That's not an exploit, hardcore or not. All Last Stand needs is a once per mission cap, then whether you medpack or not, the next time you're going down permanently, which fits in with all the other "big talents" without complicating the ruleset. As for this: I played a ton of H:E1, and I've played a ton of H2 (currently #47 on the boards), and I cannot agree with your assessment of the talent trees, not really sure what game you're playing. Many people argue guarding makes the game too easy and simple, you're calling it useless, and I know I personally make great use of the support tree. And Cripple Shot from the combat tree is one of the most useful skills in the entire game and you don't even give it an honorable mention. Vengeance is less useful on hardcore, but this game is not balanced around hardcore, nor should it be. I think you need to consider the trees are a lot more balanced than you give them credit for but just don't fit your playstyle. Keep in mind that those talents, with the exception of a couple of new ones (e.g. Last Stand), are all from Hunters: Episode One and were extensively playtested and tweaked over an entire year based upon what players did (which is why counter attack and cold blood are now only a chance to trigger since it was so easy to abuse them before).
I've been playing this past 2 days and I'm loving it but I have one dumb question to ask.. What's the point of lvling your hunters (except for talents) if enemies for every contract are generated on your average hunters level? One more... Stupid ofc ... What's level cap for hunters if there is any? If there is.. I'll spend talent points more carefully. All my hunters are on Lvl 5 atm. I wish I could invest more time in this game.. Also.. I would pay 5 more dollars just for quality online multiplayer
Yeah, I don't agree with this either. Every skill in Combat is useful. Support is also very good, especially for heavy weapons users like snipers. It's specialized, to be sure, but still useful. You are correct that Vengeance is bad for hardcore (assuming you're not using the exploit), but as CH points out, not every skill needs to be balanced for hardcore. To improve your skills, mostly. Also, higher quality weapons won't drop at lower levels. Level 10.
Well, outside of the equipment bit (average level has to be at least 6 before legendaries will drop) that Bullwinkle mentioned, the game actually does improve, and by improve, I mean it kicks your butt more as your own hunters increase in level. From everything I can tell, in H:E1, the game tended to spam a lot more enemies as difficulty was increased but quality never went much beyond a ceiling, whereas in H2 the enemy number doesn't seem to change, but their armor types, resistance, etc., does change. I've had pretty good luck on my gear (or maybe I just play too much ), so when I was going in with an average of level 6 I was one shotting a lot of enemies. Now I've got all 8s & 9s plus a 10 and the enemies are becoming beasts. A fun game is getting more fun for me with difficulty on hard and enemies catching up with my gear. Forget the "Take no damage" bonus, I'm having a hard time pulling off the "Take no casualties" bonus. No way am I cranking up my hardcore game to hard any time soon So, talents open up more choices and game options, better gear can drop, and the enemies improve. Enough of a reason for me to level them up. And if anyone doubts it isn't useful, I'll introduce them to my scouting/support sniper with 6AP, free, uninterruptable guard who can get off 2 shots on the enemy's turn
Enjoying Hunters 2 so far, but there's a few details that seem to have been missed. For example, when you get additional hunters there doesn't seem to be any way to sell or delete or reorganize your old ones, which leads to a cluttered hunter list that you need to delve through every round. If there is in fact a feature that allows you to fix this then I'd love to know how to use it (and perhaps it should be made more obvious to new players)!
There isn't, but based on the number of times I've seen this asked and/or suggested as a feature, hopefully it's on its way.
Noooooo! Apparently there is a cap of one each for legendary items (which makes a sort of sense). Between drops and replaying the campaign I'd gotten exactly one of each type of item in the game, no duplicates, which got me wondering... I wonder no more, just finished the campaign again and... got a purple assault rifle.
