It's actually kind of interesting to see how Vinny tackle this. I thought based on the way he plays open world game and the completionist in him would guide him to do everything else available to him before getting into a boss, yet here he is banging his head against the boss at way sub optimal set up in the beginning. It is also interesting how he said he prefers the pre SotN Castlevania games again based on his tendency want to go after every little thing.
Good that they spent time on upgrading their shards, hopefully they realize how powerful that is. The weapon passive shards can get stronger still, buying or crafting cheap weapons and feed them to the shards increase their effectiveness. Gathering more copies also helps especially once the maximum 9 is reached.
I wonder if they will ever walk one screen back from the home base and discover there are two more NPCs with one more side quest and opening up farming for ingredient. The Dullahammer slaying quest should hint them to return to the boat. And they really shouldn't overlook cooking.
The light saber is one of the better weapons in the game, they can grind out the money and buy a 16 bit coin from the shop and get a better version of it that is not locked by game progression.
If you are willing to grind even David Hayter isn't hard to beat. Generally I farm shard in an area until I get all of them, there are some areas that makes it easy to grind certain shards/drop.
The alchemy system could be potentially very powerful if you dismantle and craft carefully in the right order with the aid of quests. The 8-bit coin weapons are the only weapons you need for a long time. You can craft the sword passive into great sword passive and then level it up faster than you can with the sword, and combined it with the 8-bit trade in Deathbringer being one of the best weapon in the game it is a path that can take you to the end of the game.
The rest of the game progression is actually grinding for money, drops, and shards, and plotting out alchemy dismantle, crafting, and rebuying from shop.
I don't know if Shadow Hearts can capture the same magic it once did. I guess it theoretically could, but I don't know what direction it needs to go for today's standards, and if it could pull it off successfully.
First is timeline, for the most part the games progress forward in actual history, and I don't know where should the next one be. The seemingly logical step is WWII, I guess they could do another pre world war story like they did in SH1. The occult angle tied into WWII could be a convenient blessing or an overused curse in modern media. Asking for a Japanese game to deal with WWII might just be a tad weird for all involve.
SH3 didn't do much for me, honestly the homage to Alice and Yuri by the way of Lady and Killer was the only thing that stood out for me. Whereas SH1 and 2 are two of my favorite games with one of the very few romance story I find interesting in games. SH2 for its time has some seriously heartfelt moments combine with moments that made me laugh out loud. It was able to play around with and laugh at gaming conventions of the time in clever ways which I don't know if is possible to recreate or what the modern interpretation should be. The way it ties both endings of SH1 together while retreading the same story beat makes sense from the story perspective and was pretty clever as well.
Also Persona seems to be knocking it out of the park as the current day contemporary/next-to-real-life JRPG. I can go on and on about the specifics highs and lows of P5; it is good, if not great, but I think it could have been so much better.
Don't give a fuck about smoke grenades right after a mission where the smoke grenade fucks up his shots.
Default Smoke gives 20 defense, that's the same as low cover, dense smoke bumps that up to 40, that's high cover. They both stack with actual covers (going from 20 to 80), but not with other smoke grenades. Ghost armor could reach 100, Support MEC distortion field could give another 10. Smoke grenades are great defensive measures when things go wrong, they are also great for moving soldier in for a capture.
Dense Smoke vs Combat Drug is almost always Dense Smoke. Too bad Deep Pocket doesn't increase smoke grenade count. As cool as smoke grenades are, Field Medic with 3 med kits is still more attractive than Smoke and Mirrors' 2 smoke grenades. Although with Deep Pocket, 2 med kits and 2 smokes load out might not be bad. In a MEC heavy squad it might be pretty good along with a support MEC with healing mist.
The Exalt mission was hairy, all that needs to be done in this type of Exalt mission is to prevent the enemy from staying in the zone for too many turns, XCOM can move their own troops in to contest it, but usually it isn't require. Enemy will move towards the second objective if they finish "hacking" the first terminal. This type of mission also gives bonus money if both objectives are saved. My first encounter with Exalt was a shitshow also, I even had titan armor and one soldier went down to 1 health! They are very trigger happy with grenades and rockets. Strangely enough the July Exalt forces with laser weapon tend to use less explosives. Generally these missions leave you in a fairly defensible map location except for the fountain and the god awful rooftop construction site map.
