behind them.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Overall, Praetorians are one of the most solid enemies in the game on basically every level. (Ignoring the bugs and oddly underused abilities, anyway) I like them!</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>-----------------------------</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Next time, we move on to the first Gray Phoenix boss enemy -the Progeny are actually the only faction to have just the one boss enemy.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>See you then.</i></div>Ghoul Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15165232279081041131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656428975201272042.post-19407722349243182642023-12-04T05:53:00.000-08:002023-12-11T00:26:21.356-08:00Chimera Squad Enemy Analysis: Gray Phoenix Berserker<div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOWl4EvE-5Le1duNbRRjOeBeRKxzuG2HzTDOup3-aEIwJ5omvU7kII7qXAqEqTpXJCYlPLi8a-fYezE4hWIAAkpSQslJ-RRpc0WWPqvyKq_P4npwLJl5zKyBnZE3fwRFIsd-B0Yc2zmtpO/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOWl4EvE-5Le1duNbRRjOeBeRKxzuG2HzTDOup3-aEIwJ5omvU7kII7qXAqEqTpXJCYlPLi8a-fYezE4hWIAAkpSQslJ-RRpc0WWPqvyKq_P4npwLJl5zKyBnZE3fwRFIsd-B0Yc2zmtpO/w640-h360/20201119221926_1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">HP: 9 (+3/+5)</div>Defense: 10<br />Aim: 75/75/80/80 (+2/+5)<br />Mobility: 12<br />Damage: 5-6 (+1/+3)<br />Will: 60 (+10/+20)<br />Initiative: 50<div><br /></div><div>Alert Actions: None. Also, can never be Aggressive.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Berserkers are another non-Cover using enemy where they can be Alert but all this does is take away the Aim bonus you get against Surprised targets. I'm honestly curious as to why so many of these enemies weren't made to spend their Alert action on advancing; it seems the obvious thing to do.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmF2pMWCLx6s1AhIn5luVhQSDAtT34ckVXlV1Eu9qJUeAfmyvzKearf6BgHjZYD9QSOstiVbQBubyfSUwI0d-IpCdpqMISI88d51lpbDtYDmGV1jB5JfEz215QWGRXcJmQVb8ynhI9MuNY/s1600/Hardened.png"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmF2pMWCLx6s1AhIn5luVhQSDAtT34ckVXlV1Eu9qJUeAfmyvzKearf6BgHjZYD9QSOstiVbQBubyfSUwI0d-IpCdpqMISI88d51lpbDtYDmGV1jB5JfEz215QWGRXcJmQVb8ynhI9MuNY/s400/Hardened.png" /></a>Hardened<br /><b>Passive: </b>Does not make use of Cover, but does not suffer penalties from being in the open.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Once again, this is much less significant than in XCOM 2 because crits are so weak.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>It's also much less visually intuitive, as the Berserker model has been significantly downscaled, such that it no longer looks substantially larger than other Mutons. I imagine most players of Chimera Squad are XCOM 2 vets and don't think about this at all, but I do have to wonder if any players not familiar with XCOM 2 had a bit of a learning curve issue in part due to this.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>On that note, I should explicitly point out that Berserkers are <b>not</b> part of the Muton animation set (Or any other core animation set) and so for example are immune to Tongue Pull and Bind, in spite of being Mutons and broadly looking humanoid enough. I do have to wonder how many players got tripped up by this; I imagine it's not intuitive to people who don't realize the underlying <b>technical</b> reasons for what is and is not immune to such animations, and I honestly have no idea how obvious that aspect is to other people.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLoCQnumunmZtUxTJMQjSg2-bgkPMBPzbdi0zm9WYifS-0sNp90g4tl26o9nGoJaxCdw3G9Z1Lgk4qUbK157K3qzcPM3SC1nycL4mJOVcnXDx-wTtWJJEVQh8__j5YQc7MxEzlFXWubglX/s1600/Rage+Icon.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLoCQnumunmZtUxTJMQjSg2-bgkPMBPzbdi0zm9WYifS-0sNp90g4tl26o9nGoJaxCdw3G9Z1Lgk4qUbK157K3qzcPM3SC1nycL4mJOVcnXDx-wTtWJJEVQh8__j5YQc7MxEzlFXWubglX/s400/Rage+Icon.jpg" /></a>Rage<br /><b>Passive</b>: Each time the Berserker takes damage, there is a 50% chance it will become Enraged. This permanently increases its damage by +2. This effect can only trigger once.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>I'm a little surprised they didn't hearken back to Enemy Unknown 'damage equals free out-of-turn movement' or the like (Alternatively, what I suggested for Battle Frenzy of 'damage moves them up one slot in the Timeline'), given Chimera Squad is broadly playing around with turn mechanics in a similar sort of way. I'm not bothered or anything, mind, but a bit surprised.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>And yes, it's just the damage, no Mobility bonus. Rage is actually often pretty ignorable in practice because if a Berserker can't reach any agents before you down it then Rage triggering hasn't done anything.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Curiously, the camera end of things has also been changed. A Berserker in XCOM 2 becoming enraged triggered a brief Action Camera Moment where we saw the Berserker from ground level ((And usually from the front) as they roared, with all UI elements disabled. A Berserker in Chimera Squad doing the same will have the camera slide over to show the roar happening, but renain in the top-down view and leave the UI elenents active. Chimera Squad is generally lighter than XCOM 2 on Action Camera Moments, but this is mostly attributable to it only rarely making <b>new</b> Action Camera Moments while having created a bunch of new enemies and all; returning enemies that already had one or more Action Camera Moments normally keep those intact, only losing them if they're tied to abilities that didn't return. I'm not sure why the Berserker got their Action Camera Moment changed; did it bug out because of their model getting shrunk? Did it work fine, but the devs didn't like how it looked with the smaller Berserker model? Did they intend to replace it with a new effect and whoops it was time to ship before that actually happened?</i></div><div><br /></div><div><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAajuoa6NRgjKLEvTbDwqkxvvzTKlDxBt_3hK7ew-PNm0g8YLgYIvL8z2fc6KAOUysy_CIw3zDTdGEw7ChYkgJht2QU9C9W9iQ4dPLM0bPLSzDrmd-xfGMqHwRSVKtNUZnrjS4JcqsL1Tc/s1600/Fist+Strike+better+icon.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAajuoa6NRgjKLEvTbDwqkxvvzTKlDxBt_3hK7ew-PNm0g8YLgYIvL8z2fc6KAOUysy_CIw3zDTdGEw7ChYkgJht2QU9C9W9iQ4dPLM0bPLSzDrmd-xfGMqHwRSVKtNUZnrjS4JcqsL1Tc/s400/Fist+Strike+better+icon.jpg" /></a></b>Mighty Blow<br /><b>Turn-ending action</b>: The Berserker's attack is a move-and-melee action that can randomly inflict Disorientation or Stun.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Mighty Blow's side effects are still a Strength-on-Will test. Not that you can really interact with that as a player... Mighty Blow itself is much less concerning given it's no longer allowed to inflict Unconsciousness and so no longer acts as a one-hit-kill (From a tactical perspective) at random. Mind, Berserkers are actually one of the harder-hitting enemies in the game, especially once Rage has been triggered; the experiential difference between 'my soldier got taken out unexpectedly by RNG nonsense' and 'my agent got taken out unexpectedly because I didn't think this enemy hit that hard' is a bit minor. I wouldn't be surprised if there's players who are convinced RNG-one-shots are still a part of the Berserker toolkit, honestly.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>It <b>does </b>matter, mind, as for example Torque and Axiom can both be built to be pretty solid tanks, and they will in fact be pretty reliable at tanking Berserkers. (Especially Torque, as it's more or less impossible for a Berserker to achieve 100% accuracy to bypass her Dodge, where Shrug It Off is never perfectly reliable) Just less broadly than you might first expect.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Berserkers are also functionally pretty random-feeling because they still have the oddity from XCOM 2 where they'll sometimes spend an action point on pure movement, pause, then spend their other action point on pure movement... even if this results in them standing directly adjacent to a target, where they unambiguously could've punched something that turn. I suspect in Chimera Squad's case the devs were unaware of this oddity, but I remain curious if the XCOM 2 implementation was a bug or oversight or was actually completely intentional.</i></div><div><br /></div><div>--------------------------</div><div><br /></div><div><i>The Berserker is unusual in that, even though it's a Gray Phoenix unit, it can actually be encountered in any Investigation: if a District ends up at 5 full Unrest, this can generate an 'Outbreak' mission, which is basically Chimera Squad's idea of a Terror/Retaliation mission: there's civilians, and you need to rescue them. (Specifically, you fail the mission if 3 civilians die, which is surprisingly unforgiving relative to prior games) Such missions can always have Berserkers mixed in regardless of what your current Investigation is. (Alternatively, at 5 Unrest you can get an Anarchy! mission, which is instead a 3-Encounter mission where enemies are trying to flee the map and you need to stop them; I'm not entirely sure what these are meant to actually represent. They don't get Berserkers, though, so a bit tangential to this post)</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>I'm curious what, if any, narrative logic underlies this decision. I kind of <b>suspect</b> it really is just 'they wanted Berserkers showing up in this game's equivalent to Retaliation missions', but I do have to wonder if maybe the thought process is that any random (female?) Muton citizen can go Berserker if sufficiently stressed or the like.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Regardless, Outbreak missions can actually easily be where a run sees the majority of its Berserkers, as they're shockingly rare to appear in regular Gray Phoenix missions; most Gray Phoenix missions won't have any Berserkers at all, and when Berserkers do show up in a regular mission it's generally 1 per Encounter at most, with it being completely unsurprising for a 3-Encounter mission to only have 1 Encounter include a Berserker. By contrast, Outbreak missions regularly have 3-ish Berserkers; just a couple of Outbreak missions occurring in your campaign is actually pretty likely to have more Berserkers show up across those two missions than across the <b>entirety</b> of your regular Gray Phoenix missions.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Within Outbreak missions, Berserkers tend to focus on smashing civilians; my experience is they generally only attack your forces if no civilian is within reach. This contrasts with the non-Berserker units, which largely ignore civilians, sometimes even if they can't attack an agent but could absolutely target a civilian. I actually like this as a dynamic, where the player can choose between 'protect my people' and 'protect civilians' and make a judgment call about which is more important to them right now...</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>... but unfortunately, the game itself doesn't communicate it at all (Unlike Extract VIP missions and whatnot, the game doesn't clearly mark specific enemies as Going For Your Objective at any point), and Outbreak missions being attached to Anarchy reaching 5 in a District means you can easily go entire runs without ever seeing an Outbreak mission type (Especially since an Anarchy! mission can always generate instead), so it's not particularly <b>learnable</b>. There are probably players with multiple successful runs under their belt who have never considered the <b>possibility</b> that such a dynamic might be a thing, because it's just that easy to miss. Also, it's not fully consistent anyway: it's a strong enough trend I'm 99% certain it <b>is</b> a real thing and not blind chance in my runs, but non-Berserkers do occasionally target civilians in Outbreak missions, and Berserkers sometimes target an agent even when they could've killed a civilian instead.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Altogether, I hope XCOM 3 actually has a comparable dynamic ("Kill this enemy to protect civilians, kill this other enemy to protect your units instead!"), but if so I really hope it makes more of an effort to <b>communicate</b> that it's a thing that goes on in its Terror/Retaliation/Outbreak equivalent. (That almost certainly will exist) This is a good dynamic, but only if the player actually knows it's a thing to account for!</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Oh, and a note that should only matter to people reading these posts more or less as they went up: in several prior posts, I originally erroneously used the 'Anarchy!' name to refer to Outbreak missions, as I hadn't realized when I started this series that this particular pair of labels was in fact referring to two very different mission types. Apologies for any resulting confusion. I corrected the prior posts not long before this post went up, so for anybody finding this series later, this shouldn't matter.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>For reference, Anarchy! missions are instead 3-Encounter missions in which enemy units flee from one Encounter map to the next, with them escaping the mission outright if they manage an escape on the third Encounter, and you fail the mission if too many enemies escape entirely. I kind of wish they were a regular mission, honestly; they use the Encounter framework in an interesting way, the decisions they create are unusual ("Maybe I should let this guy escape and focus on a different target? I can get them in the next Encounter..."), and in general are one of the more unusual and enjoyable mission types of the game. As they don't really connect in any clear way to 'there's riots in the street', it's not like there's strong narrative reasons to specifically tie them to a District's Anarchy reaching 5 points.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Anyway, normally I'd talk about the aesthetic and narrative aspects to Berserkers at this pont, but there's not much to say; the model is smaller than in XCOM 2 but otherwise unchanged, while narratively Berserkers are yet another enemy the game doesn't actually directly address, and the extent to which Berserkers are implicitly touched on is something I've ended up covering elsewhere. (eg in Axiom's post) So...</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>--------------------------------------------------------</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Next time, we move on to the last regular Gray Phoenix enemy: <a href="https://www.vigaroe.com/2023/12/chimera-squad-enemy-analysis-gray_11.html">Praetorians</a>.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>See you then.</i></div>Ghoul Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15165232279081041131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656428975201272042.post-27391820387889909752023-11-27T03:33:00.000-08:002023-12-04T05:53:40.140-08:00Chimera Squad Enemy Analysis: Gray Phoenix Dominator<div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh68xca5Qqnt5lZmWoC_pXzbtzLw8z_Crcm4qaR_YRxm3YqVPMjc5RrePH9Q4fmWaDHjSfLejnYiwzw22QSI9dWm_IuQvtpqMBoJcdgMudR4y9-j_v2qpgirqkxhVXjkGcNN9kDNJL7ywU4/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh68xca5Qqnt5lZmWoC_pXzbtzLw8z_Crcm4qaR_YRxm3YqVPMjc5RrePH9Q4fmWaDHjSfLejnYiwzw22QSI9dWm_IuQvtpqMBoJcdgMudR4y9-j_v2qpgirqkxhVXjkGcNN9kDNJL7ywU4/w640-h360/20201113013407_1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">HP: 6/6/7/8 (+2/+4)</div>Aim: 75/75/80/80 (+2/+5)<br />Mobility: 10<br />Damage: 3-5 (+1/+2. Crit adds +1)<br />Will: 80 (+10/+20)<br />Initiative: 50<div>Psi: 40<br /><div><br /></div><div><i>Dominators are a rare example of a Chimera Squad enemy that has Psi Offense and does in fact use it in abilities.</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Alert Actions: Move to a better position, Hunker Down.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>As far as I'm aware this is the entirety of what Alert Dominators can do, which is intuitive enough to me -neither of their special abilities is <b>damaging</b>, but both are aggressive actions and they additionally raise obvious questions about what would happen in connection to the post-Breach scramble.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>As such, Alert Dominators are actually a relatively low priority, especially if you've got good tools for bypassing Hunker Down. (Which you probably do; it's actually really hard to construct a team that is reliably hamstrung by Hunker Down)</i></div><div><br /></div><div><img alt="" data-original-height="39" data-original-width="40" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR93EMDZCg7ZO7glitfu071l8ALo61HkbzjQM-_qngmD4q7TVAOop3hUNgdKeVFwibB9q0DMDZ2FhCrEvboMSs-2S-CWhPHGhwjOJCEyYKpmizi7B19b_f9o2-0Q9kMNl3IdBJsnJ0QnVE/s16000/Psi+Disable+icon.jpg" />Psi Disable </div><div><b>1 action point</b>. Attempts to Stun the target. On success, 50% chance to Stun for 1 action point, 50% chance to Stun for 2 action points. Base chance to succeed is 100, with Psi added and target's Will subtracted to arrive at the final number. 1 turn cooldown.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Since your agents have 40 or 50 Will by default and Dominators have 40 Psi Offense, this works out to a 90-100% chance to succeed if nothing is modifying Will. So basically you should just treat Psi Disable as guaranteed to succeed -it's not like your agents gain Will as they level. Even the lowest difficulty giving your agents another 10 Will isn't very significant; sure, now everybody <b>can</b> resist it, but the odds of any given person resisting are still universally low.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Note that while Dominators can in fact fire off a Psi Disable and then do something else, the AI rarely elects to take advantage. They're far more likely to move and then shoot, or move and then use Psi Disable, or most wasteful of all just hold still and use...</i></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ1I8jcjtbqbOm9y3na6AzkiqsCviT9Xjm6pP1cK6ubwKf2zT5OBv5Pk-WOH7qj1lk9Bdlnixl4ON5rJavzehg-ZdYYfXFw-hj69-EqcCV6Tisl8CQUNX3O8QMvbpqvWU8quh4AP4t1Gpt/s1600/Mindspin+Icon.png"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ1I8jcjtbqbOm9y3na6AzkiqsCviT9Xjm6pP1cK6ubwKf2zT5OBv5Pk-WOH7qj1lk9Bdlnixl4ON5rJavzehg-ZdYYfXFw-hj69-EqcCV6Tisl8CQUNX3O8QMvbpqvWU8quh4AP4t1Gpt/s400/Mindspin+Icon.png" /></a>Mind Control</div><div><b>Turn-ending action</b>: Attempts to take control of a single enemy for 2 turns. Base chance to succeed is 100, plus Psi Offense vs Will. 4 turn cooldown.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><i>... Mind Control.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>So don't worry too much about their potential to instantly take two agents out of action. Their AI is extraordinarily reluctant to actually do so, possibly completely unwilling -I've actually never seen this chain of actions happen without it being by virtue of me Puppeteering a Dominator.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><i>Anyway, it's worth pointing out that Mind Control uses the exact same formula as Psi Disable, and so you should treat Mind Control as also a guaranteed success if you don't have immunity or something.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><i>Between Psi Disable and Mind Control, Psi Dominators are one of the most important enemies to not let get a turn, which is a bit of a reversal from Mind Control-capable enemies in the prior two games. The crux of the issue is that, surprisingly, Psi Dominators have no AI shackles to prevent them from Mind Controlling whichever agent is about to get a turn. As Chimera Squad also retains the XCOM 2 behaviors for Mind Controlled units, a Dominator taking its turn can result in one agent abandoning Cover and taking a flanking shot at another agent while also pulling themselves out into the open, at which point whatever enemy acts after them gets a free shot at them. While flanking shots are much less devastating in Chimera Squad than XCOM 2 thanks to crits being uniformly weak, that's still a very bad situation to end up in.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Relative to War of the Chosen, the player has also lost some anti-Mind Control tools (eg Stand By Me), and what you retain is more awkward: Solace still exists, but if you're not obsessively picking Shelter as one of your starting agents every run... you can't count on having access to Solace in a given run. (Notably, your first run is <b>forced</b> to not start with Shelter) Even if you grab him every run, you also have to pick Solace instead of Soul Storm every time, which is a more meaningful limitation than a Psi Operative needing spend some time training in the Psi Lab in XCOM 2. Similarly, Mind Shields are no longer an early unlock every run can count on having fairly quickly if they want them, instead being locked behind completing the Progeny Investigation: any run that does Gray Phoenix before the Progeny is extremely unlikely to have any Mind Shields, let alone enough to cover the whole team.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>In conjunction with these tools not being as widely useful as in War of the Chosen in the first place, you're a lot less likely to be kind of incidentally neutering this threat; in War of the Chosen, it was entirely possible to sort of accidentally stumble into laughing off Mind Control threats because you happened to be equipping Mind Shields on Tired soldiers and bringing Bondmate pairs and so find yourself with a team that's more or less immune to Mind Control without having been worrying about Mind Control at all. Not so in Chimera Squad.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>As Dominators are actually fairly durable by Chimera Squad standards, prioritizing taking out Dominators is often actually pretty harmful to your ability to neuter other threats; spending two full agent turns on taking out a Dominator often means letting 1-4 other enemies act pretty freely!</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Which touches on an aspect of Chimera Squad's design that I think works extremely well in abstract and... not as well in execution, but still surprisingly well.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Thing is, a common difficulty with game design is that a player achieving ever greater system mastery often 'flattens' the experience as they reach the higher end of the skill curve. If a skilled player can defeat every enemy before it gets to do anything, then differences based on 'what they'll do once provoked/once they get a turn/whatever' don't matter to players who have reached the point of being able to do win immediately, reliably. More egregiously obvious is of course when a single strategy is widely a 'winning strategy', where the player solves <b>all</b> problems in the game with a single plan, never even bothering to break out alternatives -which, to be clear, is still a variation on the principle of 'system mastery flattening the game experience', just one where system mastery is overly-simplistic. ("Have you found the I Win Button Y/N?")</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Either way, system mastery can result in not having any experiential difference between two enemies that are, on paper, completely different enemies. You encounter them, you kill them in one turn with The Correct Answer, there you go.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>A common dev response to these issues is to simply inflate enemy stats in an attempt to prevent players from instantly annihilating everything; if everything has ten times as much HP as normal, than surely players won't be able to instantly kill them anymore? At that point differences relying on getting a chance to act will get to actually matter, right? But this rarely is a good solution; plenty of games end up with players <b>still</b> finding ways to reach a point of instantly killing these outrageously durable enemies, and if it <b>does</b> produce the desired result it usually leads to an unfun, uninteresting experience, where players regularly find themselves having to play out 10 minutes of combat while knowing 1 minute in that they're going to win, making the remaining 9 minutes a time-wasting formality.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Understandably, players tend to not like this, and in turn individual devs often try looking to different answers in future games after running headfirst into this scenario personally.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Notably, XCOM 2 itself has shades of this problem, where skilled play can pretty reliably arrange to pull pods one at a time and then kill the pod's members before they actually do anything. The game holds up pretty well even with this, as enemies have assorted differences that apply even if they never act (high Armor on some enemies, high Defense on others, reactive teleports, uses Cover vs not using Cover...), but it <b>is</b> a minor flaw with the game that's worth trying to minimize in successor games.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Which is what Chimera Squad does, in part through the Timeline system; what an enemy <b>can</b> do often remains meaningfully a factor in the player experience end even if the player specifically keeps preventing such enemies from getting a chance to act, because juggling all the threat profiles alongside the consideration of turn order and cooldowns and limited-use capabilities leads to the player having to make judgment calls based on said information. That is, if a player decides a specific enemy getting a turn is <b>so</b> unacceptable that they're willing to use up Items, blow their Team Up charge, put long-cooldown abilities on cooldown, and even let other enemies get turns that they could potentially easily stop, all to make sure The Most Problematic Enemy never gets to act, then the 'weight' of its capabilities and stats is very much impacting the player's experience and choices.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Technically, you can say much the same about, say, XCOM 2, but part of the difference is that the Timeline spacing things out allows the consequences of <b>each</b> individual enemy to loom closer in relevance. In XCOM 2, if I pull a pod and start taking it out, it's often somewhat immaterial what 2 of the 3 members of the pod are because I trivially take them out with multiple soldier actions to spare, where I'm not having to make judgment calls about how to respond to them <b>specifically</b>, not in a way that cares about their particular capabilities. In Chimera Squad, though, I'm always having to think at least a little bit ahead to consider whether the current agent should burn limited resources or make use of powerful abilities with long cooldowns, and so really think about what the next few enemies can <b>do</b> and what's called for in context.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Now, I said I think this all works better in abstract than in execution, and I do mean that; Chimera Squad's default tendencies lean toward things being easy enough that there is a very large extent to which you can be pretty lazy and thoughtless in how you solve Encounters and still get through pretty cleanly. The game also struggles a bit with being Interestingly Difficult without catapulting straight to Unreasonably Difficult; early in a run, when you largely don't <b>have</b> powerful-but-limited tools to use to solve more difficult Encounters, it's easy for Encounters to swing wildly between 'no threat whatsoever' and 'two agents are Bleeding Out and the other two are nearly out of HP in the successful attempt that was reasonably lucky'. (Hitting Sacred Coil as your first Investigation is particularly prone to this issue) The game probably should've actually had something akin to how Frag Grenades are available unlimitedly immediately in the prior two games; the design relies too much on the assumption that the player has powerful limited-use tools that they're meant to strategically burn on tougher situations.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Even so, when it works well, it works quite well, and even when it works poorly it's still bett<b>er</b> than XCOM 2 about making me reliably care about and think about a given enemy's abilities, overall.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>I doubt XCOM 3 will bring back the Timeline, but I am curious if it will try some other experiment to try to recapture these types of benefits.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Returning to Dominators more specifically, though...</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>A mechanic where I'm not entirely sure whether it's intentional or some manner of bug is that sometimes freeing an agent from Mind Control will result in the agent immediately getting an out-of-turn pair of action points, thus letting them take basically a full turn out of regular turn order. I <b>think</b> it's basically meant to be a 'refund', where it triggers if the agent spent their proper turn Mind Controlled and so lessens the impact of them being Mind Controlled by at least giving back the turn's worth of actions you'd have gotten, but I'm genuinely not sure it's an intended mechanic at all.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Notably, I've inconsistently seen the same thing with Verge's Puppeteer, where sometimes an enemy has Puppeteer end and then immediately takes action under enemy control even though they're not displayed as having a proper turn on the Timeline right then.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>The fact that it <b>is</b> inconsistent on both ends at least indicates it's buggy, whether it's a bug that it happens at all or meant to happen but buggily not happening consistently.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Regardless, that's something to keep in mind, both when fighting Dominators and when using Puppeteer.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>--------------------------------------------------</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Aesthetically, Dominators hit a similar note to Paladins in terms of looking to be a civilian using household materials to prep for combat. Unlike Paladins, they don't look to be prepped in expectation of rubber bullets and tear gas -or perhaps they're just not as <b>well</b>-prepared for combat in general. Dominators have a lot of bits that might be intended first and foremost to assist in carrying loot, and their core clothing looks to be everyday wear with an expectation that the footing will be dangerous. (The full boots, when I've previously pointed out that Sectoids seem to largely prefer to be barefoot or something close to it) Notably, Gray Phoenix is presented as being first and foremost a group that's been scavenging tech from the war and occupation; it's easy to imagine Dominators are essentially just Sectoids who have historically been exploring abandoned ADVENT outposts and whatnot in search of stuff that got left behind (And hasn't been scavenged by someone else yet), where they've historically been expecting to not be getting into combat and are perhaps slow to adapt to the new Gray Phoenix agenda.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Interestingly, it even actually makes a kind of sense for Sectoids who have been scavenging to have a psionic stun and mind control. Scavenging for tech in a post-Ethereal Earth would logically involve risking running into ADVENT loyalists who haven't been caught, as well as Chryssalids; if I were a Sectoid in such conditions, I'd want to be able to defend myself in a pinch from these psi-susceptible threats, and wouldn't be worried that using mind control might go over poorly with the authorities; who's going to object to using mind control in self-defense to buy time while fleeing? Who's going to complain if I make one Chryssalid attack another as part of this? I'd honestly expect this to be less likely to get me in trouble than carrying a plasma weapon around, especially given Reclamation exists and has an explicit government-mandated agenda to get advanced weaponry off the street.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Of course, you can wave off the exact ability differences between Paladins and Dominators as pure gameplay, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that's really all the devs were thinking in this case, but it's neat that this <b>is</b> intuitively sensible in-universe regardless of whether it was consciously intended or not. It'd be pretty great if later materials ran with something like this -XCOM 2 already experimented with giving your soldiers variable backgrounds (Though I've never commented on it before because it had zero mechanical impact), and it could be neat if this was returned to in XCOM 3 and such bits showed up in such.<br /></i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Narratively, Dominators are yet another unit that's never directly addressed. I could comment on how there's radio dialogue alluding to psi dampers that at least some Sectoids are apparently required to wear, but said dialogue is actually tied exclusively to the <b>Progeny</b> Investigation; it won't trigger during the Gray Phoenix Investigation. So that's probably not the devs making roundabout commentary on Dominators in particular.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>To be fair, they don't really need much direct addressment. Dominators literally just do 2 of the 3 things Mindspin could do in XCOM 2, just as deliberately chosen actions now rather than it occurring randomly off one action. It'd be <b>nice</b> to get some idea as to whether this gameplay point is meant to be in any way narratively meaningful, but ultimately it's not terribly important, and as I've noted before Chimera Squad clearly prioritized leaving possibilities open for future games; if we get any real context, it's liable to come from XCOM 3 committing to specifics for its own reasons.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>So the Dominator works well enough overall. Not as excellently as the Paladin, but fine enough.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>--------------------------------------------------</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Next time, we cover one of the murkiest enemies in Chimera Squad: <a href="https://www.vigaroe.com/2023/12/chimera-squad-enemy-analysis-gray.html">Berserkers</a>.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>See you then.</i></div>Ghoul Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15165232279081041131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656428975201272042.post-56983785754366138812023-11-20T00:57:00.000-08:002023-11-27T03:34:07.205-08:00Chimera Squad Enemy Analysis: Gray Phoenix Paladin<div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwIyrs6VgWnyLFMHHxB47lJ8a4JpNXg4GxUrFhlFV4F86e6bApgTlsY4yOQMablPAs1J9PW2tNFKsveXOf5u4PWGXYwcczz_vPPKKc0VHamtgaKapuTCfQAWhEua0vjy_-2lEhE6voLrVK/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwIyrs6VgWnyLFMHHxB47lJ8a4JpNXg4GxUrFhlFV4F86e6bApgTlsY4yOQMablPAs1J9PW2tNFKsveXOf5u4PWGXYwcczz_vPPKKc0VHamtgaKapuTCfQAWhEua0vjy_-2lEhE6voLrVK/w640-h360/20201113012247_1.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="text-align: left;">HP: 6/6/7/7 (+1/+4)</span></div></div>Aim: 70/70/75/75 (+2/+5)<br />Mobility: 10<br />Damage: 3 (3-5/4-6)<br />Will: 80 (+10/+20)<br />Initiative: 30<div>Psi: 40 <i>(As far as I'm aware they don't use this)</i><br /><div><br /></div><div><i>Paladins add spread to their damage in addition to a flat number, which results in an unusual progression I can't encapsulate with my usual +#/+# format, hence why I'm just giving you the final damage numbers.</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Alert Actions: Move to a better location, Hunker Down.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>As far as I'm aware, this is it for Paladin Alert actions, which is a bit surprising as they have a non-offensive action that seems natural to slot into being an Alert action. I've never seen an Alert Paladin use Mind Merge as an Alert action, though, even though I've given them plenty of opportunities. It's possible I've had a weirdly long streak of odd luck on this point, I suppose, but it seems unlikely.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>I dunno, maybe Mind Merge actually proved problematic to make an Alert action somehow?</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>In any event, actually covering Mind Merge;</i></div><div><br /></div><div><img alt="" data-original-height="39" data-original-width="40" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF7QjkyqxujPCthP0fnkv6zGj74jgmlU1OxJ1iR14Tw-IWgewcK6vCIPPoDsxaTQfeo1RpXr0dFUXnZ4TzcHNXyCIbkv6AMOQA_w-J6x0dbThUZ-UvrCuCsBifezJaINeB-HlP3VuiteTH/s16000/Mind+Merge+Chimera+Squad.jpg" />Mind Merge</div><div><b>1 action point</b>: Adds 4 ablative HP, 1 Mobility, 10 Aim, and 25 crit chance to one target ally. Kills beneficiary if the Paladin dies. 1 turn cooldown.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Note that Paladins are forbidden from using Mind Merge on Praetorians, Necromancers, Berserkers and Faceless. They're actually excluded from a bunch of other stuff, too, mechanically, but nothing that's allowed to matter in normal play, such as faction leaders and boss enemies that can never be seen alongside a Paladin. I'm particularly curious as to why Faceless are excluded; the other options are pretty clearly trying to limit how bad for the enemy team the 'beneficiary dies if user dies' aspect is, and in the Necromancer's case is possibly bug prevention to boot (I can imagine that the code handles poorly the scenario of 'Paladin dies, so now Necromancer dies, so now the Necromancer's summons are supposed to die'), but Faceless aren't particularly durable or otherwise high-value targets. I dunno, maybe Faceless at some point did disguise themselves in Chimera Squad and this limit was to prevent Paladins from targeting them when they were disguised as civilians?</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>In any event, a weird quirk is that Bluescreen Rounds will cause an agent's weapon to bypass the ablative HP, even though the ablative HP is supposed to be psionic protection as opposed to a technological energy shield or the like. It won't do any damage to the ablative HP, mind, so depending on your order of operations and all it won't necessarily meaningfully benefit you; if you knock a target to 1 HP with Bluescreen Rounds-backed fire and have to follow up with attacks that don't bypass the ablative HP, the initial shot ignoring the ablative HP didn't help any.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Mind Merge is of course the return of the Priest's Holy Warrior which itself was the return of the Sectoid's Mind Merge in Enemy Unknown/Within, so we're back to a Sectoid providing this, but like the ADVENT Priest's Holy Warrior this isn't species-specific of an effect, which is nice and honestly makes more sense; Mind Merge being species-locked was always questionable from an in-universe mechanics perspective.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>The Paladin as a user is actually my favorite iteration of the concept so far in terms of raw gameplay; in base Enemy Unknown, abusing the 2-for-1 aspect of Mind Merge was cute but rarely all that impactful because it was mostly tied to the most basic, least threatening enemy of the game. In Enemy Within it became more impactful with the introduction of Mechtoids, but it always bothered me how arbitrary it was that Mechtoids merely took a modest amount of damage instead of being killed outright; I understood the game design motive (It would be really janky if optimal play when encountering a Mechtoid was to let it get Mind Merged and then instant-kill it by killing the Sectoid that performed the Mind Merge), but it was still counterintuitive and could've been avoided entirely. War of the Chosen's ADVENT Priests were a decent new attempt at the idea, being by default pod leaders generally targeting lower-value allies and so it wasn't 'cheating' to leverage the 2-for-1 aspect but it was still worth pursuing if possible... but I really didn't like how it was combined with the random chance of Sustain on ADVENT Priests, where pursuing the 2-for-1 could be punished by literal RNG.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>The Paladin finally strikes a nice balance; like the Priest, they're a relatively high-end unit who is generally going to be Mind Merging a unit with similar or lesser HP to them, and so you're not getting crazy amounts of free damage if you get the 2-for-1, and indeed there's a decent rate at which you'll find yourself in a position to potentially down multiple enemies some other way (eg Torque's Poison Spit, Zephyr's Crowd Control), where targeting the Paladin post Mind Merge isn't just mindlessly optimal to do essentially every time. This then further intersects with the Timeline mechanics in interesting ways; normally once an enemy has acted, they become a low priority because their turn has been shoved to the end of the Timeline, and so you're better off trying to take out enemies who will be acting before your other agents. A Paladin that has performed a Mind Merge is a rare case where you can potentially be better off targeting this unit that's just acted, such as if the Mind Merge recipient is going to act next and your current agent can down the Paladin right now.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>The Paladin being moderately durable also means there's a decent rate at which you're having to think ahead to determine whether prioritizing the Paladin is really all that optimal. That is, if it will take two agent actions to down the Paladin, whereas your current agent could down some frailer enemy right now, the 2-for-1 deal aspect of targeting the Paladin isn't actually overwhelmingly favored, especially if both of your agents expect to take out a frailer enemy if they target such frailer enemies; in that case you're spending 2 agent actions to down 2 enemies either way, so is targeting the Paladin really the superior choice? Especially since this intersects with the Timeline point I brought up a moment ago; if your current agent can down the enemy that will act before your next agent, and your second agent can down the enemy that will act before your third agent, whereas the Paladin Mind Merged an enemy who won't act until after your fourth agent (eg the Paladin and another enemy went after your very first agent post-Breach, and both survived your first agent's turn), then it's actually probably smarter to down those two enemies and deny the enemy team turns <b>now</b> than to go for the 2-for-1 of taking out the Paladin.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This is all nice on its own, making this mechanic have a surprising amount of nuance, but is especially important in the context of Paladins having...</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><img alt="" data-original-height="39" data-original-width="39" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhkCQDsQa0qgc5O4Him_KRuJthmagSNhrmL9khRVt-E2yrGLXUbpbP6WFZnB5c4Pg0uNcuvtUNjqfRZyux5zTw4iSw_wc8lsHNyEiQf-zgn7Hx-88spEqvysnDK-m04k6_br90mAxgLzdZ/s16000/Impel+Icon.jpg" />Impel</div><div><b>1 action point</b>: One ally gains an immediate action point. Can only be used on the unit currently being Mind Merged. 2 turn cooldown.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>... Impel, which they can only use on a Mind Merged target.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Before continuing this point, I should note that while a Paladin can in fact Mind Merge a target and then immediately Impel them (You can see this in action via Puppeteering a Paladin), I've yet to see the AI do so. They far prefer to save Impel for the turn after the one in which they Mind Merged -which makes sense, since doing so is essentially producing a free turn after a bit of a delay.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>That bit of context is why I say it's especially important the player has cause to not always prioritize the Paladin as Obviously Optimal. If the mechanics were such that the player should just always target a Paladin after its Mind Merge is performed (Which is much how things worked out in Enemy Unknown/Within), then the Paladin would basically never have an opportunity to actually leverage Impel and the ability's existence would border into being a technicality. As-is, while good play will still often prevent a Paladin from using Impel, that's only in the sense that the broader design encourages limiting opportunities for enemies to actually get turns, not in the sense that a skilled player is likely to never let Paladins in <b>particular </b>get a meaningfully useful turn.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Impel itself also adds a further layer of complexity to juggle when thinking ahead, in that letting a Paladin act twice in a row is a disproportionate threat; maybe you <b>should</b> let those two frailer enemies act and prioritize the Paladin, in the scenario I laid out a minute ago, depending on how dangerous those two enemies are and how dangerous the Mind Merged unit is. It also means it can be worth considering simply targeting the Mind Merged enemy, depending on how everything has shaken out; if you've ended up substantially weakening the Mind Merged target with splash damage and whatnot while never quite catching the Paladin, it may make more sense to finish the Mind Merge target instead of trying to target the Paladin; you'll prevent the Mind Merged unit from getting 2 turns to shoot with boosted accuracy and crit chance regardless of whether you take out the Paladin or the Mind Merge recipient, after all, so if the recipient is possible for your current agent to down and not the Paladin... well, there you go.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><i>All this stuff doesn't come up <b>every</b> time you fight a Paladin -there will absolutely be times where a Paladin targets a unit who will act soon where you have the tools to take out the Paladin immediately and so you just get free damage- but the Paladin is one of the stronger bits of Chimera Squad's design, where sometimes everything comes together to make an interesting puzzle that requires thought and judgment calls to correctly disentangle. When Chimera Squad has these kinds of moments happen, they're great; it's just unfortunate that even on the highest difficulty they're uncommon overall.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Oh, and a final mechanical note: while you can in fact Mind Merge your agents, it's not something I'd recommend doing, as the Paladin going down will result in the agent immediately starting to Bleed Out. (Which is less bad than what I'd expected when testing, honestly; I was figuring it would kill the agent outright) If you've got an agent low on HP and have Puppeteered a Paladin who is in good condition, I suppose you're not increasing your risk particularly, but by default it's a pretty big risk for pretty mild rewards. Do keep in mind the potential to Impel an agent, though; if the right agent acting now can reliably end the Encounter, Mind Merge into Impel may actually be the safest option available.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>----------------------------------------------------------</div><div><br /></div><div><i>I really love the Paladin's aesthetic.</i></div></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>In general terms, the Paladin looks to be a regular citizen doing their best to armor up in the face of an expected serious police response; they've got eye protection that looks to be some kind of Sectoid eyeglasses or goggles (Sectoids lack ears and a nose, so human-made glasses obviously would be difficult or impossible to keep on), they've got a scarf pulled high enough to completely cover their mouth (and possbly noseholes; I'm not entirely sure whether Sectoids are supposed to entirely lack noses or if they're just restricted to non-obvious noseholes), which collectively would protect against tear gas (Or whatever City 31 would use as an equivalent) as well as the eyewear minimizing the odds of rubber bullets putting out an eye, and the body of their clothing looks to be something thick and a little rigid, akin to wearing a leather jacket as makeshift armor.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>In some sense none of this is terribly noteworthy, just pulling inspiration from real-life examples of civilians doing their best to use household materials to prep for battle against anti-riot forces... but it's clear somebody put actual thought into how to translate the aesthetic to a <b>Sectoid</b> in specific, such as how I already pointed out that human eyewear designed to sit on the nose and ears obviously wouldn't work at all on a Sectoid. (Hence the strap running around their entire head and pulled tight) The closest thing to a complaint I have is that I'd expect some manner of headwear, and I'm willing to shrug that off in part as making sure the player can readily see the Paladin is a Sectoid and not a hybrid or human; with how covered-up Paladins are, adding a hat or helmet really would make it easy to guess wrong, even with how lanky Sectoids are and how their hands do look noticeably different when viewed up close.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>And honestly, the Sectoid head shape is such that I could readily imagine Sectoids don't care for hats in general. It's entirely possible it would be a huge pain to get a hat to both stay on their head and not block their vision; even for actual humans this can be a nuisance, and the Sectoid head shape and eye placement is such that they don't have a clear equivalent to a forehead as far as this goes. That is, they have an area that I imagine plenty of people naturally think of as a forehead, but where on a human the forehead is a noticeable gap between the upper portion of the eyes and the top of the head that means a hat can sit pretty low on the head with little or no obstruction of vision, on a Sectoid there's basically no gap between the top of their eyes and the top of their head. Probably only hats that rely on a strap running under the chin to stay on would work about equally well for humans and Sectoids -which has obvious compatibility problems with the Paladin's scarf!</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>As a nice bonus, the Paladin actually hits similar territory as the ADVENT Officer, in terms of looking plausibly Cool And Heroic, which is a pleasant surprise after how XCOM 2 defaulted heavily to enemy forces being Evil Bad Guy Designs. (When, as I've complained about before, that didn't make sense in context) I would in fact expect Gray Phoenix forces to default, where they had the opportunity to express themselves on this topic, to a Heroic Common Person Aesthetic; they think of themselves as regular people who have switched from one form of oppression to another and are fighting to return to the homes that were stolen from them, after all. So a Sectoid cobbling together makeshift protection and ending up with a plausibly Cool And Heroic look is really something I'd <b>expect</b> to happen.