some answers to your comments : - Sadistic/last stand is the exact definition of an exploit : it makes your character invicible, essentially breaking the game. If this is not an exploit, i don't know whaat would qualify. Anyway, if you want to use , be my guest. - guarding is not useless (wrong wording from me), it's actually very useful VS aliens. But aliens are a joke anyway if you use the good weapons (shotgun obvioulsy) - As you say, i obvioulsly prefer the skills that suit my playstyle. Yet, regardless of playstyle, two trees are largely underwhelming : combat and support. For combat, massacre (average rating) seems great, but in fact, on most missions it's difficult to find a situation on which you can use it on more than 3 enemies. with a normal weapon, that means 2 AP saved (yeah!!!). and 4 with an heavy weapon which is better but not tremendous. On some specific maps with large areas, it's great though. Cripple (bad rating), i find it useful oly VS heavy armour/heavy weapons guys since it can prevent them from firing. But in my playstyle (fast moving, high AP team) i tend to kill the enemies the same round i see them, so it makes cripples useless to me Second chance (average rating) is good at the beginning but with high accuracy weapons, it becomes a lot less impressive. The last skill is a joke : it gives like 25% /kill to get 1 AP. That's just ridiculous for a level 4 skill (to be compared with improved metabolism). All in all, only massacre is interesting IMO and only in very specific situations. As for supporting : - sentry (bad) can be useful at the beginning, but becomes rarely useful when you get good, accurate weapons - steadfast (bad), i find it rarely usefful (maybe once out every 3-4 missions) - stand firm (good): Not bad but put to shame by improved metabolsim. -free fire (bad) : i rarely fire more than once / guard, so the AP saved from time to time is useless. These two trees are largely inferior to scouting which get 2 average skills (recon and fleet feet) and 1 excellent one (improved metabolism) (sprint is totally useless) The comparison is much more difficult with vengeance since the skills are very much different and don't focus on saving AP like the other 3. As for survival it is mandatory in hardcore. Even for softcore, hunker down and juggernaut makes it difficult to miss for me. Yet some specific combination (your support/scouting sniper for examples) are probably very good but harcore kinds of limit your liberty to use them. Anyway, it's just my opinion and the game is easy enough (even in harcore/hard difficulty to be beaten easily with any combination (need survival for harcore though). You can do it rather easily with a team of 2 stalkers (survi/scoutig). I doubt you can do it with other character classes (apart from the invicible / huge exploit zealot)
I do agree to the point that the survival/scout combo is quite good. I love having all those AP + high movement. But I disagree with the point that a lot of the other trees are not useful. I mean they may be not as effective in regards to the above, but they do bring flavor to the game, and they do make use of their own niche [eg guard, tank etc]. I prefer this [albeit it is my choice[may not be the right word for this moment], perhaps not yours/everyone else's]. Which is why I have one of each in my team lol. Even if it is not efficient, its just more fun for me [and thats what counts in the end, whats fun for you ]. What I actually WOULD like to see though, is the ability to bypass the pre-req skills that we may not want later. For example purpose only, if I did not want [don't have it in front of me] if I did not want the sprint skill, but want the extra AP in the later tree. - Now before you get mad, I do understand the need to have the pre-req in order to get to a "better" skill. And I am not saying it should just be freely bypassed. I just feel in the "later" game, more versatility, to put that point into resistance, or critical or stim+med may be a nicer choice. So what if at a certain level, and after you have completed the skill tree once over, there is a choice to respec, but bypass need to get all skills in the tree in order to reach skill x. So perhaps you need to pay extra to have it done, or SOMETHING to override the simple easy-ness of it all. If this makes sense.
Huh? What I said is that other than the once a mission cap (that probably was supposed to be in place to begin with since they'd limited medikits, stimpacks, massacre, hunker down, but not something as obvious as Last Stand) nothing else needed done to Last Stand. It was this part of your post I was rebutting: "as it is, even without counting the exploit you described, it makes harcore too easy (just use medipack when you go in last stand mode)". When I read something like that, I assume you're one of these "hardcore is too easy" types who are never pleased unless the game makes a virtual boot appear out of your computer monitor and kicks you in the groin every time a mistake is made. Maybe the confusion arose when I said that using a medikit on a Last Standed hunter wasn't an exploit (since you didn't come out and say that), but you were adding to the argument of why it needed changed further. It certainly read as though you thought even letting you medikit a Last Standed hunter was bad for the (hardcore) game. I'm just playing at this point as though Last Stand does have a once per mission cap. Next time a hunter goes to zero everyone stands there, looks at him, shakes their head and lets him die screaming, "...but the game code would have let you saaaaaave me".
I just misunderstod you : i'm perfecty fine with last stand/medikit. Anyway i think your proposal for last stand to work only once per mission is very good. Apart from that, i'm normally not too much of the "harcore is too easy" type but for this game, i have to say that hardcore is really too easy : i am bad at turn-based strategy (i suck a ravenmark for example) and yet i had no difficulty at all doing hardcore/hard difficulty from first play through. This setting should be really hard to beat (definately would require some knowledge of the game mechanics) as it is the maximum dificulty available. As it is, i feel hardocre/hard is just standing at what normal difficulty should be IMO. The game is really good and i would like a new challenge to extend the replay value further. Unfortunately, i can't find it anymore (even playing solo missions) That being said, the replay value is already very good and much higher than the typical IOS game.
Already a ton of good information in this thread. I've put more hours into this game then I can count...and no, I don't trust the in app timer, but I'm still learning things that I probably should have picked up in the tutorial/prologue. Here are some of the more helpful things I've gleaned - feel free to skip this post if you're a seasoned veteran. 1. If you hold down on the screen during the enemies turn it will speed them up. 2. If you hold down on your hunter arrows appear that allow you to turn your hunter (my first couple games I actually walked a square to make my hunter face a specific direction...sad but true) 3. If you go into guard mode then hold down and use the arrows it will highlight the area your hunter will cover.
