No, didn't use the Flamer yet. If combat ever turns really close and personal, I'll give him a twirl. With my current Missile+Support setup, I'm almost always fighting long-range; which is why I swapped out the close-range Assault Marine. And the Nova would go warm the bench too, if she didn't have that great weapon. For the occasional close-range action (e.g. when surprise enemies pop up right next to you), either the long-rangers could deal with it, or I had my Commanders & Medic throw Grenades and shoot. I have an Infiltrator with the "Reprogram AI" skill already usable, guess that should do the trick with droids and turrets. Instead of "confirm move" how about an "undo move" button instead? Most of the time, you move where you want, so having to confirm every single time will get annoying pretty fast. "Undo" you need to hit only when you need the functionality - better UI in my book. "End turn" button/confirmation: Try the Planar Conquest approach? There, you need to hold the "end turn" button for like 2 seconds (with a fancy indicator filling up, even) to trigger it and end the turn. Really easy way to avoid accidental mistaps.
Not a bad team build if your objective is pure range. You might struggle if the enemy is behind a lot of cover since you don't appear to have much in the way of assault. Later enemies do get a lot of hit points so if one makes it up close, you could be in trouble. With the suppression rules, if you have an enemy in amongst your team, shooting at the enemy will cause a morale penalty to any friendly units within a 2 tile radius of that enemy. So you either have to suffer the morale penalty or move your guys back before you shoot him. Both are bad options, in a sense.
For a quick button to activate a skill, perhaps I could put two buttons on either side of the character's portrait? That might look good aesthetically.
Hhmm, I honestly don't know if it's better UI-wise to have them at the top or bottom. However, most action goes on at the bottom, so I think having the quick-skill buttons there might be better: Neater, and you need to move your hands less on a tablet. On an iPhone's smaller screen it doesn't matter much if at all, I dare say. I do expect to run into trouble with that squad at some point, let's see how far I get I can always swap in some more close-combat when needed. Cover isn't an issue so far; remember, only 5+5 missions in: Even a 50% hit chance is fine, when my Missileguy can shoot at you 4+ times, and the single one that hits scores a crit and blows you to chunks
Yeah, there is that ... I'll have to see how hard it is to code the quick ability buttons. Shouldn't be too hard. The trouble with putting them next to the pentagon shaped terrain / log buttons is that icons for the abilities are square so putting them next to a pentagon would mess up the aesthetics. It's a head scratcher. I'm honestly not sure how it'll go for the mid or late game. You definitely face enemies big enough to chew missiles and spit them out like sunflower seeds. Very hard to say.
Copying from Discord cause it's fun: Another mission done where the poor Medic only twiddled her thumbs I see something like that in my head: Ning Luo, Combat Medic, Assault Squad Hydra, Personal Combat Log: 0300 - I don't want to be here, that ship is crawling with dangerous nasties. 0302 - Seriously? Sephie (that's our Squad Sergeant) brought a guy with a Missile Laucher along? Talos's his name, and he looks damn competent. But anyways, don't want to get blown up cause he judged some distance wrong. 0314 - Urgh. Got sick. Needed 5 minutes to get the gore off my helmet and bone splinters out of my visor. Missiles hurt the nasties, a lot. 0421 - More nasties. Talos couldn't keep up. Sarge gave him some combat stims, so he can shoot & reload faster. 0527 - Saw his hands shaking. Sure it's all those stims in his system. Not good, not good. 0538 - Seriously, Sarge, cut it down on the combat drugs. Talos almost killed us all. Seems he has no problem firing directly into the squad now, he's so hopped up. 0621 - That bitch is CRAZY, I tell ya! Nasties still coming at us from every corner. She gave him more shots. By now he's babbling and jerking anytime he lets go of his launcher. Bloodshot eyes, ragged breath. Betting against myself how long it'll take till his heart blows up from all the blood pressure. Don't want to die here. 0719 - FACKFACKFACK! Talos has that drug shit coming out the wazoo, pumped full to his eyeballs. Literally. Never seen a guy move his eyes so fast the nanobots couldn't hit them. Crazy Sarge ordered me to give them eyeball treatment when those fastmoving nasties showed up, so he can track them better. We'll die here. 0808 - ohmothermaryfullofgrace hejustCHARGEDmonstertwicehimsobig delivermefromevil shotitpointblanksavemeplease pointblankmissileilldienowdiedie
If u take the camera stick out, it would be perfect to put at least 2-4 quick buttons on the left side of the char. As for blood... could it be clean up after a fight? Usually if we shoot couple of enemies on the same spot and when any of character or enemy land on the same spot, can't see the hex or character due to all the dead bodies in that hex... Been playing this game since Monday and it's my go to strategy game. Love using the insulator with the flame thrower when close to the enemy. Having short and long range team works out well especially I was surprised in one of the mission, in mid game, more enemy spawned unexpected and lucky I have short range character to take care new enemies. Great job!