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This gets into questions of whether aliens would share an aesthetic sense with humans in even the most general of senses (Especially considering humans already have an incredibly wide range of aesthetics that absolutely do disagree with each other pretty hard on various points), but Chimera Squad makes it clear that its primary approach is to 'humanize' the aliens and treat most of them as being not particularly different from local humans at all in terms of culture, aesthetic sensibilities, etc. I might feel that realistically a Muton wouldn't automatically agree that a black suit is formalwear appropriate to a city's mayor, but Chimera Squad is choosing to emphasize similarities as part of its trend of inclusiveness -that differences are acknowledged and their impact referenced, but Sectoids, Vipers, Mutons, and even Faceless are all meant to feel like a regular person you don't find weird or offputting within the context of City 31's social environment. And that's fair and even admirable, so I'm not going to belabor the alien aesthetic point; it would be rather missing the point to try to argue that alien aesthetics should be more alien.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Normally I'd talk about narrative elements here, but part of what's great about the Paladin's aesthetic is how the narrative end of things is conveyed so clearly and senibly by the aesthetics; this is a Regular Citizen Sectoid who is doing their best with civilian-accessible equipment </i><i>(Plus a beam weapon, but shhh)</i><i> to prep themselves for a hostile response from law enforcement, as you'd expect given the general framework of what Gray Phoenix is. There's specific questions I could ask and that would be nice to have answered by materials at some point -for example, did the Ethereal regime even <b>have </b>Sectoids you could meaningfully describe as Not Military, or should I be assuming a Civilian Gray Phoenix Sectoid means 'a Sectoid soldier who tried to integrate for a while, but then decided to join Gray Phoenix', or what- but nothing truly <b>important</b> for Chimera Squad itself to answer.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>So I don't really have anything to say about narrative bits I haven't already said.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>----------------------------------------------------------</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Next time, we cover the other Gray Phoenix Sectoid, the <a href="https://www.vigaroe.com/2023/11/chimera-squad-enemy-analysis-gray_27.html">Dominator</a>.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>See you then.</i></div>Ghoul Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15165232279081041131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656428975201272042.post-38409409779578543222023-11-12T22:35:00.000-08:002023-11-20T00:58:14.085-08:00Chimera Squad Enemy Analysis: Gray Phoenix Faceless<div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgddNlYL1PwgJuZmt12u1COrjgRLrwtqbqHzsOCdO5cQWie-tsC35Wb_Pyo_-w1_iAHLTRi4QV9jdi1BykuJN5JW8fQyBZI6Ak3tcqz4IT4MciH7zn8jRX9eQWByCScfuKx1944FD0Q_Yr4/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgddNlYL1PwgJuZmt12u1COrjgRLrwtqbqHzsOCdO5cQWie-tsC35Wb_Pyo_-w1_iAHLTRi4QV9jdi1BykuJN5JW8fQyBZI6Ak3tcqz4IT4MciH7zn8jRX9eQWByCScfuKx1944FD0Q_Yr4/w640-h360/20200427203836_1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div></div><div style="text-align: left;">HP: 8 (+1/+4)</div>Defense: 10<br />Aim: 70/70/75/75 (+2/+5)<br />Mobility: 14<br />Damage: 3-4 (+1/+2)<br />Will: 50 (+10/+20)<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilIA8toP8Q5NWHJ5OYkOORBTfeYLznGbX2F-wMqvf8JzsApDYeS0LjvUM-qDTtyvOIy4fafRis-DJfJlTRwMJoqqMJ6aGLM3LryQ6fDuC5V2M2liKpnAnb-0_Kynj_-paOLsdHL2BlZEVO/"></a>Initiative: 50<div><br /></div><div><i>Yeah, Faceless are another enemy whose HP is never touched by difficulty. I don't get why; they're one of the enemies I'd say really <b>needed</b> more HP on higher difficulties to affect their threat profile.</i><br /><div><br /></div><div>Alert actions: None. Can never be Aggressive, either.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Note that, like the Archon, Faceless can still be Alert, it's just the only significance is that you won't get the Surprised Aim bonus against an Alert Faceless.</i></div><br /><div><img alt="" data-original-height="39" data-original-width="40" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFU2YguAA3f8BEGju_kPgVaWkm9U3OuInJ-ushyphenhyphen6_liN_coGujmhyphenhyphenP3yWle0lyc9thr86bJgDyC8-XfJzDIuGJOiLPJWS2zbWFC7jEdJrQF7HUbuLtuO8Q-9aPG1R-cVeJWZHPFnltQ8nD/s16000/Claws+Chimera+Squad.jpg" />Scything Claws</div><div><b>Passive</b>: The primary weapon of the Faceless is a melee attack that strikes all targets in a cone (3 tiles long and 3 tiles wide at the farthest point), as well as wrecking destructible objects in the area.</div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Scything Claws itself is unchanged. Same strike zone and everything.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>However, Scything Claws tearing up terrain is <b>much </b>less of a threat in Chimera Squad than in XCOM 2 for two basic reasons: firstly, the Timeline system means it's a lot more likely you'll be able to react to an agent's Cover being smashed by doing something to protect them. Secondly, Chimera Squad just plain does <b>not</b> have destructible floors: a Faceless can't inflict fall damage from taking a swipe at your people.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>The shocking height on the strike zone is also a lot less likely to come up than in XCOM 2; maps in Chimera Squad are more prone to being flat or close to flat than in XCOM 2, and for various reasons your squad is much less likely to be hunched at the edge of high ground to then be hit by Scything Claws from a Faceless standing on a floor that's multiple Z-levels below your squad. I personally have <b>never</b> had it come up in Chimera Squad, and honestly will not be surprised if this will remain so no matter how many runs I do.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>The potential to catch multiple agents is arguably a bit more relevant than in XCOM 2, in the sense that it's possible to have a Faceless going early enough to potentially catch 2-3 agents who haven't gotten a chance to move yet and where the automatic post-Breach placements clumped them enough for this to happen, where in XCOM 2 you did in fact have to <b>yourself </b>clump your soldiers at least a <b>little</b> for Scything Claws to catch multiple at once. So if you're pretty obsessive about spreading out your squad in both games, it's more likely a Faceless will get a multi-target hit in at some point in Chimera Squad than in XCOM 2. This is in part a playstyle thing, though; if you're prone to clumping a little in XCOM 2 (And there's arguments for doing so), you may find multi-target hits crop up <b>less</b> in Chimera Squad. (For one thing, your maximum squad size is smaller)</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Overall, though, it's pretty forgettable a quality now.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmF2pMWCLx6s1AhIn5luVhQSDAtT34ckVXlV1Eu9qJUeAfmyvzKearf6BgHjZYD9QSOstiVbQBubyfSUwI0d-IpCdpqMISI88d51lpbDtYDmGV1jB5JfEz215QWGRXcJmQVb8ynhI9MuNY/s1600/Hardened.png"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmF2pMWCLx6s1AhIn5luVhQSDAtT34ckVXlV1Eu9qJUeAfmyvzKearf6BgHjZYD9QSOstiVbQBubyfSUwI0d-IpCdpqMISI88d51lpbDtYDmGV1jB5JfEz215QWGRXcJmQVb8ynhI9MuNY/s400/Hardened.png" /></a>Hardened<br /><b>Passive: </b>Does not make use of Cover, but does not suffer penalties from being in the open.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>As I noted with the Archon, this is a lot less impactful than in XCOM 2 because crits are so weak that being unable to get the in-the-open crit bonus doesn't really matter.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>So instead I'm going to note here that Faceless in Chimera Squad do <b>not</b> pretend to be helpless civlians or otherwise make use of their transformation. As such, their limitations in terms of being a dedicated melee attacker who isn't even move-and-melee have no real qualifiers; where in XCOM 2 a Faceless would often start right in your squad's face and so easily get a free hit, Faceless in Chimera Squad really just have to walk up from a distance and so can almost always be entirely ignored on their first turn.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Not helping them is how their HP has taken a hit; 8 HP is how much Faceless had on <b>Rookie</b> difficulty in XCOM 2. The 10 HP they had on the middle difficulties and 12 HP they had on Legendary meant that even when encountering wandering in the open via an early Savage Sitrep they were decent threats just by virtue of being very difficult to quickly put down with early-game firepower. Admittedly Chimera Squad has depressed the player's firepower, but from experience I'd argue that the loss of their ambush mechanics is such a huge setback for them they'd still be one of the least dangerous Gray Phoenix enemies even if they had 12 HP.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>They've admittedly also picked up 10 Defense, but as I've noted before Chimera Squad is <b>really</b> fond of giving the player damaging tools that don't do accuracy checks. I honestly completely overlooked this stat boost in just playing the game because it really isn't very important.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_-8UO29pO7l9UhDvy9O7YuS7vgSZU0M6sKQ6tRboVBRS_hg3y8Bm0qEDerjVoCa-hUE3D98u7iIBBjkqZXhWA_J9I3e8G53Mgy5w9sCsY9mzwRcT5H6HFqGQnAnZSMUpEUbn_EdAet2a4/s1600/Faceless+Regeneration.png"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_-8UO29pO7l9UhDvy9O7YuS7vgSZU0M6sKQ6tRboVBRS_hg3y8Bm0qEDerjVoCa-hUE3D98u7iIBBjkqZXhWA_J9I3e8G53Mgy5w9sCsY9mzwRcT5H6HFqGQnAnZSMUpEUbn_EdAet2a4/s400/Faceless+Regeneration.png" /></a>Regeneration</div><div><b>Passive</b>: Faceless regenerate 2 HP per turn.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Note that this does <b>not</b> purge Poison or Burn the way it did in XCOM 2. The heal does occur before damage over time effects trigger so it's still protective to some extent -Poison can't kill a Faceless on its own, for example- but much less so than in XCOM 2.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><i>I kind of wish Regeneration was improved by later Acts, not to mention that Faceless base HP was higher as I implied a moment ago. In the current state, there's rarely any reason to let Regeneration trigger in the first place, and in the event that you do arrange for it to trigger then its impact is okay if it's your first Act and generally entirely ignorable if it's a later Act. 2 damage negated is respectable when your agents shoot for 3-4, 3-5, or 4-6 damage; foolishly shooting a Faceless once and then ignoring it for a couple turns may cancel out all the damage you did. When your weakest shots are going to be 6-7 damage plus a damage over time effect, Regeneration is probably never going to matter unless you're actively <b>trying</b> to stall so it trigger multiple times. If it had added 1 HP per Act, it would still fall behind a bit, but it would be more likely to be meaningfully relevant.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Also, I should explicitly point out Faceless can be rendered Unconscious, and that Regeneration won't wake them up or anything.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAws6gxZOI4to5VXdRZH9sqVMtREMVCGmi0E3tzu3EoSfTMR01yrSzi_vAbxzsLbTC_nXPNiSfOakGnM-S3kNYopeHowO7SRm2u7w0PhyLuCbbTKQxxQWPr9MEnzpbzJBbcm_zQF48fJE1/s400/Leap.png" />Leap<br /><b>Passive</b>: Can travel Z-levels freely as part of normal movement.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Like in XCOM 2, this doesn't actually have an icon or name or any apparent reference to it at all. This is true of all jump-capable enemies in Chimera Squad, just like XCOM 2.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>However, it's <b>far</b> less relevant than in XCOM 2, as Chimera Squad is much less fond of significant Z-level differences in general and when it does do them there's usually multiple easy paths for getting up them. This is further exacerbated by the Timeline and Encounter system; in XCOM 2, you could plausibly do stuff like activate a Berserker's pod, kill its podmates so no ranged attackers are about, and move your squad to block off all the routes up to a roof you'd moved your squad up to before encountering the pod, and so it mattered that this wouldn't be effective against a Faceless. In Chimera Squad, your agent turns are alternated with enemy turns by default and every enemy on the map is active automatically; you'll basically never be in a position to do the shenanigans of blocking off climb points in the first place.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>It will intermittently result in a Faceless getting to attack where they wouldn't be able to do so if they lacked Leap, but as far as player-engagement stuff? It's kind of whatever in Chimera Squad, which is a pretty striking contrast with XCOM 2.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>In general, where Faceless in XCOM 2 were a memorable, distinctive enemy, in Chimera Squad they're largely an ineffectual punching bag you ignore for a Round and then stomp effortlessly. Alas.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>-------------------------------------------</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Narratively, Faceless aren't really addressed <b>directly and explicitly</b> by the game, but if you pay attention to background art it's clear the devs didn't just throw in Faceless without thought; there's a few different bits of art showing Faceless are supposed to be integrated into City 31 as full regular citizens. (My favorite by far is one of a Faceless in a construction worker outfit, hardhat included) We don't get any info on things like 'is there any social tension over the shapeshifting?' the way we get references to Sectoids wearing psi-dampers of some kind, but this isn't like how I'm genuinely unsure if Archons are 'properly canon' to Chimera Squad.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>The fact that Faceless got placed on Gray Phoenix in particular is interestingly suggestive all by itself. Gray Phoenix, as I went over in the intro, is a faction of people who want to get off Earth and go back to their homeworlds; Faceless being a part of Gray Phoenix forces thus suggests that Faceless are in fact a natural species the Ethereals ripped away from a homeworld, not what Tygan speculated in XCOM 2 of having been created in a lab by the Ethereals. It doesn't <b>demand</b> that this scenario be true -it could instead be that the Faceless joining up with Gray Phoenix want to go to space to <b>find</b> a place to be their own, for example- but it's easy to imagine the devs put Faceless on Gray Phoenix with the 'going back to their homeworld' model in mind.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>It's too bad Faceless are really obviously being hit by the 'this is a comparatively small project' stuff. It would've been nice to have Faceless being depicted with appropriate clothing, potentially actually wielding a ranged weapon of their own, potentially using their shapeshifting in new ways, not to mention getting audio that isn't just their moans, but all that was probably never on the table for Chimera Squad.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Conversely, I do hope that 'this is a comparatively small project' is <b>why </b>we don't get things like a new name for Faceless, rather than 'the devs would've mindlessly stuck with this even if this was XCOM 3 in its full glory'. I've previously commented on how the first game presented most alien names as Earthling-picked terms for their enemies and how it's weird in-universe that these have just become the canonically correct name for these species, but for Faceless in particular it's difficult to imagine the 'Faceless' name being anything other than a <b>really</b> hostile slur in-universe; 'Muton' is easy to accept as 'this is a roughly accurate representation of how you pronounce this people's name for themselves'. Faceless is... much harder to buy is anything like that.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>(Realistically speaking, if humanity ever encounters aliens that speak in a manner recognizably alike to human vocalizations it actually <b>is</b> pretty likely they'll have a name for themselves that happens to be pronounced similarly to words humans have for existing concepts; this is already an issue just when talking one human language to another human language, where a perfectly acceptable and ordinary name for a person or family in one language sounds a lot like something <b>completely different</b> in another language. But within the context of fiction, there are a variety of motives for not wanting an alien species to be The Forks or something unless it's one or both of deliberate comedy or actually meant to be an accurate descriptor of some kind that presumably isn't meant to be their internal name at all, so even though it technically is plausible for Faceless to internally have their species name be something that is phonetically close to the English word 'faceless', my default assumption is nobody on the development team is thinking in such terms</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>And even if they were, I'd still expect 'Faceless' to be <b>used</b> as an ugly slur in-universe such that the species would very possibly insist on a different name for outside use once they were integrated into the post-Ethereal society. So either way, I hope XCOM 3-or-whatever gives them a species name that's not 'Faceless')</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>In any event, Faceless being humanized to even this extent was one of the biggest pleasant surprises for me; Faceless have so many qualities I normally see get inextricably intertwined with Bad Guy-ness evenin works trying to press messages of acceptance and all that when I first learned of Chimera Squad I honestly assumed Faceless would either not be in the game at all, or get handled in a really hostile way. Faceless being treated as Just Another Regular Group Of People was a happy shock. I'd have loved to have a Faceless team member to cement the point, but I imagine this was not particularly feasible in terms of the game's technical and budgetary limitations. (I suppose Whisper could have been a Faceless? Maybe?) So honestly, I'm quite happy with this much...</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>... especially if XCOM 3 comes along and makes Faceless a part of your forces.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Here's hoping.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>-----------------------------------------------</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Next time, we move on to the first Gray Phoenix Sectoid: the <a href="https://www.vigaroe.com/2023/11/chimera-squad-enemy-analysis-gray_20.html">Paladin</a>.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>See you then.</i></div></div>Ghoul Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15165232279081041131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656428975201272042.post-6096752053829758972023-11-06T08:29:00.003-08:002023-11-12T22:36:09.572-08:00Chimera Squad Enemy Analysis: Gray Phoenix Python<div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKP1K5WCs0CAG8_Uzrd7IbZNBVK84PC12pW9MTN0Stww06Qdeb7iSd-oH9y-YxSyfryZKxgSAUxqXPlHNzfXIDfGSJwr8nKmh1L8aB52RL3e1uu5nWsnNcQ1hmvklZ1h_hnCEdCaNg4iG4/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKP1K5WCs0CAG8_Uzrd7IbZNBVK84PC12pW9MTN0Stww06Qdeb7iSd-oH9y-YxSyfryZKxgSAUxqXPlHNzfXIDfGSJwr8nKmh1L8aB52RL3e1uu5nWsnNcQ1hmvklZ1h_hnCEdCaNg4iG4/w640-h360/20201113003006_1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">HP: 6 (+1/+3)</div>Dodge: 15<br />Aim: 75/75/80/80 (+2/+5)<br />Mobility: 12<br />Damage: 2-4 (+1/+2)<br />Will: 50 (+10/+20)<br />Initiative: 30<div><br /></div><div><i>Yes, Pythons don't have difficulty affect their HP at all. It's odd.</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Alert Actions: Move to a better position, Hunker Down.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Pythons have only aggressive special actions, so this is unsurprising.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnRNrSuNcn4XtxI7E2lIJsEVvWwrGCYyros5WZHNCam6f_Wnt_2FgItomHyvEprsVMmF0T-Pl_P58IABLdPk_NSZEoUJFP2bSmIam1DEADuawUGs1fLDSeWkSKBY0m9zZ9bQ1r-UAFP3Iv/s1600/Poison+Immunity+Chimera+Squad.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnRNrSuNcn4XtxI7E2lIJsEVvWwrGCYyros5WZHNCam6f_Wnt_2FgItomHyvEprsVMmF0T-Pl_P58IABLdPk_NSZEoUJFP2bSmIam1DEADuawUGs1fLDSeWkSKBY0m9zZ9bQ1r-UAFP3Iv/s400/Poison+Immunity+Chimera+Squad.jpg" /></a>Poison Immunity<br /><b>Passive</b>: The Python cannot be Poisoned, and will not take damage from certain Poison-based attacks.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>This carries basically all the same connotations as when I discussed it on Adders; it probably doesn't matter if you're not using Torque, but does matter a decent amount if you are using Torque.</i></div><div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXXWibaxCNq7XdHi05shBtdX-wStyqPvM6v_fP0J2VEpCNUIMfMgk8XB_82_ShzTKv7xvkMCTRxKqAlSjMrZMuNKeqfQezwOrUFwVGPS8jE450l619m5DCbUYorU78i0Cin88xVYZXPPso/s1600/Tongue+Pull+Icon+Chimera+Squad.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXXWibaxCNq7XdHi05shBtdX-wStyqPvM6v_fP0J2VEpCNUIMfMgk8XB_82_ShzTKv7xvkMCTRxKqAlSjMrZMuNKeqfQezwOrUFwVGPS8jE450l619m5DCbUYorU78i0Cin88xVYZXPPso/s400/Tongue+Pull+Icon+Chimera+Squad.jpg" /></a>Tongue Pull<br /><b>1 Action Point</b>: The Python attempts to pull a single enemy adjacent to her current position, with a minimum range of 3 tiles and a maximum range of 12 tiles. Performs a normal accuracy check with +20 to Aim, and if successful pulls the target adjacent, at which point the Python instantly initiates a Bind. Some enemies cannot be targeted with Tongue Pull. 1 turn cooldown.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>This is straightforwardly the Viper Tongue Pull from XCOM 2, which is to say it's <b>not</b> Torque's souped-up version that can be used on allies. By a similar token, the post-pull Bind is automatic, where for Torque it's merely an option.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>That said, it fully benefits from Chimera Squad having developed Standard Skeleton Animations for Sectoids, Mutons, and Vipers, which is to say Pythons can Tongue Pull all your agents, and also means that if you Puppeteer a Python it absolutely can Tongue Pull another Python or the like. So it's noticeably more versatile than in XCOM 2.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Of course, talking about Tongue Pull requires talking about Bind, so on to that.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyeWAdPrhMogieCYlpHLVlU4HhDVH8Loro1jV2tB0fwwMyDrGI9xIM4iFpMeqIhZhdoQPS7AO1Htp2Iab7Z8KXQihjq15tZ011GZVB9H18emf-MWncNCnAGBieHhcKgZLczAh7PqSkTlCj/s1600/Bind+Icon+Chimera+Squad.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyeWAdPrhMogieCYlpHLVlU4HhDVH8Loro1jV2tB0fwwMyDrGI9xIM4iFpMeqIhZhdoQPS7AO1Htp2Iab7Z8KXQihjq15tZ011GZVB9H18emf-MWncNCnAGBieHhcKgZLczAh7PqSkTlCj/s400/Bind+Icon+Chimera+Squad.jpg" /></a>Bind<br /><b>Turn ending free action</b>: The Python immediately does 2 damage to an orthogonally adjacent target, and completely disables them. The enemy in question cannot be targeted until the Bind is terminated, other than by the Python electing to continue the Bind, in which case she'll do 2 more damage immediately. Each time the Python's turn rolls around again, she can abandon the Bind as a free action. She will also automatically terminate the Bind if she takes damage, doing so immediately after taking damage. Some enemies cannot be targeted by Bind.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Unlike Torque's version, this does <b>not</b> ignore Armor. Which is weird given Bind did ignore Armor in XCOM 2. Anyway, this means putting off Gray Phoenix until later and getting Mastercrafted Armor before you fight them halves Bind's damage -it doesn't get any Act-based bonuses.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>I'm also pretty sure Chimera Squad has removed the largely-irrelevant thing where Bind in XCOM 2 had some kind of damage scaling component on successive Bind turns. Not completely sure given I never understood the mechanics of that in the first place, but pretty sure. I've had a Python keep someone Bound 2 turns in a row a couple of times and both times their damage was the same every time, for one.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Note that the victim is much safer from other enemies than when Vipers Bound your soldiers in XCOM 2. In XCOM 2, AI shackles dissuaded enemies from targeting a Bound unit, but Bound units were perfectly <b>legal </b>to target, with this resulting in some enemies (eg Lost, the Chosen) ignoring the AI shackles saying 'you're not supposed to attack that unit' because their own AI overruled general AI stuff. In Chimera Squad, a Bound unit is actually an <b>illegal</b> target, and so AI going awry is inadequate to bypass this protection; only effects that aren't directly aimed at a unit can potentially catch a Bound agent. There aren't many of those in enemy hands in Chimera Squad, and some of them can't even share space with a Python (eg ADVENT Mecs with their Micromissiles), so this is very much a narrow edge case concern.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This of course benefits just as much from Tongue Pull being possible to use on Sectoids, Mutons, and Vipers. And yes, a Viper Binding a Viper looks very silly; it really looks like the victim Viper ought to be able to slither right out. This includes that it looks silly if a Python Binds Torque, to be explicit.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Like in XCOM 2, I've never seen an AI-controlled unit end a Bind manually. As far as I'm aware this option existing on the Python primarily matters because you can potentially Puppeteer them, much like it mostly mattered in XCOM 2 because you could Dominate a Viper. That said, a</i><i> surprising new way it matters is that Berserking a Python in the middle of a Bind will cause them to exit the Bind and then perform their Berserk action, making Verge's Battle Madness actually a very effective way to save an agent from a Bind. So that's a nifty edge case to be aware of if you're using Verge.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Pythons are actually noticeably less aggressive about using Bind as a standalone move than Vipers were in XCOM 2. They'll happily Bind someone you have stand orthogonally adjacent to them, but where Vipers in XCOM 2 would rush out into the open to Bind someone if you left a soldier in range for that to be an option, Chimera Squad's Pythons are reluctant to Bind someone unless they can be in Cover relative to the rest of your squad. Among other points, if you have someone melee a Python from a diagonal, the Python will often back off to new Cover and try to shoot them... unless the agent is along a strip of longer Cover, of course. Then the Python is basically guaranteed to go for the Bind, so long as the Cover does in fact shield them from your other agents.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Overall, Pythons are a surprisingly plain enemy in practice. I'm not sure they're coded to recognize that they can fix 'no target in Tongue Pull range' by getting closer, and enemies in Chimera Squad are <b>much</b> less aggressive about advancing than enemies in XCOM 2; a Python that's 13 or more tiles away will often either stay right where it is and fire a shot, or shuffle to High Cover -possibly moving <b>away</b> from your squad in the process- and fire a shot.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>They do default pretty heavily to using Tongue Pull if somebody <b>is</b> in range, mind, but it's surprisingly common for Pythons to end up functionally just a plain 'shoots at you' unit.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Aesthetically, Pythons are the most boring Viper enemy in the game, in the sense that they are basically just the XCOM 2 Viper but adapted from 'alien enforcer of the totalitarian government's will' to 'ragtag fighter with makeshift armor and a scavenged weapon'. They're <b>not</b> a straightforward reskin of the XCOM 2 Viper model, mind, though I suspect a lot of players assume so; the proportions on their head are different, the clothing elements are very different (Pythons lack the 'crown' or whatever that thing XCOM 2 Vipers had on their head is supposed to be, for one), and so on; the basic 'sketch' is similar as far as color scheme and all, but they're actually more divergent from XCOM 2 Viper design than Torque.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>But they're still not an Excitingly New Take On The Viper Look.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>---------------------------------------------</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Next time, we move on to <a href="https://www.vigaroe.com/2023/11/chimera-squad-enemy-analysis-gray_12.html">Faceless</a>, because Gray Phoenix has those. Yep.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>See you then.</i></div>Ghoul Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15165232279081041131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656428975201272042.post-27427774288142762222023-10-30T10:10:00.001-07:002023-11-06T08:31:02.714-08:00Chimera Squad Enemy Analysis: Gray Phoenix Adder<div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4CcnI9zvn2yrEWYKP-PCAc-MTUIzMtSIvGeCi1VldF3QEhmYuUpsuP6Chp9LxhXJNg76YS1HKKJGUSsN9FqT7vmN_U-FV5BlFUlh2GGtF_ybIS_yRW83o05QU8f7oqGV6vL3l-GBj6rX5/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4CcnI9zvn2yrEWYKP-PCAc-MTUIzMtSIvGeCi1VldF3QEhmYuUpsuP6Chp9LxhXJNg76YS1HKKJGUSsN9FqT7vmN_U-FV5BlFUlh2GGtF_ybIS_yRW83o05QU8f7oqGV6vL3l-GBj6rX5/w640-h360/20201113002001_1.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><span style="text-align: left;">HP: 3/4/4/5 (+1/+3)</span></div></div>Dodge: 15<br />Aim: 75/75/80/80 (+2/+5)<br />Mobility: 12<br />Damage: 2-4 (+1/+2. Crits add +1)<br />Will: 50 (+10/+20)<br />Initiative: 50<div><br /></div><div>Alert Actions: Hasten.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>I don't believe I've ever seen an Adder reposition or Hunker Down, but once again it is possible my experience is just RNG lining up right. They certainly really <b>strongly </b>prefer Hasten, at minimum.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>So let's talk about Hasten.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigHa4l3kRa7nrMEZa05NqWxM4eScr7nSWv6YZCPLRQ29xCKCDr3a1kVIUxOZnYm3Agl3Rjj4mAiueo_Li1eSnNzgOWQjfJ-unTy3ToTt0vr6LXY8dAyQCLVKiOBdQkGY92MYrVfdfSqvFa/s1600/Hard+Target+icon.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigHa4l3kRa7nrMEZa05NqWxM4eScr7nSWv6YZCPLRQ29xCKCDr3a1kVIUxOZnYm3Agl3Rjj4mAiueo_Li1eSnNzgOWQjfJ-unTy3ToTt0vr6LXY8dAyQCLVKiOBdQkGY92MYrVfdfSqvFa/s400/Hard+Target+icon.jpg" /></a>Hasten</div><div><b>???</b>: +1 Mobility, +40 Dodge, 2 turn duration, 3 turn cooldown.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>I've listed the action type as a bunch of question marks because I'm pretty sure Hasten isn't a proper action at all. It doesn't show up if you take control of an Adder with Puppeteer, and I don't think I've ever seen an Adder perform it manually post-Breach. The name Hasten is from the config files: within gameplay all that's announced is the stat boosts. No icon when it pops up, either; even using the F1 mod to look at an Adder, Hasten just uses the standard shooting icon.</i></div></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>In any event, Hasten's effects are sufficiently mild/easy to work around that Adders are pretty easy to justify ignoring if they're Alert. The point of Mobility often literally does not matter, while the 40 Dodge can be bypassed via so many otherwise-useful options you can easily render it irrelevant without even actually <b>meaning</b> to. Notably, Adder HP is sufficiently low that it's really easy for them to end up in Subdue range, even if an attack <b>does</b> Graze them, and of course Subdue (Including Zephyr and Cherub's special melee actions) can't Graze.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>So generally it's not worth prioritizing Alert Adders -to the point I prefer targeting Surprised enemies if Adders are the only non-Surprised enemies in the Encounter. Better to maximize my odds of landing hits than to try to stop a usually-irrelevant stat bonus from kicking in.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnRNrSuNcn4XtxI7E2lIJsEVvWwrGCYyros5WZHNCam6f_Wnt_2FgItomHyvEprsVMmF0T-Pl_P58IABLdPk_NSZEoUJFP2bSmIam1DEADuawUGs1fLDSeWkSKBY0m9zZ9bQ1r-UAFP3Iv/s1600/Poison+Immunity+Chimera+Squad.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnRNrSuNcn4XtxI7E2lIJsEVvWwrGCYyros5WZHNCam6f_Wnt_2FgItomHyvEprsVMmF0T-Pl_P58IABLdPk_NSZEoUJFP2bSmIam1DEADuawUGs1fLDSeWkSKBY0m9zZ9bQ1r-UAFP3Iv/s400/Poison+Immunity+Chimera+Squad.jpg" /></a>Poison Immunity<br /><b>Passive</b>: The Adder cannot be Poisoned, and will not take damage from certain Poison-based attacks.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>This is of course standard on all Vipers -including civilian Vipers!- and so Torque's Poison contributions are less reliably useful during the Gray Phoenix Investigation than during the Progeny Investigation; I've already pointed this out, but Gray Phoenix has the highest concentration of Viper enemies, with in fact only <b>one</b> Viper type in the <b>entire game</b> not being part of Gray Phoenix.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><i>It's worth explicitly noting that it really is almost purely Torque being affected by Gray Phoenix's Vipers being immune to Poison. Venom Rounds and Gas Grenades are locked behind completing Gray Phoenix's Investigation, after all; you <b>can </b>potentially loot one (or both) before that point, but it's very much not expected, so for most runs Torque's Poison contributions are all that's being affected. (Okay, Verge's Puppeteer also makes it relevant. But it is <b>mostly</b> Torque)</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>In the case of Adders in particular, the immunity is pretty meaningful if you <b>are </b>using Torque, especially if you hit Gray Phoenix first; Adders in High Cover would be great targets for Toxic Greeting if they weren't immune, as they'd reliably die (If hitting Gray Phoenix first, or second while not on the highest difficulty) before getting to act between the initial damage and the Poison damage, and same for using Poison Spit on them. So the fact that they are immune has a pretty noticeable impact on your options relative to if they weren't. (Unless playing on the highest difficulty and not hitting Gray Phoenix first, anyway)</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>If you're not using Torque, though, it's very close to completely irrelevant.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><img alt="" data-original-height="39" data-original-width="39" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbc8dBrI89iKkBIu-wvHVAfxHaWaKZKQk4QyvcNwh_7tHMizuzdYLiXDeaUYVELq3UbjZ1OWvyCRtcINXCd91emW0_BI8VqHynpIHzuW2KL11791mwN3jXTdWzgUH5apJsgOoSA2Nts9iA/s16000/Quickbite+icon.jpg" />Quickbite</div><div><b>Turn-ending action</b>: A move-and-melee attack that uses base Aim, does 2 (+2/+3) damage, ignores 5 points of Armor, and has a 50% chance to Poison the target. A successful hit will trigger Hasten, unless the Adder is already benefiting from Hasten.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>I should note that it's possible that the 3-turn cooldown on Hasten is what prevents Hasten from triggering off of Quickbite rather than the question of whether Hasten is currently active. I suspect not, but arranging to test this point is... inconvenient.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><i>Anyway, I'm genuinely unsure what prompts Adders to use Quickbite, in the sense that I know they're willing to use it in relatively normal conditions but I have no idea if it's just low odds they'll decide to use it or if they make a vaguely intelligent judgment call that I've just never identified a pattern to. I suspect it's just the low odds scenario as I've seen them use it on targets in Low Cover and yet also ignore it to shoot at nearby targets in High Cover, so they're probably not coded to specifically break it out in cases where shooting has worse odds of hitting or the like, but... very much uncertain.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>In any event, Quickbite is notably uneven in its danger level. If Gray Phoenix is your first Investigation, it's quite likely to be a bit of a waste of the Adder's turn; if it hits but doesn't Poison (Whether by flubbing its 50% chance or because its target was immune), then it's as strong as a low-roll hit from their firearm, which is underwhelming. In later Investigations, though, Quickbite gets more of a damage boost than just shooting your agents, and it's eventually guaranteed your entire squad will have at least 1 point of Armor; an Act 3 Quickbite into an agent with 2 points of Armor is 5 damage (Plus potentially Poison damage) vs just shooting that same agent being 2-4 damage!</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>An unfortunate component of the unevenness is the ongoing pattern in these games of the AI not 'seeing' immunities. If Adders just keep randomly deciding Torque is their best Quickbite target, assuring the Poison's irrelevance, then Quickbite will be noticeably less of a concern than if they keep targeting agents who aren't immune to Poison. I'm not entirely sure what a <b>good</b> solution to this point would be, but it's awkward.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Regardless, the point is that Quickbite is unusually variable; a lot of enemy abilities can be broadly dismissed as 'terrible and irrelevant' or classed as 'key thing that makes this enemy a priority target' and have such a simple rubric be basically always accurate. Doing the same to Quickbite is liable to get a player subtly (Or not so subtly) in trouble, whether by ignoring Adders as a low threat (And then getting caught off guard by them doing a ton of damage to an agent who has 3 Armor) or by prioritizing them more than they deserve in context. (eg focusing on them even though your entire team has immunity to Poison and you don't even have Armor on anyone yet, allowing more relevant threats freedom to act)</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>A sub-component of this variability is the part where Quickbite is a melee attack; on some maps, it can be essentially irrelevant because Adders are just never in range to perform a bite, while other maps are so close-quarters it's more or less impossible to have even a single agent outside Quickbite range. It's easy to do a few larger maps in a row and kind of forget Quickbite is relevant... or to be a first-time player and genuinely not know about Quickbite and be caught off guard when a smaller map leads to Adders breaking out their special ability, having probably concluded they didn't have anything other than Hasten from them not doing anything else multiple maps in a row. Whoops!</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Also, Quickbite's name is basically the only indication it's tied to Hasten. If you Puppeteer an Adder, the in-game description won't mention the Hasten effect. In conjunction with Quickbite silently failing to trigger Hasten if Hasten is already active, it's easy to go a <b>long</b> time with no idea that Quickbite can trigger Hasten. I got <b>ten runs</b> into the game before figuring out the connection exists! And I was actively <b>looking</b> for this kind of thing because I had these posts in mind throughout essentially all my Chimera Squad play!</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>----------------------------------------------</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Overall, Adders are functional enough as a basic Gray Phoenix unit that can be encountered right away in decent numbers without being overwhelming; they are in fact <b>usually</b> much less of a threat than Legionnaires. ('Usually' because Quickbite can be a very nasty surprise in the right conditions) </i></div><div><br /></div><div>-----------------------------------------------</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Aesthetically, Adders are interesting in that while the yellow-scaled cobra-hooded look XCOM 2 used as the only Viper look (Aside the Alien Hunters-exclusive Viper King and Neonate Vipers) is still the 'default' look in Chimera Squad, in the sense that civilian Vipers all use it, Torque has a different coloration but the same body type, etc, it's now the case that Vipers are shown to come in a notably wider range of body types and colorations.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This is mildly interesting in its own right -Chimera Squad's Sectoids aren't particularly variable in appearance, and while its Mutons get varying coloration their <b>build</b> is pretty much fixed- but especially notable for the part where this does <b>not</b> extend to variability in gender; several Muton and hybrid enemy types will be randomly assigned a gender for purposes of their voice clips, but Vipers are uniformly female. The Alien Hunters DLC already pretty heavily implied that yes, Vipers don't have males hidden somewhere off-planet or the like, but Chimera Squad's context is much firmer that yeah, Viper males probably don't occur naturally, full stop.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Part of why this is interesting is that Chimera Squad doesn't make a big deal out of it; it's just a background fact that's clearly true but also clearly not anything the game feels the need to draw the audience's attention to. Usually when fiction has an all-female culture/ethnic group/alien species, it's the first (and often only) thing the story wants to draw the audience's attention to, and typically gets played up as the most centrally important facet of said people, where you can't get through half a scene without the story trying to shove it in the audience's face. (Even if the story definitely already did so 5 minutes ago in a different scene)</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This really <b>shouldn't</b> be a thing I feel the need to point out about a <b>literal alien species</b>, but having seen pop culture consistently treat 'all-female group' as The Most Important And Interesting Quality Of Literal Aliens for 25+ years, I feel compelled to do so anyway. By a similar token, it's nice that Chimera Squad doesn't try to tell us a bunch of cringe-y elements about Viper societal trends and just presents them 'naturally'; all-female groups in pop culture often get weird stuff attached to them like the narrative informing us that they're 'strictly matriarchal' (Which... yes? Of course? Why do you feel the need to explicitly say this?...) or otherwise mishandling the topic in contextually bizarre ways that are pretty clearly 'this is a poorly-considered allegory for real-world feminist groups' or the like. Chimera Squad not doing any of this nonsense is nice.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>I do hope XCOM 3 continues this trend.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>But returning to aesthetics a bit more broadly; a detail I suspect a lot of players miss is that Adders have armor on their tails! Indeed, in general they're visually fairly heavily armored (In spite of mechanically not getting Armor), and I kind of suspect a lot of players misread their design. It's easy to overlook that their vest continues right up their head and leaves only their face exposed, misinterpreting the upper portion of this clothing as just a natural part of their body. It's similarly easy to overlook that they have gloves of some kind that go up to their elbow and looks to be some kind of light armor; all this stuff blends a bit into their scale color, and then their weapon is halfway between their scales and their armor in color so it's easy to misread their profile in any number of ways, such as not registering their gloves because you interpret the color splotch you're seeing on-screen as just more of their weapon.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>It's too bad because I actually really love the blue-and-yellow aesthetic on its own merits, but in conjunction with the similar shades of blue-to-black used for their clothing their design is easily misunderstood. They're unfortunately also one of the enemy types that never gets represented in the 2D art sequences; a still shot of an Adder up close would potentially substantially ablate the issue of their model being easily misunderstood.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>(It also doesn't help that the blue-to-gray color scheme is something Chimera Squad is fond of in office spaces and more 'tech-y' environments; Adders often blend a fair amount into their environment, as seen in the screenshot I used on this post, making it even easier to misunderstand their design)</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>There's also a bit of uncertainty here I should point out; <b>are</b> Adders supposed to lack the 'hood'? I started out assuming 'yes', and spent over a year continuing to assume it, but I didn't realize their vest was going up over their neck. It's entirely possible they're supposed to have the 'hood' and it's just compressed down by their clothing. So Chimera Squad is possibly not implying as wide a range of body types on Vipers as I'd first assumed...</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>... but it's impossible to be sure. They certainly seem at least svelter than the other Vipers of the game.</i></div><div><br /></div><div>---------------------------------------</div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Next time, we move on to the other Gray Phoenix Viper, the <a href="https://www.vigaroe.com/2023/11/chimera-squad-enemy-analysis-gray.html">Python</a>.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>See you then.</i></div>Ghoul Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15165232279081041131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656428975201272042.post-60367969864399139452023-10-23T01:29:00.002-07:002023-10-30T10:10:46.195-07:00Chimera Squad Enemy Analysis: Gray Phoenix Legionnaire<div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_LNodmgv0GpeVLbV9Lr3RClzEFuRmULiEp-YmVcYP6weIa3jCMBg38TZunWyGMP-Jaw2UPML6l5os0Ew324q3LNpIfRubAkwGp8tkPDsnsCDlrVCw2kHOPk3Ys3L7095hCiCIMH4Vryn_/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_LNodmgv0GpeVLbV9Lr3RClzEFuRmULiEp-YmVcYP6weIa3jCMBg38TZunWyGMP-Jaw2UPML6l5os0Ew324q3LNpIfRubAkwGp8tkPDsnsCDlrVCw2kHOPk3Ys3L7095hCiCIMH4Vryn_/w640-h360/20201113001856_1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div></div><div style="text-align: left;">HP: 5/6/6/6 (+0/+2)</div>Armor: 0/0/0/1 (+0/+1)<br />Aim: 70/70/75/75 (+2/+5)<br />Mobility: 10<br />Damage: 3-4 (+1/+1)<br />Will: 50 (+10/+20)<br />Initiative: 50<div><br /></div><div><i>It's kind of funny to me that Legionnaires are less durable, less accurate, and less lethal than Progeny Brutes. I'm pretty sure this boils down to game design considerations; the Brute is a semi-elite, uncommon unit on the Progeny, whereas the Legionnaire is one of Gray Phoenix's basic units that shows up constantly in good numbers, so the Legionnaire gets less stats. It's a little unfortunate the aesthetic end of things doesn't support it; in most respects the Legionnaire and Brute are just different color palettes for the same core model, and the one substantial difference is that the Legionnaire has a beam weapon instead of a mag weapon, which would imply Legionnaires should be the <b>more</b> lethal unit.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>It's not that big a deal overall, given how transparent the game is about stuff like HP, but still unfortunate.</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Alert Actions: Move to better position, Hunker Down.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Surprisingly, even though Legionnaires have a non-damaging special ability, as far as I'm aware they're not willing to use it as an Alert action.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Speaking of.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM1Wk8Ln2qf6TqPg8DBG2Tzln9y0zJ3AGLkDRHwmnQR2bGKqjrFJTt59TAwombzKOl1M_vN5qyLj8zlYwgxkt_Z-WHFs_YOBD9vlQcdKC8rvuV5mPBQPEe-mLfNU3XkUlJRRjJGMNxblxY/s1600/Demolition+Icon.png"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM1Wk8Ln2qf6TqPg8DBG2Tzln9y0zJ3AGLkDRHwmnQR2bGKqjrFJTt59TAwombzKOl1M_vN5qyLj8zlYwgxkt_Z-WHFs_YOBD9vlQcdKC8rvuV5mPBQPEe-mLfNU3XkUlJRRjJGMNxblxY/s400/Demolition+Icon.png" /></a></b>Demolition</div><div><b>Turn-ending action</b>: Attempts to destroy a target enemy's Cover. Does no damage to the target unit.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>It's literally the Grenadier's Demolition skill from XCOM 2, but now it's used to give a modestly dangerous enemy the potential to basically do a dud turn.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Surprisingly, this is literally the only interesting quality Legionnaires have, as far as special abilities and whatnot. Their Armor situation is much more interesting, honestly; Armor varying by difficulty is surprisingly rare in Chimera Squad.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Do note that Demolition will instantly detonate Cover if it's explosive Cover, assuming it passes its check for instantly destroying the Cover. If Legionnaires are around and you're not fully confident you'll be able to prevent their turns, you should probably avoid moving adjacent to exploding Cover.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Other than that, though, Demolition really is almost always a waste of the Legionnaire's turn. The Timeline system means there's no guarantee any other enemies will be able to capitalize before the exposed agent gets to act, for one, and as far as I can tell Legionnaires don't make any effort to target Demolition on agents later in the Timeline or the like.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>On the plus side, Legionnaires are <b>really</b> reluctant to actually break out Demolition. They do actually know they have the ability and all, but it's really rare for a Legionnaire to decide now is a good time for Demolition, so they at least only occasionally waste their turn on it. It's a little unfortunate that this means that -like Thralls- they're mostly just a Boring Stat Block Enemy even though they technically have more to them than that, but I'd rather this awkwardness than 'they constantly use Demolition'.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Aesthetically, Legionnaires are just a palette swap of the Progeny Brute, aside swapping the magnetic Shotgun for a beam Shotgun. It still is striking/interesting/odd to me that Brutes parallel the color scheme of XCOM 2 Mutons whereas Legionnaires have this more brown-to-yellow skin tone and metal-blue armor; I'd really have expected The Muton Faction to get The Classic Muton Color Scheme by default.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Narratively, Legionnaires are never directly addressed that I'm aware, where you seem to be intended to assume they're essentially just random Gray Phoenix Mutons of no particular background, no further explanation necessary, Which works fine overall, honestly, even if it would be nice to get some kind of context on the name or a suggestion as to why they get Demolition of all things. The general context of what Gray Phoenix are as an organization and how Mutons fit into the Ethereal army does a perfectly fine job of implicitly answering a bunch of possible questions, after all.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>---------------------------------</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Next time, we move on to another of Gray Phoenix's most basic units, the <a href="https://www.vigaroe.com/2023/10/chimera-squad-enemy-analysis-gray_30.html">Adder</a>.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>See you then.