Just in case you were all wondering, yes, I did just hit a guy for 340,000 dmg! The setup: Hunter1: lvl10 Scout/xxx with points into full scout and 2x stimp. Hunter2: lvl10 Scout/xxx with points into full scout and 2x stimp. Hunter3: lvl10 Scout/Vengeance with full points into scout and 1 revenge, 1 retribution, 1 use plasma guns, 2 improved damage. Hunter1 has a custom made flame thrower that does ~49% of Hunter3's life when it hits for full. Hunter3 has the legendary plasma wep, Supernova, 1,310 dmg 33%crit. Hunter3 also has 5ap armor, doesn't matter what as long as Hunter1's flame thrower does 49% of his life per hit. (or 99% if you can manage that). Other gear doesn't matter. Mission 5: Meet Caius. Target: Shotgun hero in the room above where you start. Assume room of shotgun guy looks like: 1 2 3 4 X 5 6 7 8 9 a b Place Hunter 1 @ (3) Place Hunter 2 @ (a) Place Hunter 3 @ (6) Hunter1 uses stimp2 on himself for full AP. Hunter2 uses stimp2 on Hunter3 for a total of 8ap on Hunter3 (5 from armor, 2 from recon, 1 from improved metabolism). Hunter1 then shoots the shotgun boss with his flame thrower and hits Hunter3 twice. If you don't get a full damage shot one of those two hits, reset. Hunter3 should now have 8ap available, be at ~1% hp and have been hit to activate Retribution. POWER UP THE LAZERS. The normal 8ap shot with supernova + 2improved damage hits for ~85,000 x2 revenge = ~170,00 x2 retribution = ~340,000. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM HEADSHOT! Note: you can craft a plasma wep that hits for 1,610 and I plan on re-testing this once I make the ~600,000 credits it will take to make that wep actually have a chance to crit 0.5 million dmg? WE SHALL SEE!! Note2: It does NOT count this damage in the hunter history saved for each char. Despite hitting for 340,000 it says the most my hunter has ever hit for is 73,575 Anyone have any fun challenges to try? I am currently going for a record speed run through the full campaign! I will post again with a writeup when I am satisfied with the results.
Do legendary weapons drop randomly from the dailies? I just got around to finishing the campaign with a level 8 team and the legendary I was given is the only one I have seen. Hoping I'm not forced to replay the whole campaign each time to get more.
Speed campaign is fun but short Missions 2,3,4,5,6 take 1 turn each mission 7 took me 7 turns (i think it can be done in less (probably 6) mission 8 is the longest due to the damage cap on the boss : took me 9 turns (i think it may be possible on 8) Total time :21 turns Guess for best possible time : 19 turns For another challenge : get level 10 team in hard/hardcore without last stand and without alien missions (too easy)
Interesting! I was going for actual time instead of turns because it would force you to make a choice between a larger party and a smaller party that is more maneuverable. I am pretty sure it can be done extremely fast though even just time based. For example: mission 3, while doable in 1 turn, is actually faster, time wise, to take 2 turns. Counting by total turns leads to some seriously inefficient uses of human time as well. For instance it would be advantageous in a per-turn system to hit the last boss with an entire team of 6 every turn even though the last 4 hunters would do practically nothing. As for mission 8 I need some testing to figure out if the boss has a hard-cap on the damage you can do to him. I feel like he must because a normal 8ap plasma shot should do ~+50,000 dmg and it hits him for ~9,500. If it isn't capped and he just has a lot of armor, I might be able to get that 9.5k up to ~40k which would speed things up quite a bit
I'm pretty sure the boss has a hard cap : with 5 ap plasma zealot, i always did around 9500 whatever the situation (with or without retribution ,...)
Considering the screenshot above, I have a question about the accuracy system : On the image, the epic hammer is a manufactured one. My hunter has the second chance skill, so, if the accuracy of the hammer is 78%, thanks to second chance it becomes 95.15% However I've noticed that i've missed (the two attempts) 6 times on 25 (24%) !! Is there a hidden parameter regarding the accuracy ?
Questions Still loving this game, finished campaign 8 times. Was pleased to get legendary armour -Zealot Suit - on last pay through. Thought there were only legendary weapons! Appreciate if anyone can help with some guidance here to help me sleep at night! 1) The stats on the Armoury screen don't add up for me on any Hunter : Example : Kills 659 Human 280 Alien 366 Reactors 11 This equals 657, so something else must be included. Any ideas? Maybe game doesn't include double kills (from exploding aliens) or when you kill your own team members? 2) There is a stat "Leaders Killed". This is zero on all my Hunters. To Devs - any updates coming soon please??!!