Yeah, a quick ability wheel would be cool. There is a fair bit of empty space in that area if I hide those controls. Will try a few designs in that direction. Could definitely hide the corpses. The functionality is there but I don't enable it. I'll see if adding it as an option would work. Thanks! Yeah, you will get ambushed from time to time. There are also alien cocoons that can spawn new enemies. Generally the campaign does a good job of gradually adding the new challenges and elements so you can redesign your team accordingly.
The command is just one of the character classes. She's the blue armoured woman with the orange hair.
Thanks, W L. By the way, I love this game. Haven't been so glued to the iPad in a long time. PS. Have now found the Commander. Having the name 'Command' wasn't obvious enough for me. Doh.
Just completed Stage 8 on Normal difficulty. I assume that's the first boss you mentioned? If yes, easy as pie Turn 1: I had the Turret use its own boosts, then teleport 5 forward. Turn 2: Turret shot most of the chaff to pieces. Turn 3: Turret killing more chaff, started shooting the big one. Turn 4: All enemies dead, stage won. The two Commanders just kept fueling the Turret so it could shoot more. All the other units basically twiddled their thumbs and shot some convenient targets. The big one got a few hits on the Turret in with counterattacks and almost destroyed it, but that's it in terms of return fire. The poor Medic is in a corner, curled up, rocking and babbling incoherent nonsense by now
Took me a lot longer on level 8, albeit on hard. Beat the big fella by using the ability which makes him change sides. End of level.
Yeah, using the command skill on the turret is probably overpowered. I probably should tweak that skill so it only works on humans and not AI units. Note taken.
Well done! Hard difficulty is well ... pretty damned hard. How are you finding the Psi Operative, by the way?
First time out with the Psi Operative, to be honest. I was very surprised that you can take out a major enemy with just one go. On another note, I did find that if two things end up dead in the same spot it gets very messy, graphics-wise. Definitely would be good to clear up the body parts at the end of a round. Haven't spent this long on a new game in ages. It seems to make more sense to me than DR2, for some reason.
Same as below, I wouldn't tweak that. And you'll lose another fun "Tale of the Medic" if you do: 0948: "How...How the heck did she do that? Can't ask her, nono, she's mad as a chimp. But...but...that was STIMS! Those don't work on machines. Not. Possible. Pe.ri.od. No metabolism and such to speed up, you know?" Now that's nasty Wavelight, you should leave that option in, creativity needs to be rewarded. In general, I wouldn't balance-tweak (too much) when folks come up with crazy stuff like this. That's part of the fun, after all. And it's a singleplayer game, so screw balance and go crazy
yeah, you're probably right. It's just funny imagining a commanding officer shout at a gun turret to make it shoot more often.
Regarding the command's shout ability, did you ever see the variation by the Black Orc from Demon's Rise 2? He has a similar ability where he gives a unit some AP, but he does it by kicking them in the face. So they suffer damage but gain AP. Was quite fun and suited that character. I was thinking of having another ability for the command where she hits an ally and all OTHER allies within x range get a bonus to their AP. So basically she beats the crap out of someone under-performing to make everyone else work harder.
Yeah, I'll add an option to hide the corpses in a later patch. Not the one I submit today as it needs some testing. I think the game rules make more sense too once you're used to it. Because in Demon's Rise you could always move your max distance, regardless of what else you did. In Strike Team, you have a set amount of actions in a turn ... could be all movement, all fighting, all special abilities or a mix. But it makes more sense that if you don't want to run a long distance this turn, you can attack more often. I'll be using a variant of this system for the next Demon's Rise game rather than the old system.