</i></div>Ghoul Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15165232279081041131noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656428975201272042.post-64697179092021743342023-10-22T05:00:00.002-07:002023-10-22T05:00:40.365-07:00Site Update: Timetable Stuff<div style="text-align: left;">Checking my Chimera Squad drafts, my current pace implies I'll be done with Chimera Squad in 8 months. If other things I'm working on go unexpectedly smoothly, I may soon switch to a Monday/Friday schedule for the duration of the Chimera Squad analysis; I'd prefer to do so, but my current circumstances seem unlikely to allow for it unless a big change occurs unexpectedly. So... no definitive plans, but here's hoping.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div>If things work out, I'll probably once again do some posts not tied to a specific project, then tentatively my next big project is Doom Roguelike, as it's the project in the best state right now. That could change easily if I end up taking the full 8 months and other projects come together better, but that all seems unlikely, so <i>probably </i>yes it will be Doom Roguelike.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm trying to get better at this 'communicating with people who have investment in the site' thing, so here we are.</div><div><br /></div><div>And yes, the normal Monday update is still happening; I'm doing sufficiently well on the Chimera Squad posts I don't need to do shenanigans to technically stick to my schedule.</div>Ghoul Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15165232279081041131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656428975201272042.post-63317977844303551582023-10-16T02:08:00.005-07:002023-10-23T01:31:08.266-07:00Chimera Squad Analysis: Gray Phoenix Intro<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVEa3GlZbSk8Cxoqu30vKZNuUYPOl0vqapCeKwG-IvXh1pQx_15dfvASPaXBvpKNn9kIKM8hxXnpbJk8CY9Yi76lUvN3LX_1Lh4y-aiv44W3wayI7maJ9VHKuFmKRkVTXoSEcNRX_qkyZ1/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="496" data-original-width="513" height="387" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVEa3GlZbSk8Cxoqu30vKZNuUYPOl0vqapCeKwG-IvXh1pQx_15dfvASPaXBvpKNn9kIKM8hxXnpbJk8CY9Yi76lUvN3LX_1Lh4y-aiv44W3wayI7maJ9VHKuFmKRkVTXoSEcNRX_qkyZ1/w400-h387/Gray+Phoenix+Icon.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><i>Gray Phoenix probably has the most immediately clear narrative design; Gray Phoenix is a group united under the banner of 'we want to go home'. There are no human or hybrid units in their forces; they are made entirely of the species the Ethereals plucked from their homeworlds and dragged along in the Ethereal crusade across the universe, where these species could theoretically fly back to their homeworlds and try to resume the lives their peoples had before the Ethereals enslaved them.</i><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>(Aside the somewhat ambiguous case of Faceless, where XCOM 2 raised the possibility they might be a species created 'whole-cloth' by the Ethereals and Chimera Squad doesn't actually firmly say that this is incorrect, plus one robot unit in their forces that technically falls outside the above description)</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Which is a pretty natural group to imagine appearing in the wake of the Ethereals having vanished! Of course there'd be people going 'let's go back home now that this is an option that actually exists', and of course such a group would be made primarily or entirely of the peoples who were forcibly uprooted.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Chimera Squad using them as an antagonist group is a little shakier, but only a little; realistically speaking, while the impetus would exist it would be a pretty naive plan. The Ethereals have been running their roaming operation for some number of centuries; even if, say, Mutons can live upward of 500 Earth years, The Homeworlds Of Our Species are probably basically mythology for most or all of the species the Ethereals enslaved, where nobody currently alive actually has any personal memories of their homeworld, and indeed probably nobody even knew a relative who has such memories. (That is, there's probably no Viper grandmother who lived on The Homeworld and died of old age but beforehand relayed some stories to a current-generation Viper) A Sectoid going back to the Sectoid Homeworld is actually pretty unlikely to find it really satisfies their dreams of Going Back Home; they never lived there, they don't actually have any fond memories of living there, and they probably would run into a bunch of struggles in adapting to it. (Sectoids being particularly extreme about this given the current generation of Sectoids have been modified to be more like humans; whatever ancestral homeworld the Sectoids first evolved on is <b>very</b> unlikely to be a better biological fit to current Sectoids than Earth is)</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>That's not even getting into the very real possibility that said homeworlds are functionally impossible to find. It's entirely possible the Ethereals didn't bother to archive coordinates or other ways to identify these worlds; they likely had no intention of going back, after all, and possibly only cared to mark them as 'we've been here and we're not going back'. And such an approach to marking out planets would likely mark out basically <b>everything </b>the Ethereals passed by this way, not just inhabited worlds they kidnapped species from; in such a case, a journey to search for the Homeworlds Of Our Species would be stuck just coming manually through <b>all</b> the space the Ethereals passed through.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Which would be a complete nightmare to do, by the way! Retracing historical routes from centuries ago on Earth is actually pretty hard in real life, but at least landmarks don't <b>drift</b>. (Or more accurately, they do drift, but so enormously slowly that for it to be <b>relevant</b> of a problem you have to look so far back that accessible-to-current-humans chronicles of history largly don't exist anyway) Stellar features are constantly moving: if we say the Ethereal route was essentially a straight line through the galaxy, simply pointing some ships in the direction the Ethereals came to Earth from will <b>not</b> hit all the same places they passed by in their route. It will in fact very possibly hit <b>none</b> of them.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>So even if the Ethereals documented their overall route pretty accurately and said route is available to the current peoples (Both pretty big 'ifs', it should be noted), the process of searching for these lost homeworlds would actually require plotting out an efficient distribution of search parties, where all of these search parties are liable to spend multiple <b>generations</b> heading out to their assigned planets, and where almost all the search parties are going to end up confirming 'this isn't a homeworld' and then presumably starting a new multi-generational journey to... another disappointment? Back to Earth?</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Now, in a depressing amount of scifi, the enormous logistical hurdles I'm layng out would be a criticism of the <b>story</b>; usually when scifi has this kind of plot involving species displaced from their homeworld centuries or millenia ago yearning to 'go home', the plot is taking it as a given that this is a realistic goal, generally one that will in fact be achieved over the course of one movie/game/book, with this tending to in fact mean it will occur within a single person's lifetime.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>But in Chimera Squad's case, none of that applies. No one in the game talks like Gray Phoenix could totally get to the Lost Muton Homeworld in a couple years if only they were allowed to take a spaceship and set off, or anything like that. The overall undertone is in fact that Gray Phoenix's goal, though sympathetic in a general sense, isn't really achievable.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Notably, this actually does a lot to make 'Gray Phoenix as antagonists' relatively palatable; the general impulse of 'I want to go home' is reasonable, but successfully pursuing that impulse is realistically essentially impossible, which means people actually <b>pursuing</b> that impulse are liable to skew toward having unrealistic models of the situation (eg "We could get home in a few short years, if only the humans weren't refusing to let us") and skew toward being being unlikely to be readily reasoned with by pointing out the factual problems with their plans. ("You do realize your home is probably multiple lifetimes away, pretty much impossible to find, and not liable to feel like a home to you even if you somehow do get there, right?" "LIES!")</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Models like 'humans are refusing to let us go home and <b>that's </b>the only thing preventing us from going home' in turn would be models that imply that pushing to be <b>allowed</b> to go should work, and that if it doesn't work then force is a reasonable choice. It's thus believable that Gray Phoenix is driven by a sympathetic motive ("I want to go home"), but is using violence enough to be an enemy faction in this game and where fighting back against this -though it would feed into narratives about being oppressed any individuals in Gray Phoenix might have- doesn't make the player clearly the bad guy here.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>That's a pleasant surprise, honestly. One of my concerns with Chimera Squad when it was first revealed was the possibility of it just walking directly into Police Brutality And So On: The Game while cluelessly presenting the player as Heroically Fighting The Evil Criminals. I wouldn't try to argue it dodges that territory perfectly, but it certainly doesn't live down to my worst fears, and is in fact noticeably above-average on this topic relative to what I'm used to seeing from pop culture depicting anything resembling law enforcement in the position of 'the good guys'.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>I'll be touching on this a bit more in some later posts, though.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Mechanically, Gray Phoenix probably has the weakest 'identity' as a gameplay faction; it seems likely that the devs' starting point was just throwing together the relevant species and trying to figure things out from there. Which is a fair starting point, but still. It probably doesn't help that the Progeny took up the mantle of The Psychic Faction; Gray Phoenix leaning into the psionic abilities of their Sectoids would step a bit on the Progeny's toes, after all, leaving them mostly to focus on the Muton and Viper end of things. There's a few different ways the diversity herein could've been played for a reasonably strong mechanical identity, but unfortunately the devs seem to have thought of Mutons mostly as The Strong And Tough Guys as far as combat mechanics, and really struggled to think of things to do with Vipers aside the Dodge/Poison/Tongue Pull/Bind set of capabilities getting some remixing.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>In practice they mostly end up as the middling-difficulty faction; their units trend durable and they don't really have any clear exploitable weaknesses, so they tend to present a tougher front than the Progeny and you have less ability to build your squad to counter their strengths than with Sacred Coil forces. This means their highs are less high, but their lows are also less low, relative to Sacred Coil.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>You might intuitively expect them to be the most close-quarters-combat faction, but in practice that honor goes to Sacred Coil, who have a weirdly high amount of dedicated melee units plus units that aren't melee but are restricted to close-up attacks anyway or have their most powerful attacks require getting close. Gray Phoenix does have more melee-capable units than the Progeny, at least, but not even by that much!</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>As for their icon...</i></div><div><div><br /></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgYR6HwO6Y6pEjAog3GGfp6ANgZi2od7M8sJVHAUYkxvz_7Y4QFAYYyVesNKQlqBAiUvU3feVCMYjGUPx_0KuxCnuLs2y80_xrzKGkZ_NmmWSvJPkTm_6gKZo2b5UtXDjuNusijAyoTmwd_Exm_OXWdAe2qIpTEzo_eT11u4eyJzyf88W-m0d3rpfWptg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="337" data-original-width="378" height="286" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgYR6HwO6Y6pEjAog3GGfp6ANgZi2od7M8sJVHAUYkxvz_7Y4QFAYYyVesNKQlqBAiUvU3feVCMYjGUPx_0KuxCnuLs2y80_xrzKGkZ_NmmWSvJPkTm_6gKZo2b5UtXDjuNusijAyoTmwd_Exm_OXWdAe2qIpTEzo_eT11u4eyJzyf88W-m0d3rpfWptg=w320-h286" width="320" /></a><div><i>I'm genuinely unsure if it's meant to be more meaningful than 'an icon assembled from abstract shapes'. Gray Phoenix is the faction centered on non-humans; it may be the intent is that it's a symbol with intuitive meaning to Mutons, where the devs didn't try to come up with a specific explanation for what it's supposed to represent.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>I could imagine it's meant to be a very abstract representation of a bird in flight, or of a bird's head, which would fit to the Gray <b>Phoenix </b>name. I'm not <b>convinced </b>that's the intent, but it's plausible.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>What it puts me most in mind of is actually the Vigilo Confido icon;</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjxtHfMj3NFLOPaq0vAn5EPEqm3qNh6LLeKKkb8orwstG1nYmDipagasM3pj0tP6x7c8t-ZTgst5eyRxjTiX-56-CNRrVe8yxkKqkz-gAZXapMBCPoAJ_J-3MSwzoxIAbDQcRCXOKMuVHU1icZ5kIsEMVrP4Yp7wWOl7g4Ilv8pFAEVy1R2SYeH87KSmQ" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><i><img alt="" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjxtHfMj3NFLOPaq0vAn5EPEqm3qNh6LLeKKkb8orwstG1nYmDipagasM3pj0tP6x7c8t-ZTgst5eyRxjTiX-56-CNRrVe8yxkKqkz-gAZXapMBCPoAJ_J-3MSwzoxIAbDQcRCXOKMuVHU1icZ5kIsEMVrP4Yp7wWOl7g4Ilv8pFAEVy1R2SYeH87KSmQ=s16000" /></i></a></div><div><i>You've got the X-shape of 'negative space', you've got the general downward pointing quality of the overall shape, and the shared use of an X results in some secondary shape overlap (The bottom diamond shape in each, specifically) so if you squint they actually look noticeably alike.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Given as of XCOM 2 the XCOM iconography has associations with fighting against the oppressors and all, I find it plausible Gray Phoenix is meant to have derived their icon from XCOM iconography.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>That said, I would be completely unsurprised if that's not remotely the intended explanation and it's just something like 'the same artist made both icons and so their aesthetic sense shaped both icons'. On the other hand, if that is why it doesn't preclude the possibility of running with the idea that they're similar icons -if XCOM 3 touches on Gray Phoenix at all and directly states their icon is derived from the XCOM icon I will be only moderately surprised.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>On a different note entirely, it's</i><i> worth pointing out that Chimera Squad's regular mission music is actually faction-specific! The Progeny, Gray Phoenix, Sacred Coil, and sort of Shrike all have distinct musical identities to help set a different tone for how fighting them feels, which is a nice touch. It's a touch I suspect a lot of players don't notice, as for one thing it <b>only</b> applies within missions; the music for puttering about the base does actually change each time you move on to a new Investigation, but it's purely Act-based, where the music you hear in the base during your third Investigation is different from what you hear during your first Investigation, but every run hears the same music in its third Investigation regardless of which faction is currently being Investigated. There's also other stuff going on with the music even within a mission to further obscure things, where for example you get different music playing during the pre-Breach phase as from in combat (And said music changes as you slot in -or remove- agents to Breach points!) and the Breach Phase doesn't actually have music playing at all, instead having distorted audio in support of the slow-motion visualization of everything.</i></div></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>I am unfortunately not sufficiently versed in the relevant musical terminology to know how to describe Gray Phoenix's music. I personally take it as tending to be tense -some of the songs remind me a little of classic X-COM music, actually- but with less urgency than the other factions, which certainly feels appropriate to me, but I wouldn't know how other players take Gray Phoenix music.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>The Progeny is easier for me to articulate, with their music low-key evoking 'spooky' styles of music. This is particularly blunt for Take Down the Progeny, where the music is an interesting hybrid of something very military-sounding and something like you might hear from a horror movie sequence going for 'there is something out there, but you're not sure where' or alternatively might hear in an alien abduction movie -oh, yes, I should explicitly point out that every Take Down (Investigation target) mission has music completely unique to it. They're pretty consistently great tunes and I have kind of mixed feelings about them being each reserved exclusively for one mission; the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwKUeh0-GTM">Progeny tune in particular</a> I feel would've been great to be a more general Progeny song, but the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG-PrIkti2Q">Gray Phoenix Song is also great</a> and would've been nice to hear more.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Regardless, the musical identity stuff is all cool and I wish the game did a better job of drawing the player's attention to it. It's especially easy to overlook or misunderstand this music stuff in one's first run -I imagine there's players who noticed the music changing as they switched Investigations but assumed it was <b>all</b> based on Act- but even if you do multiple runs it's easy to not recognize it. Among other points, the Progeny and Gray Phoenix tunes aren't <b>jarringly</b> different from each other; Sacred Coil's music being very different leaped out at me enough it was what lead to me ultimately realizing this was a general mechanic of faction-specific music, whereas I spent a while thinking the Progeny and Gray Phoenix shared a pool of music. And when you do know it's distinct, the music actually does a good job of helping set expectations about the factional identities; if XCOM 3 does something similar, that's liable to be very nice.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Aesthetically, an interesting point I suspect a lot of players don't notice, or do notice but kind of wave off as meaningless, is that Gray Phoenix troops are widely equipped with beam weapons as opposed to the magnetic weapons that are the game's default. Beam weapons show up on the other factions, but only in cases where a model is recycled with few or no modifications from XCOM 2; Progeny Codices and Archons and Sacred Coil Andromedons all using beam weaponry is somewhat dubious in its 'canonicity'.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Whereas Gray Phoenix are the reverse; the only units of theirs that <b>don't</b> use beam weapons are directly recycled models of units that didn't use beam weapons in XCOM 2.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This is a nice detail, as it makes sense twice over that Gray Phoenix would have greater access to beam weaponry than the other two factions; firstly, they're mainly made up of Ethereal slave-soldiers who used beam weapons in XCOM 2 and so would have greater odds of having beam weapons on hand from that time. Secondly, they're presented as a group of salvagers who've been focused on scooping up advanced technology, where the other factions have had different agendas to focus on; presumably a lot of Gray Phoenix's beam weaponry is looted from battlefields, abandoned armories, and so on.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>The <b>exact</b> implementation is strange from an in-universe standpoint, as the models for Gray Phoenix beam weapons are the <b>X-COM </b>beam weapon models from XCOM 2, but it's pretty clear you're not meant to take this piece completely literally; among other points, Epic Weapons are also beam weapons using the X-COM beam weapon models, but multiple of them come with a bit of lore about how the Epic Weapon in question is an experimental ADVENT weapon or the like. Presumably it was simply easier/cheaper to adapt X-COM weapons to other 'generic' soldier skeletons than to adapt the alien plasma weapons from XCOM 2 to new models, but whatever the case you're clearly supposed to take these X-COM beam weapons as stand-ins, where a Legionnaire is 'in reality' wielding the weapon XCOM 2 Mutons carried.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>On a different topic, something I find kind of funny is that the game informs you that Gray Phoenix is 'mostly' made of Mutons. I find this funny because the gameplay doesn't support it all that well; Gray Phoenix has exactly two types of Muton unit if you don't count Berserkers, three if you do, and while that's more than any other faction in the game they actually have more Vipers and more Sectoids than any other faction as well, and due to Berserkers and Praetorians being enemies the game doesn't like to use in large numbers it's not at all unusual for Vipers or Sectoids to be the majority of enemies in a Gray Phoenix mission, especially Vipers.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>It's not like it's a big flaw or anything, but it still amuses me.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>---------------------------------------------------------------</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Next time, we start with the overall most common Gray Phoenix unit, the <a href="https://www.vigaroe.com/2023/10/chimera-squad-enemy-analysis-gray.html">Legionnaire</a>.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>See you then.</i></div>Ghoul Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15165232279081041131noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656428975201272042.post-12600551933653995122023-10-08T22:25:00.003-07:002023-10-28T04:37:48.537-07:00Chimera Squad Enemy Analysis: Progeny Leader Violet<div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6kfpf4F37ACmuVunmP4lBiA0XkB47Ulnn585HR_uvRQ_OaZzvBNJncLuvld9sd_y7uOtnTAo7OiKDgWfUsbsf8RDeAD0iXis-W39wixGM6mNRmVo81hx779H0EZDUTfxiue05OOxroX3t/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1532" height="452" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6kfpf4F37ACmuVunmP4lBiA0XkB47Ulnn585HR_uvRQ_OaZzvBNJncLuvld9sd_y7uOtnTAo7OiKDgWfUsbsf8RDeAD0iXis-W39wixGM6mNRmVo81hx779H0EZDUTfxiue05OOxroX3t/w640-h452/20201111200824_1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">HP: 12/14/14/14</div>Armor: 1<br />Aim: 80/80/85/85 (+2/+5)<br />Mobility: 10<br />Damage: 3-4 (+1/+2)<br />Will: 150<br />Initiative: 120<div>Psi: 100 (<i>Not that she uses her high Psi Offense</i>)</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Compared to a regular Sorcerer, Violet has 50~% more HP, a point of Armor, and superior Initiative... and that's actually it before getting into her fight gimmick. Her damage is the same, her Will is the same, her Aim is the same, so on and so forth.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>That said, the combination of her boosted durability and monstrous Initiative means she's far more prone to getting turns at all than regular Sorcerers, and it is in fact pretty difficult to prevent her from getting a minimum of two turns, so she's still noticeably more threatening in practice, even before getting into her fight gimmick.</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Alert Actions: N/A.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>As far as I'm aware Violet never does anything in the Breach Phase. This is an oddity that's standard to boss enemies; no boss enemy get a proper Breach Phase action. I'm not entirely sure why this is so. For about half the bosses it's because they don't start the Encounter around in the first place, but for Violet -among others- there's no obvious reason of that sort to point to. Did the devs think it would 'feel unfair' for bosses to get a free hit in, or something?</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Conversely, note that you <b>cannot</b> target Violet in the Breach Phase, period. This is actually a recurring feature of bosses in Chimera Squad; if they're present for the Breach Phase, your squad can't target them, even if you can clearly see your squad has a clean line of fire to them. So at least their weird non-participation is total, not unidirectional.</i></div><div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaQvz_oyy2-1QT4Wbo94BpdjrDmRMeGrCvmG6AqZ14K7wnq_v7byAyo2_xxHoRDhrpdT9kq2HzMFBZr_kiAfx1HiNGf3FLw3GHqvKsy-yRlOhEQkCYuxGIigOHyjaa23qm-NFA4LjmqfYR/s1600/Mental+Fortress.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaQvz_oyy2-1QT4Wbo94BpdjrDmRMeGrCvmG6AqZ14K7wnq_v7byAyo2_xxHoRDhrpdT9kq2HzMFBZr_kiAfx1HiNGf3FLw3GHqvKsy-yRlOhEQkCYuxGIigOHyjaa23qm-NFA4LjmqfYR/s400/Mental+Fortress.jpg" /></a>Mental Fortress<br /><b>Passive</b>: Immune to all mental effects.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>As Sorcerers have this quality it's no surprise that Violet has it as well, but this is actually standard for the leaders of your Investigation targets; I assume they didn't want the player able to Puppeteer these characters, which makes sense both from the gameplay perspective of 'boss fight conceits tend to break if the player gets to take over the boss' and from the more narrative perspective that taking over a faction leader seems like it ought to offer options that no, the devs aren't going to represent. (ie the devs aren't going to let you terminate Violet's mission by mind controlling her into ordering her troops to stand down, or anything like that)</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Of course, since it is standard on Sorcerers and Violet is chiefly a somewhat upstatted Sorcerer, this means Violet having these immunities isn't some big change in how you fight her relative to her standard counterparts.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>One minor deviation is that I'm reaonably confident that Violet -and all faction leaders- are immune to Panic, which regular Sorcerers actually aren't immune to. As Panic is barely available to the player and is never fully reliable anyway, this shouldn't be terribley important, but still worth mentioning.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><div>AI Pistol</div><div><b>Passive</b>: Primary weapon is buggy and has an inconsistent response to ammo drain effects.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><i>Violet is, in my experience, much less prone to firing her pistol than Sorcerers are, so this should be less reliably relevant than with Sorcerers, but I'm still noting this for all relevant enemies.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><img alt="" data-original-height="40" data-original-width="40" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaxlIJBcWV_EXxj7mFG7AwPu1HRCYbPO7dElzixQ2GHvcKN2o8VFEvxH_WRQdHyDRO_xQ61hNdguV0hxszPbuXN6xffvIgMlPdR2sel_dwp5qfkjqvMUIIAwTRsV9ssboDc9Z5ycQCWJm7/s16000/Tyranny+Icon.jpg" />Tyranny</div><div><b>Turn-ending action</b>: Target ally's turn is moved to immediately after the user's. 3 turn cooldown, 2 turn global cooldown.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Violet has this, but I'm not sure she's willing to use it. I've <b>personally </b>never seen her use it, but that could just be a moderately long streak of improbable RNG or the like. I certainly <b>hope</b> she's not willing to use Tyranny, honestly; just like regular Sorcerers it's generally the case that Violet taking her own turn is the most dangerous thing she can do, and it's always a little jarring if a boss is willing to give up its turn for lesser enemies if the given boss isn't clearly <b>designed</b> around such.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>It could be worse, mind; Violet's offenses aren't actually any greater than a regular Sorcerer's. If she had superior damage, her passing off her turn to someone else would be even more likely to be a waste than with regular Sorcerers.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpu7p2JlvTNhdyHwpsIQBw5PF88mwPAnIRdcMfguSAs_09d26kCKLBesSxWocKPPPUT1Kwp5Tw8r8pvpaaXmr2NZLN0VQv0Jj-cCEFKVyKHl0qNgv4iHFGb7zVCv4a_eJ7pXzy8VTIvFgb/s1600/Null+Lance.png"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpu7p2JlvTNhdyHwpsIQBw5PF88mwPAnIRdcMfguSAs_09d26kCKLBesSxWocKPPPUT1Kwp5Tw8r8pvpaaXmr2NZLN0VQv0Jj-cCEFKVyKHl0qNgv4iHFGb7zVCv4a_eJ7pXzy8VTIvFgb/s400/Null+Lance.png" /></a>Null Lance</div><div><b>Turn-ending action</b>: Violet attacks all units in a line, even piercing through solid walls, for 4-5 (+1/+2) damage, potentially damaging or destroying environmental objects in the path. 3 turn cooldown.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>As with regular Sorcerers, Null Lance is the primary threat Violet presents. My experience is that she's more reliable about using it than regular Sorcerers, but I'm unwilling to assume my relatively small sample size is truly representative.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>That said, essentially everything I said about Sorcerers applies here. The main point of distinction is that Violet is (mostly) very unrealistic to take down before she's taken a turn, and honestly she'll probably get two or even three turns; you should normally plan around the idea that Violet is going to hit at least one person with Null Lance, because it's basically guaranteed to happen.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>On the plus side, the maps you can fight Violet on have reasonably spread-out initial agent positions; you're unlikely to have her catch multiple people with one Null Lance, or at least if it does happen it's liable to be due to <b>you</b> clumping agents thoughtlessly rather than because the <b>game</b> did it to you.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfCYIQtUgZyi7HAlk6qDXuRU4SUE0lpACh7_HP1QRZfYnzYfmGxIIoMunSMm5VyBFzJYQWdPaY3XBYp3OftVqsd1COPn034_f27ZYDGkDSeMysR_qUjKeX06_S5NGZycV_ygN5VjXI0Zuw/s1600/Writhe+Icon.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfCYIQtUgZyi7HAlk6qDXuRU4SUE0lpACh7_HP1QRZfYnzYfmGxIIoMunSMm5VyBFzJYQWdPaY3XBYp3OftVqsd1COPn034_f27ZYDGkDSeMysR_qUjKeX06_S5NGZycV_ygN5VjXI0Zuw/s400/Writhe+Icon.jpg" /></a>Writhe<br /><b>1 action point</b>: Violet attacks an adjacent enemy for 3-4 (+1/+2) damage, and heals herself for up to 4 HP. Cannot be used unless Violet is injured. 2 turn cooldown.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>I have literally only seen Violet use Writhe by virtue of actively trying to provoke her into using it. This took noticeably fewer trials than with regular Sorcerers -she used Writhe the second time I set it up to be possible for her to do so- so it's possible she prioritizes it more than Sorcerers and just still doesn't try to make it happen herself, but it's also possible that was just chance.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Violet having Writhe is thus much like regular Sorcerers having Writhe; a fact that is technically true, but which is largely irrelevant and probably most players have no idea any enemies have it at all. It mildly discourages trying to stand in melee with Violet, but even more so than with regular Sorcerers this is a technicality because...</i></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSYNBdcWeN8rHgW5-snnYPUcvqpJJGBl-LEz1oZP8KAts0J9Uy_m90_jXUyKLhqUyG7xbLcbPV7uZPEAEuCzO-sZagQsRBRREEU4pIbzgcNfwADwXVFTSZZRcY4Htn3jJThLjpD_xSsY3Q/s1600/Teleport+Icon.png" style="font-weight: bold;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSYNBdcWeN8rHgW5-snnYPUcvqpJJGBl-LEz1oZP8KAts0J9Uy_m90_jXUyKLhqUyG7xbLcbPV7uZPEAEuCzO-sZagQsRBRREEU4pIbzgcNfwADwXVFTSZZRcY4Htn3jJThLjpD_xSsY3Q/s400/Teleport+Icon.png" /></a>Sorcerer Teleport</div><div><b>1 action point</b>: Violet moves to an arbitrary location without crossing the intervening terrain, bypassing all forms of Overwatch. Additionally, Violet reactively teleports anytime she takes damage, automatically placing herself in relevant Cover when she does so.<br /><br /></div></div><div><i>If you skipped over the description: Violet picks up a <b>reactive </b>teleport, as compared to regular Sorcerers. So even if you <b>do</b> melee Violet, she's just going to instantly bounce away; her having Writhe can't even meaningfully punish melee! Writhe does make Lockdown more dubious in this fight, in the sense that you probably shouldn't have Zephyr Momentum up next to Violet after hitting a different enemy on the idea she'll hit Violet with Lockdown because that might provoke a Writhe instead, but that barely matters because if she teleports away Lockdown won't trigger anyway; the fact that trying to Lockdown her might be punished instead of ignored is pretty whatever.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Anyway, Violet picking up a reactive teleport is a big part of why Violet tends to get multiple turns; it's extremely difficult to actually arrange to pile a bunch of damage on Violet in a row, because she'll very possibly bounce to somewhere that's not in reach, and even if she's in reach she'll be in Cover so your odds of missing will be noticeably higher. Notably, two of the maps you can fight her on are fairly large and offer opportunities to completely break line of sight/line of fire, giving her pretty good odds of jumping somewhere you really can't hit at all just yet. This is all so much so I honestly tend to just ignore Violet in the first couple of Rounds, in part due to a gimmick of the entire mission:</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim14gZvXlBa7hXsrVw1-sZogfYqk0ZbtOZBV3H1bcbZXZpRrd0s-bqMDBeVgkGb6bcSA4wY5XytMmILrDC4sQXAE7VnhaIP73892n1SnJIc2beu_E_TbrZgKNVKAwuiI4pIp5M_1NgrlEn/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim14gZvXlBa7hXsrVw1-sZogfYqk0ZbtOZBV3H1bcbZXZpRrd0s-bqMDBeVgkGb6bcSA4wY5XytMmILrDC4sQXAE7VnhaIP73892n1SnJIc2beu_E_TbrZgKNVKAwuiI4pIp5M_1NgrlEn/w640-h360/20201112133926_1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div><i>Resonance Pylons.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Resonance Pylons show up in every Encounter of the Take Down the Progeny mission, and are unique to this mission; they will never show up anywhere else. The graphic itself can show up in other missions (Even aside that it's recycled from War of the Chosen in the first place, being the repeater node graphic from psionic transmitter missions), but not the Resonance Pylon unit per se.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Resonance Pylons themselves are, surprisingly, classed as units rather than environmental objects; among other points, Blueblood will actually automatically target them with Faceoff, unlike environmental objects. This includes they have real turns placed within the Timeline (they're not <b>visible</b>, mind, and don't follow the normal distribution rules) that can be prevented by killing them and so on. It's also clearly a bit of an ugly kludge, in that Resonance Pylons are prone to slightly rotating in place when taking their turn in a manner that's clearly not intended, among other oddities they exhibit. They also share with Violet the inability to target them during the Breach Phase, though that's pretty clearly intentional.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Stats-wise, Resonance Pylons are too simple to justify me doing the full stat block; they have no attack, their only defense stat is that they have 4 HP (6 if the Progeny are your final Investigation), they have 0 Mobility, and that's it. (Aside possibly Initiative, but I haven't found their Initiative in the config files and they probably don't use standard Initiative anyway) As for what they <b>do</b>, they add shield HP to allies. They start out the mission adding 2 Shield HP to a single ally apiece, though note that Resonance Pylons can in fact stack this effect, where two Resonance Pylons targeting the same unit will result in it having 4 shield HP. At some threshold in moving through Encounters, they start being able to target multiple units at the same time, adding 2 shield HP to each target; this still stacks, but a given Resonance Pylon can't double up its targeting. (ie if there's three Resonance Pylons and one non-Resonance Pylon enemy left, the Resonance Pylons can add 6 shield HP to that enemy through their collective efforts, not 12) This spreading effect is also influenced by Investigation placement -if the Progeny are your final Investigation, the first 2 Encounters have the Resonance Pylons slapping shield HP on 3 units apiece!</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Resonance Pylons themselves cannot be targeted by this effect. The shield HP lasts indefinitely, aside the qualifier that if a Resonance Pylon is destroyed any shield HP it personally generated will immediately go away. Notably, Resonance Pylons aren't treated as living enemies for the purpose of determining whether an Encounter is allowed to end; it actually is a valid option to ignore them. Also, note that Resonance Pylons are immune to all damage over time effects; don't chuck an Acid Grenade at them in expectation that the Acid Burn will finish the job, because it won't.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Wrapping back to Violet: Resonance Pylons <b>always</b> prioritize shielding Violet if possible. This intersects with her reactive teleport, in that if you, say, hit her for 8 damage and then can't follow up because she teleported away, it's entirely possible you only removed 2 <b>actual</b> HP and that she'll have another 6 shield HP by the time you have anybody ready to hit her again. If you keep walking right into this, you can easily end up dumping over twice her max HP in damage before she actually goes down, all while her buddies are free to attack because you've been ignoring them. Hence why I was saying I tend to ignore her to start; taking out Resonance Pylons and regular enemies tends to be just better all-around, even taking out Violet herself faster than trying to immediately focus on her is liable to take.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Oddly, the config files seem to indicate Resonance Pylons were supposed to directly affect Violet's actual HP. I'm not sure if this is a cut mechanic or if I'm just misunderstanding what the relevant bits actually do, but it doesn't <b>seem</b> to be a still-functional mechanic.</i></div><div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYkG2H7xBrNwPfhA9EE7jJahaTLFVU70j_L2E2WMrCe4_cRK-L_GeDlzpOkYxRZIynle8Ef3JGQWmqiFKax7NKDMWaOZmMg1c3AWivhmEPHeQERyaMtazhyphenhyphen3y5ZYdG0bpJpWNyyNJA0buP/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYkG2H7xBrNwPfhA9EE7jJahaTLFVU70j_L2E2WMrCe4_cRK-L_GeDlzpOkYxRZIynle8Ef3JGQWmqiFKax7NKDMWaOZmMg1c3AWivhmEPHeQERyaMtazhyphenhyphen3y5ZYdG0bpJpWNyyNJA0buP/w640-h360/20201112135913_1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div><i>Broadening perspective a bit, Take Down (Investigation target) missions have a rather interesting formula. I've mentioned before that 3 Encounters is the normal maximum number in a mission with only the very final mission being an exception at four Encounters, but in a conceptual sense the Take Down missions are made of <b>five</b> Encounters linked in a continuous chain.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>A given run will only see three of these Encounters from a given Take Down mission, however. <b>Which</b> three your run sees depends on which Act you placed that Investigation in, with the start and endpoints being moved 1 Encounter forward by being one Act later.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>That is, if you hit the Progeny first, you'll go 1->2->3 and then stop, whereas hitting them second will have you skip past the first Encounter and go 2->3->4 and stop, and of course hitting them last will have you skip past the first two Encounters and go 3->4->5.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>I quite like this, as it makes variable-order runs have meaningfully different experiences with each Investigation's culmination, without requiring the devs to custom-craft three (or more) times the content for these missions. Among other points, boss fights get shuffled about; Violet is always in the <b>final</b> Encounter, for example, whether that means map 3, map 4, or map 5, and so you get different exact experiences with fighting her based on which of those maps you're fighting her in.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><div><i>The game also uses it to narrative benefit; with the Progeny, for example, they're building a device in the building you're hitting, and how close they are to completing it depends on which Act you fought the Progeny in. If you hit them first, the device is very early in its construction, where you hear about how its completion was weeks away. If you hit them last, the device is in the middle of powering up as you arrive and there's talk about how close things came to disaster because it activating would've been catastrophic.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>And this basic idea applies to every Investigation; the faction is working toward a goal, and the later you hit them the closer they are to completing their goal by the time you stop them entirely.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Which is nice! Games with significant plot components often have severe dissonance between the gameplay and the narrative, where the plot presents a ticking time bomb of a scenario such that some problem needs to be dealt with urgently or else disaster will occur, and then meanwhile the gameplay is a world in stasis, where the main plot won't move forward an inch while the player is off doing sidequests or whatever. In Chimera Squad's case, I was honestly expecting that the narrative design would be such that eg the Progeny's plot would be 'on pause' until such time as I picked their Investigation, and same for the other factions; that's usually how this type of 'pick which narrative you want to start with' choice works, even if it makes no sense to work that way as far as in-universe realism.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><i>So it's a pleasant surprise to see a representation of people in the game world making progress based on something like time, rather than only doing things in response to the player tripping event flags. It's not perfect -for one thing, a given Investigation's initial mission is always the same, where the faction effectively waits on a specific task until your attention turns their way even though the initial mission of an Investigation is framed as you surprising the faction with the fact that you're now paying attention to them- but it's honestly surprising to see a game even <b>try</b>.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><i>But back to the specifics of Violet's mission chain.</i></div></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Map 1 is a lobby area that's built wider than it is long, with some high ground in the back. It's a pretty straightforward, normal sort of Encounter; if it weren't for Resonance Pylons showing up, it wouldn't stand out from the assorted regular maps at all, even though this lobby map is in fact unique to this mission. The main thing noteworthy about it is that it has High Cover pillars in each wing, and so it's easy for a methodical left-to-right (Or vice-versa) sweep to end up with a surprisingly rough endstate because a couple enemies are hiding in the High Cover and it's difficult to get a safe flank on them and all.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Map 2 is a bit of a janky gimmick map. The way you end the Encounter is that first you interact with an object to activate an 'anti-gravity sled' in one corner of the map, and then you get your entire squad into that corner. It's clear the <b>idea</b> is that you'll fight a running battle to the sled after you've activated it, with reinforcements pouring in to create the 'running <b>battle</b>' part, but said reinforcements only start after you've activated the sled; as such, the optimal thing to do is to set three agents inside the sled and have your fastest agent throw the switch and then come running. Done right, the reinforcements will get no turns at all, such as because you brought Torque and have her Tongue Pull Zephyr into the sled area. Even outside that most 'don't play that part of the mission at all' scenario, there's multiple agent abilites that are really designed around the assumption that turns are always being taken with active enemies about; you can have Cherub put a shield on everyone before throwing the switch and have Terminal heal everyone to full at no resource cost, as a couple examples that interact jankily with this situation where </i><i>the Tutorial team actually foists these examples upon the player</i><i>. (Among other examples of jank, this mechanically optimal behavior is tedious to actually play out)</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Aside that unfortunate jank, map 2 is an okay mostly-indoors environment. Among other points, it has solid walls completely breaking up line of fire, which is something Chimera Squad's maps usually don't do, or more accurately don't tend to make such walls strongly relevant; the map tends to stand out for this factor alone. Notably, these walls make it harder to trivially destroy all the Resonance Pylons with eg Faceoff; you're unlikely to get them all in the first Round.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>It's worth pointing out that an agent Bleeding Out is <b>not </b>counted for purposes of determining whether your entire team is in the anti-grav sled zone. This leads to the counterintuitive result that you should simply ignore agents going down; getting the rest of the squad to the sled will end the Encounter and any downed agents will automatically be fine. Since agents entering Bleeding Out mode are out of action for the remainder of the mission anyway and Chimera Squad has no option for reviving a downed agent, there's no benefit to trying to Stabilize an agent if you can end the Encounter before their timer runs out.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Map 3 is a trashed-out cubicle office space area, and of course is where you'll fight Violet if the Progeny are your first Investigation. It's a fairly open map overall, but it has some odd hiding spots that Violet is prone to reactively teleporting into that can be difficult to get an angle on, and the map stretches sufficiently far that the back portion of it isn't actually within range of your agents' starting positions. Among other points, it's harder to Faceoff the entire room than you might expect, and the overall openness of the room doesn't actually mean you can readily take out Violet in a single Round; she's too prone to teleporting somewhere nobody can currently reach one way or another.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Regardless of whether you fight Violet here or not, there's reliably Codices as an additional complication, among other points making the room's size and weird hiding spots relevant even without Violet; it's easy to hit a Codex and end up with it teleporting somewhere you just can't follow up on, after all. I actually tend to find it the roughest part of the mission regardless of whether Violet is present or not, oddly.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Interestingly, if the Progeny are your final Investigation, your agents rappel into this room, giving them a very different starting position, much closer to the room's center. The dialogue doesn't mesh with this, in a manner that could easily confuse a first-time player, as Whisper still makes an allusion to how noisy the 'gravity sled' was... without actually directly referring to it, and even though your agents arrive in a manner incompatible with having taken the sled. Chimera Squad wasn't obviously heavily rushed like War of the Chosen was, but there's bits and pieces like this suggesting the devs didn't quite finish what they meant to do before it was release time.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Map 4 takes place atop the roof of the office building you've been working your way up through, and is something of a defense mission that can be made much easier by bringing a Breaching Charge; there's a part of the map enemies will try to walk to, where they're narratively trying to activate the device they've been building, and if enemies spend enough turns in the area in question you lose the Encounter. The default entrance is physically not very far from the area in question, but the map is an indoors environment sectioned off by walls where you can't readily walk into the area you need to defend; using a Breaching Charge instead places you right inside the area you need to defend. Enemies are prone to prioritizing walking into the activation zone, and doing so in the form of simply Dashing in without bothering to attack your agents; coming in via Breaching Charge can turn the mission into a shooting gallery where enemies charge in and get annihilated effortlessly over and over.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Violet shows up here if the Progeny is your second Investigation target, and this is arguably the roughest map to fight her on; much of the map is sectioned off by solid walls, where her reactive teleport can easily drop her in a wide variety of locations you can't reach immediately and her access to Null Lance lets her attack right through solid walls -a fact she is quite willing to take advantage of. Reminder that both the player and AI have full awareness of the entire map at all times; don't forget your own ability to hurl some attacks right through walls, such as Blueblood's Phase Lance.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This map is another case where the not-quite-complete element is obvious if you hit the Progeny last, as Whisper will allude to the idea that the device the Progeny built is already self-sufficient in terms of power, where it's clear the <b>idea</b> is that you shouldn't be doing the defense mission to prevent access to the power supply... but you still have to do said defense mission. So that's a little unfortunate, and potentially confusing to a player running into it for the first time.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Map 5 takes place on the actual outdoors part of the roof; this area is actually visible but greyed-out and inaccessible when in map 4. It's also surprisingly straightforward: the psionic device is visibly glowing but not relevant to the mission (Whisper will urge you to hurry up before it activates, but there's no actual timer or anything), and the only actually unusual quirk is that there's 6 Resonance Pylons arrayed around the device that, as soon as the Breach Phase is over, all pile shield HP on Violet, giving her a total of 12 shield HP. This is actually a little underwhelming given the Resonance Pylons in the prior Encounters have been hitting 3 enemies apiece; 4 Resonance Pylons targeting 3 enemies is a total of <b>24</b> shield HP to chew through, twice what these 6 Resonance Pylons are adding in total. And 4 Resonance Pylons isn't higher than what you'll be seeing in those Encounters!</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>In conjunction with the fact that you're by definition near the end of your campaign and so presumably sent in max-level agents with full Training, fully upgraded weapons and armor, and a collage of great gear, it's easy for this to end up being weirdly trivial compared to if you went after the Progeny earlier. Every time I've done the Progeny last, I've taken out Violet before she even got a turn -even though she is always placed before your second agent in the Timeline.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>I kind of suspect the config file bit of giving Violet extra HP is supposed to kick in here. In general, the whole setup looks like something that was intended to be 'and now Violet is supercharged in myriad ways by the Resonance Pylons' to act as the centerpiece of the Encounter and then whatever was intended to be done simply wasn't, and so we're left with arguably the most boring third-Act situation, and certainly the easiest one.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>-----------------</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgEQgD_PJTOG2M_6dmFJriridSoZYNIdmrRwCeSCsNtmaoKgsI9yDRWx5GpgnAQ85sQM0ONvZuFzKYREQhonqstLwXQpl_ec1k-hcYVHst2f1ziyakGXlGsa2BjjaZy6H1GgDtBUczVqOfNWq6tkAOxMin9A_Cs7AV85zOpedYxKDLAkBWjipEslqHOJCsU" style="clear: left; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgEQgD_PJTOG2M_6dmFJriridSoZYNIdmrRwCeSCsNtmaoKgsI9yDRWx5GpgnAQ85sQM0ONvZuFzKYREQhonqstLwXQpl_ec1k-hcYVHst2f1ziyakGXlGsa2BjjaZy6H1GgDtBUczVqOfNWq6tkAOxMin9A_Cs7AV85zOpedYxKDLAkBWjipEslqHOJCsU=w640-h360" width="640" /></a></div><div><i>Narratively/aesthetically, Violet and her attendant mission continues the Progeny trend of murkiness.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>The Progeny are building a device which they think will awaken psychic powers in everyone in the city when activated; you get told it would've just <b>fried</b> people's brains instead so you're the hero for stopping their plan, but it's a bit confusing that the Progeny have this plan at all. It seems at odds with the Progeny's overall cultish structure; if their organization is, as it seems to be, built around having something of a monopoly on ability to inculcate psychic powers in people and using that monopoly to indebt people to their organization (Among other points, there's a line claiming Violet personally awakened <b>all</b> Progeny human psychic abilities), then instantly passing out powers to everyone in the city is destroying that monopoly. It seems unlikely they instead realized they would've fried people's brains; the Progeny doesn't come across like its members would be perfectly happy to die if it meant taking a bunch of other people them, or anything of that sort. So this confusing goal seems to be in fact their actual goal?</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This doesn't <b>have </b>to be nonsense -it's possible the Progeny think they would become the leaders of City 31 by virtue of everyone needing help with mastering heir psionic powers and so turning to the Progeny, for example- but my actual point is that what the Progeny are thinking with this plan isn't actually explained and isn't entirely, intuitively clear. (And that this is just one of many examples of this type of murkiness in regards to the Progeny)</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Similarly, it's not entirely clear why <b>Violet </b>would want to perform such a plan, which is rather important given she's the overall leader of the Progeny. We're told she's got psychic powers due to ADVENT science experiments, and there's a clear implication it was a pretty unhappy experience, a fact her design helps sell; the large patch of purple on her skull is presumably some manner of psionic contamination, and notably while her half-shaved hairstyle <b>could</b> just be a punk aesthetic thing it's worth pointing out that the purple discoloration is heavier on the right side of her head and that's where she's bald. It's entirely possible the right side of her head is bald because her <b>hair fell out</b> in response to whatever ADVENT did to her to get her psychic abilities, which would be a pretty clear indicator it was harmful to her health. The dark circles under her eyes are similarly meta-suggestive, giving her an appearance of significant sleep deprivation; while you can argue that from an in-universe standpoint that's coincidental, it's a pretty clear visual signal that Violet is probably meant to be in a very bad place physically and mentally, and honestly, even from a purely in-universe standpoint the fact that she has this purple crap discoloring the area around her eyes -which is one of the more direct connections to the brain- is a rather concerning symptom!</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Even her lips are purple! I originally took that as more punk aesthetic stuff, like that Violet is just a fan of purple lipstick, but it seems likely it's meant to be more of this contamination. And in real life, discoloration of the lips tends to be a concerning sign; if your lips are blue, for example, you are literally in the middle of freezing to death.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>So overall, Violet getting psionic abilities seems to have been a pretty raw deal. This isn't too difficult to reconcile with her creating the Progeny -she may be trying to avoid what happened to her happening to anyone else by virtue of having control over the awakening/teaching process- but seems at odds with this 'forcibly activate the psionic powers of an entire city of people' plan. It seems likely that Violet's personal experience would point to such a plan being emotionally and physically traumatic, causing irreparable harm to their health; why would Violet think this is a desirable thing to pursue?</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Unfortunately, this is both a harder sell than the organizational layer, and also the game itself doesn't really try. Violet is mostly presented as 'unhinged'; we seem to be meant to take her plans as not making sense because she's A Crazy Person, which fiction unfortunately often takes as an excuse to not bother to imagine internally-sensible reasons for a character's decisions. This is problematic in general, but the approach is particularly glaring when you have a leadership figure who is obeyed by people underneath them; Violet at least needs to be able to <b>appear</b> to be a coherent thinking person long enough to relay a sensible-sounding framework to the Progeny. You can argue that we only ever see Violet when things are coming apart around her and so maybe what we see of her isn't really representative of how she acts around the Progeny normally, and that would be fair, but it wouldn't alleviate the murkiness issue any.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Also not helping is that the game seems a bit undecided on how it wants to present Violet. The bit of art I've used at the beginning of this post makes Violet seem like an angry or ominous figure, but her portrait when speaking seems to be meant more as manic, like she's cheerfully unhinged -which is rather striking given it's a portrait you primarily see in combat situations (It's also used in the Investigation data sub-page once she's properly revealed) where you're actively trying to foil her plans and do harm to her and hers. The reverse -ominously angry Violet in combat, cheerfully manic Violet when you're getting a between-mission overview of her- would still have me wondering if there was a consistency problem here, but would also just make contextual sense. Ominously Angry Violet would also fit if the game had decided that the 'fry everyone's brains' plan was in fact Violet's <b>intent</b>; one would presume such a Violet is lashing out in anger over how her life got ruined and all, after all.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>(Notably, on a meta-level this would fit to her punk aesthetic; a big part of punk is anger at the world/society, which can include lashing out, up to and including lashing out in a way that causes harm to the angry individual but is deemed 'worth it' because a bunch of other people got hurt too who the individual feels deserve it. Given one of the other Investigation targets is a major group of ADVENT loyalists, it would be quite plausible for Violet to feel that City 31 is still an ADVENT holdout that deserves whatever happens to it)</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>As-is, it comes across like maybe the devs were undecided on Violet's character for a long time and didn't clearly commit to a specific model by the time the game actually released. I kind of suspect something like this is the core of so much of the Progeny's murkiness; there were two (or more) major possibilities the devs had in mind, they only really clearly committed to the bits that would be true no matter which possibility they went with, and then it was time for release before the devs actually figured out which option made the most sense/appealed to them the most/whatever. The Progeny having some obvious signs of unfinished bits contributes to this impression.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>I am unfortunately somewhat doubtful the Progeny in particular will be meaningfully followed up on by XCOM 3, so it seems unlikely that later material will pick a specific model and clearly communicate it as far as all this goes. Alas.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>----------------------------------------------------------------</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Next time, we move on to Gray Phoenix, starting with <a href="https://www.vigaroe.com/2023/10/chimera-squad-analysis-gray-phoenix.html">an overview</a>.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>See you then.</i></div>Ghoul Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15165232279081041131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656428975201272042.post-86299863847150357142023-10-02T07:37:00.005-07:002023-11-20T00:52:59.872-08:00Chimera Squad Enemy Analysis: Progeny Archon<div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQZ5xRmvGFNcpBjLJvr8a9DCFQ8ojDetE7iQ50z1cqNbh6FCvEV2yC4WiAonW1F40WSkoVuFgPu6NArHRndsVrH2vW6CPCP5iMx5E22vuAnXyLSSg_Oo_-C-GXPLJMjLI0fwSKjy_YK_X9/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQZ5xRmvGFNcpBjLJvr8a9DCFQ8ojDetE7iQ50z1cqNbh6FCvEV2yC4WiAonW1F40WSkoVuFgPu6NArHRndsVrH2vW6CPCP5iMx5E22vuAnXyLSSg_Oo_-C-GXPLJMjLI0fwSKjy_YK_X9/w640-h360/20201111201748_1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">HP: 7/7/7/8 (+2/+4)</div>Armor: 2<br />Defense: 15<br />Dodge: 25<br />Aim: 75/75/80/80 (+2/+5)<br />Mobility: 12<br />Damage: 4-6 (+1/+1)<br />Will: 60 (+10/+20)<br />Initiative: 70<div><br /></div><div>Alert Actions: None.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Archons are our first example of an enemy that doesn't use Cover, and common to such enemies is that they don't fully interact with the Breach Phase. Archons can at least be meaningfully Aggressive, unlike most such cases, but for an Archon the only difference between Surprised and Alert is that you won't get +30 Aim against an Alert Archon the way you will a Surprised Archon.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_8jRiSIv5KAsUpawuVMgzxg3xkR9Q7om5Wy3zKtwvqDhXiFPRbRow4ymsPUAZvzTAkxS65zLopCeWcVO9OKZstCHvJycZmxUb1X5oAVspnEQwvu4Ok_EySdMLhtRziYbm9T9TZVP63xNq/s1600/Flight.png"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_8jRiSIv5KAsUpawuVMgzxg3xkR9Q7om5Wy3zKtwvqDhXiFPRbRow4ymsPUAZvzTAkxS65zLopCeWcVO9OKZstCHvJycZmxUb1X5oAVspnEQwvu4Ok_EySdMLhtRziYbm9T9TZVP63xNq/s400/Flight.png" /></a>Flight<br /><b>Passive</b>: Is a flying unit, allowing it to reach locations without regard for intervening terrain.<div><br /></div><div><i>Flight matters far, far less than in XCOM 2. Chimera Squad doesn't do destructible floors at <b>all</b>, so Archons in Chimera Squad will never be seen hovering midair, and in general Chimera Squad isn't anywhere near as fond of major Z-level differences as XCOM 2. You can easily go an entire campaign without ever seeing an Archon fly to high ground or the like, in part due to how uncommon Archons are as enemies.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Chimera Squad <b>is</b> more willing to use terrain that can't be walked through, though. Stuff like water in oceanside maps, for example. As Archons remain (non-dedicated) melee attackers, this means you can be in situations where if they weren't flight-capable you might be able to ignore them for a turn (eg because your squad is in High Cover relative to them so their ranged attack is unlikely to hit) but because they do fly they can absolutely reach someone and thwack them.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>But it is <b>overall</b> less relevant than in XCOM 2.</i></div><div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmF2pMWCLx6s1AhIn5luVhQSDAtT34ckVXlV1Eu9qJUeAfmyvzKearf6BgHjZYD9QSOstiVbQBubyfSUwI0d-IpCdpqMISI88d51lpbDtYDmGV1jB5JfEz215QWGRXcJmQVb8ynhI9MuNY/s1600/Hardened.png"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmF2pMWCLx6s1AhIn5luVhQSDAtT34ckVXlV1Eu9qJUeAfmyvzKearf6BgHjZYD9QSOstiVbQBubyfSUwI0d-IpCdpqMISI88d51lpbDtYDmGV1jB5JfEz215QWGRXcJmQVb8ynhI9MuNY/s400/Hardened.png" /></a>Hardened<br /><b>Passive</b>: Does not use Cover, but is never considered to be in the open.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><i>This would be a lot more meaningful if crits weren't so consistently weak in Chimera Squad...</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Also, just like Codices, Archons still have unlimited ammo on their primary weapon, and this quality is noticeably more relevant than it was in XCOM 2. Not hugely so given they have other options and prefer those other options, but still.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitQkUDaZXNPa-t_ryjrTIwRftmXCT7CJB0mDxzrCG5OByuZ6Ag4ZboTwGTIyA5UuLYTUQ9VJTTk5cqFhvWsNVKEIAjzUm4yv0TaOewkSBwsSCrFxYHsS09JgNY18jJK1wbxQBHtV8XBtU3/s1600/Archon+Staff+Icon.png" style="font-weight: bold;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitQkUDaZXNPa-t_ryjrTIwRftmXCT7CJB0mDxzrCG5OByuZ6Ag4ZboTwGTIyA5UuLYTUQ9VJTTk5cqFhvWsNVKEIAjzUm4yv0TaOewkSBwsSCrFxYHsS09JgNY18jJK1wbxQBHtV8XBtU3/s400/Archon+Staff+Icon.png" /></a>Staff Strike</div><div><b>Turn-ending action</b>: A non-move-and-melee attack that does 3-5 damage, with +10 Aim.</div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><i>Yep, Archons still have a melee attack. It is of course really premised under Battle Frenzy, though, so let's get to that.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>It also doesn't scale at all with Investigation placement, and so not only starts behind their shooting action but will be even farther behind if you hit the Progeny later. So triggering Battle Frenzy tends to drag down their damage output.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Speaking of Battle Frenzy...</i></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRr88zv-RYzdEdJeEuzak_KemQhJMgvy59Ku25tuJBLS7_OLWCVYueYQunhaw88Lvc5ZKPkVMPUDbh1BNHdgc6aPGeTOgUIGXALO8EAeg38ku7rrR_y_DoxPU-MizQSGaTsQPRLXDMTL2h/s1600/Battle+Frenzy+Icon.png" style="font-weight: bold;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRr88zv-RYzdEdJeEuzak_KemQhJMgvy59Ku25tuJBLS7_OLWCVYueYQunhaw88Lvc5ZKPkVMPUDbh1BNHdgc6aPGeTOgUIGXALO8EAeg38ku7rrR_y_DoxPU-MizQSGaTsQPRLXDMTL2h/s400/Battle+Frenzy+Icon.png" /></a>Battle Frenzy</div><div><b>Passive</b>: 75% chance to trigger on damage. Substracts 1 Armor per trigger. Adds 1 action point for 2 turns. The benefit doesn't stack (but the penalty does), with new triggers merely refreshing the duration.</div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><i>This retains the XCOM 2 quality of AI Archons prioritizing melee attacks over everything else if Battle Frenzy is active, including the part where the game doesn't really do anything to communicate this fact. It's also actually even less obvious than in XCOM 2; the close-quarters combat, greater prevalence of High Cover, and greater strength of High Cover mean an Archon has overall better odds in Chimera Squad of being within melee range of a target that the Archon really is best off smacking in melee, where it's easy to assume they used melee due to it being optimal in context.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>It's also overall less relevant than in XCOM 2 for the simple reason that Archon's are <b>massively</b> less durable than in XCOM 2. In XCOM 2 it was possible for the entire squad to pour firepower into an Archon and still not kill it from a mixture of misses, Dodges, and their very high base HP. In Chimera Squad it's mildly surprising if they survive even two shots, and there's always that 25% chance the first shot doesn't actually trigger Battle Frenzy. The Timeline admittedly makes it harder to do an alpha strike in the first place, but the point is that it's entirely possible to end up with two agents acting before an Archon and take it out before the additional action point and the AI change can matter.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>In practice Battle Frenzy is mostly interesting to me for the part where the devs brought back the in-the-code-but-unused behavior in XCOM 2 of Archons having Armor that degrades as Battle Frenzy triggers. And that itself is mostly interesting for the 'meta' stuff of the Chimera Squad devs having a decent rate of bringing back such unused mechanics; within Chimera Squad itself it's mostly just part of a broader collage of decisions that keep Armor low-impact in Chimera Squad in general. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but the Archon would stand out more from the crowd if their Armor was stronger and didn't degrade from Battle Frenzy triggers.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Personally, I kind of wish Battle Frenzy had instead pushed the Archon's turn up one slot every time it triggered. That would've been an interesting experiment with the Timeline system and made Battle Frenzy a bit more impactful than its current state. The additional action point was fairly notable in XCOM 2, where Archons often couldn't close to melee and attack in one turn if Battle Frenzy hadn't been triggered but could close the gap successfully if it had been triggered, but in Chimera Squad's context you could be forgiven for thinking it literally only eats their Armor.</i></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq3rsKnWaMCLrz6MnB9k7nw25QgKsZb5hdDrp88xPZDiaufTedWymBWwY-8p7KYeYzp4o-OxMU85fkqNF1qDJ4Lvbe8CdUTX4sJmM3wPp40jSYnpPS3Ri5WO86455JbVsEUWa-3OA5S5kp/s1600/Blazing+Pinions+Icon.png" style="font-weight: bold;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq3rsKnWaMCLrz6MnB9k7nw25QgKsZb5hdDrp88xPZDiaufTedWymBWwY-8p7KYeYzp4o-OxMU85fkqNF1qDJ4Lvbe8CdUTX4sJmM3wPp40jSYnpPS3Ri5WO86455JbVsEUWa-3OA5S5kp/s400/Blazing+Pinions+Icon.png" /></a>Burnout</div><div><b>Turn-ending action</b>: Targets up to 4 hostiles. If not interrupted, at the beginning of the Archon's next turn it hits its targets for 3-4 damage. Canceled if the Archon becomes disabled or takes any damage. 3 turn global cooldown.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Chimera Squad's equivalent to Blazing Pinions, with almost the opposite mechanics. It doesn't even retain the 'fly into the air and hang there' behavior -the Archon simply fires their rockets from a 'standing' position and holds a pose. Among other points, this means that where Blazing Pinions protected an Archon from grenades and whatnot, Burnout has no interesting secondary implications.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Burnout is also, unfortunately, functionally a 'waste the unit's turn to make things easier on the player' ability. I doubt that's what the devs were <b>intending</b> it to be, honestly, but Burnout being a delayed action that's completely canceled if the Archon takes <b>any</b> damage or gets hit with any number of non-damaging effects (eg Stupor and Battle Madness) makes it trivial to cancel. I'm not sure I've ever had an Archon successfully fire it off in all my runs, outside when I've specifically <b>let</b> Burnout go through to test it out.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This is sufficiently true that there's a bit of a reverse from in XCOM 2 in terms of how you generally want to handle Archons; in XCOM 2, if you couldn't kill an Archon just yet, you often wanted to damage it anyway in hopes of triggering Battle Frenzy so they wouldn't initiate Blazing Pinions, since Blazing Pinions could create problems even if nobody on the squad got directly hit by the missiles and it bringing the Archon into the sky made it still harder to kill the Archon. In Chimera Squad, you're often better off ignoring the Archon initially in hopes that it wastes its turn on Burnout so you can then cancel its turn trivially. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjly7xYrXBe19ckPYIH60PTs5dwTNr4dN55B8iQDEfSKowqWedFth-KoCLzB5uCHKRTh9jjOR1eM6eco_HTFmu49DnZo-_nmWNUlZvUalYD-VqJThyn6UY09ld9tDfhwvK2MPkwTv5QWo_Qs-O7TNTZfutpmKPNCYgTEWXEF-3KE5sL9qCMNxuv9U0aFeM3" style="clear: left; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjly7xYrXBe19ckPYIH60PTs5dwTNr4dN55B8iQDEfSKowqWedFth-KoCLzB5uCHKRTh9jjOR1eM6eco_HTFmu49DnZo-_nmWNUlZvUalYD-VqJThyn6UY09ld9tDfhwvK2MPkwTv5QWo_Qs-O7TNTZfutpmKPNCYgTEWXEF-3KE5sL9qCMNxuv9U0aFeM3=w640-h360" width="640" /></a><br /><div><i>Burnout, in the unlikely event its projectiles acually get to fire, works much like Blazing Pinions in terms of being splash damage projectiles... though they're more or less incapable of smashing terrain, unlike Blazing Pinions. And are trivially avoided and interrupted; anybody being hit by Burnout is unlikely to come up short of an Archon and Sorcerer getting back-to-back turns and the Sorcerer using Tyranny on the Archon. (This has yet to happen to me, for reference)</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>To be fair to the design, Burnout being effortless to cancel is probably less design-awful than if it was almost impossible to cancel. 4 simultaneous splash damage attacks with respectable base damage in a game with tiny maps and the smallest squad size yet would honestly border into 'you just lose' if it was impossible to prevent.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>I basically wish it just fired one projectile at one target, with the delay, and couldn't be prevented, only escaped. That would probably have been an okay balance. I assume the devs didn't go there because they still wanted the recognizable 'spray a bunch of missiles' effect from XCOM 2, whether for the pragmatic reason of reducing how much work they had to do (It uses the same animations as Blazing Pinions) or for the fan-focused reason of 'Blazing Pinions is iconic!' Understandable either way, but unfortunate.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Also, Burnout cannot be initiated by the player, such as when Puppeteering an Archon. A side effect of this is that I'm not sure whether Act-based bonuses apply to Burnout; no such thing is exposed in the config files and the ability is actually completely invisible even with the F1 mod, so the only way to try to determine whether Act-based bonuses apply is to let Burnout hit agents and make notes of the numbers. I'm... unlikely to ever do that, for reference. I suspect Burnout simply doesn't get Act bonuses, but I could be wrong!</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>--------------------------------------------------------------------</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>As an overall game piece, Archons are possibly the most underwhelming part of the Progeny's arsenal. Back in XCOM 2 they were one of the most elite regular enemies of the game, and depending on how you played they could honestly be more of a threat than any of the enemies that the game clearly considered to be their superiors. (Andromedons, Sectopods, and Gatekeepers) I imagine plenty of XCOM 2 veterans spotted their first Archon, prepped themselves for a tough fight, and then were surprised when the Archon was a complete non-threat.<br /></i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>I'm especially puzzled at how little HP they have. They admittedly have all of Dodge, Defense, and Armor, but Chimera Squad is sufficiently fond of tools that bypass most or <b>all</b> of those (eg Verge's Mind Flay) that this simply isn't as protective a combo as it is when it shows up in XCOM 2. (eg on the Chosen and Elite Stun Lancers) I'd have expected some HP bloat just to give their 'Battle Frenzy eats Armor' gimmick more of opportunity to play out; as-is, I often down them with 0-1 Battle Frenzy triggers, because it usually only takes 2 attacks to down them (Sometimes just 1 attack) and they aren't actually guaranteed to trigger Battle Frenzy.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>---------------------------------------------------------------------</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi1TmRXxmXCEJvV9F3rjCGjoUwkkQpZxR2yGPgqNMKtA-KWDjkyjI3BFe9UqXz9z1g-WVxaPKr3-yovDGV-cY9sTX-ES6Wyjex2dkq-fUs-13gdNM0-5tME5Lmkqd0NiMhc-4GFLhWgHclbryxEapuz2EzV65V-QGthDIOdsYz4tImWI3xZ2RDPGsfdY8OI" style="clear: left; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi1TmRXxmXCEJvV9F3rjCGjoUwkkQpZxR2yGPgqNMKtA-KWDjkyjI3BFe9UqXz9z1g-WVxaPKr3-yovDGV-cY9sTX-ES6Wyjex2dkq-fUs-13gdNM0-5tME5Lmkqd0NiMhc-4GFLhWgHclbryxEapuz2EzV65V-QGthDIOdsYz4tImWI3xZ2RDPGsfdY8OI=w640-h360" width="640" /></a><br /><div><i>Narratively, Archons are barely touched by Chimera Squad, but there's one new wrinkle here: Archons apparently have hardware in them to let others exert some kind of fairly overt control over them. This fits with my earlier observation that overall the Progeny seem to just be opportunistically targeting people who are naturally susceptible to being controlled, and is completely believable to be a thing given what XCOM 2 showed us of the Ethereal mentality and modus operandi. It's really just the Psi Network brainwashing all over again, just presumably using a different exact mechanism.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>There's also a reference to an Archon 'sanctuary', which is the same terminology Chimera Squad uses for Andromedon and Gatekeeper living spaces; this seems to suggest Archons live in a colony of just Archons, which is a bit curious. Andromedons pretty explicitly have a sanctuary because of the atmosphere incompatibilities, where presumably the Andromedon sanctuary is some kind of space Andromedons can walk about in without needing their exosuit to survive and its atmosphere would presumably melt the flesh of any other species that tried to wander unprotected through the Andromedon sanctuary. Gatekeepers having a sanctuary also makes relatively obvious sense just because they're enormous and all; just as a lot of spaces designed for humans in real life aren't exactly accomodating of an elephant wandering them, a Gatekeeper trying to wander a human downtown would struggle to go a lot of places without simply smashing through walls and whatnot. Archons having a sanctuary isn't as obviously intuitive, as they're human-scale, capable of navigating human-scale spaces reasonably readily, and both this game and XCOM 2 basically just ignores the fire hazards realistically presented by how they move about. So... what's the segregation supposed to be about?</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>One can argue that Archon Sanctuary concept suggests that Archons are in fact supposed to be an entirely different species rather than a continuation of the 'Floaters are cyborg Mutons' concept, but this is never actually stated and the Sanctuart isn't actually all that strong of evidence.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Indeed, I'm in general unsure how seriously to take Archons as a narrative concept within Chimera Squad. Given how Archons were presented by XCOM 2, where Shen is repulsed by the cybernetic horror show of what Archons look like beneath the surface, we seem to be intended to think of Archons as victims of grotesque body horror where the obvious default answer is to try to undo it, or at least to get them set up with bodies that aren't expressly made for combat and propaganda while likely being miserable horror shows to actually live in. Chimera Squad just sort of... moves forward as if their XCOM 2 look is the Archon's natural state, which is all kinds of weird.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>But the thing is, the more in-universe-sensible outcomes would imply a <b>lot</b> of developer work that is likely beyond the scope of what Chimera Squad was really allowed to do. So I can't help but suspect the real explanation for the Archon narrative strangeness is that Chimera Squad was always going to use Archons because it's a relatively low-budget entry recycling many familiar gameplay faces from XCOM 2 with minimal modification, and that context further means they were never going to do much more than whatever was necessary to get them adequately workable in Chimera Squad itself. In which case it's entirely possible any follow-up media is going to completely ignore -or radically reframe- this 'Archon sanctuary' concept, because it was always just a kludge to try to vaguely justify Archons showing up with the same model and so on and not really meant to be a serious part of the narrative.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Mind, I'm particularly dubious on the probability of Archons returning in any form in XCOM 3, so Archons may remain confusing and unclear forever. I dunno, maybe that Reaper-focused The Bureau-esque game idea I've floated before will become a real game and actually explore Archons, among other things... I guess that's technically possible?</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>At least we do get some extra context on what was supposed to be going on in XCOM 2 as far as their loyalty; one optional mission drops in the notion that Archons were conditioned to obey by virtue of being in constant agony that somewhat lessened anytime they were obeying Ethereal orders. Which... is completely consistent with what we see in War of the Chosen of the Ethereals being all about negative reinforcement: obey or else suffer extreme pain is literally what they do to the Chosen. So this is broadly believable, too.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>----------------------------------------------------------------------</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Next time, we wrap up the Progeny by covering <a href="https://www.vigaroe.com/2023/10/chimera-squad-enemy-analysis-progeny_8.html">their leader and her attendant boss fight</a>.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>See you then.</i></div>Ghoul Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15165232279081041131noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656428975201272042.post-11347755928126432872023-09-25T03:53:00.002-07:002023-10-28T04:35:47.117-07:00Chimera Squad Enemy Analysis: Progeny Codex<div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0WNfhZRPds_Oh563zkHK-wH7QMuSrJ7VrS2Zkz7epIiOFGYWP3ln25_jEsIVQXGDOyQpGiTKSD6Q2jhg7_F2wX96fcCiB19FgMKkbNcuRMsrWVCLQaq0L6MtWdBTCuI6F7mKJB8wY5Ptz/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0WNfhZRPds_Oh563zkHK-wH7QMuSrJ7VrS2Zkz7epIiOFGYWP3ln25_jEsIVQXGDOyQpGiTKSD6Q2jhg7_F2wX96fcCiB19FgMKkbNcuRMsrWVCLQaq0L6MtWdBTCuI6F7mKJB8wY5Ptz/w640-h360/20201111163956_1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div></div><div style="text-align: left;">HP: 7/7/8/8 (+1/+4)</div>Dodge: 20<br />Aim: 80/80/85/85 (+2/+5)<br />Mobility: 10<br />Damage: 3-5 (+1/+1)<br />Will: 80 (+10/+20)<br />Initiative: 70<div>Psi: 100</div><div><br /></div><div>Alert actions: Move to a better position, Hunker Down.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Surprisingly, as far as I'm aware Codices will never Teleport as part of an Alert action. I'd have expected it to replace regular movement as an option, honestly, but nah, Codices are strangely boring in the Breach Phase.</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Digital Enemy</div><div><b>Passive</b>: Susceptible to Bluescreen Rounds and takes damage from Shock Grenades.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>This is still not a visible ability with a name or anything, but I'm still mentioning it explicitly, with the made-up name I gave it in XCOM 2.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Also, it should be pointed out that Codices are impossible to knock Unconscious: they automatically die at 0 HP. This was actually true in XCOM 2, but it's a lot more <b>relevant</b> in Chimera Squad. Among other points, they shouldn't be your first choice for Verge adding them to his Neural Network, as they'll exit it when they go down -even if he has Collar.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>To a lesser extent, it means you might miss out on Intel if you're not very aggressive about pursuing captures in a mission and don't realize Codices won't contribute. (eg you decide to KO exactly 5 enemies, and don't notice that 3 of your 'KOs' actually aren't because you Subdued Codices) This isn't a big thing, as Codices show up rarely in general and are restricted to the later portions of the Investigation; I imagine plenty of players have gotten through a campaign without noticing this and without it ever costing them Intel.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqoi9Fjdv61YHYkDD6XQ8lc9_9CmS4Rzh0vYr2lx47SFOaOKr7ZovZcA6uBN2ygjtlf-vke23dUQ-eT62a8btwNwksXCSVoMXgLJSnFgekrG7EUGcdM5q4EHOJ7TouUQzfoFFWYXR9j8N9/s1600/Immunities+Icon.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqoi9Fjdv61YHYkDD6XQ8lc9_9CmS4Rzh0vYr2lx47SFOaOKr7ZovZcA6uBN2ygjtlf-vke23dUQ-eT62a8btwNwksXCSVoMXgLJSnFgekrG7EUGcdM5q4EHOJ7TouUQzfoFFWYXR9j8N9/s400/Immunities+Icon.jpg" /></a>Immunities<br /><b>Passive</b>: Immune to all damage over time effects.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Note that Codices no longer have the weird partial immunity to Stun they uniquely had in XCOM 2. Feel free to have Verge Stupor them, or toss Shock Grenades their way; it can absolutely eat their entire turn, unlike in XCOM 2.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Their immunity to Burn, Acid Burn, and Poison is a bit less of a mercy than in XCOM 2, as while they still have Clone their base HP is noticeably lower. The player's firepower is lower as well, admittedly, by not by so much proportionately; where in XCOM 2 it was very easy to end up triggering Clone 3-4 times off a given Codex if you were careless, in Chimera Squad it's surprising if it happens more than the one time, all but requiring you actively try to make it happen. That it makes them immune to Torque's Toxic Greeting and Poison Spit can actually be noticeably inconvenient, in fact, taking away reliable options for finishing a low-HP Codex and whatnot.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>It'd probably be an overstatement to say it's significantly more problematic a set of immunities than in XCOM 2, but it's certainly the case that, where in XCOM 2 taking away their immunities would in some ways make them harder, in Chimera Squad it's pretty firmly overall upside for them that they have the immunities.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Also, it's worth noting that Codices still have unlimited ammo on their weapon. This was already true in XCOM 2, but it's way more <b>relevant</b> in Chimera Squad, where a player might chuck a Cease Fire Grenade at a Codex and be unpleasantly surprised when it does nothing.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSYNBdcWeN8rHgW5-snnYPUcvqpJJGBl-LEz1oZP8KAts0J9Uy_m90_jXUyKLhqUyG7xbLcbPV7uZPEAEuCzO-sZagQsRBRREEU4pIbzgcNfwADwXVFTSZZRcY4Htn3jJThLjpD_xSsY3Q/s1600/Teleport+Icon.png" style="font-weight: bold;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSYNBdcWeN8rHgW5-snnYPUcvqpJJGBl-LEz1oZP8KAts0J9Uy_m90_jXUyKLhqUyG7xbLcbPV7uZPEAEuCzO-sZagQsRBRREEU4pIbzgcNfwADwXVFTSZZRcY4Htn3jJThLjpD_xSsY3Q/s400/Teleport+Icon.png" /></a>Teleport<br /><b>1 action point</b>: The Codex transports itself to a new location, bypassing intervening terrain and not triggering Overwatch or other reaction fire. This has a global cooldown of 1 Round, meaning only one Codex will teleport in a given Round. No local cooldown.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>A nice thing is that Chimera Squad has actually fixed the buggy behavior on Teleport; Chimera Squad's Codices genuinely spend an action point on a Teleport, rather than setting their action points to 1. As such, stuff like Verge Stunning them for one action point actually will mean that if they Teleport they won't get to do something else right afterward.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><i>Anyway, Teleport is overall less significant than in XCOM 2, simply because Chimera Squad has tighter battlefields. In XCOM 2, if your squad was spread out and fighting multiple pods, it was entirely possible for a Codex to teleport two entire screens and really mess up your plans. In Chimera Squad, you don't really care; it mostly means they're somewhat above-average at getting flanks and hiding in High Cover. Since Codices still heavily prioritize Psionic Bomb, the flank threat aspect isn't all that relevant, though at least High Cover is more impactful in Chimera Squad than in XCOM 2 so that benefit is pretty meaningfully noticeable.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Teleport also gets a bit weird in missions where the AI is supposed to flee from your squad, as a Codex won't Teleport to the escape point and evac if marked as supposed to flee that turn, instead either simply walking normally to the evac point or Teleporting under their normal 'try to flank in good Cover' rules and then attacking. Whoops! This doesn't come up very often, as Codices are rare enemies and missions where enemies try to flee are rare, but it's a pretty noticeable oversight on the rare occasions they intersect.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>I haven't seen similar issues with Sorcerers, but as the 'rare enemies and rare mission type' thing applies to them as well, it's entirely possible they have this same jank and I just happen to have not witnessed it. They don't use their Teleport the same way Codices use theirs, though, so it's equally possible they don't have this issue from having a different AI routine.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggjZq88imEd1v7AC5FZv8f5buVwtKbEV9W5NqqeMTqiNTwEqV5w9d2qk9fqLLWgaMgSzs275fNvtS2Cr6SLhZr03KIJEn1NOy7ZJTqCtiEGd_kJmr_i1ivYCWg1nynVW93KOxnZT2aI_nW/s1600/Clone+Icon.png" style="font-weight: bold;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggjZq88imEd1v7AC5FZv8f5buVwtKbEV9W5NqqeMTqiNTwEqV5w9d2qk9fqLLWgaMgSzs275fNvtS2Cr6SLhZr03KIJEn1NOy7ZJTqCtiEGd_kJmr_i1ivYCWg1nynVW93KOxnZT2aI_nW/s400/Clone+Icon.png" /></a>Clone<br /><b>Passive</b>: When the Codex takes damage, it immediately teleports itself away to a new location, leaving a clone of itself behind at its old location. Its HP after Clone triggered is split between these two Codices. If the Codex has only one HP left when it attempts to Clone, it will simply teleport itself instead. When triggered in the Breach Phase, only occurs once the Breach Phase is over, and only triggers a maximum of one time.</div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Just as in XCOM 2, the fact that the clone is the one left behind carries connotations to keep in mind, like that Disorientation will be on the Codex at the new location, not the Codex standing in the old spot. This includes Verge's Neural Network, for example.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Speaking of Neural Network, Verge's Slam ability doesn't trigger Clone. That's appreciated; usually games miss edge cases like this when they're intending for skill-ups to be unambiguous improvements, leading to secret disadvantages that aren't actually meant to exist. Not that Chimera Squad caught all such cases, but honestly I'm used to games sloppily not catching <b>any</b> such cases, even when there's multiple really obvious such considerations.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Anyway, Clone itself is noticeably less threatening than in XCOM 2. First of all is the previously-noted point that the HP and damage numbers mean you're much less likely to trigger Clone multiple times than in XCOM 2. Second is the part where Clone's behavior is weakened in the Breach Phase, not triggering at all if the Codex doesn't survive to the end of the Breach Phase and only triggering the one time even if you manage to hit a given Codex four separate times in the Breach Phase; this makes it a lot easier to alpha strike a Codex if you're worried enough to want to do so. Third is that there's nothing equivalent to catching an inactive pod with Overwatch; in XCOM 2, the otherwise-sensible play of trying to catch inactive pods with Overwatch for free damage could randomly be punished by triggering Codex cloning, especially in the base game where the Codex would never take more than one Overwatch shot before triggering Clone and the clone would actually get an immediate turn if generated in the enemy phase. In Chimera Squad, the only situation that could have even vaguely comparable connotations is if Codices reinforce in... which isn't a mechanic you see in literally every mission the way XCOM 2's inactive pods were standard, and I'm pretty sure Codices are usually not allowed to reinforce in anyway.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Also noteworthy is there's nothing equivalent to how in XCOM 2 you could readily see pods of just Codices, where chucking a grenade at the group could be a tempting thing to consider and would trigger up to 4 Codices to clone themselves if said temptation was indulged. Indeed, it's uncommon to see even 2 Codices across an entire Encounter, and when multiple Codices do show up they're rarely clustered together.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Also, just as with Teleport, the smaller battlefields minimizes Clone's opportunities to create havoc. In XCOM 2, triggering Clone basically always carried the risk of the Codex teleporting to somewhere extremely inconvenient for you. The AI insisted on teleporting somewhere your squad could see, so they couldn't disappear behind a wall or the like, but they could still jump to a location that was visible to the squad but wasn't meaningfully accessible to anybody with action points left, which could easily happen if your squad got spread out and you pulled a Codex relatively late in your turn or prioritized other targets before turning your attention to the Codex. In Chimera Squad, such situations can technically still happen, but the smaller maps make it much less <b>likely</b> to happen, and in fact some Encounter maps are so tiny it's genuinely impossible.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>The Timeline framework is another wrinkle, in that Codices are one of a handful of enemies that can spontaneously generate additional 'proper' enemies in the middle of a fight, and in every such case the newly-generated enemies are actually appended to the <b>end</b> of the Timeline. In XCOM 2, if you injured a Codex as the very last action before its turn, you'd have two Codices immediately acting -or more, if you did something like chuck a grenade at a pod of 3 Codices. In Chimera Squad, if you have the agent who will act right before the Codex injure it, the clone won't get to act until your other three agents get their turns, including that this applies to <b>every</b> clone if you trigger Clone on multiple Codices!</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>As such, doing the maximally-wrong thing (Because you're not familiar with Codex mechanics, for example) has <b>much</b> more manageable consequences in Chimera Squad than in XCOM 2.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><img alt="" data-original-height="26" data-original-width="27" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_gysU4mmKJlXsTZxo0CVHfT4p5cGfu8ZEAsqZ1XIN1Nx9CJseiMvWXwO9w5cFdQNMiyB_6AeUXWIbctYJ7AVI6B6l839qm5WifAjWOvaIhLFB-2RahHJ0L73lZDLFSqBAu8RleNLTorfE/s16000/Psionic+Bomb+better+icon.jpg" />Psionic Bomb<br /><b>Turn-ending action</b>: Area-of-effect attack that immediately attempts to empty ammo from the weapons of all units caught in its blast radius. This is a Will test, and so higher-Will units are more likely to have their weapon unaffected by the Psionic Bomb. The turn after Psionic Bomb was first used, it will hit all units in the same radius for 2-3 damage, ignoring Armor, even if the Codex that initiated it is dead. 3 turn local cooldown, 2 turn global cooldown.</div><div><br /></div><div><div><i>The damage has gone down, but otherwise this at first glance seems to be exactly the same as in XCOM 2.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Then you realize turn mechanics have completely changed, and that Chimera Squad is, in fact, willing to use that fact. After all, the Progeny have Codices and Sorcerers, and the latter have Tyranny, allowing them to force a Codex's turn ahead of the curve. Doing so will cause an active Psionic Bomb to instantly detonate! (This is, in fact, basically the only use of Tyranny that's liable to be a bigger threat than the Sorcerer taking their own turn) Same for if you Puppeteer a Codex, have it use Psionic Bomb, and then use Team Up on it.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Conversely, if the player uses effects to delay the Codex's turn, that will delay Psionic Bomb's detonation. The only qualifier here is that a dead Codex will still have its Psionic Bomb go off whenever it last would've gone next. (Which for one thing means it can sometimes make sense to delay a Codex's turn <b>instead</b> of killing it) An unfortunate UI point here is that the Psionic Bomb's phantom turn doesn't get marked in the Timeline if a Codex goes down; you'll have to remember it on your own. This usually isn't a big deal, but can be unfortunate if you step away from the game for a minute for some reason.</i></div></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Conversely, a nice touch is that Chimera Squad added in 'danger' tile markings for where the Psionic Bomb is targeted at, so you know where to not stand your agents. The fact that XCOM 2 didn't have those was an actual painpoint given how the graphics weren't very clear on which tiles were in the radius vs which weren't, so this is an appreciated addition, especially if Psionic Bomb returns again in XCOM 3. (As presumably it will also bring back the danger markings in such a case)</i></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVAQab4R9Hc6upJl7d9U5xxoHY2V6d5d02WC2uFwujdHKj53ZlOKz-2mXScDLp1aW5nEpHVhLxWcjoOBoU6dNZv6xamtPCsdufxwv3ywO_YkU74uMnoy4EYDx3l8TfdEq0aP3i53Q-VPjw/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVAQab4R9Hc6upJl7d9U5xxoHY2V6d5d02WC2uFwujdHKj53ZlOKz-2mXScDLp1aW5nEpHVhLxWcjoOBoU6dNZv6xamtPCsdufxwv3ywO_YkU74uMnoy4EYDx3l8TfdEq0aP3i53Q-VPjw/w640-h360/20200430144645_1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div><i>Overall Psionic Bomb is actually generally less oppressive a threat than in base XCOM 2 and to a lesser extent War of the Chosen. Agents universally have access to a move-and-melee attack that can often make sense to use even without ammo being a consideration (And which most agents can power up with an Impact Frame), and Chimera Squad is very fond of passing out ways for agents to contribute offensively that aren't based on their weapon; only Godmother actually <b>requires</b> ammo to contribute. (And only if you discount Subdue) One of your agents most focused on using ammo -Blueblood- can literally get infinite free reloads as a personal passive skill, where a run that doesn't hit the Progeny first may have Blueblood essentially immune to the ammo drain in every fight it comes up.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>The Encounter system also reduces its capacity to be a problem. In XCOM 2, it was possible to be hit with Psionic Bomb's ammo drain, wipe out the Codex's pod that turn, and still end up with the ammo drain creating problems, whether by another pod immediately stumbling onto your squad and the need to reload taking away options for solving this new fight efficiently or by it being a timed mission where spending half a turn on reloads is risking mission failure in general. In Chimera Squad, taking out all the enemies you're currently fighting often means the Encounter ends, at which point your squad automatically reloads for free, so an ammo drain can easily have literally no consequences.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This does come with the qualifier that the initial post-Breach positions of your agents can easily be clumped enough Psionic Bomb will in fact catch <b>all</b> of your agents. Depending on the map, it can be the case that this is more or less completely unavoidable, contrasting with how in XCOM 2 you <b>always</b> had the opportunity to control your soldiers positions <b>before</b> encountering a Codex and so always had the ability to reduce how many people could be caught by a single Psionic Bomb. As Codices actually have fairly high Initiative, it's possible to be in a position where you can't really avoid your entire squad being caught. (You already used Team Up in a prior encounter, none of your agents currently can perform action-gifting, you got the Breach Modifier that Roots the agent in the first slot...)</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>But that's not a consistent point -a given run may never have the squad clump like that simultaneous to a Codex being present- and its impact is still generally reduced by the other points.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>It's also worth pointing out that Weapon Attachments can be freely swapped by default in Chimera Squad and that the Investigation framework gives greater predictability to Codex appearances. A player can loot or buy Autoloaders and swap them in/out as appropriate trivially, whether that's Investigating the Progeny first and prioritizing Autoloaders in expectation of largely phasing them out or Investigating the Progeny later and swapping in Autoloaders temporarily during the Progeny Investigation. I don't bother, personally, but it's an option for minimizing the damage of the 'catches the entire squad immediately' scenario, if that scenario strongly concerns you. (Maybe you picked a particularly turret-y squad)</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>--------------------------------------------------</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Narratively, Codices in Chimera Squad come across like a(nother) retcon of what a Codex is. The base XCOM 2 info seemed to pretty heavily imply Codices were Ethereal-controlled/created puppets. War of the Chosen muddled things with the Assassin complaining about how Codices are 'so unmoved by our pursuits', seeming to imply they're separate intelligences that obey the Ethereals but aren't big on the propaganda, or something of that sort. And now we get told that the Progeny have gotten a hold of <b><u>a</u></b> Codex, where the implication seems to be that all the Codices you fight in missions are projected by a central 'real' Codex the Progeny is controlling to thus indirectly control these projections.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>I'm not sure if the Codex concept was simply never entirely clear internally to the devs or if it started out clear but drifted for any number of reasons, but it's Another Muddy Progeny Thing, contributing to the Progeny being difficult to fully contextualize. This 'central/real' Codex conceit could, for example, just be riffing on a part of the XCOM 2 mechanics; that mechanically a Codex would only drop the one Codex Brain no matter how many times Clone triggered. This is the kind of detail that at times sticks with people better than stated lore. (This is in fact a big part of why I place such a heavy emphasis on gameplay as a foundation to narrative; because quite clearly it's very normal for players -and developers!- to prioritize gameplay for informing their understanding of a game's story, often clearly without even realizing they're doing it)</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj-1IaolCjr-t8uBr82uVo-jj43VAph1iSixRA9J_iT4JwN99K9gp193dYTthG48wg3BXKqMMen0xixuCuyhfkTH99cjuAXCxBs3GCbUGCzaUvP2T9EZDNeFRR-TC3NZIRWIRl1Z783MlZuq7yq7gaZYjPwn1IGYCfZt_OousNxl79s5mYNpRtocWW-vJli" style="clear: left; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj-1IaolCjr-t8uBr82uVo-jj43VAph1iSixRA9J_iT4JwN99K9gp193dYTthG48wg3BXKqMMen0xixuCuyhfkTH99cjuAXCxBs3GCbUGCzaUvP2T9EZDNeFRR-TC3NZIRWIRl1Z783MlZuq7yq7gaZYjPwn1IGYCfZt_OousNxl79s5mYNpRtocWW-vJli=w640-h360" width="640" /></a><br /><div><i>Another layer of muddiness is that as far as I'm aware Chimera Squad never really gives an explanation of <b>why</b> the Progeny grabbed a Codex. Did they actively pursue it for a specific reason? Did they sort of stumble on the Codex, play around with it psionically, discover in the process that they were able to control it, and just kind of shrug and decide they mught as well use the free extra muscle? Were they given the Codex by an external group to prop them up, and are just using it because if they have it they feel they might as well? It's difficult to tell if there's an internally-sensible reason that was just poorly-communicated by the game, or if this is a moment of 'game logic', where the devs decided the Codex would be in the game, assigned it to a faction for broadly sensible reasons ("The psychic faction gets the psychic unit, and we'll say they have it as opposed to other factions because they're controlling it psychically"), and then didn't give thought to the in-universe, in-character aspects of <b>why</b>.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>I do hope XCOM 3 comes back to the Codex with greater clarity, hopefully managing to contextualize their appearances in these two games in the process; the Codex is one of the more interesting enemies in XCOM 2 as a gameplay piece, in terms of visuals, and apparent narrative elements, and it's a bit disappointing how the series progression has taken an interesting mystery and increasingly muddied it. Among other points, I worry this is one of those cases of a dev prioritizing 'maintaining the mystery' over sticking to a single explanation underlying said mystery; prioritizing keeping a mystery mysterious invariably requires contradiction and destroys any reason to care about the answer because there clearly isn't going to be an answer that satisfactorily explains all the contradictory stuff that came before.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>And honestly, Codices are another enemy that has the potential to be a good foundation for a fun gameplay piece. Imagine if XCOM 3 returns once again to the SHIV/Mec/SPARK concept of a soldier you manufacture instead of training, but this time it's derived from Codex tech. It's easy to imagine a Codex Operator class that works sort of like a less janky (And less horrifying) Mec, where a psionically adept soldier is sitting in a rig back at base while puppeting a Codex-like psi-digital body; this would allow for the manufactured soldier to gain experience and abilities (They'd presumably gain psionic abilities as they leveled), but be relatively disposable and upgradeable (If the Codex shell goes down, the operator is back at base, still alive; if you want there to be more consequences, just say they suffer a psychic backlash that puts them in the infirmary for a few days) while making narrative sense. You'd still be able to have equipment upgrades be a thing, too; upgrading the Codex Brain that actually projects the body could act as a ready stand-in for upgrading the body armor/chassis, and if the engine supported it without too much jank you could also have the operator's rig be something you upgrade to provide some other benefit. (Maybe upgrading the rig would be a replacement for upgrading the primary weapon -or a replacement for Weapon Attachments. Or both!)</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Such a thing would make it perfectly natural to give some more context on Codices, even if XCOM 3 focuses firmly on the new enemy group and doesn't have Codices show up as an enemy in gameplay; it would be elegant in a lot of ways.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>I doubt it'll happen, mind, but I can dream, right?</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>--------------------------------------------------</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Next time, we move on to the last regular Progeny enemy, not to mention probably the most unexpected one; <a href="https://www.vigaroe.com/2023/10/chimera-squad-enemy-analysis-progeny.html">Archons</a>.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>See you then.</i></div>Ghoul Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15165232279081041131noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656428975201272042.post-70205371697577141032023-09-18T00:16:00.003-07:002023-11-20T00:52:28.316-08:00Chimera Squad Enemy Analysis: Progeny Sorcerer<div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_ePEwYbnytGbDh4Ucp_YCgbsR6SGXdfWkTHzeD9acGld7oFd3mNLcbDDGd5F_3GwjtB9rmZ82wpLh2G6fql5t1UqB9FkEEQ4kfs2XGaN6DsR3nlilTBuIQPvS_KOi-JbVu5In4pAF2bxI/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_ePEwYbnytGbDh4Ucp_YCgbsR6SGXdfWkTHzeD9acGld7oFd3mNLcbDDGd5F_3GwjtB9rmZ82wpLh2G6fql5t1UqB9FkEEQ4kfs2XGaN6DsR3nlilTBuIQPvS_KOi-JbVu5In4pAF2bxI/w640-h360/20201111160442_1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>HP: 7/8/9/9 (+1/+4)<br />Aim: 80/80/85/85 (+2/+5)<br />Mobility: 10<br />Damage: 3-4 (+1/+2)<br />Will: 150<br /><div style="text-align: left;">Initiative: 30</div><div style="text-align: left;">Psi: 100 (<i>As far as I'm aware they don't use this</i>)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Alert actions: Move, Hunker Down.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Yes, Sorcerers don't have a custom Alert action. It's a bit surprising given they have two non-offensive actions they could plausibly use.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaQvz_oyy2-1QT4Wbo94BpdjrDmRMeGrCvmG6AqZ14K7wnq_v7byAyo2_xxHoRDhrpdT9kq2HzMFBZr_kiAfx1HiNGf3FLw3GHqvKsy-yRlOhEQkCYuxGIigOHyjaa23qm-NFA4LjmqfYR/s1600/Mental+Fortress.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaQvz_oyy2-1QT4Wbo94BpdjrDmRMeGrCvmG6AqZ14K7wnq_v7byAyo2_xxHoRDhrpdT9kq2HzMFBZr_kiAfx1HiNGf3FLw3GHqvKsy-yRlOhEQkCYuxGIigOHyjaa23qm-NFA4LjmqfYR/s400/Mental+Fortress.jpg" /></a>Mental Fortress<br /><b>Passive</b>: Immune to all mental effects.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Note that this includes that Verge cannot target Sorcerers with any effects that can add them to his Neural Network, including that he can't use Lift on them during the Breach phase because of the consideration of Slam.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>To be honest, I'm not sure why Sorcerers in particular are immune to mental effects. From a gameplay standpoint it's pretty anomalous -the only other enemes with such immunity are bosses and robots- and thematically it's actually pretty tenuous. Yes, Sorcerers are apex Progeny psi units, but similar to Psi Operatives in XCOM 2 in practice Sorcerers are pretty purely scifi wizards, only more so; Sorcerers don't have <b>any</b> mind-to-mind powers! (Bar <b>maybe</b> Tyranny)</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>They do admittedly have 150 Will, but most mental effects in Chimera Squad actually don't test Will at all, so this is largely a curiosity.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>This all makes me wonder if Mental Fortress on Sorcerers is some artifact of developer intentions that fell through or were pivoted away from or whatever, like maybe at some point the devs were thinking every faction would have an elite and powerful unit they wouldn't want players able to mind control and then the Sorcerer ended up the only manifestation of this thought process.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Bizarrely, Mental Fortress does <b>not</b> include immunity to Panic, unlike XCOM 2. I'm honestly not sure whether that's an intentional change or some manner of bug or accident or whatever.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>In any event, while it can be unpleasant to run into this immunity when using Verge, where a player might set up a plan hinging on Verge using Stupor on a Sorcerer and whoops that's not an option and so now things are going to go wrong, outside that point it's... not really terribly important? The player doesn't have very many tools that constitute mental effects in the first place, and a number of them would be a bit mediocre if used on a Sorcerer anyway, like Berserking them would result in them using their relatively dinky pistol if they weren't immune. Similarly, it means Zephyr can't Root them because of the bizarre thing where mental immunity blocks <b>all</b> her punch-based side effects, not just the mental ones, but losing that option isn't exactly significant; Sorcerers don't get much benefit out of moving about in the first place, and have a teleport so Rooting them wouldn't even stop them moving about.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div>AI Pistol</div><div><b>Passive</b>: Primary weapon is buggy and has an inconsistent response to ammo drain effects.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>As with Acolytes, I've already covered this point but will be including it in every relevant enemy's post.</i></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div><img alt="" data-original-height="40" data-original-width="40" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaxlIJBcWV_EXxj7mFG7AwPu1HRCYbPO7dElzixQ2GHvcKN2o8VFEvxH_WRQdHyDRO_xQ61hNdguV0hxszPbuXN6xffvIgMlPdR2sel_dwp5qfkjqvMUIIAwTRsV9ssboDc9Z5ycQCWJm7/s16000/Tyranny+Icon.jpg" />Tyranny</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Turn-ending action</b>: Target ally's turn is moved to immediately after the user's. 3 turn cooldown, 2 turn global cooldown.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Yes, this has its own custom icon, even though you'll never see it in-game since you can't control Sorcerers and it doesn't actually pop up its icon when used. Whoops!</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Tyranny itself confuses me, chiefly because it's a turn-ending action and the Sorcerer is basically always the most dangerous thing in the room. If it were a 1-action-point ability, it would make Sorcerer presence threatening via action economy boosting, where letting a Sorcerer act is adding in a free turn on another unit on top of whatever the Sorcerer does. As-is though, a Sorcerer giving another unit a turn is basically always inferior to the Sorcerer zapping one of your agents herself. Among other points, this has the janky implication that it's generally making a Sorcerer <b>more</b> dangerous to take out their buddies before they can act, because you're taking away their ability to waste their turn on Tyranny.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>I'm curious why the Progeny in particular has this type of issue. This is pretty similar of a situation to Subservience, where a player is liable to intuitively expect the mechanics to work in a manner very different from the reality and in turn is liable to run into trouble from this incorrect intuition, where once a proper understanding is arrived at the mechanic in question is largely just making the enemy less threatening.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Tyranny is especially weird in this regard because it has <b>two</b> cooldowns, both local and global, implying the devs thought it was a powerful enough ability to require especially severe constraints. I'd get that if it was 1 action point, but as-is... huh?</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpu7p2JlvTNhdyHwpsIQBw5PF88mwPAnIRdcMfguSAs_09d26kCKLBesSxWocKPPPUT1Kwp5Tw8r8pvpaaXmr2NZLN0VQv0Jj-cCEFKVyKHl0qNgv4iHFGb7zVCv4a_eJ7pXzy8VTIvFgb/s1600/Null+Lance.png"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpu7p2JlvTNhdyHwpsIQBw5PF88mwPAnIRdcMfguSAs_09d26kCKLBesSxWocKPPPUT1Kwp5Tw8r8pvpaaXmr2NZLN0VQv0Jj-cCEFKVyKHl0qNgv4iHFGb7zVCv4a_eJ7pXzy8VTIvFgb/s400/Null+Lance.png" /></a>Null Lance</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Turn-ending action</b>: The Sorcerer attacks all units in a line, even piercing through solid walls, for 4-5 (+1/+2) damage, potentially damaging or destroying environmental objects in the path. Can't miss. 3 turn cooldown.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Null Lance is of course the primary reason Sorcerers are threatening, being a decently strong attack that can't fail and can potentially catch multiple agents. This latter point is, unexpectedly, much more reliably relevant in enemy hands than player hands; though the enemy outnumbers the player's forces, I've noted repeatedly that enemies tend to be spread out so splash and line damage effects struggle to catch multiple targets, whereas the player's agents are much less reliable about spreading out once the Breach phase ends. It depends on the map and how the player elects to distribute agents among available Breach entrances, but there are plenty of maps that have at least one entrance where piling all the agents through will result in them being in a pretty tight cluster, or arrayed in a line of 3-4 agents, where splash and line effects can easily catch 2-4 agents if the agents don't scatter with their proper turns before relevant enemies can act.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>The AI <b>generally</b> doesn't optimally abuse this fact; I've never seen a Sorcerer teleport to line up to catch all my agents, even when it would be completely possible and a human opponent would find the opportunity obvious. That said, I absolutely have had a Sorcerer catch two agents where it probably was deliberately targeting just one of them but the other was in the line of fire anyway; the potential for them to catch multiple agents is <b>very</b> much relevant, especially if you've got a turret-y selection of agents and tend to play them in a turret-y way. Even without that, though, Timeline-wrapping can result in a Sorcerer going before your second agent, where your squad has no time to scatter unless you're gifting action points/turns.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Sorcerers don't use Null Lance nearly as aggressively as they <b>should</b>, mind, tending to prioritize Tyranny and depressingly often firing their pistol for no clear reason, but you should generally behave as if a given Sorcerer will bust out Null Lance first time every time, because even though they generally won't do so the consequences when they do can easily be catastrophic for you. Among other points, Null Lance is one of those effects that can instantly kill an Unconscious agent; it's not <b>likely</b> to happen, but I did in fact, in my very first run of the game, have a Sorcerer zap an agent into Bleeding Out mode, and then a different Sorcerer promptly kill them as a side effect of trying to zap one of my still-standing agents.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>As the Progeny forces are overall bad at actually being threatening, there's not really a significant opportunity cost to perpetually treating Sorcerers as priority targets. That is, you're unlikely to be choosing between downing an enemy who is reliably moderately problematic to leave able to act vs downing a Sorcerer to then be tempted to ignore the Sorcerer on the idea that they'll <b>probably</b> spend their turn poorly. It's far more likely to be 'I'd kind of like to down this Codex before it acts, but it's not really that big a deal if it does, so I'd rather prioritize the Sorcerer anyway'.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>I kind of wish Sorcerers were more reliable about using Null Lance, honestly... there's basically never a time a different action is actually going to be a smarter choice for them, and it just ends up feeling like a janky, weird way of making Sorcerers less reliably threatening to have them prone to doing other stuff first. I doubt that's <b>why</b> in this particular case, but still.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfCYIQtUgZyi7HAlk6qDXuRU4SUE0lpACh7_HP1QRZfYnzYfmGxIIoMunSMm5VyBFzJYQWdPaY3XBYp3OftVqsd1COPn034_f27ZYDGkDSeMysR_qUjKeX06_S5NGZycV_ygN5VjXI0Zuw/s1600/Writhe+Icon.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfCYIQtUgZyi7HAlk6qDXuRU4SUE0lpACh7_HP1QRZfYnzYfmGxIIoMunSMm5VyBFzJYQWdPaY3XBYp3OftVqsd1COPn034_f27ZYDGkDSeMysR_qUjKeX06_S5NGZycV_ygN5VjXI0Zuw/s400/Writhe+Icon.jpg" /></a>Writhe<br /><b>1 action point</b>: The Sorcerer attacks an adjacent enemy for 3-4 (+1/+2) damage, and heals herself for up to 4 HP. Cannot be used unless the Sorcerer is missing at least 1 HP. 2 turn cooldown.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Yep, just like Shelter, Sorcerers have Writhe.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Also like Shelter, it's mostly kind of pointless. I'm completely sure the overwhelming majority of players have never seen a Sorcerer use Writhe; the need for a target to be adjacent <b>and</b> the Sorcerer be missing HP already means it can easily just never have an opportunity to be used, and the Sorcerer's AI further works against it; Sorcerers do not attempt to close to melee, and will in fact usually respond to a hostile unit being adjacent by either walking away or teleporting away before turning to some other action, even if they're missing HP to be <b>able</b> to use Writhe. Among other points, they clearly don't assess 'kill potential'; that is, if you drop an agent next to a Sorcerer where the agent has 8 or less HP, the Sorcerer won't notice that Writhe+Void Lance will 100% reliably take the agent down and then do that. They might <b>happen</b> to RNG their way into that sequence of events, but it's not something they're coded to try to do.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Mind, if their AI wasn't <b>so</b> averse to using Writhe it would actually be overall more reliably meaningful than Shelter's access to the same, as it would quite punishing to players blithely hurling an agent into melee with a Sorcerer without making sure it will down them. Alas, they really are very reluctant to use it; I made sure to actively try to bait out Writhes to make sure their AI was even <b>allowed</b> to call it, and it took somewhere over 10 attempts (As in, walk somebody next to an injured Sorcerer and let the Sorcerer take their turn) to get a Sorcerer to use it at all. But they really are very averse to using it, so... it largely doesn't matter.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>I don't really get why it has a noticeable cooldown on top of everything. This isn't as striking as with Tyranny, but it's the same thing of it appearing that the devs figured it would be a powerful enough ability to justify yet further restrictions. Was there a point in development where they <b>were</b> oppressive abilities for one or more reasons that don't apply to the release state?</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSYNBdcWeN8rHgW5-snnYPUcvqpJJGBl-LEz1oZP8KAts0J9Uy_m90_jXUyKLhqUyG7xbLcbPV7uZPEAEuCzO-sZagQsRBRREEU4pIbzgcNfwADwXVFTSZZRcY4Htn3jJThLjpD_xSsY3Q/s1600/Teleport+Icon.png" style="font-weight: bold;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSYNBdcWeN8rHgW5-snnYPUcvqpJJGBl-LEz1oZP8KAts0J9Uy_m90_jXUyKLhqUyG7xbLcbPV7uZPEAEuCzO-sZagQsRBRREEU4pIbzgcNfwADwXVFTSZZRcY4Htn3jJThLjpD_xSsY3Q/s400/Teleport+Icon.png" /></a>Sorcerer Teleport</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>1 action point</b>: The Sorcerer moves to an arbitrary location without crossing the intervening terrain, bypassing all forms of Overwatch.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>This is literally the Codex teleport from XCOM 2 -including that Sorcerers use the same animation- aside that it's spending an action point properly instead of doing the weird thing of setting the user's action points to 1 post-teleport. (Thank goodness)</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Where Codices being able to teleport in XCOM 2 was a reliably significant ability that noticeably contributed to their threat profile, Sorcerers being able to teleport in Chimera Squad is usually a curiosity that doesn't really matter. Chimera Squad's maps are mostly small enough that every unit is in range of every other unit by default, said maps rarely have significant obstacles to navigation on foot where teleporting bypassing them is meaningful, flanking is not strongly important to Sorcerers, they're not coded to try to teleport for Writhe for optimal Void Lance usage...</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>... Sorcerers being able to teleport isn't precisely irrelevant, but I'm not sure it would particularly impact their threat profile if it was removed, which is a big contrast with XCOM 2 Codices where taking away Teleport would <b>drastically</b> reduce their capacity to threaten your squad. The context is simply too unfriendly to teleportation as a mechanic of substance. (Which feels a bit weird in the context of the Breach phase being a core mechanic; you'd think teleportation would be a gamechanger in this kind of burst-into-a-room urban combat)</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>---------------------------------------------</i></div><div><br /></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgCM86o0kE80OB5VrLi5MYHAtHBmZyhKDuZgt7Pr4A_5UdM3o7Mon86YMpWyenUesKc12BdNiTUYbuEKqZxLCzqpIRy0nvGb-Sbdn1E-_cY1b9j52VUyneALkW0DIE_61bl20DaAvQUeNYsIamQJyrqQICuey--iYYTVHg2kRI1vc8vN76IGxwZviQQLXkL" style="clear: left; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgCM86o0kE80OB5VrLi5MYHAtHBmZyhKDuZgt7Pr4A_5UdM3o7Mon86YMpWyenUesKc12BdNiTUYbuEKqZxLCzqpIRy0nvGb-Sbdn1E-_cY1b9j52VUyneALkW0DIE_61bl20DaAvQUeNYsIamQJyrqQICuey--iYYTVHg2kRI1vc8vN76IGxwZviQQLXkL=w640-h360" width="640" /></a><br /><div><i>Aesthetically, the Sorcerer is one of the better examples of Chimera Squad employing a retrofuturepunk aesthetic, where the gangs of the future resemble the sort of thing that used to be put forth earnestly as a Depiction Of The Future. The really silly stuff that was literally the aesthetic of the time, but stylized and 'future-fied', and which has pretty consistently failed to particularly resemble The Future by the time it's The Present.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Which... actually makes a kind of sense in context? The Earth of Chimera Squad was taken over by an alien imperial power that attempted to eradicate existing cultural values/systems and replace them with one imposed by the alien imperial power, and then said imperial power was overthrown and control returned to the native population. There's a fair few real-world examples of that kind of progression, and there's a fairly notable tendency for this to result in the once-conquered peoples hearkening back to older aesthetics -including potentially aesthetics that were no longer in vogue by the time the imperialist power showed up- and it's also pretty common for newer advances and elements to make their way into this anyway for various reasons. Or put another way, it's not unusual for this to result in an unusual amalgation of the old and the new, much like how retrofuturepunk is 'our current punk aesthetic but with futuristic modifications'.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>So I could actually see XCOM's Earth ending up with parts of the population (eg City 31 in particular) organically walking into something resembling exactly this aesthetic because some people are trying to hearken back to aesthetics from before the initial invasion and latching onto elements from the 80s or whatever, never mind that the invasion arrived decades after those fell out of fashion.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>I would be <b>very</b> surprised if anyone on the development team was thinking in such terms rather than something more like 'we think the aesthetic is cool and we think we can get away with using it in this game', but it's neat that the aesthetic actually makes <b>sense</b> in-universe, regardless of what process led the developers to pick it.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>The Sorcerer's name and gender are also mildly interesting to me. It's pretty obvious that Sorcerers are meant to be what Acolytes aspire to become within the ranks of the Progeny, but where Acolytes are quite firmly young men Sorcerers are quite firmly women. In some sense this isn't terribly meaningful as it's obvious they're both meant to be archetypical examples of a broader and more diverse array of individuals; presumably from an in-universe standpoint both Acolytes and Sorcerers are meant to each have men and women at a decent rate and the devs only made the one model apiece because time/budget/whatever. You're certainly not meant to assume that male Acolytes become female Sorcerers, and I suspect Sorcerers are female chiefly because of one or both of 'recycling Codex animations, which are feminine' and 'the Progeny's boss is a woman and they just tweaked her model for Sorcerers'.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Even so, this is a rather unusual conjunction of decisions for a video game, where even when individual representations are clearly meant to be symbolic simplifications in this manner normally a game will insist on aligning the gender of closely-related classes of being. ie the usual thing would be for Acolytes and Sorcerers to both be depicted as male, or both be depicted as female, or to both get male and female versions. (And presumably pick at random for individual Acolytes/Sorcerers) That Chimera Squad was comfortable with male Acolytes and female Sorcerers is striking; I don't think I've ever seen another game make a comparable decision.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>As for the name, I brought it up because it fits with the symbolic simplification, once again in a non-standard way; people will use 'sorcerer' both as masculine ("This is a sorcerer, meaning a male practitioner") and as neutral/gender-inclusive ("This is a group of sorcerers, where we mean a mixture of male and female practitioners"), which fits with the fact that we're almost certainly meant to assume Sorcerers include male and female examples, but usually when a term has a clear feminine form (Sorceress, in this case) games will insist on using it for a female depiction, even in cases where it's clear the depiction is meant to be a symbolic simplification where male examples are explicitly supposed to exist. ie in this case the usual practice would be for Progeny Sorcerers to be Progeny Sorceresses, not as a signal that they're <b>all</b> female but just because the standard model used by the game happens to be female.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>This is all an interesting surprise, and one I personally find pleasant. The terminological rules I just laid out that games often hold themselves to are subtly problematic, quietly causing various options to be closed off or shot down not because they're actually bad options in context but because some honestly-unrelated decision 'set a precedent'. A game has a low-level gumbie enemy get a male model, and has a series of more elite forms of that basic enemy type, and even if they're actually completely new graphics (As opposed to reskins/recolors/sharing a skeleton/otherwise recycling assets) these more elite forms all get depicted as male to 'maintain consistency' with the basic one even though that doesn't really make sense. Maybe the devs on some level wanted a more gender-even cast of enemies, but this kind of thought process sabotaged the possibility the second they committed to some decisions that they probably didn't actually think of as <b>having</b> such import for the project's overall direction. It's just one enemy type, after all. Right?</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Narratively, Sorcerers are part of the ongoing trend with the Progeny of there being <b>some</b> info that seems relatively clear but the overall picture remaining murky. Presumably Sorcerers are what Acolytes aspire to be, members of the Progeny further along in their mastery of their psychic abilities, but as far as things like 'what is the goal in achieving such mastery' or 'what a Sorcerer is really expected to <b>do</b> as part of the Progeny' the game doesn't really fill those spaces in at all. We get a final goal for the Progeny in their Take Down mission, but said final goal is something of an anti-answer, in that if the goal worked out as intended then one of the Progeny's main apparent functions -helping humans unlock their psychic abilities- would actually be completely obviated.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>The only specific 'duty' we see attributed to Sorcerers is that of somehow or another managing control of the Codex the Progeny somehow got a hold of, but while that broadly makes sense it doesn't really clarify any of the points I'm bringing up.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>I'm curious why the Progeny in particular are so vague in this way. It's really just the Progeny that suffer from this.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>---------------------------------------------------</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Next time, we move on to <a href="https://www.vigaroe.com/2023/09/chimera-squad-enemy-analysis-progeny_25.html">Codices</a>.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>See you then.</i></div>Ghoul Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15165232279081041131noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656428975201272042.post-65251185729868104922023-09-11T00:21:00.003-07:002023-10-08T20:06:32.225-07:00Chimera Squad Enemy Analysis: Progeny Resonant<div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOn0Q0A3Tb9GnrlsKX1l80XpMdpSIkIWrMkFascAT1vZhATCd40OodroA3WR9j0EmRyOkkDoNH82XO2MPRB4amlGUukvZQ5DNs7QHUsPVEodsBTMRlWMczo29QBJFqCCcNSwqrVHEobidZ/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOn0Q0A3Tb9GnrlsKX1l80XpMdpSIkIWrMkFascAT1vZhATCd40OodroA3WR9j0EmRyOkkDoNH82XO2MPRB4amlGUukvZQ5DNs7QHUsPVEodsBTMRlWMczo29QBJFqCCcNSwqrVHEobidZ/w640-h360/20201110133158_1.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="text-align: left;">HP: 6 (+1/+4)</span></div></div>Aim: 75/75/80/80 (+2/+5)<br />Mobility: 10<br />Damage: 2-4 (+1/+2)<br />Will: 80 (+10/+20)<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilIA8toP8Q5NWHJ5OYkOORBTfeYLznGbX2F-wMqvf8JzsApDYeS0LjvUM-qDTtyvOIy4fafRis-DJfJlTRwMJoqqMJ6aGLM3LryQ6fDuC5V2M2liKpnAnb-0_Kynj_-paOLsdHL2BlZEVO/"></a>Initiative: 30<div>Psi: 40<div><br /></div><div>Alert Actions: Psi Domain.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>I've never seen an Alert Resonant move or Hunker Down, but Resonants are uncommon enough overall it's possible that's just me having a moderately unlikely RNG streak rather than an indication they can't do those when Alert. Maybe they only bother if your agents are flanking them once they've moved to their initial positions and I've just never managed to have that circumstance occur, for example.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>In any event, Psi Domain is very much their default Alert action, so time to talk about Psi Domain.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><div><img alt="" data-original-height="40" data-original-width="40" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh75Zqa8VQEGVbBwILELIltcSzGHly-jDMzinaLZSdzVa7TLSR9eiCqqOxXMkEYyVm0e25tbLsFHZhDpKhtXoUfBDM88lClRUSZ0K7VirNPSkSS8JZNHaVANwUWd4yrIx0e9I8kDHR1VKe9/s16000/Psi+Domain+Icon.jpg" />Psi Domain<br /><b>Turn-ending action</b>: All allies with damaging psionic abilities in a large radius around the Resonant gain +1 damage to those abilities so long as the Resonant remains alive.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Some points you might not intuitively expect is that Psi Domain benefits the Acolyte's Psionic Suplex, and can actually boost Verge's damage with Mind Flay if you Puppeteer a Resonant, which is a pleasant surprise. More straightforwardly expected is that it benefits the Sorcerer's damaging abilities and Psionic Bomb on Codices, but I'm still explicitly noting them for clarity's sake.</i></div></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>I'm actually not sure Psi Domain has a range limit. It's possible it does and it's just large enough it rarely crops up, but it's also possible it's just plain map-wide. Its visuals certainly aren't clear, with it pulsing out an effect that goes quite far and fades sufficiently gradually relative to its speed that it's difficult to tell where the pulse fully fades away relative to the game's grid system.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Also note that Psi Domain stacks. Resonants are only sometimes encountered 2 at a time, and I'm not sure 3 in one Encounter is actually possible so it doesn't come up much, but for one thing there's no weirdness akin to how Shieldbearers in XCOM 2 being unable to stack shields can produce unexpected outcomes.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>In any event, Psi Domain is a neat idea that... doesn't work out particularly well. Even though the Progeny are The Psionic Faction, they don't actually have a good array of psionic offensive abilites; Acolytes, Codices, and Sorcerers are their only units with actions that count. You might expect Resonants to benefit from other Resonants using Psi Domain (For one thing, they visibly get the Psi Domain buff when it's applied, and most units don't; I suspect the game just checks if a unit has more than 0 Psi Offense for whether Psi Domain affects them), but they don't have damaging psionic abilities, and Psi Domain <b>only</b> adds damage, and only to abilities that already do damage. Acolytes at least show up regularly, but Psionic Suplex's damage is a delayed and readily-interrupted effect, so often you're getting to waste two unit's turns for the price of one, while Codices are rare throughout the Progeny Investigation and only show up in small numbers and Sorcerers only show up late in the Investigation and always in small numbers. I've had more than one run where I'm pretty sure I actually never had a Resonant show up in the same encounter as a Codex or Sorcerer!</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Shrike forces making guest appearances doesn't exactly help; they have exactly one psionic unit of their own, and Shrike Necromancers don't have any abilities that do damage directly, so when Shrike forces are showing up that's just plain a reduction in the already-low rate of potential beneficiaries for Psi Domain.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>As such, Psi Domain only rarely has a real chance of doing anything other than wasting a Resonant's turn, which is unfortunate given how much they prioritize it as an action. The Progeny really needed to be a bit more heavy on direct psionic offense, or have Acolytes have a more immediately threatenning action. Honestly, even just having Psi Domain be 1 action point instead of turn-ending would be an improvement, simply because it would reduce the consistency of it being a waste of a turn.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>It's too bad, because as a gameplay mechanic the idea is perfectly sound, and thematically I actually like the idea of psionic cooperation being a game mechanic, but Chimera Squad didn't stick the landing.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Hopefully XCOM 3 will come back to the idea and implement it more successfully.</i></div><br /><div><img alt="" data-original-height="40" data-original-width="39" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWpfG2SyHtMEB4IOrp2x8lo3uRVJFWtRVaQgiImYCVFqO8DgC9nfLclteY7j4DHQId0UbpZQdNMLy0oXT3xTR7n0OqG3p7voczpTNL6pHsKoQ77gwOAC7SBDI4RvYaSlQgk_2IfGd0Ky0L/s16000/Soul+Siphon+Icon.jpg" />Soul Siphon</div><div><b>Turn-ending action</b>: The Resonant sacrifices 2 of its own HP to give an ally 4 HP. Requires standard line of fire to the target.</div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Soul Siphon is sufficiently undertuned I'm not sure what would really be a <b>good</b> use of it. Spending a full turn for a net increase in enemy HP of 2 is a very poor trade, and the Progeny don't really have good recipients for making the HP transfer more valuable. That is, donating HP to an Armored unit could result in the HP going farther and so potentially be functionally a greater net increase in the enemy team's HP, but the Progeny have the worst access to Armor of any of the game's factions; only Brutes have even a single point of Armor, and... it is, in fact, just a single point of Armor. Nor do the Progeny offer any other mechanics to extend the value of donated HP.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>In practice its primary implication is that if the player Puppeteers a Resonant they can heal an agent while hurting an enemy (the controlled Resonant) without costing the player resources or agent actions. (Assuming that Puppeteering a Resonant was kind of an incidental side effect rather than the actual <b>goal</b>, mind) And it's kind of mediocre even in that situation.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Not helping there is that Soul Siphon cannot be used if it would kill the user; in theory it would be nice to have a Puppeteered Resonant spend its last turn of Mind Control on Soul Siphon to take itself out while giving an agent some HP for free, but in the unlikely event you get a Resonant on 1-2 HP while Mind Controlled, nope, that option isn't available.</i></div></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>The AI <b>does</b> try to use Soul Siphon to save units that are slated to be killed by damage over time, so... that's potentially annoying? I think that might be the only circumstance they use it in, though, and it's easy to go through an entire campaign without it ever coming up.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>At least it's not harmful to the game design the way Psi Domain's situation is.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrnRnTRaMxwH3GB4MbSQE3jyGFprxjB66_SVxItC_ngROuXeWKMk-YDPzVVMwU-CnLg_OGOoky19Yk-PZIu7jxMccUFeSroSBdyJamULd3rxTSl03FcigNhZ-7hBH9E0ju30XjZJURiY1I/s1600/Fuse.png"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrnRnTRaMxwH3GB4MbSQE3jyGFprxjB66_SVxItC_ngROuXeWKMk-YDPzVVMwU-CnLg_OGOoky19Yk-PZIu7jxMccUFeSroSBdyJamULd3rxTSl03FcigNhZ-7hBH9E0ju30XjZJURiY1I/s400/Fuse.png" /></a>Psidet</div><div><b>Passive</b>: When the Resonant is killed or KOed, there is a 50% chance that it releases a psionic 'explosion' in a small radius around it. Organic units caught in this 'explosion' perform a Will test, clamped to between a 5-45% chance of actually Panicking.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>This ability actually has no name or icon in-game, and in fact won't be displayed if eg using the F1 mod to check a Resonant's details. The name I'm using comes from the unused Sectoid ability in XCOM 2, while the icon I'm using is of course the Psi Operative's Fuse ability.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Also, I suspect the Resonant's Psi Offense stat is used as part of this, but can't be sure, and similarly can't be sure of specific numbers, given how hidden and RNG-based the ability is. In particular, I can't be sure whether it adds a flat bonus to the 'hit rate' the way these games are fond of doing with psionic abilities. It's not terribly important in practice, at least.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><i>Aggravatingly, your agents are <b>still </b>able to respond to Panic by chucking a grenade at your own forces, just like Panicking soldiers in XCOM 2. The only good news is they seem to have a preference for chucking them at <b>civilians</b>, which isn't as terrible for the player. Still bad, mind.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Do note that Psidet can in fact affect your enemies. This rarely crops up as the blast radius isn't very large and enemies tend to be spread out further than said blast radius, but it's something to keep in mind if a Resonant happens to end up close to one or more other organic enemies. Taking out the Resonant may bring additional benefits after all. Just... don't count on it, given how much RNG is involved. On the plus side, no enemy in Chimera Squad is both susceptible to Psidet and capable of chucking an instant-damage grenade type of effect, so enemies Panicking is far less likely to backfire than in XCOM 2.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Overall, Psidet is interesting mostly for appearing to in fact be an adaptation of the cut Psidet behavior in XCOM 2. Within Chimera Squad itself, its odds of doing anything are low enough I've had runs where it never mattered at all, and indeed its odds of triggering and then provoking Panic are sufficiently low it doesn't even meaningfully discourage taking out Resonants with melee. Like yes optimally speaking you should avoid risking Psidet catching your agents, but unless you're just <b>obsessive</b> about taking out Resonants from up close, it's entirely possible to be very careless about the point and go <b>multiple runs</b> without it backfiring.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>It's also one of the more poorly-communicated abilities in Chimera Squad, even before considering its unreliable nature occludes it further. As I noted earlier, there's no ability popup when it triggers; all that happens is that the Resonant has a burst of purple energy stuff pulse out when they go down, and this is easy to write off as purely a general part of their death animation, or to think it's supposed to represent Psi Domain ending. Even if potential victims are in its radius when it goes off, no popups occur to suggest anything tried to happen unless it specifically <b>succeeds</b> in triggering Panic. And even there, the only feedback is 'this person is Panicking now'; the game doesn't actually inform you <b>why</b> they're Panicking.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Which in turn means when it does trigger, it's easy to be left absolutely baffled as to why somebody Panicked all of a sudden, not realizing the Resonant has a passive ability that is why.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>So for Chimera Squad's design, it's... very much not ideal. Probably would've been better either being cut, or being made a lot more reliable so it both actually mattered and was more learnable. That is, if it always triggered and always forced Panic (Instead of doing a Will test), even if it still lacked popups and so on, a player would be reasonably likely to fairly quickly guess that Resonants going down was the cause; if every single time you charged in Cherub or whoever to finish a Resonant resulted in the agent Panicking, it would only take three or so times to become pretty suspicious.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>It's overall so rarely relevant it's not a <b>big</b> problem, but it's certainly one of Chimera Squad's more poorly-designed elements.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><div><img alt="" data-original-height="40" data-original-width="40" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOqdt05iYSExug5N04sfO8Lg4QQd-9hMsLqjCg4ZI1hLZUTaNpj8owRe_jJ0N2pArwgF42xtKQwDHqUKJItywWasaCl-LwPuk_BJdYrA0iVKNaBN0Vq2EB-CYS6VO_W3wo7tODg1Sj8B-T/s16000/Subservience+Icon.jpg" />Subservience</div><div><b>1 Action point</b>: The Resonant targets a friendly Sorcerer. If the Sorcerer should take damage, the Sorcerer will Deflect it, and the Resonant will be instantly killed instead.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><i>This is literally the exact same ability as Thralls have. This includes points like...</i></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHYtZG4YETjbifAM1W-TnaSseujTsGpc0hpvD6SniGIHegHSRkMoCPb8x5qvDeg9zCEFlny5WWtr1TVFhiHeKFoEL4bdwEEzREra0Lk2Rbpo2sd74SvWJOXJEPmE68VqQOy01BA90T_PKo/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHYtZG4YETjbifAM1W-TnaSseujTsGpc0hpvD6SniGIHegHSRkMoCPb8x5qvDeg9zCEFlny5WWtr1TVFhiHeKFoEL4bdwEEzREra0Lk2Rbpo2sd74SvWJOXJEPmE68VqQOy01BA90T_PKo/w640-h360/20201112134302_1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div><i>... the animation being misleading and making it seem like the Sorcerer is the one initiating the ability rather than the Resonant.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>The mechanical implications are similar as well, including the part where if you don't understand what's going on it can be a pretty significant obstacle, but if you do understand what's going on it's generally just making things easier for the player. Indeed, it's actually a bit worse about this than with Thralls, since Resonants have more base HP; Cherub shooting a Sorcerer and instantly killing a Thrall isn't necessarily meaningfully different from if he shot the Thrall directly, since his Pistol can already do 4 damage to their 4 HP and so instantly down them. A Resonant's base HP is high enough that only your Shotgun-wielding agents can potentially one-shot a Resonant 'out the box', so killing a Resonant via Subservience is far more likely to be effectively an <b>increase</b> in your damage output relative to shooting the Resonant directly.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Nnnnooot ideal design.</i></div><div><br /></div><div>----------------------------------------------------------------</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Narratively, Resonants are interesting to me for how they flout a truism of pop culture I've always found strange; that psionically adept individuals/species/etc are generally never subjected to psionic control by others. To a certain extent I get it, as there's a bunch of logistical questions raised by mind controllers mind controlling mind controllers (Among other obvious headaches), but it's something that's usually not justified at all; that is, fiction rarely actually <b>says</b> 'the mind controllers are immune to mind control themselves', but rather just conspicuously never has nobody ever get around to trying to do so even when a situation arises in which it would be an obvious thing to try. This is janky in general, but 'naturally psychic' species in fiction are often presented as being more naturally <b>open </b>to psychic influence in a manner that makes it particularly unbelievable that they never end up psychically compelled by others.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>While Chimera Squad doesn't go into <b>detail</b> of what is going on with Resonants, it pretty clearly implies something like mind control is happening. One dialogue scene that probably every player of Chimera Squad has seen (because Verge is part of the Tutorial squad) involves Verge explaining to his squadmates how the Progeny's Sectoids are 'thinking human thoughts', and he uses a nice metaphor for capturing how strange an experience it is, where he says 'the cats are barking'. So there's a pretty clear implication that Resonants are psionically brainwashed or dominated or something, where the Progeny have their human psychics imposing thought patterns onto Sectoids that aren't really how Sectoids naturally think.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>It's too bad this 'the cats are barking' thing doesn't seem to have gotten representation elsewhere. Resonants use the standard Sectoid animations and audio cues pulling from the XCOM 2 presentation, and while I <b>like</b> those being retained, it could potentially have made for a really great Unsettling Realization if Resonants actually swapped out some of those for more human styles of acting/responding. Like if they didn't respond to injury with the Sectoid injured hissing audio and instead made an angry grunt or something. Though on the other hand if the game didn't actively draw attention to it I suspect most players wouldn't notice, or worse would notice but interpret it as an error instead of something Deliberately Off.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>In any event, this is all interesting, and in conjunction with Thralls and the Sacred Coil plot bits in regards to hybrids seems to imply the Progeny are first and foremost just going after easy targets that are relatively open to being psionically influenced. I'm not 100% sure this is the intended implication and would be particularly hesitant to assume the inverse implication is actually intended (ie the fact that Vipers and Andromedons aren't in the Progeny's unit list <b>probably</b> isn't an implication they're unusually resistant to psionic influence or anything), but it fits the facts reasonably well and Chimera Squad's approach to worldbuilding/storytelling seems to be pretty heavy on 'this makes obvious sense and we don't feel a need to explicitly spell it out', so I'm more inclined to suspect that this is an accurate read than I would be with a lot of games.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>The fact that Resonants are so support-oriented is also interesting to me, in that it could be meant to tie into all the prior, where Resonants being support-focused psionics and in the Progeny are <b>related</b> instead of coincidental. That is, it would make a kind of sense if Sectoids who are talented/skilled/experienced at cooperative sorts of psionic experiences are more vulnerable to being psionically infiltrated/influenced/dominated than Sectoids who are primarily skilled at the more offensive or conttrolling applications. I wouldn't be surprised if this is a complete coincidence and the devs were just thinking in terms like 'it would be interesting to have a psychic unit that supports other psychic units, and obviously that should go on the psi faction', but I do have to wonder if this is intended. Or if it's not intended but later materials recognize it as a natural possibility and then run with it, which would be functionally the same thing from an outside perspective.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Even if all that is me reading too much into things, it's still a pleasant surprise to see a story actually have a psionically adept species falling prey to such themselves. It <b>shouldn't</b> be a surprise given the Ethereals ruling over everybody automatically implies such a thing, but that doesn't stop so many other stories, so I'm pleasantly surprised anyway.</i></div><div><br /></div><div>-----------------------------------------------------------------</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Next time, we start in on the elite Progeny forces, starting with the most 'generic' one; <a href="https://www.vigaroe.com/2023/09/chimera-squad-enemy-analysis-progeny_18.html">Sorcerers</a>.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>See you then.</i></div>Ghoul Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15165232279081041131noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656428975201272042.post-66055462997651017092023-09-04T07:06:00.004-07:002023-10-08T20:36:17.382-07:00Chimera Squad Enemy Analysis: Progeny Brute<div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo2_rHXh5sqzE8D7SYS4gtZIo5qkZzja0Nbql__hDJM9Dv0jsVI1Bax5p-mNyqnVD2wjL5LQ-8UzG2sp2uFURJyLOSYojSfmfDH5bFv9Vt9MPZn9a-DG6V4zYsBU8JUisXGVlZ_UjnMK-4/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo2_rHXh5sqzE8D7SYS4gtZIo5qkZzja0Nbql__hDJM9Dv0jsVI1Bax5p-mNyqnVD2wjL5LQ-8UzG2sp2uFURJyLOSYojSfmfDH5bFv9Vt9MPZn9a-DG6V4zYsBU8JUisXGVlZ_UjnMK-4/w640-h360/20201111162959_1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">HP: 7 (+2/+4)</div>Armor: 1<br />Aim: 75/75/80/80 (+2/+5)<br />Mobility: 10<br />Damage: 4-5 (+1/+1. Crit adds +1)<br />Will: 50 (+10/+20)<br />Initiative: 30<div><br /></div><div><i>Notice that Brutes are actually more accurate than Thralls. As the AI doesn't use distance-based Aim modification, Brutes are prone to landing nasty long-range shots in spite of wielding a Shotgun. As they also hit harder than even Shotgun-wielding Thralls, it's really important to prioritize not letting Brutes get turns. Which can be a bit rough given how they're one of the more durable Progeny units.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Fortunately, their terrible Initiative means you can often prioritize other targets first anyway, and of course tools like Stuns work just fine.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>It's also mildly interesting to note that their Will isn't actually poor by Chimera Squad's standards. Mutons in the prior two games consistently had poor Will, but Chimera Squad doesn't carry this trend forward for whatever reason. I'm curious as to whether this was more 'pure game design' or if any narrative aspects were in fact intended.</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Alert Actions: Melee Stance.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>I have never seen a Brute move to a different position or Hunker Down. It's possible they just have a <b>really</b> strong preference for Melee Stance over those other options and I've just had a mildly improbabble streak of RNG, but I suspect they really do only use Melee Stance.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>So let's talk about Melee Stance.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><div><img alt="" data-original-height="40" data-original-width="40" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigdi5rP7Kad_fIw_dHK-0o3i9_UhkN6R_DEOasPVUgOc_KyTRYgBJTdXQh1ZLJNQ9XeUDmm1NLBQfgMDlKjowjKrA7Zi_PNB1rYfW_BKjnopL06p2BLZwompkCyEKsCYGy2yqmNm4a0DYK/s16000/Melee+Stance+icon.jpg" />Melee Stance</div><div><b>Passive, sort of</b>: At the end of every turn, if not disabled, the Brute enters a special form of Overwatch where it will perform a melee attack on the first enemy to move through a tile adjacent to it.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Mechanically, Melee Stance is <b>incredibly</b> janky, as what's actually going on is that Melee Stance is a turn-ending action that doesn't require action points and has no cooldown, which is to say it can be activated at <b>any</b> time during the controlling team's turn. The AI restricts itself to activating it immediately after the Brute's turn is over (Which you can't actually do yourself...) but if you Puppeteer a Brute you'll find you can select the Brute and activate Melee Stance during any of your other unit's turns, and can indeed activate it over and over. (To no further benefit, mind) Conversely, if you activate Melee Stance during the Pupeteered Brute's own turn, it'll end its turn prematurely, whoops!</i></div></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Hence why I labeled it 'passive, sort of'. It's not actually a passive effect at all, but the AI utilizes it in a manner that makes it functionally a passive.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Melee Stance itself is mostly not actually particularly relevant, especially once you've got a reasonably strong mastery of the game overall. Thanks to the low Initiative of Brutes, unless they were Alert in the Breach Phase (And then survive and so on) they usually won't get the opportunity to function as area denial until most of the first Round is over; when you're good at the game, plenty of Encounters don't even make it <b>through </b>the first Round, and plenty of the ones that do make it that far still don't last much longer.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Even when an Encounter either lasts long enough or a Brute is Alert in the Breach Phase, Melee Stance still tends to not matter. The radius of 1 tile out from the Brute is very, very unlikely to actually blockade any tiles you want to pass through unless you're specifically wanting to melee the Brute, and since Overwatch can be trivially ended with any damage and Chimera Squad is generous with action point efficiency in general and has activated Items outright <b>free</b> to use, even if a Brute is meaningfully in the way this often just means you chip it (Or Stupor it, say) and proceed with your plan minimally impacted. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Exacerbating this is the previously-covered point that damage to your agents doesn't necessarily impose a strategic cost. You can easily shrug and just walk an agent through the Melee Stance zone, not caring that it probably takes off some HP, because if it isn't going to down the agent and you'll finish the mission before any follow-up can happen, probably the damage doesn't matter at all. The only significant caveat to this is the janky point I've covered before that if Axiom has Counterattack there's a risk he'll interrupt his action and end his turn via Counterattack triggering, which itself has the caveat that if you were having Axiom end his turn attempting to melee them then this is all to the good.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>I like the idea of Melee Stance and actually hope XCOM 3 comes back to the general idea, but within Chimera Squad itself it's not terribly effectual.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><img alt="" data-original-height="39" data-original-width="39" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAPANf8xw5utO_dqBlOfHstLEkE3MhHnL2IxqsPsZH60riKWiHn9zCm6_zdlgkQTliT3yiEDClLBSQtQVd6-s3ZE9lV3Z0FZffyBnruAdmoi4Jo1jnl-UinORcEcfBybkZ-fQatuj010qZ/s16000/Fist+Strike+Chimera+Squad.jpg" />Devastating Blow</div><div><b>Turn-ending action</b>: A move-and-melee attack that does 4-5 (+1/+2) damage.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Brutes are surprisingly reluctant to use Devastating Blow, far preferring to move up and fire their shotgun, which is a surprising contrast with XCOM 2 where melee-capable enemies uniformly preferred to charge into melee if it was possible at all. I'm honestly not sure what prompts Brutes to decide that <b>now </b>is a sensible time to turn to break out the melee attack.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>In any event, it should be pointed out that Melee Stance's hit is basically an Overwatch version of Devastating Blow, which... means it's basically just a Devastating Blow, as for some reason Chimera Squad has all melee attacks classed as Overwatch in some sense, where melee simply isn't allowed to crit. It's one of the strangest non-obvious decisions in Chimera Squad; I have absolutely no theories as to why they did this.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Devastating Blow itself is both rare to see and rarely particularly sensible for a Brute to use. Excepting third-Act Brutes, their Shotgun always has the same damage while actually being allowed to crit, and so the only time Devastating Blow is overall better is if the Brute is close enough to Devastating Blow a target but <b>not </b>close enough to flank and then shoot that target. Third-Act Brutes only have a single point of damage advantage on </i><i>Devastating Blow </i><i>over their shotgun, too, which is both drowned out by damage variance and also can be canceled out by the shotgun critting, so even for third-Act Brutes </i><i>Devastating Blow </i><i>is a dubious use of their time.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Not helping is that Brutes have...</i></div><br /><div><img alt="" data-original-height="40" data-original-width="40" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQmC45l49L_5acHpGCAazcqCM7G4ccTE5qEQ1TT0qQ5086n2YbtbeG6BTtFRo9BqpnyveuysuD1uwD0YgIdHsnp0tQ0g_UE9xNEcuGc-u_Z4NF9FWVEu0unCmHoJBbKEqfi0p5vuNyGPaE/s16000/Bloodlust.png" />Bloodlust</div><div><b>Passive</b>: Automatically advances toward attackers when damaged.</div><div><br /></div><i>This doesn't actually have an icon in-game, just a text pop-up when it triggers, so have an appropriate icon from Enemy Unknown. Indeed, Bloodlust won't show up at all if checking a Brute with the <a href="https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2487237726">F1 mod</a>!</i><br /><br /><i>Anyway, Bloodlust in theory synergizes with </i><i>Devastating Blow </i><i>by making it more likely that a player will pull a Brute close enough to </i><i>Devastating Blow</i><i>, but in practice it just feeds back into the problem of there being a narrow band in which a Brute is going to be in </i><i>Devastating Blow </i><i>range but not in range to flank. After all, if a player shoots a Brute that <b>is</b> in that band, the most likely result is that the Brute is now close enough for a flank! Admittedly the converse is true, where a player can pull a Brute forward by just enough that <b>now</b> they're in </i><i>Devastating Blow </i><i>range where they weren't before, but in practice I'd still argue it's skewed toward reducing </i><i>Devastating Blow's </i><i>relevance, especially when talking a player who has a grasp on the general design of the game.</i><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Note that unlike the Enemy Unknown version of Bloodlust, <b>all</b> this does is make the Brute move. They don't try to Panic their tormenter or anything like that. As such, Bloodlust is primarily a disadvantage an informed player can leverage, using one attack to provoke a Brute into leaving their Cover and then getting an easy shot on the now-in-the-open Brute. The only way Bloodlust can be a hazard is if it results in the Brute getting a flank/performing a </i><i>Devastating Blow </i><i>where that otherwise wouldn't have happened, and due to how Chimera Squad has retuned enemy accuracy and the power of crits this is only somewhat important if it specifically lets the Brute bypass High Cover. (Because of the Armor provided by High Cover, mostly)</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>------------------------------------------------<br /></i><br /><div><i>Overall, Brutes are a solid enough example of a concept Chimera Squad is fond of; uncommon semi-elites that tend to show up in small numbers throughout an Investigation, loosely comparable to how pod leaders in XCOM 2 are prone to being a cut above the pod members they're leading. Among other points, it continues the benefit from that system that the difficulty curve gets to be much less jagged than in Enemy Unknown, where these semi-elites showing up at all isn't a big difficulty spike, and in fact Chimera Squad gets even more nuance than XCOM 2 out of its approach because there's more granularity to an individual Encounter than there is to a pod in XCOM 2; a room of 4-8 enemies doing something like swapping out a Thrall for a Brute is simply less of a proportionate spike than XCOM 2 doing stuff like swapping a Basic ADVENT Trooper for a Basic ADVENT Stun Lancer in a pod of 3 enemies.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>The Timeline also contributes, and in fact Chimera Squad is, unexpectedly, rather fond of semi-elite and even more properly elite enemies having <b>low</b> Initiative, where what I'm used to seeing from games with even vaguely comparable systems is to have more elite enemies also get to act sooner. This reduces the impact of phasing in elite enemies, as a <b>particularly</b> outsized threat can usually be responded to by the player going nuclear on it. If more elite enemies defaulted heavily to also having high Initiative, elite enemies being rotated in would tend to result in a disproportionate spike in danger, as basic enemies are weak enough it's not unusual for a single agent to be able to take them out before they act, whereas tougher enemies like Brutes often require two agents acting to take down. This is in fact often true in Chimera Squad even when the player is averaging more than one enemy taken down per agent turn, in part because Chimera Squad is fond of tools that can hit multiple targets at once and somewhat less fond of providing options for an agent to pile damage onto a single target.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>So this is all neat, and I'm kind of curious as to whether XCOM 3 will try to come back to a similar approach, in part because War of the Chosen was already noticeably more fond of 4-unit pods in various missions; Chimera Squad's Encounter system isn't precisely a <b>straightforward</b> extension of this trend, but it clearly extends the concept and expands its benefits.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Aesthetically, it's interesting to me that the Progeny has the Muton type that most closely resembles the XCOM 2 Muton in terms of skin tone and armor coloration, and in fact also has the most mechanical overlap given that Melee Stance has clear overlap with Counterattack in terms of potentially punishing attempts to melee the unit. The next-closest in aesthetic overlap is civilian Mutons; there's a pretty noticeable rate of civilian Mutons wearing a green shirt, specifically, which is mildly interesting as it's suggestive of cultural components. (eg that this shade of green has some specific meaning in overall Muton culture)</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>The odd thing is that the purple skin tone is unique to Brutes; Axiom uses his unique primarily-green skin coloration (Well, unique for models in the engine; a portrait of a City 31 mayor Muton has Axiom's coloration as well), while all other Mutons we can see any skin on have a yellow-to-brown coloration. You'd expect the purple coloration of prior games to be presented as the standard, and instead Chimera Squad makes it seem like a minority of Mutons have this coloration. As far as I'm aware the game doesn't acknowledge this change, let alone explain it.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>In general, the narrative end of Brutes is extremely unclear. Where Thralls and Resonants have clear indications that they're being psionically controlled by the Progeny's human members, Brutes... don't. Notably, they lack the Subservience ability that Thralls and Resonants share, which could be taken as evidence they're not being controlled. But Brutes are never handled as anything less generic than 'a Muton enemy', leaving it unclear whether they're meant to be Mutons willingly working with the Progeny or what. Their dialogue, for example, isn't akin to Thrall 'apparently on drugs' dialogue, and in fact sounds very akin to Gray Phoenix Legionnaire dialogue. (ie the basic, generic Mutons of Gray Phoenix)</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>It honestly leaves me wondering if Brutes were not originally made for the Progeny at all, it's so odd; the Brute is the only enemy in the game to come across as not really having any thought put into how they fit into their faction. While plenty of other enemies are murky in the sense that we don't get a clear, explicit explanation of what's going on with them, it's usually broadly intuitive what's up with them, at least once you've seen the collective picture of a given Investigation target.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Whatever the case, it's a detail that contributes to the Progeny being the overall murkiest faction, where one of their relatively common units is basically a giant question mark.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>---------------------------------------------------</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Next time, we move on to another 'semi-elite' Progeny unit, the <a href="https://www.vigaroe.com/2023/09/chimera-squad-enemy-analysis-progeny_11.html">Resonant</a>.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>See you then.</i></div></div>Ghoul Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15165232279081041131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656428975201272042.post-16012599967011474652023-08-28T04:29:00.004-07:002023-09-04T07:07:28.307-07:00Chimera Squad Enemy Analysis: Progeny Thrall<div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilIA8toP8Q5NWHJ5OYkOORBTfeYLznGbX2F-wMqvf8JzsApDYeS0LjvUM-qDTtyvOIy4fafRis-DJfJlTRwMJoqqMJ6aGLM3LryQ6fDuC5V2M2liKpnAnb-0_Kynj_-paOLsdHL2BlZEVO/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilIA8toP8Q5NWHJ5OYkOORBTfeYLznGbX2F-wMqvf8JzsApDYeS0LjvUM-qDTtyvOIy4fafRis-DJfJlTRwMJoqqMJ6aGLM3LryQ6fDuC5V2M2liKpnAnb-0_Kynj_-paOLsdHL2BlZEVO/w640-h360/20201110131002_1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">HP: 4 (+0/+2)<br />Aim: 70/70/75/75 (+2/+5)<br />Mobility: 10<br />Damage: Complicated. See below.<br />Will: 50 (+10/+20)<br />Initiative: 70</div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Some notes to start.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>First of all, there's a Progeny Dark Event that adds +2 HP to Thralls while it's active. I largely don't intend to get into Dark Events on this site for various reasons (Mostly: it would be a huge pain to properly document, and the mechanic isn't actually all that impactful, unfortunately), but this is worth mentioning because Thralls cross a bunch of 'magic number' thresholds while this Dark Event is active.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Second, the Thrall is the first of several enemy types that are allowed to wield all of Assault Rifles, SMGs, and Shotguns, which have slightly different stat profiles.</i><i> They all start from 2 damage with 1 damage from a crit, except the Shotgun has a 50% chance for +1 damage to occur. They then all gain 1 damage per Act, except the non-Shotguns also gain a point of spread starting from the second Act. Or to provide a summary you might find clearer:</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><br /></div><div>SMG/AR: 2/2-4/3-5</div><div>Shotgun: 2-3/3-4/4-5</div><div>Crit adds +1 for all weapons in all Acts</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Unfortunately, in practice this boils down to 'Thralls have a chance to be slightly more lethal than their usual'; the SMG and Assault Rifle are completely identical to each other, and the Shotgun has no disadvantage or other distinct qualities, just the little bit of extra damage. This is because, as I've alluded to before, enemies in Chimera Squad retain the XCOM 2 quality of their Aim never being affected by distance from the target; as such, where your Shotgun-equipped agents struggle to hit far-off targets, a Thrall with a Shotgun is just as accurate at any range as a Thrall equipped with an SMG or an Assault Rifle.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>I like the idea of individual enemy types being able to have different weapon types equipped, but if XCOM 3 returns to the concept it really needs to put in the effort to make distinct weapons <b>distinct</b> when in enemy hands, and it also needs to make sure this concept is relatively obvious to the player. In Chimera Squad, not only is the Shotgun just <b>better</b> for enemies than an SMG or Assault Rifle, the fact that enemies <b>can</b> carry different weapon types, as well as the fact that this can <b>matter</b>, is not actually conveyed clearly to the player; the only indication is the audiovisual elements of the weapon itself. For various reasons, it's really easy to just entirely overlook that a couple Thralls in an Encounter are actually holding different weapons, and even if a player notices this it's easy to end up assuming it's just flavor with no gameplay implications -exacerbated by the fact that this is functionally <b>true</b> when it comes to SMG vs Assault Rifle, so a player might notice the different graphics, expect a difference to result, pay attention to what happens... and see no difference between two Thralls because the SMG and Assault Rifle don't have mechanical differences, and so just take longer to arrive at the 'this is just flavor' guess than a different player who went to it immediately.</i></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>It's not like it's a serious flaw in practice -it's not as if Shotguns are <b>hugely</b> more powerful than the alternatives, where it's safe to ignore an SMG or Assault Rifle Thrall but a Shotgun Thrall will casually kill someone- but it's one of the elements of Chimera Squad that's very obviously rough around the edges if you're aware of it at all.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />Alert actions: Move to a different position, Hunker Down, Subservience.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>The Thrall gives us our first example of an enemy whose Alert actions include the option of using one of their special abilities (That being Subservience) rather than just moving around or Hunkering Down. In all such cases the ability in question is not capable of delivering damage to your squad; they are always defensive or supportive effects. This includes that even preventible delayed-damage effects are forbidden from being Alert actions. Not that Thralls have such an example, mind, but there are a few enemies that toss a grenade at a location and a few turns later it detonates, and I imagine some players intuitively expected such to be allowed as Alert actions, and no.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Of course, getting into the implications of Subservience as an Alert action requires actually laying out what Subservience <b>does</b>, so onto that.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /><img alt="" data-original-height="40" data-original-width="40" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOqdt05iYSExug5N04sfO8Lg4QQd-9hMsLqjCg4ZI1hLZUTaNpj8owRe_jJ0N2pArwgF42xtKQwDHqUKJItywWasaCl-LwPuk_BJdYrA0iVKNaBN0Vq2EB-CYS6VO_W3wo7tODg1Sj8B-T/s16000/Subservience+Icon.jpg" />Subservience</div><div><b>1 Action point</b>: The Thrall targets a friendly Sorcerer. If that Sorcerer should take damage, the Sorcerer will Deflect it, taking no damage, and the Thrall will be instantly killed instead.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Subservience is, unfortunately, possibly the most poorly-communicated enemy ability in the game in terms of visuals and so on.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>First of all, the animation for Subservience makes it seem like the Sorcerer is the one initiating the effect. This makes in-universe sense and is probably the intention as far as what's supposed to be canonically happening in-universe, but within the game itself it's poor visual communication. In conjunction with Chimera Squad's experimental turn design, it's easy to end up guessing something non-standard is happening with the turn mechanics, like the Thrall is gifting an action point to a Sorcerer who is then casting Subservience on the Thrall. (Especially since XCOM 2 and Chimera Squad are both prone to not 'calling out' action point gifting with an ability popup)</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Second, when damage is done to a Sorcerer after Subservience has been triggered, the Sorcerer performs the Templar Deflect animation to negate the damage, and then the camera cuts to the Thrall that promptly dies, with nothing about the visuals suggesting that the Sorcerer redirected the attack to the Thrall or anything of the sort. It's easy to end up thinking Sorcerers have a passive block chance in general (They don't, to be clear), and also easy to end up thinking initially that the Thrall is being killed by some other mechanic you missed. Among other points, the game absolutely does handle turn transitions 'too quickly', where it's possible for an enemy to not finish some animation or another before the game decides it's the next enemy's turn, which can result in eg Poison downing an enemy while another enemy is still finishing some animation of theirs.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Third, when the Thrall is killed, you get a damage pop-up that lists a damage number. This makes it easy to misunderstand the mechanics and think that, for example, the Sorcerer is deflecting the damage onto the Thrall, or deflecting the damage but doubling it, or otherwise think that the damage you would've done to the Sorcerer actually mattered. Nope! Nicking a Sorcerer for even a single point of damage will instantly kill whatever Thrall targeted them with Subservience!</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Exacerbating all this is the very fact that it's an Alert action, as when the Breach Phase ends the game simply jumps about depicting enemy actions without otherwise signalling what action is tied to which unit's turn. This mostly isn't a problem since normally a unit apparently doing something is in fact that unit using its own turn and thus it's all intuitive enough, but with Subservience it makes it especially easy to think an Alert Sorcerer is using it, not an Alert Thrall.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>All of which is unfortunate, as the difficulty of late-game Progeny fights is heavily influenced by whether a player correctly understands this poorly-communicated mechanic or not. If a player has any number of incorrect models in mind, they may find battles with Sorcerers in them are a notable uphill struggle, possibly outright some of the toughest fights in the game. With it properly understood, though, Sorcerers are sadly prone to making fights <b>easier</b> by being present. After all, it opens up the option to do things like lob a weak grenade at a Sorcerer benefitting from Subservience and have your 2-3 damage grenade effectively do 4, 6, or <b>8</b> damage by virtue of instantly deleting a Thrall.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Notably, Thralls <b>heavily</b> prioritize using Subservience without any particular regard to current conditions, where Sorcerer presence will often cause them to give up opportunities to flank or even opportunities to <b>shoot at all</b> because they'd need to move first and they'd rather use Subservience. So even before the potential to exploit the kill-for-minor damage aspect, Sorcerer presence is notably prone to dropping Thrall danger level just generally.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>All that said, this isn't to say Subservience is never a problem once understood. Maybe you try to take out a Thrall, and roll low enough on damage they end up at 1 HP, followed by getting their turn and using Subservience. At that point hitting the Sorcerer they targeted is basically guaranteed to be a <b>loss</b> in damage, and depending on positioning and all it may be worse than that -if you toss a grenade so it catches a Thrall and Sorcerer at the same time who are linked by Subservience, even if the grenade is doing enough damage to finish off the Thrall, the game will still have Subservience trigger and prevent all damage to the Sorcerer. Or maybe you try to shoot an Alert Thrall in the Breach Phase, and once again roll low on damage such that they survive on 1 HP. These kinds of situations aren't <b>common</b>, but they are something to keep in mind; among other points, I'm not suggesting that deliberately ignoring Thralls so they can use Subservience is a good idea, because honestly, it often isn't.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>-----------------------------------------------</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Aside Subservience, Thralls are about as basic as units get, being a Cover-using humanoid carrying a firearm. As Subservience requires a Sorcerer is present to matter, and Sorcerers are uncommon elites, a lot of missions with Thralls have them essentially the blandest enemy in the game. (Which is another of the reasons I'm pretty sure the Progeny is meant to be your first Investigation target for first-time play)</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>They are one of the few examples of the game's number tuning particularly favoring Shotguns, I guess, in that if you hit the Progeny as your first or second Investigation a Shotgun is guaranteed to down them in one hit whereas your other weapons need a damage boost of some kind to be fully reliable. Even that comes with the caveat that you can get the Dark Event that raises their HP and makes this point stop being true, especially if you hit the Progeny late so a Dark Event is immediately active.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>But overall I don't have much to add in terms of gameplay discussion; when Subservience isn't relevant, Thralls are basically ADVENT Troopers, but minus the part where ADVENT Troopers at least picked up a grenade past their Basic tier.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsCO0fBpKcxywJZZjYQRy-pLaWcCzYwHQjpE4RGHRUSc_5lTHXH8JBbohV2N9ZO8IKnpG06lSxMzydIvQTXkWxISfv63utIDePtLmFboPckys9UFZYj-2YIQ3yLiBwT-0eh-ued9yg0wee/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsCO0fBpKcxywJZZjYQRy-pLaWcCzYwHQjpE4RGHRUSc_5lTHXH8JBbohV2N9ZO8IKnpG06lSxMzydIvQTXkWxISfv63utIDePtLmFboPckys9UFZYj-2YIQ3yLiBwT-0eh-ued9yg0wee/w640-h360/20201110125738_1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Narratively, Thralls are, as far as I'm aware, never fully explicated by the game. There's a strong picture painted collectively, mind, but key details are never directly addressed, so just as with Acolytes there's some uncertainty at the edges.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Broadly speaking, it's made pretty clear that Thralls are unfortunate hybrids that the Progeny are psionically controlling and using as disposable meatshields. (Up to and including the Subservience ability making this a literal gameplay mechanic) One of the more subtle elements of this I suspect goes over a lot of players' heads is the intersection of two points; firstly and most obviously, when Thralls speak up in combat they consistently say a variety of pretty odd things. Second and less obvious is the Thrall's facial covering, which appears to be some manner of rebreather unit. (It's not just a scarf, though I suspect some players mistake it for such) Between the two, I suspect the Progeny are meant to be drugging the Thralls as well, and that this is probably meant to be part and parcel of the psionic control, making them more susceptible or some such.</i></div><p></p><div style="text-align: left;"><i>In and of itself this is only mildly interesting -drugs to make people more pliable isn't really that unusual an idea in pop culture, and the implication of it helping with the psionic control is something I've seen used a few other times in pop culture- but it gets a bit more interesting when connected to Sacred Coil's endgame, where we learn that Sacred Coil fills their religious centers with pheromones that specifically make hybrids more relaxed and whatnot. Altogether, Chimera Squad seems to be implying a new -but logical!- facet to how the Ethereals maintained control over their ADVENT forces, where their very biological design was tuned so the Ethereals had still more tools to minimize the odds of a rebellion or the like. It also interfaces with the previously way-too-vague implications of some manner of ADVENT religion, but I'll save that commentary for when we get to Sacred Coil, as it's far more relevant there.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>All of this stuff is also interesting in that it suggests that the Progeny's lineup of unit types is, from an in-universe standpoint, primarily ruthlessly pragmatic. That is, it seems the Progeny isn't exploiting hybrids out of some philosophical commitment to discriminating against hybrids, but rather because they're an easy target, conveniently already designed to be readily controlled by the psionic powers the Progeny forces are honing anyway.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>This is particularly interesting to me because I can broadly describe this as the 'controlling the weak-willed' set of tropes, which is a set of tropes I normally sigh at seeing, but where usually 'controlling the weak-willed' is a vague way of justifying psionic powers/mind control tech/magical domination/whatever controlling whoever the narrative wants controlled and <b>not</b> whoever the narrative <b>doesn't</b> want controlled (eg the protagonist is typically immune to such measures, where the concept of a protagonist is applicable) with no real underlying system of rules it actually follows, this is instead a coherent model of factors with specific implications that fit with what came before (ie XCOM 2), what's going on right now (ie Chimera Squad), and will hopefully actually be held to by later entries. (ie XCOM 3, other spinoffs, etc) There's nuance here, for one, and for another Chimera Squad itself is actually willing to touch a little on the idea of sociopolitical implications in regards to setting elements, where eg the between-mission radio chatter will touch on there apparently being 'psi dampers' that at least some Sectoids are legally obligated to wear, so it's possible later games will actually engage with such topics instead of glossing right over them and ignoring that the setting has established rules and whatnot. I can imagine XCOM 3 touching on ideas like some humans worry that hybrids are overly-susceptible to being controlled by psionic powers, and indeed this could even be a <b>mechanic</b> where the player has to be particularly careful with hybrid soldiers around psionic enemies. That could all potentially be very interesting.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>The Thrall's aesthetic is potentially also interesting, though it's much more ambiguous. Unlike a lot of enemies in Chimera Squad, Thralls appear to have a fairly complete uniform of armor; nothing to cover their hands or head, but otherwise they appear to be pretty completely protected, and the protection doesn't look particularly makeshift, which is a bit unexpected given the overall presentation of the Progeny and the nature of Thralls as mind-controlled troops the Progeny clearly views as pretty disposable. Given hybrids are all, by definition, ex-ADVENT troops, it seems very possible the intent here is that Thralls are wearing a part of their old military uniform -a layer under what we saw in XCOM 2, presumably.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Buuuut this is never explicitly suggested, the visuals of the armor don't try to evoke any variation on ADVENT armor, and 'form follows function' is a thing, where it's not particularly surprising for two armored designs to arrive at similar looks not because they're supposed to be related but because the underlying goals are the same. It's entirely possible Thrall armor is meant to be just what a City 31 civilian can scavenge up relatively readily, and the aesthetic just isn't communicating this all that strongly.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>A similar point is the conspicuous dark streaks across the top of their head; this could just be meant to be one of the looks hybrids can have kind of randomly, or it could be meant to be evidence of something a bit more specific having been done to Thralls, like the Progeny tattooing them or performing some manner of brain surgery where the dark streaks are scar tissue, or whatever. It's impossible to neaningfully guess what it's meant to be about, though.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>It's too bad XCOM 3 is unlikely to return to the Progeny in enough capacity to potentially clarify any of these ambiguous elements.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />---------------------------------------------</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><i>Next time, we move on to the <a href="https://www.vigaroe.com/2023/09/chimera-squad-enemy-analysis-progeny.html">Progeny Brute</a>.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>See you then.</i></div></div>Ghoul Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15165232279081041131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656428975201272042.post-57513155896700976172023-08-20T22:50:00.003-07:002023-10-07T10:18:53.453-07:00Chimera Squad Analysis: Progeny Acolyte<div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB2_zz5X2fJ-YdwNC2p0H3hfs-D0c4BlRGhKh-gpM7Zw-hgwerjUIOL0hWyLoRpEiERczMJAkhuRvlhrlG9d9jp2r7kwW9IFs_6IllQt1y7hdTUsnEwfsh3wevqofHUEu3qdhUMV7OUroy/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB2_zz5X2fJ-YdwNC2p0H3hfs-D0c4BlRGhKh-gpM7Zw-hgwerjUIOL0hWyLoRpEiERczMJAkhuRvlhrlG9d9jp2r7kwW9IFs_6IllQt1y7hdTUsnEwfsh3wevqofHUEu3qdhUMV7OUroy/w640-h360/20201110125835_1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">HP: 5/5/6/6 (+0/+2)</div>Aim: 75/75/80/80 (+2/+5)<br />Mobility: 10<br />Damage: 2-3 (+1/+2. Crit adds +1)<br />Will: 80 (+10/+20)<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilIA8toP8Q5NWHJ5OYkOORBTfeYLznGbX2F-wMqvf8JzsApDYeS0LjvUM-qDTtyvOIy4fafRis-DJfJlTRwMJoqqMJ6aGLM3LryQ6fDuC5V2M2liKpnAnb-0_Kynj_-paOLsdHL2BlZEVO/"></a>Initiative: 70<div>Psi: 75 (<i>Possibly only relevant because of Resonants</i>)</div><div><br /></div><div><i>As this is the first enemy I'm covering in Chimera Squad, a few things worth explaining.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Firstly, relative to XCOM 2 I've removed crit chance, Shred, Armor, Defense, and Dodge from the 'standard' stat block, because most enemies in Chimera Squad have 0 in all of those across all difficulties no matter how many Investigations you are into a run. In cases where an enemy has non-zero values in the stats in question I do in fact list them, to be clear, but if I do not list a given such stat it's because it's always zero on that enemy type. These were all stats that weren't 'default' in XCOM 2 but they were each reasonably common; Chimera Squad almost never uses them.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Second; the numbers in parentheses. These are Act-based bonuses, which is to say they're the stats going up in later Investigations. So for example if you hit the Progeny as your first or second Investigation and are playing on Impossible, you'll be fighting Acolytes with 6 HP, whereas if you save the Progeny for last on your Impossible run instead the Acolytes will have 8 HP.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>A couple wrinkles that deserve clarification; firstly, third-Act bonuses <b>overwrite</b> second-Act bonuses. That is, an Acolyte on Impossible can have 80 Aim, 82 Aim, or 85 Aim based on Act, not 80/82/87 Aim. Secondly, the endgame missions that occur once all Investigations are completed use third-Act stats; you might expect them to apply a still larger boost to stats, but no.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Also, 'crit adds +number' is as in 'a crit will add exactly this much damage', just as crits worked in XCOM 2, just in XCOM 2 I wasn't using parentheticals for other numbers to muddy the issue.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>The only new stat worth noting here is Initiative; I don't know what the exact formula involved might be (Among other points, I'm unsure what, if any, randomization might be getting applied to it), but broadly this is the stat that determines how enemy turns are initially organized after the Breach Phase ends. Higher Initiative means getting placed earlier in the turn order. For reference, regular enemies never go above 100 Initiative or below 25 Initiative; an Acolyte is 'fast' and will typically be one of the earlier enemies to act, but it's not shocking for some other enemy to be placed before them.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>An additional note: the highest difficulty raises the crit chance bonus from a flank from +33% to +45%, while the lowest difficulty lowers it to +20% chance. I might've overlooked an exception, but as far as I've determined this is universal to all enemies -even enemies that can't make flanking attacks get their flank crit chance modified! As crit damage is so minor in Chimera Squad this is pretty ignorable, but it does mean enemies flanking your agents is on average a little more of a threat on Impossible. (And a little less in Story)</i></div><div><div><div><br /></div><div><i>On to a new thing, though; Alert actions.</i></div></div><div><br /></div><div>Alert Actions: Move to a different position, Hunker Down.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>If an enemy in the Breach Phase decides to be Alert (as opposed to Surprised or Aggressive) and then remains able to act once the Breach Phase is over with, they randomly pick from a list of possible actions. While this list doesn't have much varety, it <b>is</b> defined per-enemy, and in fact a number of enemies are able to perform actions unique to them when Alert.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Acolytes are not such an enemy, though, having only the two most standard actions.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Moving to a different position is available to all Cover-using enemies (And one non-Cover-using enemy, oddly), and if an enemy decides to perform it they specifically attempt to move to a location that is in Cover relative to your squad's final positions. Notably, enemies tend to prefer falling back, making it harder to flank them, than they do to move forward for a flank. As far as I'm aware this isn't really meaningfully different from regular Cover-seeking movement behavior, though.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Hunker Down is slightly more interesting. In mechanical terms it's really just XCOM 2's Hunker Down action, granting +30 Defense and +50 Dodge until the unit's next turn (and it still clears Burn, just like in War of the Chosen), including the weird wrinkle that it can't be activated if the unit isn't in Cover but provides its protection even against flanks, but for the <b>player</b> Hunker Down has been replaced by Preparation. It's an unexpected reversal from what happened with the transition from Enemy Unknown/Within to XCOM 2, where Hunker Down went from a standard action available to anything that used Cover to being player-exclusive.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Hunker Down is also more interesting for what I've touched on before of intersecting with the overhaul to Overwatch; that in Chimera Squad it can legitimately make sense to lay Overwatch on a target that's Hunkered Down instead of just taking a shot, because the Overwatch shot will in fact be more accurate and not risk a Graze.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>And now on to the Acolyte's remaining qualities of note.</i></div><div><br /></div><div>AI Pistol</div><div><b>Passive</b>: Primary weapon is buggy and has an inconsistent response to ammo drain effects.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>I've already alluded to this before, but I'll be including this tidbit in every Pistol-using enemy's post just in case someone finds a given such post in isolation.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Acolytes are one of the enemies least impacted by this bugginess since they don't like using their Pistol and honestly <b>shouldn't</b> use their Pistol in most situations, but it can still be an unpleasant surprise to throw a Cease Fire Grenade at an Acolyte and then they flank and shoot someone anyway.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfCYIQtUgZyi7HAlk6qDXuRU4SUE0lpACh7_HP1QRZfYnzYfmGxIIoMunSMm5VyBFzJYQWdPaY3XBYp3OftVqsd1COPn034_f27ZYDGkDSeMysR_qUjKeX06_S5NGZycV_ygN5VjXI0Zuw/s1600/Writhe+Icon.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfCYIQtUgZyi7HAlk6qDXuRU4SUE0lpACh7_HP1QRZfYnzYfmGxIIoMunSMm5VyBFzJYQWdPaY3XBYp3OftVqsd1COPn034_f27ZYDGkDSeMysR_qUjKeX06_S5NGZycV_ygN5VjXI0Zuw/s400/Writhe+Icon.jpg" /></a>Soulfire</div><div><b>Turn-ending action</b>: Unavoidably does 2-4 (+1/+2) damage to a single target the Acolyte can see, ignoring Armor.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Note that, unlike Shelter's version of Soulfire, this does <b>not</b> delay the target's turn. It's just straight damage.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Also, the numbers in parentheses are, just as with the stat block, Act-based modifiers, meaning if you hit the Progeny as your second Investigation an Acolyte's Soulfire will do 3-5 damage while if the Progeny are your third Investigation their Soulfire will do 4-6 damage.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Soulfire itself can be a rude surprise for a learning player who was expecting that standing behind High Cover while Safeguarded by Terminal would be strongly protective of an agent who's ended up low on HP, but overall is less impactful than you might expect. There is of course the point that good play minimizes enemy opportunities to act, but it's also the case that enemy Aim is actually largely noticeably higher than in XCOM 2; in XCOM 2, even by the end of the game it was very rare for an enemy to rise above 75 Aim, and multiple early game enemies started from 65 Aim even on the highest difficulty. Meanwhile in Chimera Squad literally <b>no</b> enemy in the entire game has less than 70 base Aim, with 75 being the new 'baseline' Aim that only a few enemies drop below, and only if both fought early in a run and playing on a lower difficulty. If you're playing on one of the upper two difficulties, literally no enemy goes below 75 Aim! And third-Act bonuses are pretty uniformly +5 Aim, so by the end of a run the expectation is 80 Aim is what you see on the most inaccurate of enemies; the actually good shots will do better.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>As these games use a subtractive approach to Aim and Defense, the average impact of Defense goes <b>up</b> as Aim goes <b>down</b>; being in Low Cover and getting 20 Defense shaves off nearly a third of the attacker's chance to hit if they have 65 Aim, but only 25% of their chance to hit if they have 80 Aim.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>As such, in Chimera Squad enemies are noticeably more prone to landing shots even through Cover than in XCOM 2, and so guaranteed-hit effects are, on average, simply not the kind of jump in danger level they presented in XCOM 2.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>The fact that Soulfire ignores Armor and Dodge is worth keeping in mind, though. All your agents will have a point of Armor by endgame, multiple agents can get additional Armor through skills or Training, and Torque specializes in Dodge and you can eg have Verge lean into Dodge if you like. It's easy to get used to having set up a fairly tanky squad and end up overestimating your agents' ability to shrug off damage from Acolytes. After all, they're a basic low-end enemy, so they're not a threat like the elites, right?</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This is particularly relevant if you took Torque and Axiom together, of course, but if the Progeny are your third Investigation in general you may wish to prioritize Acolytes slightly higher than you might expect.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>That said, Acolytes actually aren't terribly aggressive about using Soulfire. No, they much prefer to use...</i></div><div><br /></div><div><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEizXqZ_wk6rvY8l946z9mS3n5c-nnFY58kiMNxXL92U7h96I6xtmskcC1xvtq4Kcwx5QzmSTMYoXfbrXueo1FIaX5KX6nwIDIvwypFyR3tHl6S-_8Kv_iU9X1OL8Bmd2lxPNdt1Ix-7Oac7XC-GG0GUksONrqCT4vHVVavZCKtuEyzd9-lxySe7IUJAN62x=s16000" />Psionic Suplex</div><div><b>Turn-ending action</b>: Lifts a single target into the air, denying them the Defense and Armor of their Cover. This effect lasts until the target's next turn, or until the Acolyte takes damage or is disrupted by another effect. If it ends by the target's turn arriving, the target is attacked for free before its turn starts, taking 2-3 (+2/+3) damage that ignores Armor. 2 turn cooldown, 3 turn global cooldown.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Note that Acolytes are supposed to refuse to target your next two agents that will act, ensuring you have some opportunity to respond to the Psionic Suplex if no other factors are interfering with turns. I'm not sure how stringently this effect is held to in practice -I've personally never had them target the <b>immediately</b> next agent, but I have had them target the agent after that, which would be violating what the config files lay out.</i></div></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>On a more helpful note, Psionic Suplex can be interrupted by eg Stunning them, or inflicting Berserk: while taking them out is the most universal option, some Agents have other tools that may be even more reliable, or you may have Items, either way. Verge, for example, has both a Stun and a Berserk inflictor, so he can pretty casually interrupt a Psionic Suplex.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Psionic Suplex itself is basically Verge's Levitation, including that you can compare the damage at the end to Slam, aside that Levitation is a Breach Phase action and Psionic Suplex is not. (Okay, and that Acolytes don't have a Neural Network mechanic) This includes the odd wrinkle that units attacking the victim won't get the crit chance bonus for attacking a target in the open, making follow-up attacks on a Psionic Suplex victim slightly less dangerous than you might expect.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Psionic Suplex is also our first example of something Chimera Squad is fond of using the Timeline system for; dangerous actions that are reliable but which give the player a chance to respond. That is, if an Acolyte shoots an agent, they either hit or don't hit, and while there's some stuff you can do ahead of time to minimize the odds of hitting, once the Acolyte's turn arrives you can't <b>respond</b> to them taking a shot to try to prevent its damage. Whereas Psionic Suplex will, if you simply ignore the Acolyte performing it, automatically and unavoidably do some damage to the target, but you have a window of time in which other agents can act to prevent its damage from going off.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Also, do note that using Team Up to move a Psionic Suplex victim's turn forward will in fact cause them to take damage earlier in the Round; it really is that it triggers on the victim's next <b>turn</b>. This can make sense to do anyway when trying to untangle a tricky situation, but if you're careless it can instead be a way to cause an agent to start Bleeding Out completely gratuitously.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>On a design note, Psionic Suplex is interesting in part because it's more clearly a deliberate formalization of a dynamic I commented about in regards to Sectoids in XCOM 2 -that a Sectoid raising a Psi Zombie or performing a Mindspin tended to be a mercy action because it did nothing immediately and the player could negate the potential threat essentially for free. I didn't really like the dynamic of this in XCOM 2 because it felt like another example of the game trying to go easy on the player without <b>looking</b> like it was doing so (ala the assorted ways XCOM 2 invisibly cheats on accuracy checks to make things more favorable to the player than what the stated numbers indicate), but in Chimera Squad it comes across more like a mixture of playing with the mechanics of the new turn system and trying to give more room for counterplay.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>And Psionic Suplex isn't the only example of this type of dynamic in Chimera Squad. These types of abilities are less common than I was expecting when I was first playing Chimera Squad, but there's a decent array of them.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>These mechanics don't work out as well as I'd prefer in practice, but I like the attempt, and I do wonder if XCOM 3 will try to refine the concept.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><i>------------------------------------------</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Narratively, the Acolyte is pretty typical of Chimera Squad's approach to your enemies; there's a sketch of a concept visible to the player via the name and general visual presentation, but the game itself doesn't really explicate much, among other points leaving it a bit unclear player-side whether there actually is a coherent concept underlying what you're seeing.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>So for example the Acolyte's name and visual presentation, particularly in conjunction with the Sorcerer unit that is the Progeny's overall most elite unit, suggests that Acolytes are inexperienced and low-ranking members of the Progeny who are still developing their powers and aspire to someday reach the heights of Sorcerers. The two even have a similar look in terms of their outfits, suggesting the hood-and-eye-covering-and-so-on look may be something like a uniform for the Progeny. (Contrasting with how a player's first guess when looking at an Acolyte might be that this is meant to be just a Teen Criminal In The Future sort of look, something a teenager throws together to obscure their identity using household goods)</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>But the game doesn't address this stuff explicitly anywhere that I can tell, so the final result is pretty ambiguous, and indeed lots of elements are, as far as I'm aware, 100% ambiguous in general. For example; what's the starting point of psionic powers in the Progeny? Are the Progeny primarily or exclusively made of people who <b>already </b>manifested psychic powers before joining the group, and the Progeny are just helping them to master these abilities? Or are the Progeny helping 'unlock' psychic powers in the first place, where a typical Acolyte couldn't do anything psychic prior to joining up?</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Similarly ambiguous is the aforementioned head-and-eye-covering aspect. I commented a bit in Shelter's post about being disappointed that Chimera Squad didn't stick to the 'unlocking your psychic powers visibly marks you permanently' approach of XCOM 2, but the fact that Acolytes and Sorcerers hide their eyes and hair in-game may be in part the game being actually undecided on that topic. Shelter doesn't have the white hair and glowing purple eyes, nor does the Progeny's leader, but if XCOM 3 decides to say that those effects are in fact typical and gives one or more reasons why a given individual can be an exception to this rule, such an explanation only needs to cover Shelter and the Progeny's boss; XCOM 3 is free to declare that most or all the Progeny Acolytes and Sorcerers do in fact have white hair and glowing purple eyes under the hood and goggles. (Well, Sorcerers aren't wearing goggles per se, but close enough)</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>So there's going to be a recurring thing in these posts of me hedging a fair amount, because it's very difficult to be sure whether a given reasonable-looking interpretation of what we're seeing is actually the <b>intended</b> one, or if the devs intended something else, didn't explicitly communicate it, and would be surprised to hear of the reasonable-looking interpretation.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>I'm actually somewhat curious if this ambiguuity was at all intentional, though. I suspect it isn't, honestly, but just as the eyes-and-hair thing with Acolytes and Sorcerers I raised a second ago can be played either way by future games, so too do many other elements of Chimera Squad's narrative being handled murkily open up wiggle room for later games to potentially frame them rather differently from whatever the Chimera Squad devs were thinking without this automatically being a clear (and problematic) retcon. I kind of wish games did this more as a default, honestly; so many series are frustrating to try to follow the larger arc of their story precisely because each individual entry wants everything to be as explicit and specific as possible, often with no regard for whether this is going to create trouble for later entries down the line.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>-----------------------------------------</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Next time, we move on to the other basic Progeny unit; <a href="https://www.vigaroe.com/2023/08/chimera-squad-enemy-analysis-progeny.html">the Thrall</a>.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>See you then.</i></div>Ghoul Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15165232279081041131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656428975201272042.post-63835913733001465802023-08-13T23:22:00.001-07:002023-08-20T22:50:46.674-07:00Chimera Squad Analysis: The Progeny Intro<div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKRGVCz7YZx_g3z6DDBDeiERnLJiBptvxuD0LcGebeJeH91ShYy24H9QI2H4HQGGajMxCHBee_I1nas2yx6GWXhyphenhyphenQl8_f4hEHxmR_Lcud_hRWdTggx6Y7LwR378Apg-1-1R1L4gnJYCosr/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="495" data-original-width="515" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKRGVCz7YZx_g3z6DDBDeiERnLJiBptvxuD0LcGebeJeH91ShYy24H9QI2H4HQGGajMxCHBee_I1nas2yx6GWXhyphenhyphenQl8_f4hEHxmR_Lcud_hRWdTggx6Y7LwR378Apg-1-1R1L4gnJYCosr/" width="250" /></a></div><div><i>The Progeny are, gameplay-wise, pretty clearly meant to be the player's first Investigation that eases them into the game, and in service of that function are probably the blandest of the Investigation factions, which feels a bit strange given their core distinction is being The Psychic Faction. It's also kind of strange from a more purely gameplay standpoint, in that Gray Phoenix and Sacred Coil are heavier on directly recycling mechanics from XCOM 2, where the Progeny have more brand-new mechanics to trip up an XCOM 2 veteran learning Chimera Squad; I personally probably would've tried to set up Gray Phoenix as the Boring Default Investigation Target for that reason, among others.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>The Progeny still are probably the easiest faction to start with when first playing the game simply because their units tend to be on the weak side and even their unique mechanics tend to be pretty unfavorable to them, but it's an odd-looking decision.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>In spite of being defined as The Psychic Faction, it should be noted that the Progeny don't really use Psi Offense-on-Will tests. Much like Psi Operatives in XCOM 2, a lot of their conceptually psionic abilities actually skip 'dice' mechanics, reliably doing whatever they're supposed to without regard to stats. This isn't super-important in practice since Chimera Squad gives you essentially no ability to bolster agent Will anyway, but it's still worth mentioning.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>I've mentioned factional icons on and off, and here's the Progeny's:</i></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgUoe1zg9QON9PrNQtLNsVezj38NJEXvG1zaRfAr_J5131kVpd6d9YIPDwl_4vPan3sUBIRTQtJd6SsG6-Ix8D9zxudcjPkRwyR9Ua-JXfA3_dT6awaZMBTZ8fLru6B5dso29QV70JB7oBPzNa8vhCE34Hf2bnq8NF08Izw6-aqKDOC92SZjS8K-pbjZw" style="clear: left; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="230" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgUoe1zg9QON9PrNQtLNsVezj38NJEXvG1zaRfAr_J5131kVpd6d9YIPDwl_4vPan3sUBIRTQtJd6SsG6-Ix8D9zxudcjPkRwyR9Ua-JXfA3_dT6awaZMBTZ8fLru6B5dso29QV70JB7oBPzNa8vhCE34Hf2bnq8NF08Izw6-aqKDOC92SZjS8K-pbjZw=w204-h320" width="204" /></a></div><div><i>In gameplay it's not colored like this; you'll normally see it be solidly filled in as light green, orange, or a dark-ish red, depending on either their Alert state (During the Breach Phase) or whether you're considered to be flanking them or not. (Outside the Breach Phase)</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>The icon itself is pretty obviously a stylized human hand. I don't think there's meant to be anything else to its design, though I have wondered about the empty space behind the middle finger. Was it done just for 'cool factor' or visual clarity reasons, or is there some potential symbolic meaning I'm unfamiliar with? I suspect it's the 'cool factor' or visual clarity point, but I do have to wonder.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Narratively, the Progeny's basic framework is... probably the vaguest of the three Investigation targets. They have a leader, she's trying to do a specific thing -which I'll be talking about when we get to her in a later post- and there's some implications of speciesism to the Progeny where they seem to be using psionic brainwashing to get hybrids and Sectoids working for them, but it's not particularly clear what the average Progeny groundpounder thinks is going on, why they might want to sign onto this group, etc. It's easy enough to kind of <b>assume</b> they're a cult-ish group who helps their members unlock and master their psychic powers as the payoff for being in the group and doing what it wants, and I wouldn't be surprised if some interview somewhere has a dev explicitly laying out such a model, but the game itself never really tries to communicate what the Progeny as a group are about.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>And honestly, some bits are such that I doubt a truly coherent model underlies it. One of the beats with the Progeny is that they get a hold of a Codex and use it to project other Codex bodies about, explaining why Codices are part of the Progeny enemy lineup, but then the game never really provides a reason or purpose to the Progeny choosing to do this; it comes across like it was done for the 'meta' reason that Codices are a psionic enemy, the Progeny are the psionic faction, and so the game throws Codices onto the Progeny lineup.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>By a similar token, the whole thing where the Progeny is psychically brainwashing hybrids and Sectoids is... broadly logical as an abuse of psychic powers, but the game doesn't provide any detail. Why that selection? Are the Progeny speciesist toward hybrids and Sectoids in particular for some reason? Or maybe hybrids and Sectoids are easier for the Progeny to psychically influence than Mutons, Vipers, Faceless, etc? Similarly, what's the Progeny doctrine and associated rationals and mental models when it comes to such? That is, are they explicitly thinking of controlled hybrids as ablative armor for the human members, and if so do they have any rhetoric for trying to justify this as not a morally reprehensible act, or what?</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>It's all a bit odd for the faction the game pretty clearly pushes a player toward picking as their first Investigation target, in that the other factions are notably clearer in concept, rhetoric, etc. It's much more typical for a game to have the earliest enemies the player faces be the most clearly thought-out and later enemies be the ones who aren't clearly defined. (And/or to have their defined lore difficult to reconcile with the broader game, or with prior games in the series, or otherwise be contradictory)</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>It all makes me wonder what happened in Chimera Squad's development that we got this collage of oddities regarding the Progeny.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>---------------------------------</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Next time, we start more properly covering the Progeny as a factiion with one of their more basic units; the <a href="https://www.vigaroe.com/2023/08/chimera-squad-analysis-progeny-acolyte.html">Acolyte</a>.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>See you then.</i></div>Ghoul Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15165232279081041131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656428975201272042.post-32040990874490723182023-08-07T11:46:00.001-07:002023-08-13T23:22:22.726-07:00Chimera Squad: Initial Settings<div style="text-align: left;"><i>Chimera Squad doesn't bring back Second Wave, but it does have more in the way of initial campaign settings than just difficulty, which is mildly interesting.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Though first let's talk about that difficulty thing.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Difficulties;</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Story</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Normal</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Expert</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Impossible</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Difficulty is noticeably less impactful on a run of Chimera Squad than a run of the prior games, but it does still matter. Story mode in particular, as I've covered across multiple posts, has several special-casing effects like making the Anarchy meter longer, giving a bunch of baseline stat boosts to your agents, etc.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Most of the impact of difficulty is, oddly enough, tied very specifically in the strategic end, affecting how much benefit certain Spec Ops provide, affecting how much Field Teams provide, influencing your odds of seeing an Epic Weapon at all, affecting how quickly Unrest rises at a given stage of the game... I suspect I'm still overlooking some of the strategic changes it makes, as there's quite a lot of them, and many of them are extremely easy to not register while playing or to notice but wave off as coincidental. eg I did notice, when I switched to Impossible, that I wasn't ending every run with every Epic Weapon on hand the way all my prior runs had, but initially waved it off as a coincidence until digging in the files showed that Epic Weapons do in fact generate quite a bit less often on the highest difficulty.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>This design decision is quite the contrast with the prior two games, where the impact of difficulty was heavily focused on the tactical portion of gameplay. In XCOM 2, for example, there were a large number of Geoscape-layer details that were unaffected by difficulty unless you were specifically talking about Legendary difficulty, like the costs of producing Items, how long digging out rooms in the Avenger took, and so on. Meanwhile, the tactical layer of XCOM 2 was very obviously heavily impacted by difficulty, where a player could pretty readily notice things like that Basic ADVENT Troopers have 3 HP on the lower two difficulties and 4 HP on the higher two difficulties, or how mission timers were less lax on higher difficulties.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Chimera Squad's tactical layer, meanwhile, is not actually affected particularly strongly by difficulty. Things like how many enemies you expect to fight in a given Encounter don't change that I can tell, and individual enemy statlines are minimally impacted by difficulty; Aim generally only goes up 5 points when comparing the lowest difficulty to the highest for a given enemy, HP doesn't necessarily go up at all and tends to only go up by 1 point, and those are the only stats where it's actually standard for difficulty to affect it on a given enemy. Exactly one enemy in the entire <b>game</b> has its Armor affected by difficulty (Sacred Coil's Turrets), Defense going up is not a standard concept, damage going up is not a standard concept, Mobility going up is not a standard concept, Dodge going up is not a standard concept... all kinds of parameters that XCOM 2 was very willing to tune up as you climbed through difficulties are more or less untouched by Chimera Squad.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Notably, a <b>lot </b>of enemies actually only have two difficulty-based stat blocks: the one they use for the lower two difficulties, and the one they use for the higher two difficulties. As such, if you find Expert a little too easy and are hoping Impossible will renew the challenge of the tactical space... it might do so a little bit up through the midgame by virtue of slowing your ability to improve on the strategic layer, resulting in you getting stuff like weapon upgrades online a little slower, but to whatever extent you'll experience that it will be both mild and temporary, falling away in relevance as you approach an endgame state on your squad.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>I do personally appreciate the impact Impossible has on the strategic layer, taking Unrest management from an interesting-seeming framework that's too trivial to be <b>really</b> interesting to an actually meaningful challenge that might genuinely cause you to game over if you're still expecting Unrest to be a joke, but I also feel the tactical layer could've used one more step up in difficulty. I'm a little surprised mods didn't step in to provide such an additional tier of tactical difficulty, honestly.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Overall, if you have concerns about your ability to cope with Chimera Squad's newfangled systems but aren't, like, completely unfamiliar with tactical games of any kind, Normal is probably the place to start. If you're an XCOM 2 veteran -which I suspect describes most people who gave Chimera Squad a try- Normal is liable to be boringly easy and I'd sooner recommend starting from Expert. And if you're someone who has always viewed these games as the kind of thing that <b>should</b> cause you to game over... well, I doubt Chimera Squad can ever be satisfying to such a player, but you might as well start right on Impossible to maximize the odds that your ignorance dooms your run.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>In the aggregate, I kind of wish Chimera Squad had only done three difficulties, and made them a bit more strongly distinct from each other. I felt this way some about XCOM 2, honestly, but XCOM 2 is sufficiently demanding on multiple layers that while I personally have never touched Rookie I can believe there are people who genuinely needed it to ease them into the game. I'm much more skeptical that Story difficulty has a real place in Chimera Squad.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Ironman</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>No manual saving, relying solely on the game's auto-saving. If you have an agent finish bleeding out in a mission, you're forced to restart it, unless of course...</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Hardcore</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>... you also have this on.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Hardcore is that failing a mission deletes the save instead of prompting you to try again. Perfect success, or lose all progress. Roguelike rules, basically.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Chimera Squad is sufficiently stable Ironman is actually pretty safe to turn on, and the game autosaves every time you have an agent do anything even without enabling Ironman, so you generally don't have to worry about losing half a battle to a crash or to something causing you to quit out the game abruptly.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Hardcore is kind of whatever. I don't find it terribly appealing, but the primary reason I'd recommend against it is that it's possible to play correctly and still have an agent die because some enemy happened to lob explosives and catch the tile they fell in when Bleeding Out, even if you Stabilized them. I'm pretty sure that's not actually intended behavior, and it certainly <b>feels</b> unfair. If you're cool with risking a run being wiped by a janky mechanics interaction, go ahead I guess -it's not like it's that hard to consistently avoid failure the majority of the time in Chimera Squad.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>But I don't really feel the option adds anything to the game.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Extended City Anarchy</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Adds five bars to the overall city Anarchy rating (Taking it from 13 to 18 above Story), thus making it take longer to get a game over through strategic mismanagement.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>So it's basically the return of Lengthy Scheme in War of the Chosen, albeit less dramatic.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Anarchy is already very generous; only in my first Impossible run was I ever in a position of worrying I might get an Anarchy-induced game over, and that only happened because I ignored a District hitting max Unrest because I wanted the other mission's reward and was used to the lower difficulties being really lenient with Unrest. Extended City Anarchy is honestly overkill.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>If you just can't stand that kind of strategic pressure on a psychological level, I guess it's your life, but I'm a bit puzzled why this option exists, honestly. Was Anarchy a bit harsher at an earlier point in development, or something?</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Tutorial</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Your very first run on launching Chimera Squad automatically enables the Tutorial setting with no option to turn it off. The game can be a bit weird about this when, for example, installing onto a new computer, where the game may decide your cloud saves of a dozen completed runs don't matter and still forcibly enable the Tutorial when you boot up a new run. Interestingly, if you mess around with debug mode stuff, that also forces the Tutorial to be enabled by default.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>The Tutorial being on adjusts the very beginning of the game. With the Tutorial off, you get some cinema stuff, pick your initial agents, pick your first Investigation, and away you go into the normal Investigation loop. With the Tutorial on, you get a slightly adjusted initial set of cinematics, and launch straight into a special mission occurring entirely outside the normal Investigation progression, where you do a unique 2-Encounter mission on a unique map (It's a museum dedicated to X-COM), where of course the game proceeds to walk you through the basics of the game. Much like in XCOM 2, this is an on-rails tutorial where the game prompts you to take specific actions and this is an order you must obey rather than a suggestion of what good play might look like.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>It should be noted that as far as practical effects goes, Chimera Squad's Tutorial is much less intrusive or distortive than XCOM 2's own Tutorial. The main lasting impact of substance is that it forces you into a fixed squad</i><i>; Verge, Cherub, Godmother, and Terminal. But a non-Tutorial run that picks that exact squad isn't particularly different from a Tutorial run; among other points, I've commented on the fact that you always start with a Breaching Charge, and while it's probably <b>because</b> of the Tutorial, it's not <b>tied</b> to the Tutorial. I do mean you <b>always</b> start with it, not just in Tutorial runs.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Of course, unless you want to scrutinize the differences it causes yourself, or see the Tutorial plot bits once you have context from the rest of the game, there's not really much reason to enable this option past your first run. It is, first and foremost, teaching you the basics of the game, which you probably don't need a refresher for in later runs.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Heal Between Encounters</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Your options here are 'no heal', 'half heal', and 'full heal', which are pretty much exactly what they sound like; 'no heal' means agent HP doesn't change when transitioning to a new Encounter. 'Half heal' means any agent below half their maximum HP rises to half their maximum HP when transitioning to a new Encounter. 'Full heal' means your agents always start every Encounter with max HP. Do note that agents ending up in Bleeding Out mode are not affected by this setting; they're still out of the mission, and an Android will sub in if possible, even if you have 'full heal' enabled.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>I'd strongly recommend against ever playing with full heal enabled. It heavily distorts the gameplay, making Terminal's niche nearly worthless (And indeed making two of her skills outright worthless), screwing up certain skill choices (Regeneration on Axiom loses so much value, for example, making it basically a trap choice), makes the pre-Breach healing tools <b>literally </b>worthless, and sucks the depth out of multi-Encounter missions much more than it reduces the game's overall difficulty.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Half heal is okay for easing you into the game. It's still distortive, but healing tools remain useful, you actually get to have moderately bad play in one Encounter potentially catch up to you in a later Encounter, and keeps every tool relevant. (Well, every tool that's relevant without between-Encounter healing)</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>No heal is the 'correct' way to play the game, in the sense that the game is clearly designed around it as opposed to either of the other settings. I wouldn't necessarily recommend a first-time player jump in with it on their first run, but the game is at its best with this setting overall.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Personally, I kind of wish this setting choice didn't exist at all and the game just went with 'no heal' as the way the game works, no qualifiers; while there is an extent to which 'half heal' and 'full heal' do make the game a little more forgiving, it's surprisingly mild of an effect, whereas the negative impact on skill and Item choices and so on is actually quite large. It feels like a bad trade for the design, and it makes the initial settings screen that little bit more cluttered and unpleasant to work through for a first-time player. More options is generally good for a variety of reasons, but more options means more cognitive load, and putting it mandatorily right at the beginning where a new player is already having to learn a <b>ton</b> makes it particularly bad.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>--------------------------------------------------</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Next time, we head toward enemies, starting with a bit of an overview of <a href="https://www.vigaroe.com/2023/08/chimera-squad-analysis-progeny-intro.html">The Progeny</a>.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>See you then.</i></div>Ghoul Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15165232279081041131noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656428975201272042.post-64600591764676890982023-07-31T10:55:00.002-07:002023-10-06T10:56:06.487-07:00Chimera Squad Strategic Analysis: Spec Ops<div style="text-align: left;"><i>Broadly speaking, Spec Ops are basically Chimera Squad's version of Covert Ops from War of the Chosen; you assign an agent to do a thing, they go away for a few days, and they come back with goodies.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Unlike Covert Ops, Spec Ops involve no random elements (They always take a specific number of days, the pool is rigid, etc), are not tied to any kind of faction system, are not tied to anything equivalent to the Chosen, carry no risks (Agents can't come back with a Scar or anything of the sort), and... well, even though it's recognizably the same basic framework, the two really are just radically different in practice.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Initially, you have one Spec Ops slot, with three basic options that have no particular requirements. Other Spec Ops have requirements for unlocking them, and furthermore demand the agent assigned to them is a minimum level, which is theoretically another incentive to diversify your agents so you can actually have agents doing the more demanding Spec Ops, though I'd argue it doesn't really work out in practice.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Eventually you can have the Assembly upgrade Spec Ops to have two slots. At this point an odd wrinkle comes into play: a given Spec Op type can only have one agent assigned to it at any given moment. You cannot have two agents performing Gladhanding simultaneously, for example. I'm kind of curious whether this was a deliberate design decision or just an oddity of how they implemented the system that they didn't care enough to fix. Whatever the case, it slightly drags down the utility of performing that Assembly upgrade, taking away options you might find appealing like doubling down on Credit generation or getting Unrest across the city down more or whatever.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Another important difference between Covert Ops and Spec Ops is that Spec Ops do <b>not</b> provide experience to an agent for completing them. So if you're expecting to be able to use Spec Ops to get a new agent a bit caught up; nope. (Well, sort of yes, but not <b>this</b> way)</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>It's also particularly worth pointing out that you can freely cancel an assignment, even if an agent has already spent multiple days on it. You'll lose any progress toward the reward that Spec Ops provides, but that's it for consequences.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>On to specifics, though.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>As usual, if I format a number as x/x/x/x, that means it varies by difficulty, working from lowest to highest as you go from left to right.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Gladhanding</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">Duration: 3 days.</div><div style="text-align: left;">Effect: Provides 100/85/85/75 Credits upon completion.</div><div style="text-align: left;">Unlock: No requirements.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Gladhanding is a straightforward delayed injection of cash, and as such is... kind of mediocre. In the early game, Credits are just not a priority resource; a lot of the most significant purchases are gated behind Assembly Projects that have notable Elerium requirements, where stockpiling cash doesn't necessarily meaningfully hurry access to stuff like armor and weapon upgrades, and the assorted Items you can readily purchase have various reasons they're generally a bit dubious to prioritize purchasing. You also tend to get Credits at a decent clip from missions and Situations; if you're close to purchasing something you want, it's entirely possible that assigning somebody to Gladhanding duty to bump you over will end up obviated by a mission or Situation covering the shortfall before Gladhanding finishes.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>In the midgame it can be more worthwhile to perform Gladhanding, as you unlock more stuff that's strongly worth purchasing, especially if you tend to not build Finance Field Teams. Once you have the full 8 agents a run gets, you'll regularly an agent who would otherwise be idling, for one, and Gladhanding is a safe enough choice for having an un-leveled agent perform to pass the time.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Then in the late game, when your team has solidified, with gear in all their slots and so on, Gladhanding goes back to being difficult to justify doing.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>It's all a bit awkward, though that's more a commentary on how the general economic details of Chimera Squad could've used refinement than a commentary on Gladhanding itself.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Legwork</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div>Duration: 3 days.</div><div>Effect: Provides 80/65/65/60 Intel upon completion.</div><div>Unlock: No requirements.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Your best, most crucial early Spec Op, and also a great fallback option if you don't have a clear idea of what to go for in any given moment. It does fall off in relevance once all your Field Teams are maxed and you've got more or less everything you strongly care to purchase from the Scavenger Market, but until that late-game point more Intel is always nice to have.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>The key thing about Legwork is that Intel is how you buy Field Teams. Legwork can thus be plowed into infrastructure for generating additional resources, making the payoff more than the amount of Intel you initially got out of Legwork. Furthermore, Field Teams are your tech tree equivalent: building and unlocking Field Teams is how you unlock city-level abilities, unlock three of your Spec Ops, and unlock the Assembly Projects for upgrading your Spec Ops, Training, and Assembly facilities, all of which pay dividends in terms of your time efficiency. Most blatant in this regard is Spec Ops upgrading: the Spec Op time spent on Legwork can be 'made back' by it leading to an early Spec Op upgrade, after all.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>As such, it's generally smart play to have someone doing Legwork pretty constantly once you've got enough agents that you still have an agent idling even with the Assembly manned and somebody assigned to Training, up until somewhere in the midgame or late game.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Elerium Sting</b></div><div><div>Duration: 3 days.</div><div>Effect: Provides 35/25/20/20 Elerium upon completion.</div><div>Unlock: No requirements.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Elerium Sting is a shockingly poor return on your time investment. Certainly, Elerium is also much less in demand than the other resources, but this is literally roughly 1/3rd the Intel payout or 1/4th the Credit payout for your time compared to Gladhanding and Legwork. If you look at Field Teams, Elerium payouts from a Technology team are 75%-100% what a Security team would give in Intel, or 37.5%-66% what a Finance team would provide in Credits.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This is to say that it's generally better to perform Legwork and Recruitment Drives and invest in early Technology Field Teams than to perform an Elerium Sting. You're getting more payout for your time investment that way. Elerium Sting is only specifically worth bothering with if you're <b>just </b>short of the Elerium you need for an Assembly project, preferably early in the campaign when you don't necessarily have Technology Field Teams waiting to cover such a small gap in a few days anyway.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Elerium Sting isn't literally worthless, but it's certainly not something you'll perform often.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>It also has an expiration date, since there's only so many Assembly Projects that cost Elerium, and once you've performed them all... Elerium is now worthless, as it can't be spent in any other way or otherwise made use of. (eg you can't sell it for Credits, nor is it ever part of the price of a Supply purchase) Notably, the Assembly Projects that are locked behind completing specific Investigations <b>do not</b> cost Elerium, so there's no 'surprise' late game Elerium sinks; basically, once you're unlocked third-tier armor and weapons, Elerium ceases to be something to care about.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>So Elerium Sting is never going to be performed past about the midgame, for one.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Recruitment Drive</b></div><div><div>Duration: 5 days.</div><div>Effect: Provides one Free Field Team upon completion.</div><div>Unlock: Requires one or more Finance Field Teams at Rank 2, and requires a Special Agent or higher to perform the Spec Op.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>If you unlock Recruitment Drive as fast as possible (That is, build a Finance Field Team, and then upgrade it to Rank 2), it's a dubious investment. The initial purchase price of a new type of Field Team is low enough that Legwork covers the entire cost with Intel to spare, even up on Impossible difficulty, when Legwork takes fewer days to complete and doesn't require you send an experienced agent to handle it. Even once you're looking at adding a second copy of a Field Team type somewhere, Legwork is still able to cover almost the entire cost on Impossible while, again, taking less time.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>If you're wanting to upgrade a Field Team to Rank 3, though, Recruitment Drive is <b>great</b>, being effectively worth 120 Intel, +15 for every Field Team of that type that you've already upgraded to Rank 3. Even on the lowest difficulty, that's about as day-to-Intel efficient as Legwork out the box, while auto-scaling with the rising Field Team costs. It's a good idea, if you can, to time things so you complete a Recruitment Drive right as you unlock Rank 3 Field Teams, with a Rank 2 Field Team sitting around that can be immediately upgraded.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>As your run progresses and you have Field Teams increasingly filled out -and thus increasingly expensive- Recruitment Drive just keeps getting better... well, aside that once every District has a Rank 3 Field Team there's no more need unless you want to swap one out. (Or get the Situation that lowers Field Team rank and proceed to ignore it) Still, it's very much worth considering arranging to have someone doing Recruitment Drive a few times in the mid-early portion of a run. Conveniently, the Special Agent requirement is something you're liable to meet just from the agent rotating required by Training; that is, even if you have a core team of 4 agents that you prefer to use as much as possible, you're liable to still have a fifth agent who subs in while core agents are Training and thus gets a decent chunk of experience.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>So it's not particularly hard to arrange to take advantage!</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>I'd argue that Recruitment Drive is probably the best of the Spec Ops. Leveraged well, it's a <b>drastic</b> acceleration in your Field Team development, which for one thing makes its benefits even greater than they sound (Faster Field Team development means more income sooner, for example), and especially on the highest difficulty Field Team development is very important for managing Unrest.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Humanitarian Aid</b></div><div><div>Duration: 5 days.</div><div>Effect: Lowers Unrest in each District by 1 upon completion.</div><div>Unlock: Requires one or more Security Field Teams at Rank 2, and requires a Special Agent or higher to perform the Spec Op.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Below Impossible difficulty, Humanitarian Aid is difficult to care about unless you're <b>impressively</b> sloppy at Unrest management. Unrest simply isn't difficult to keep adequately under control below Impossible.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Up on Impossible, Humanitarian Aid is... actually still not very good, but gains more of a niche. On Impossible, Unrest builds up fast enough from the very beginning of the game -which is to say when your ability to manage Unrest is at its weakest, it should be emphasized- that staying fully on top of it is genuinely a difficult thing to do, where additional options for pushing Unrest down are genuinely appreciated.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>I say it's 'still not very good' even on Impossible because Unrest buildup simply doesn't tend to work in a particularly synergistic manner with Humanitarian Aid's mechanics. Unrest buildup doesn't tend to spread itself out; for example, the hidden mission target generates 1 Unrest every day, but it all gets concentrated in the one District, not spread around. An ignored mission generates a relatively big spike of Unrest, all of it in a single District. Mission and Situation generation is random such that, when looking over the extreme long haul, Unrest gets roughly evenly distributed across the city, but that's 'on average over the long haul'.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>In the mid-term, mission and Situation generation is perfectly happy to be 'streak-y', and the mechanics of the Geoscape abilities give the player incentives to functionally encourage this fact. That is, if three Situation-generating days in a row all drop a Situation in Bugtown, with each of them generating the other Situation in different Districts from each other, ignoring all three Bugtown Situations so the Unrest gets concentrated in one place lets the player wipe it all at once with Vigilance, or from a mission generating in it the player actually takes.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>In conjunction with Humanitarian Aid taking five full days to play out, it's actually pretty unlikely a run will ever manage to get the best-case scenario of lowering Unrest in every District by 1. A total of -9 Unrest is a pretty nice best-case scenario, but it's much more typical that you'll end up shaving off 3-5 Unrest with a given Humanitarian Aid. And since Unrest <b>only</b> matters if it reaches 5 points, lowering Unrest a little bit across a wide array of Districts isn't actually that useful anyway -say you have a District at 3 Unrest, and then Humanitarian Aid knocks it down to 2 Unrest, and then a mission generates in that District. If you ignore that mission, the District hits 5 Unrest, and would've hit exactly 5 Unrest even if you <b>hadn't</b> performed Humanitarian Aid, and that's a problem. Or on the flipside for illustrating my point, say you knock a District from 1 Unrest to 0 Unrest via Humanitarian Aid, and then a mission generates in that District; you can freely ignore the mission without Anarchy resulting, but you could've done so even if you hadn't performed Humanitarian Aid. The numbers have to line up <b>exactly</b> for Humanitarian Aid to have clearly done anything of worth.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Since it does take five days to play out, you can't even keep an eye out for such opportunities and perform Humanitarian Aid in response to them occurring. 5 days is long enough that the situation is liable to change before it can complete -as in, you spot a couple of Districts at the right numbers for Humanitarian Aid to be clearly impactful, and then whoops you get missions generating in one or both of those Districts before it actually completes and so it doesn't actually get to prevent Anarchy from happening and was just basically a waste of agent time.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Also awkward is that you can compare it to Rank 3 Security Field Teams, and Humanitarian Aid doesn't make a good showing in the comparison. Humanitarian Aid is -1 Unrest in all Districts a bit faster than once a week if you always perform it again as soon as it completes. A Rank 3 Security Field Team is -2 Unrest in its District once a week; given spamming Security Field Teams is really just the smart thing to do, with other Field Team types mostly worth building for their associated unlocks, it's completely realistic to have 6-7 of your 9 Districts fitted with Rank 3 Security Field Teams. At that point Humanitarian Aid is theoretically 12.6 Unrest reduction per week vs your Security Field Teams being 12 or 14 Unrest reduction per week.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Now, this comparison is misleading on a few different levels, as it's not like the options are meaningfully in competition with each other, but it's a useful illustration of how Humanitarian Aid's payoff feels a bit undertuned for something that requires committing an experienced agent for 5 days to produce. Especially since Security Field Teams are both better able to be done as just-in-time-delivery (Upgrade a District's Security Field Team from Rank 2 to Rank 3 on Thursday precisely because that District has 2+ Unrest) and are also less plagued by timing issues anyway. (If you upgrade a Security Field Team to Rank 3, and then two weeks pass with no Unrest in its District, the upgrade wasn't wasted; they'll still be improving your Intel income and will still be passively ready to reduce Unrest on any later weeks)</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Overall, I wish the general idea of Humanitarian Aid had gotten a different mechanical implementation. Say Humanitarian Aid had given every District a point of 'Unrest resistance', where a unit of Unrest generation would be canceled out and the point consumed; this would dodge the current design's potential for you to start Humanitarian Aid in response to multiple Districts having Unrest problems and then only a couple of them actually have Unrest by the time it completes. Alternatively, if Spec Ops had all provided their benefits <b>immediately</b> rather than at the end of the agent's commitment to the job, then Humanitarian Aid would still be a bit niche but at least you'd be able to go 'oh, I've got Unrest in literally every District' and just immediately get maximum value out of Humanitarian Aid without any need for guessing games. (Obviously such a design would requite not letting the player pull an agent out of a Spec Op partway through, mind)</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>It could certainly be worse, but it's not ideal.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Sanctioned Cooperation</b></div><div><div>Duration: 5 days.</div><div>Effect: The next item bought from the Scavenger Market will cost no Intel.</div><div>Unlock: Requires one or more Technology Field Teams at Rank 2, and requires a Special Agent or higher to perform the Spec Op.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Sanctioned Cooperation has a somewhat awkward implementation in that its effect is just automatically applied to your next Scavenger Market purchase; you can't spot something you want but feel isn't really expensive enough to blow Sanctioned Cooperation on it, and hold the charge for later except by just... not buying the thing.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>That aside, Sanctioned Cooperation is a solid enough Spec Op, especially as you go up in difficulties and as your run progresses. The Scavenger Market's offerings tend to rise in quality as you progress through Investigations, its costs go up as you complete Investigations, and Sanctioned Cooperation isn't directly affected by difficulty whereas Legwork's Intel payout goes down as you go up in difficulty. So later in a run, and as you go up through difficulties, Sanctioned Cooperation gets more and more Intel-efficient than Legwork. Never outrageously so, but enough so it's solidly worth considering performing, especially if you're prone to only going for the more expensive Scavenger Market purchases anyway.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>The fact that you ultimately get two Spec Ops slots contributes, too, since you can't double-up. If you're already performing Legwork and would like to effectively further improve your Intel situation, Sanctioned Cooperation -or Recruitment Drive- makes sense to do for that purpose.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>It's worth pointing out that Sanctioned Cooperation and Recruitment Drive have mechanics that minimize the problems from the 5-day delay before you get their reward. You can do Sanctioned Cooperation just as a broad bit of preparedness, such as if you have an agent idling anyway and are casting about for something useful for them to do. If the Scavenger Market shows up and nothing appeals, well, you retain the charge for next time, or the time after that. There's no point the benefit times out or anything. (Contrasting with Humanitarian Aid)</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>I should also emphasize that Assembly duty is easy to pull an agent from. Say you have your fifth agent who subs in when your core agents are Training, and you keep assigning this agent to Assembly duty for any number of reasons; if some <b>other</b> agent is the one idling, you can in fact swap the idling agent onto Assembly duty and Team Member 5 get assigned to Sanctioned Cooperation. (Or some other Spec Op with a rank requirement)</i></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Crisis Management</b></div><div><div>Duration: 5 days.</div><div>Effect: Lowers the city Anarchy rating by 3. (5 on lowest difficulty)</div><div>Unlock: Requires a Senior Agent or higher to unlock and perform the Spec Op.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Like Humanitarian Aid, this has very little relevance on the lower difficulties, requiring fairly severe mismanagement of Unrest to have any chance of being useful -among other points, completing an Investigation instantly takes away a bunch of Anarchy, so even if you end up with some Anarchy it'll usually end up wiped without you specifically trying to deal with it.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>On the highest difficulty, Crisis Management is very much worth keeping in mind throughout a run, but especially toward the beginning when your Unrest management tools are at their most limited. If the RNG is against you, it's pretty easy for even 'perfect play' to end up with some Anarchy unavoidably generating in the first Investigation, simply due to how limited your ability to manage Unrest initially is. I have, for example, had a run where 3 missions generated, all in Districts high enough on Unrest that ignoring them would push them to max, where I thus had two Anarchy!/Outbreak missions generate and could only deal with one of them, leaving the other District to keep generating Anarchy until Vigilance came off cooldown. As Anarchy maxing out is an instant game over, you of course want to beat it back aggressively.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Contrasting with Humanitarian Aid, the 5-day delay before Crisis Management kicks in isn't really an issue. Anarchy can't build up very fast unless you're basically actively <b>trying</b> to maximize Unrest generation, so it takes <b>very</b> sloppy play to have it be the case that Anarchy maxes out and you lose before Crisis Management completes, and Anarchy lacks anything equivalent to the randomized distribution of Unrest generation to produce any kind of guessing game. The requirement that you send a Special Agent is also pretty lax for what it does; you won't even necessarily need to send a properly 'core' agent to handle Crisis Management, minimizing the odds of you having to make a difficult decision there. (ie you're unlikely to be going 'but I need my squad at their best for the upcoming plot mission, and so can't spare a Special Agent for Crisis Management!')</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>You probably won't need to perform Crisis Management more than a handful of times even up on the highest difficulty, because your ability to combat Unrest does rise so much, but it's genuinely an appreciated tool in the early-mid-game on the highest difficulty.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><b>STAR Initiative</b></div><div><div>Duration: 5 days.</div><div>Effect: All agents gain 20% more experience from missions for the next 5 days. (30% more on lowest difficulty)</div><div>Unlock: Requires a Principle Agent to unlock and to perform the Spec Op.</div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>I like the idea of STAR Initiative, but have difficulty imagining actually using it.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>First of all, the game has a pretty strict pattern of having days alternate between missions and Situations. Plot missions can break this up (And maybe Anarchy!/Outbreak missions?), but unless you precisely time STAR Initiative to take advantage of this (Which can't even be done fully reliably) you're only going to benefit from STAR Initiative 2-3 times per use, not the 5 times you might intuitively expect.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Second, this isn't War of the Chosen. You don't have over a dozen agents all regularly participating in missions, with more besides waiting in the wings to potentially replace a dead agent: your agents <b>can't</b> die without it forcing a mission restart or, if you have Ironman on, terminating your entire campaign. You end the game with exactly 8 agents, and due to Training's mechanics you'll generally end up with 5-6 of them leveled decently just from cycling people out for Training purposes, not to mention potentially cycling an experienced agent out to cover one of the other Spec Ops that has a level requirement. Taking one of your max-rank agents out of action for five days to try to catch up other agents is basically pointless: the game already naturally pushes you to have secondary agents, and indeed even if you decided to <b>try </b>to maximize STAR Initiative's payout you may well find yourself unable to field a team of people who are all still able to benefit from gaining experience!</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Third, 20% more experience is simply too mild. If it eg doubled the experience gained, it might've let you do something like max Zephyr early on, then roll whoever is one of your favorites later and rapidly catch them up via repeatedly assigning Zephyr to STAR Initiative. A 20% boost is practically invisible, given how few ranks there are and how slowly agents progress through the ones past the first two. (Which they instead progress through too quickly for the boost to matter)</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>The most killer issue, though, is that it's attached to Spec Ops, and therefore competes with actually-useful Spec Ops. If it was attached to eg Training, where you could assign an agent to boost other agent experience, it could potentially be worth bothering in the late game, such as if you managed to clean out the Assembly and so there's no point to assigning agents to it. (Which is entirely possible to do, to be clear) As-is, the only time it's only vaguely worth considering is if you've reached the point of having run out of stuff to buy while having no Unrest or Anarchy problems worth managing...</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>... which is unlikely to happen even on the lower difficulties, while on the higher ones where more backup decently-leveled agents might be genuinely appreciated it's just plain never going to happen. In the early game, you need resources perpetually. In the late game, Unrest and by extension Anarchy generation is higher, enough so that Humanitarian Aid and/or Crisis Management are more likely to be priorities.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>There's basically always better priorities than a minor boost to agent experience.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Which makes it a bit frustrating that it's the apex Spec Op you can't perform until somebody is max level...</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>-----------------------------------------</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Next time, we do a brief aside about <a href="https://www.vigaroe.com/2023/08/chimera-squad-initial-settings.html">initial settings</a>, including of course difficulty.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>See you then.</i></div>Ghoul Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15165232279081041131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3656428975201272042.post-18856063210580569622023-07-24T08:06:00.002-07:002023-10-06T10:55:38.173-07:00Chimera Squad Strategic Analysis: Field Teams<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Field Teams are a new mechanic to Chimera Squad. You can broadly compare them to XCOM 2's mechanics of making contact with new regions and building Radio Relays, in terms of being a Geoscape-layer mechanic where you make investments that, among other things, improve your income. I'd argue that's a pretty misleading comparison to make, as it would suggest similarities that simply don't exist (Chimera Squad lacks anything comparable to Continent Bonuses, for example), but I do suspect that broadly Field Teams are developmentally traceable to that whole system.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Anyway, but first context, as Chimera Squad's approach to the Geoscape is notably different from either of the prior systems.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>First and most obvious is the passage of time: in the prior two games, time passing on the Geoscape was visibly tracked in units of minutes. Most scheduling was built around a number of <b>days</b> passing, but the game modeled and tracked the time more continuously than that, and this mattered for a number of reasons. In Chimera Squad, instead the Geoscape is just as 'turn-based' as the tactical layer, with a day being the equivalent of a turn; you complete a mission or Situation, the day ends, and all scheduling tasks increment one day forward and now you're in the next day. It's a much simpler, clearer system, among other points lending itself more readily to rapidly understanding that there <b>are</b> various consistent rules about scheduling, and in turn working out what many of those rules are without any need for the game to explain it. I'm not sure it's actually <b>better</b> than the prior systems, but the clarity advantage is certainly nice for several reasons.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>The second difference is of course the map. Where the prior two games both had the Geoscape cover the entirety of the Earth, Chimera Squad restricts itself to City 31. City 31 is itself divided into 9 Districts, which can be loosely compared to countries in Enemy Unknown/Within or the regional divisions of XCOM 2. The Districts themselves each have a specific name and in-universe lore stuff related to them, but while I suspect which District a mission a mission generates in has an influence on its range of possible maps, in most regards (Or, if I'm wrong, all regards) the Districts are mechanically indistinguishable from each other.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Three Geoscape mechanics are tied to Districts: missions and Situations, Unrest, and Field Teams, all of which intersect with one another. Unrest is essentially a refined version of the Avatar Project in XCOM 2 -or more accurately the Anarchy meter is, but Anarchy is tied to Unrest. If the Anarchy meter hits full, that's it, your campaign ends, you've lost; why this is so from an in-universe standpoint is about as murky as XCOM 2's Avatar Project meter automatically defeating you if it fills, unfortunately, though overall it's a bit easier to fill in with a reasonable explanation. (eg 'the Chimera Squad is disbanded because of how horrible a job they're doing')</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Anarchy points themselves are generated by virtue of a day ending with a District having max Unrest, 1 Anarchy point per District at max Unrest. Unrest itself starts from 0 in all Districts, and the cap is 5 points of Unrest for a given District. Do note that Unrest doesn't do anything below 5 points; you might intuitively expect 4 Unrest to, say, result in civilians in that District being unfriendly to your squad, or something of the sort, but no. Either a District is at 5 points, and so generating Anarchy and intermittently generating an Anarchy! or Outbreak mission, or it's below 5 points and everything is fine.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Unrest generation itself is surprisingly complicated, because it's influenced by a combination of what difficulty you're on and how many Investigations you've completed. That said, there are exactly four ways for Unrest to generate, and two of them are consistent across difficulties and no matter how many Investigations you've completed, so I'll start with those.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>First of all is civilian deaths when doing a mission. This works basically exactly like Intel generation for KOed enemies; if one civilian dies while you're doing a mission, there's a 20% chance the District's Unrest will increase by 1, if two civilians die there's a 40% chance, and so on, all the way up to 5 or more civilians dying guaranteeing that Unrest will go up 1 point. I actually like this overall; video games with the possibility of civilian deaths as a mechanic have long struggled with making civilian deaths an undesirable thing to allow to happen, or more precisely with doing so without creating other design problems. (eg plenty of games have gone with 'any civilian dying is an instant game over', and this always has <b>all kinds</b> of <b>really serious </b>problems) My main complaint is that it's pretty ignorable; I kind of wish it had been a 50% chance per civilian death, and 'rolled over' when above 100% to produce more Unrest points. (ie 3 deaths would be a 50% chance of 1 Unrest and a 50% chance of 2 Unrest) It's sufficiently minor the only reason you're liable to realize it's a mechanic is because the game explicitly mentions it in the mission summary screen if any civilians go down.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Second is 'hidden mission targets', which requires a bit of explanation; every Investigation has a series of fixed plot missions, which the game paces out by making most of them initially generate as a 'hidden mission target'. A hidden mission target generates in a specific District, blocks other missions and Situations from generating in that District until completed, and so long as it remains in place adds 1 Unrest to the District per day that passes. Upon completion, either a new hidden mission target will generate, or you've finished that Investigation and it's time to move on to the next stage of the game. Straightforward enough, and honestly probably most players who played the game exactly once figured all this out on their own even though the game doesn't explain it.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Third is that ignoring a Situation can generate Unrest. I say 'can', because this is the first thing affected by difficulty setting/how far into a run you are; below the highest difficulty, this won't happen until you're somewhere past your first Investigation. I suspect it will in fact never happen on the lowest difficulty, but I've never tested it so don't take my word for it. Regardless, note that Situations almost always generate in pairs (If you stall on hitting a revealed 'hidden mission target', you can get a day where only 1 Situation generates, but that's it), and by default you can only deal with 1 Situation per day, so this reliably adds a bit of pressure to Unrest management when it's relevant.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Fourth is that ignoring a mission generates Unrest. Unlike ignoring a Situation, this happens on every difficulty at every point in a run, but the <b>amount</b> of Unrest goes up based on those factors, starting from just 1 Unrest and being allowed to rise as high as 3 Unrest for an ignored mission. Like Situations, missions mostly generate in pairs, and you can never deal with both at once, so this is very much the primary source of Unrest pressure in any run throughout the run. Exacerbating this is that you'll occasionally get <b>three</b> missions generating; two regular random generation missions, plus an optional plot mission that will reduce how many days it takes for the current hidden mission target if performed. So that's additional Unrest pressure.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Nicely enough, even though the game doesn't really <b>explain</b> these mechanics, it has UI elements that show how much Unrest will generate in a given District if you don't do anything to prevent the Unrest, so you don't need to <b>understand</b> the rules to account for them reasonably well, and probably most players who have played through the game even once figured out most of the rules accurately enough on their own.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Now, I laid out all this in this post partly because Field Teams are tied up pretty heavily in not only the Geoscape layer in general but more specifically in Unrest management; among other points, 2 of your 3 Field Team types can directly fight Unrest, and there's another Geoscape set of mechanics I'll be getting to later that are focused on fighting Unrest and partially tied up in Field Teams.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Field Teams themselves are something you pay Intel to install into a District, and from there you can potentially spend more Intel to upgrade the Field Team, ultimately being able to do this a maximum of two times. (ie max Rank on Field Teams is 3) At Rank 1, all a Field Team does is provide some resources once per in-game week, every Friday, at Rank 2 a Field Team provides additional benefits for doing missions in their District (And also provides more resources on Friday), and at Rank 3 they provide another new benefit. (Which I can't provide a global summary for because they don't all three hold to a pattern)</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Field Team costs are one of the more poorly-explained elements of the game (Though you do at least reliably get an accurate preview of current costs), and easy to be confused as to what the rules are, unfortunately. The base costs work like so:</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">50/80/120 Intel for Rank 1/2/3</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>However, you'll normally only ever see those exact numbers three times per run, as Field Team costs increase based on how many copies you already have of a given Field Team type that are at least your target Rank. Normally this increase is 15 Intel per such Field Team, but it's only 10 more Intel on the lowest difficulty.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Now, I used such a cumbersome wording because the system is surprisingly specific. Say you build a Rank 1 Security Team. If you want to build a second Security Team, it will cost 65 Intel, but if you decide to build a Finance or Technology Team instead, you'll just pay the normal 50 Intel. Similarly, if you build three Rank 1 Security Teams and are considering upgrading any of them, the first one you upgrade will cost the base 80 Intel; you won't have to pay more Intel until you're trying to get a <b>second</b> Security Team to Rank 2.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>All of which means you're encouraged to diversify a bit, where it's easier to afford installing one Security Team, one Technology Team, and one Finance Team than it is to build three copies of your favorite. It's a surprisingly nice system; given what I usually see with games, I'd have expected a system whose rules were less specific, and more precisely I'd have expected the game to have optimal play look radically different from dev intentions due to not thinking through the implications of the rules. eg if all costs on all Field Team types went up for each Field Team <b>built</b> while upgrades did not affect costs, you wouldn't be encouraged to diversify and would in fact be encouraged to 'build tall', fully upgrading each Field Team before installing a new one to minimize wasted Intel. (And given my usual experiences with games, such a thing would be paired with the tutorial elements actively exhorting the player to diversify or otherwise trying to get the player to play in a way that is actively contrary to the incentives the game actually has)</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Something worth noting is that it's possible to get a 'free Field Team' reward. This lets you perform one Field Team purchase -whether installing one into a District or upgrading an existing one- at no Intel cost. Such free Field Teams are optimally spent on upgrading an existing Field Team, preferably to Rank 3, and preferably of whatever Field Team type you have the highest number of copies at Rank 3; the Intel cost negation applies in full no matter what the price you'd otherwise be paying is, so best to use it on whatever would be most expensive.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Anyway, it's worth pointing out that Field Team upgrading is instant, and more precisely the implications in the context of their bonuses: the first Rank of a given Field Team should generally be bought specifically on Thursdays, as there's no benefit to doing so earlier unless you're trying to unlock something. (eg if you have three Field Teams up and want Quarantine <b>today</b>, you should just go ahead and build that fourth Field Team) Similarly, every Field Team's second Rank specifically bolsters mission rewards, and so it's a good idea to hold onto Intel to opportunistically upgrade Field Teams to Rank 2 when you happen to want to do a mission in that District that day, though it's also slightly worth considering making such upgrades on Thursdays since they also provide a small increase to the weekly income.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Rank 3 actually varies by Field Team type more significantly, though in practice these just-in-time behaviors aren't terribly important to Rank 3. It takes too much Intel to hit Rank 3 to reasonably take a District from nothing to Rank 3 in response to an opportunity, and only Security's Rank 3 benefit is big enough to potentially be worth pursuing in such a targeted manner.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Otherwise, this build-and-upgrade-just-in-time behavior is pretty favored unless you're playing specifically on the lowest difficulty: on Impossible, the immediate cash payout added to the mission will take two Fridays for just building two Field Teams to exceed, while the Intel cost difference is pretty minor. (If we say these are your first Finance teams, building two Rank 1 cases is 115 Intel, while building and upgrading to Rank 2 just one is 130 Intel; only 15 more) It's actually even more favored on Expert, since the mission payout goes up with no other changes!</i></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Also, a mechanic I have no idea the details of: it's possible to have a Situation generate that will lower the Rank of the Field Team in that District if ignored, where the only reward for doing it is preventing the Rank drop.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>I've literally only seen this Situation once, ever, so I honestly couldn't tell you what the rules on this being allowed to generate are. (I assume they're such it doesn't generate readily given I've only seen the Situation the one time, but that's not terribly helpful) Just keep in mind it's a thing that can happen.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>As for the specifics of Field Teams...</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVhFSzBKMOyKVyBhBAukOmO_Emi4ggv1z9TovTPqh0Qefn49ypz1gibdUUA-aPOredAT8WCCz1HD-Ou2kD0kPCPHPWgtoYj4wGslcIwdkDjjQchbQUBPXhD6_R0UN42cs5js9ir7wQoetG/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="113" data-original-width="114" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVhFSzBKMOyKVyBhBAukOmO_Emi4ggv1z9TovTPqh0Qefn49ypz1gibdUUA-aPOredAT8WCCz1HD-Ou2kD0kPCPHPWgtoYj4wGslcIwdkDjjQchbQUBPXhD6_R0UN42cs5js9ir7wQoetG/s16000/Finance+Field+Team+icon.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b>Finance</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Rank 1: 30/20/15/15 (Difficulty-based) Credits every Friday.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Rank 2: 5 more Credits every Friday. Additionally, missions completed in this district provide 65/55/50/40 (Difficulty-based) Credits on top of their own rewards.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Rank 3: 5 more credits every Friday. Additionally, Situations completed in this District lower its Unrest by 1.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>The middle-of-the-road Field Team type, neither the best nor the worst. The Situation-based Unrest reduction at Rank 3 is unique to Finance Field Teams, and on the highest difficulty is honestly probably a better reason to decide which Situation to take than what the actual rewards offered by the Situations; Unrest management is genuinely difficult on the highest difficulty, and being able to get a free bit of Unrest reduction intermittently is quite valuable.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Finance is, unsurprisingly, nice for helping you keep up with the expenses in kitting out your squad. Armor and weapon upgrades are pretty Credit-intensive, and most other worthwhile purchases aren't actually all that cheap. Crucially, building Finance teams is the only fully reliable way to drag up your Credit income: you can pick missions and Situations that offer Credits, of course, but any given set of mission or Situation offerings doesn't necessarily include Credits, and furthermore you have to juggle Unrest management and compare against the alternative rewards, and grabbing Credits tends to lose out in such choices simply because you'll definitely get more Credits <b>eventually</b>. Whereas if, for example, you get two missions, one of which has a Credit reward while the other has Caustic Rounds... you'll probably go for the Caustic Rounds, since they're extremely useful, can only be acquired as mission rewards, and can't be counted on to generate again at some later point.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>I generally only build 2-3 Finance teams, personally, but firstly I try to target them for maximum effect (eg building and upgrading a Finance team in the District I'm about to launch a mission in anyway), and secondly I tend to prioritize them a bit for upgrades, which is notable given I prefer to play only on the highest difficulties. (The top two difficulties' ratios make each upgrade add a third of the base weekly income, where down at Story upgrades are adding a <b>sixth</b> of the base weekly income) </i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>On a different note, your first Rank 3 Finance team also unlocks the Assembly Project for upgrading your Training facility with a second agent slot... AKA the least valuable of your facility upgrades, by far. Unless you're regularly getting people heavily Scarred-up, there's really no time you're liable to particularly care about having two slots in Training: you don't want to cycle out too much of your main team in the first place, your agents tend to end up with staggered levels from cycling through Basic Training at the beginning of the game, and you just don't have enough </i><i>demand for </i><i>Training program time: it's trivial to get everyone to their maximum Training off of the one Training slot.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>I really wish upgrading Training had done something like accelerate Training time of individual agents. It would still have been pretty low-value, but getting an agent back into action faster would be something you'd get <b>some</b> benefit out of.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>As it is, you probably shouldn't have your first Rank 3 Field Team be a Finance team. It's probably better as a just-in-time upgrade when you're intending to do a Situation in the District and the District has at least one Unrest, honestly. And even that is a pretty small benefit if you're playing below Impossible, as only Impossible really has Unrest as a serious mechanic you have to carefully manage at all times.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinr7oxpFhUzuJHD7N-IXS07BpiE4sKlEf6rJKsI5kpuAE4GGDRxHPk8vPHZ0j2N_eDFA7G7BJrONZIX1KMII1h6UfPsUbHFEYBwtn8H6ZKqpgcAM8A2Rs0WY9yJqBLWFRQz912gaspathc/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="113" data-original-width="113" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinr7oxpFhUzuJHD7N-IXS07BpiE4sKlEf6rJKsI5kpuAE4GGDRxHPk8vPHZ0j2N_eDFA7G7BJrONZIX1KMII1h6UfPsUbHFEYBwtn8H6ZKqpgcAM8A2Rs0WY9yJqBLWFRQz912gaspathc/s16000/Security+Field+Team+icon.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b>Security</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Rank 1: 20/15/15/10 (Difficulty-based) Intel every Friday.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Rank 2: 5 more Intel every Friday. Additionally, missions completed in this district provide 40/30/25/20 (Difficulty-based) Intel on top of their own rewards.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Rank 3: 5 more Intel every Friday. Additionally, this district's Unrest lowers by 2 every Friday.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>It's worth pointing out that a run always starts on Thursday, with enough Intel to purchase a Field Team right away. It's probably best to always start a run by buying a Security team somewhere, so you'll immediately defray your first Field Team's Intel cost. Even on the highest difficulty, you're immediately refunded 20% of what you spent by doing that.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Security Field Teams are by far the best Field Team type, and overall should be your earliest priority since early Security Field Teams can literally pay for themselves. Their third-tier effect is also great in the late game for helping you with Unrest management, and is generally appreciated a lot on higher difficulties, where Unrest rises faster, more consistently. 2 Unrest canceled each Friday might not sound like much, but it can be what lets you ignore an Outbreak mission without worrying about the effect on the Anarchy meter because the district will be automatically brought below 5 Unrest in a couple days, letting you focus on whichever mission is most useful to developing your squad and all, or what prevents an ignored mission from pushing a district to 5 Unrest in the first place.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>As with Finance teams, keep in mind you can do just-in-time upgrades to Rank 2 if you're going to do a mission in that District anyway. This isn't as significant as with Finance teams, as the Intel reward isn't very large, but it does effectively provide a partial refund on the upgrade so it's still worth doing, especially early on when Field Team purchases are at their cheapest. Your first Rank 2 Security team is refunding 25% of its cost on Impossible if you do this, for example.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Similarly, keep in mind the potential for just-in-time upgrades to Rank 3 on Thursdays, if the District has Unrest. This is one reason I tend to prefer a Security-heavy distribution; because jumping on Rank 2 just-in-times gets my Field Teams built up faster in general and then gives me a broad net of existing Rank 2 Security teams that can then do just-in-time upgrades to Rank 3, all while feeding back Intel to fund more Field Teams. And since the Scavenger Market is another Intel dump, getting every District maxed out early doesn't turn ongoing Intel streams worthless.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Your first Rank 3 Security team also unlocks the Assembly Project for upgrading your Spec Ops facility. This isn't urgently important, which is a little unfortunate given how much incentive there is to invest heavily into Security Field Teams early and often, but it's useful to have it <b>eventually</b>, as once you've got a full set of 8 agents you'll end up with two agents who perpetually have nothing better to do than Spec Ops anyway.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3jnr1otKCnZ7k-CsffvjcZ4vYtKzNd5-NaArXHKRgjomgebEtMWjwl7ACERFzn8jMxqypQ7nOAdjdKxEL3dMX64hhQvWb0cGenWk72GypQ07PbyP2TKhSeswpKOJxfSwsQQvWOEtV5yin/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="113" data-original-width="114" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3jnr1otKCnZ7k-CsffvjcZ4vYtKzNd5-NaArXHKRgjomgebEtMWjwl7ACERFzn8jMxqypQ7nOAdjdKxEL3dMX64hhQvWb0cGenWk72GypQ07PbyP2TKhSeswpKOJxfSwsQQvWOEtV5yin/s16000/Technology+Field+Team+icon.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b>Technology</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Rank 1: 20/10/10/10 (Difficulty-based) Elerium every Friday.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Rank 2: 5 more Elerium every Friday. Additionally, missions completed in this district provide 35/20/15/15 (Difficulty-based) Elerium on top of their own rewards.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Rank 3: 5 more Elerium every Friday. Additionally, missions completed in this district advance the timer for revealing the current 'hidden mission target' by 1 day on top of their own rewards.</div></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Surprisingly, given the usual video game trends when it comes to technology-related mechanics, Technology Field Teams are by far the worst, least useful Field Team type.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>First of all, Elerium is actually the lowest-value resource. You only spend it on Assembly Projects, and only on some of them. While this includes the very important weapon and armor upgrades, you still then need to spend Credits on performing the actual upgrades (Meaning that raising your Elerium income doesn't necessarily speed up your technological improvement at all), and there's quite a few Assembly Projects that don't cost Elerium but are still very useful to pursue. Crucially, in the long haul this means Elerium becomes literally worthless: Intel can be spent on the Scavenger Market all the way to the end of the game, and Credits can be spent on Supply items anytime. Yes, they both have clear points past which <b>little</b> benefit is occurring, but Elerium is the only resource where it's completely possible to have <b>literally</b> no use for more of it before you've beaten the game -in fact, this can happen before you've completed your <b>second Investigation</b>! It requires you know what you're doing, yes, but it's entirely possible.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Second, the third-tier reward is <b>anti</b>-useful unless you're just tired of playing Chimera Squad and want to get it over with already. 99% of the time, it's more optimal to drag things out, so you can accumulate more resources and experience and get more time to expend on Training and Assembly Projects before having to take on tough missions -and plot missions (Which is what 'hidden mission targets' are) are almost always the hardest missions, the ones you most want to prepare for. As such, accelerating the reveal of a plot mission is actively counterproductive, to the point that the only reason I'd recommend bothering with a Technology Field Team at all is that building your first third-tier one unlocks the ability to upgrade the Assembly itself, which is one of the best Assembly Projects in the game.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>This operation reveal acceleration dynamic touches on a related problematic bit of design, which is that you have Investigation-specific minor plot missions intermittently pop up where the primary reward is accelerating the reveal of the current hidden mission target. This is terrible, because these have a non-trivial fraction of unique plot stuff and character interaction locked behind them, but the optimal way to play the game is to actively avoid these missions! It's frustrating enough that 'advance Investigation progress' is actively a bad thing, but it's so much worse that optimal play fundamentally discourages a player from seeing Floyd Tesseract in person, among other examples. A game with as much focus on its story as Chimera Squad should endeavor to make optimal play <b>seek out</b> such plot bits, not make them fundamentally something optimal play avoids hitting.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Anyway, Technology teams are technically a case where you can do just-in-time upgrading to Rank 2 to bring in more Elerium, but not only is Elerium surprisingly low-value but the Rank 2 payout is pretty low -it's only 50% more than the base weekly payout when up on the higher two difficulties. Furthermore, you really don't want or need lots of Technology teams; even on Impossible, every run I've done ran out of things to spend Elerium on before <b>reaching </b>the third Investigation. It's also not acceptable to just refuse to fully upgrade Field Teams if you're playing up on Impossible, as Major Crimes Task Force has its effectiveness maxed out by getting <b>all </b>Field Teams to Rank 3 and the ability to kick back the city's Anarchy is actually important on Impossible. (Vigilance also scales with Field Team Rank, for that matter...)</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>So really, you should just build one Technology team, upgrade it to Rank 3 to unlock its associated Assembly Project, and very possibly replace it with a Security or Finance team afterward. (I've never bothered with the replacing, but I have repeatedly done 'only build one' -this is completely viable)</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>It should also be pointed out that one of the more awkward bits of Chimera Squad's design is that a given team's Elerium needs can vary wildly. The Assembly Projects for armor upgrades are at least fixed and predictable (All teams want both of them to more or less the same extent), but the way weapons are handled is uneven. A team of Blueblood, Torque, Verge, and Godmother will spend a chunk of the early game genuinely Elerium-hungry, because the team needs <b>every</b> weapon upgrade to properly keep up. At the opposite extreme, a team with Zephyr backed by either Torque/Shelter/Terminal or Claymore/Godmother/Axiom only cares about <b>one</b> weapon upgrade chain: SMGs for the first set, Shotguns for the second set. This results in Elerium costs being almost completely irrelevant past the extremely early game. (It also affects the team's Credit needs, for that matter, but this isn't so drastic since you have other things to spend Credits on; Elerium really is spent almost exclusively on unlocking weapon and armor upgrades)</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Given how bad Technology Field Teams are, it's frustrating that at Rank 3 they unlock the Assembly Project for upgrading the Assembly itself, as that's by far the best Rank 3 unlock. The Assembly being more time-efficient is incredibly useful, and many of the quicker Projects start from 3 days to complete, drop to 2 if manned by one agent, and drop to 1 day if manned by two agents, which is to say that upgrading the Assembly <b>halves</b> how much time you end up spending on a number of Assembly Projects. Even for the longer ones, though, it's a big deal, and ideally you'll get it <b>really</b> early -I'm of the opinion that optimal play involves beelining to unlocking Rank 3 Field Teams and then using Free Field Teams to quickly unlock the Assembly upgrade, as the dividends are <b>huge</b>.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>------------------------------------------</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Tied to Field Teams is a series of Geoscape abilities. You unlock them through building and upgrading Field Teams, and they should be a priority; every ability is completely free, held back only by a cooldown. This isn't too important on lower difficulties, but on Impossible Unrest management is a big part of mastering the game, and three of these abilities are key to managing Unrest.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>The idea of Geoscape-level abilities is an interesting one, and I'm quite curious if XCOM 3 is going to come back to the idea. Chimera Squad's attempt is decent (If a bit simplistic), and one of the flaws with EU/EW and XCOM 2 was how the Geoscape is pretty low-interactivity while being a relatively major facet of playing the game. It'd be nice if XCOM 3 built on this idea.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrfr-KshaCcekEtukkO06AuGDvFOCfddYK_OdYthbdvQYkRYHN_0ryzy4Vv2FocV2svhsOcB-xLbvCXpKlHY-ANnOdk5ZmputUq-Wd49IrZ0A_nymbWEUC7HI5G8ufr8JJecpksjERQ4C-/" style="clear: left; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="152" data-original-width="153" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrfr-KshaCcekEtukkO06AuGDvFOCfddYK_OdYthbdvQYkRYHN_0ryzy4Vv2FocV2svhsOcB-xLbvCXpKlHY-ANnOdk5ZmputUq-Wd49IrZ0A_nymbWEUC7HI5G8ufr8JJecpksjERQ4C-/s16000/Vigilance+icon.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b>Vigilance</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Effect: Instantly lowers the Unrest of a District of your choice. Unrest reduction is 1/2/3/4, based on the Rank of Field Team installed in that District. (The lowest difficulty raises the Unrest reduction by 1 at all tiers) 4 day cooldown.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Unlock: Build a Field Team.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>That's -1 Unrest if no Field Team is installed, -2 if a Level 1 Field Team is installed, -3 for Level 2, and of course -4 for Level 3, all but wiping out Unrest if used on a District with a maxed Field Team.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Vigilance is of course your bread-and-butter city-level ability. In the early game it just kind of exists (Unless you're playing on Impossible), but the deeper a run goes the more significant it gets between Field Team upgrades directly improving its effectiveness and Unrest becoming more of a problem in general. Among other points, with a Rank 3 Field Team it can keep Unrest completely canceled on the hidden mission target's District, since that generates 1 Unrest per day, you'll zap 4 Unrest away, and you can use it every 4 days.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Reminder once again that installing and upgrading Field Teams is completely instant; say you have a District that will end up at exactly 5 Unrest at the end of the day if you target it with Vigilance under current conditions. You can potentially install or upgrade a Field Team in that District to add 1 more point of Unrest reduction, avoiding hitting max Unrest and thus avoiding Anarchy generation.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Vigilance itself starts kind of boring and ends kind of boring, because you largely just apply it to whatever District has the highest Unrest. There's some room to consider putting it off for a day, such as if it comes off cooldown when you happen to have no District with more than 1 Unrest currently in the midgame or late game, but most of the more interesting decision-making exists exclusively in the portion of a run where you have variable Ranks of Field Teams across your Districts and so have to make judgment calls about whether to eg target a District that's at 4 Unrest but has no Field Team installed or target a District that's at 3 Unrest and has a Rank 2 Field Team and so you'll wipe its Unrest entirely.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Vigilance's dynamics are functional enough, mind; the boring-ness aspect mostly just means I don't have much to say about it.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUmsHAsR1MT0X-hsVNUo-g0dwkV7svq2U3X55yrAxXF1Xu7M2976xowXISnhztgxbEx8qfAwDhdrxbv5pGJSJ2tP3pvPa70xwyDC8eeMN-h-OGhFBQ0CXRUcEr1qEo1IlOBltHyRojpsLv/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="152" data-original-width="153" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUmsHAsR1MT0X-hsVNUo-g0dwkV7svq2U3X55yrAxXF1Xu7M2976xowXISnhztgxbEx8qfAwDhdrxbv5pGJSJ2tP3pvPa70xwyDC8eeMN-h-OGhFBQ0CXRUcEr1qEo1IlOBltHyRojpsLv/s16000/Quarantine+Icon.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b>Quarantine</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Effect: Prevents Unrest from rising in a chosen District for 2 days. 4 day cooldown.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Unlock: Build Field Teams in four different Districts.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>By default, you're going to be perpetually slapping this onto the hidden mission target, so that the District's Unrest going up 1 point every day doesn't inevitably lead to Anarchy points.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>It's... not a very interesting mechanic, unfortunately. There really needed to be other multi-day Unrest-raising effects to make Quarantine targeting a meaningful choice. As-is, it's basically a clunky way for the devs to ensure hidden mission targets do, in fact, raise Unrest in their District, without this being insanely oppressive in the context of the small numbers used for Unrest. That is, if Unrest had been tracked as a 25 point system, you could simply multiply most current Unrest values by 5, make hidden mission targets raise Unrest by 1 point per day while getting rid of Quarantine, and the net result would work out to hidden mission targets generating a total amount of Unrest roughly equivalent to Unrest 2 points in the current framework. Or you could make it 2 points per day for a final of 20, equivalent to 4 in the current system. Either way, the point is that Quarantine just gives a way for the devs to effectively have fractional Unrest growth without actually having fractional Unrest growth: if you're perpetually using Quarantine on hidden mission targets (Which you should), that effectively brings hidden mission target Unrest generation down to half a point per day, since they end up spending half their days not generating Unrest.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>You <b>can</b> slap Quarantine onto other mission sites, and this becomes actually important to keep in mind up on Impossible where Unrest requires more careful and continuous management, but by default it's not ideal. Among other points, the game alternating missions with Situations means it's not actually possible for a Quarantine used in this way to actually do anything on its second day, at least not until you're far enough along ignored Situations generate a point of Unrest... and it's not like it's <b>likely</b> that a Situation will generate in the District you Quarantined yesterday, so even if you have ignored Situations generating Unrest it's still unlikely to happen. Since you don't get to see mission/Situation generation in advance, it's not like you can go 'oh, a Situation will generate there tomorrow in addition to today's mission I want to ignore' and drop Quarantine in response.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Overall, in the context of how things worked out, I'm not a fan of Quarantine. It doesn't add much to the design (Again: just increasing the base scale of Unrest numbers would do most of what it does for the design), and it's not something that's interesting to engage with as a player.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>It also feels weird on a more narrative level. You quarantine a portion of the city, and that <b>stops</b> the people in that area from getting angry and restless? I'd sooner expect this to cause Unrest to <b>rise </b>over the duration in exchange for some other benefit. Say the game had some kind of mechanic for having Persons Of Interest hanging out in the city; initiating a quarantine in an attempt to pin them in a specific place and let you flush them out would make intuitive sense, and an ability that generates Unrest in exchange for another benefit would also be more mechanically interesting.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>I kind of doubt XCOM 3 is going to return to a sufficiently similar framework for this to be liable to be refined in a meaningfully recognizable manner, too, which is maybe unfortunate. Chimera Squad's Geoscape layer is an okay foundation that would really benefit from a second game expanding on it, and it's entirely possible XCOM 3 will take no lessons from this attempt.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxAubw8spLng737VZVKij-c9XGarFQMxVKZN9XMYLNwl-FI8f0oMSIT4UHBA1lDaAt7Ne-QZdb2I8OK_enShXtnjpQfy7BqHKPWmfuEi6bymxrxc1zW9SFKrqtzYNmCF8rdb3nKeeedtBh/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="152" data-original-width="153" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxAubw8spLng737VZVKij-c9XGarFQMxVKZN9XMYLNwl-FI8f0oMSIT4UHBA1lDaAt7Ne-QZdb2I8OK_enShXtnjpQfy7BqHKPWmfuEi6bymxrxc1zW9SFKrqtzYNmCF8rdb3nKeeedtBh/s16000/Dragnet+Icon.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b>Dragnet</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Effect: Can only be targeted on a District with an active Situation. Instantly removes the Situation, but you gain only 65/50/40/40% (Based on difficulty) of the rewards you'd have gotten if you'd sent the APC. 4 day cooldown.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Unlock: Get a Field Team to Rank 3.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Dragnet is a pretty good incentive to try to get a Rank 3 Field Team up as early as you can, especially up on Impossible where ignored Situations generate Unrest right in the first Investigation, as Dragnet still counts for preventing Unrest from being generated; you didn't ignore the Situation, after all. More resources for free is appreciated in the early game when you're perpetually hungry for more. The cooldown means it hits at least half of all your Situations after unlocking it; 'at least' because there are multiple cases where the game will put off Situation generation, so it's possible for things to line up such that you use Dragnet and have its cooldown finish before another Situation gets to generate. (Though it won't happen very often, and might not happen in a given run at all)</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>It does give me little to talk about, as its usage is very straightforward: use it whenever you can, target whichever Situation you would otherwise ignore, profit. There's an argument for saving it if, for example, the second Situation is offering Elerium and you've reached the point of Elerium being useless, but that's the main extent of its nuance, and in the late game you're often more concerned about the Unrest generation you're negating by using Dragnet than with the resources Situations grant, where you're liable to just use Dragnet whenever you can without regard to whether you care about the resources involved.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>One mechanical bit to keep in mind, though: a Rank 3 Finance Team only causes a Situation to lower Unrest if you handle the Situation in the normal 'send the APC' manner. Using Dragnet on the Finance Team's District doesn't count for this.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>I would also assume that the Situation that lowers a Field Team's Rank if ignored is unaffected by the reduced reward scaling aspect of Dragnet; certainly, the one time I had that Situation generate I used Dragnet on it without apparent issue. So probably it's optimal to aim Dragnet at that Situation if it happens to generate. I'm reasonably confident that's the only such Situation in the game, though, so that's probably the only case of Dragnet being especially favorable.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcQlfZ2O0c74Saujx40N-kRcAsNU7qsjfy38nqQRL90jDg4h9hep5gFcDHnrGH_N_uyqxL0O0vvEx8bK_GDqKJL1jqmPTuqyJArepwZWNqpXv4Vev6OwFnqaPmRQlwtM0rqlTemZ3TFC-y/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="152" data-original-width="154" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcQlfZ2O0c74Saujx40N-kRcAsNU7qsjfy38nqQRL90jDg4h9hep5gFcDHnrGH_N_uyqxL0O0vvEx8bK_GDqKJL1jqmPTuqyJArepwZWNqpXv4Vev6OwFnqaPmRQlwtM0rqlTemZ3TFC-y/s16000/Major+Crimes+Task+Force+icon.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b>Major Crimes Task Force</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Effect: Immediately lowers Anarchy by 1/2/3 points, based on what the lowest Rank of Field Team you currently have is. (1 for 0/1, 2 for 2, 3 for 3) 5 day cooldown.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Unlock: Have a Field Team in every District.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>I touched on this earlier, but Anarchy is your Game Over meter in Chimera Squad, akin to the Avatar Project bar in XCOM 2, where it filling up is Very Bad. Unlike the Avatar Project bar, it's not a continuously ticking clock advancing at all times, but rather only goes up in a specific circumstance: when a District ends the day at 5 Unrest, Anarchy goes up one point per such District.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Notably, the Anarchy bar is actually pretty limited in your ability to drain it. Major Crimes Task Force is one of only three things that drain it: number two is completing a Take Down (Investigation target) mission, which will reduce Anarchy by 3 points. (4 points on Story difficulty) As the Take Down </i><i>(Investigation target)</i><i> missions each only occur once, that's a total of 9 Anarchy you get negated for free; if you generate Anarchy beyond 9, you'll need to use Major Crimes Task Force if you want to make it go away. Either that or option number 3; the Crisis Management Spec Op. (But we'll be talking about that in the next post)</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Below Impossible, Major Crimes Task Force isn't terribly important unless you're just very sloppy about Unrest management. You might as well use it once it's unlocked, which you'll do because of course you're going to fill out every District with Field Teams, assuming you generate Anarchy in the first place, but it's entirely possible to get through a run with little or no Anarchy generating.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Up on Impossible, this actually should be something of a priority to unlock and get to its second-tier effect. Unrest generates very aggressively all the way to the beginning of the game on Impossible, where it's actually very difficult to completely prevent Anarchy from rising, and it's actually plausible to end up with quite a lot of Anarchy generating fairly early on because eg three missions generated at once, all in Districts with enough Unrest that the 'ignored mission' Unrest increase will bring them to max, and so two Anarchy!/Outbreak missions generated and you can only pick one. If Vigilance is on cooldown, you'll have to eat Anarchy increases until it isn't on cooldown; Anarchy!/Outbreak missions only generate the <b>first</b> day after a District hits 5 Unrest, rather than continuously generating the way you might intuitively expected. (Exception: if an Anarchy!/Outbreak mission <b>should</b> generate, but the game is demanding you do a plot mission right now, the Anarchy!/Outbreak mission will delay until no such urgent mission is in the way)</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Major Crimes Task Force itself is unfortunately probably the most straightforward or boring of these abilities. There's a little room for doing things like waiting a day to get more Intel so you can upgrade one last Field Team to bump up MCTF's effectiveness, or putting it off a day so Anarchy rises to meet MCTF's current level of effectiveness (eg if Anarchy is at 2 and will rise to 3 once the day rolls over, and you have maxed Field Teams in every District), but mostly it's a pretty mindless 'click button if Anarchy still exists and MCTF is off cooldown'.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>This is part of why I'd like to see XCOM 3 come back to this concept of abilities for the Geoscape: Chimera Squad's system is an okay first attempt, but it could really use more nuance, something to make it more interesting. If MCTF was instead outside the player's control, applying itself if Anarchy is present with a 5 day cooldown, this would largely result in the same outcome, but without forcing the player to do the clicking to make it happen. That's not ideal design.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">------------------------------</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Next time, we move on to another Geoscape-focused mechanic: <a href="https://www.vigaroe.com/2023/07/chimera-squad-strategic-analysis-spec.html">Spec Ops</a>.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>See you then.</i></div></div>Ghoul Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15165232279081041131noreply@blogger.com4