Good to see Dan putting in work with the base and thinking ahead. He is probably the best among them when it comes base building. Genetic Labs and laboratory link with each other only. Cybernetic, Workshops, and Foundry all link with each other, so the Foundry doesn't need to be build right under the workshop, it is ever so slightly better to link Foundry with Cybernetic since you might tear down workshops, but probably not the other two. I would put another workshop for a 2x2 grid, comes in handy for Firestorm and money saving down the line.
Labs are a tossup, at this stage of the game the 20% you can get just from grabbing more scientists, having both Cybernetics and Gene labs are too meld intensive, however labs also work as defense measures against Exalt. With labs in place and spending all the money in advance there's little Exalt can really disrupt. Panic can be counter by mission. It is possible to "farm" Exalt after learning the mission types. Intel scans cost money also and require some knowledge and luck of when to do it.
They should have started more satellites, and buy them before knocking down the workshop to save a few bucks, then when the new satellites are ready the new workshop/foundry should be done also and reap in the rebate from the bonus. Start a lift and dig a spot for another uplink also.
Vinny is right when he said feeling comfortable in XCOM is usually a bad sign. Exalt will continue to be a pest, they should still get a mix of abduction and UFO missios, Site Recon should be coming up if this is their first game. With Canada starting to freak out ignoring might not be the wisest decision. There is a way to cheese it, but I don't think they would know.
The whole Dong Song thing...weirdly enough both words tend to be family names so a little less likely to show up together. Yet someone mention Dong Man, which strangely enough is actually more likely to appear with Man as the given name.
They are at an interesting crossroad. They can potentially launch 5 or 6 satellites next month and it is within their current monthly income. A 7 satellites launch could be possible depending on the type and outcome of this Exalt mission.
The obvious 5 satellites layout would be to build across on the right blocking one possible workshop/cyberlab/foundry bonus, but still keep the other available. A vertical two uplinks stack will allow for 2x2 workshop/cyberlab/foundry bonus down the line at the cost of power generator, lift and an excavation at the beginning of next month.
With 5 satellites they can cover any 2 of the 4 continents.
A 6 satellites layout will need to remove the old workshop and build vertical down. This however enable another uplink under the thermo generator to get bonus bringing their total possible coverage to 14 down the line. If nothing goes crazy by that point, they can leave Mexico and Canada uncover, but still get to manage panic and have all the bonus.
With 6 satellites they can potentially cover 3 continents if they skip Africa, although Africa is quite valuable.
7 satellites will be taking out both thermo generator and workshop, mass build generators to compensate, and then build the uplinks, and they can cover any 3 continents. Probably a little too aggressive.
@do_the_manta_ray: Adjacency bonus are important, especially for satellite uplink, early crappy power generator is another one. The question for them is if it is worth re-arranging the base over. Three uplink in a row, boost available slots from 6 to 8, with some luck that can secure the game. A 2x2 grid bumps slots from 8 to 12, more than enough to secure the game. Still have to put up with terror mission of course. Two separate sets of 2 uplinks can get them 10 slots which isn't so bad.
Odd, I seemed to remember other people in the comments in past episodes advocating for this exact strategy. People in the rear move up and set up overwatch positions in order for the front line units to move forward, thus getting enemies to spawn and triggering overwatch.
It depends on various things. Setting up a pre fight overwatch trap is viable if you have good cover or elevation, and soldiers with decent aim to work with. Since OW kills a soldier's turn you lose a layer of control over what happens next. It is kind of hard to find a good place to pull off barring a few cases (occasional doorways for example). By the time you have the tools to know enemy position in the field there are probably other tactics.
For general out of combat movement it depends on how fast you want to move. For conservative play the general rule is don't move past someone who burn one movement turn already, so if you move someone from the back to the front, no one else should move past that person. Another way to move is to have someone move ahead, and then have everyone match pace with that person, but never get in front. Leaping cover to cover is another way to look at it with the lead taking new cover ahead and the rest of the team take over each other's old cover. Support with sprinter will have better movement, Assault with Run and Gun might be more ahead coming off a fight, snipers lagging behind, etc. these things could shake up the balance, and you either slow down or have someone double-move/dash to compensate.
In a video feature like this, sometimes it isn't about how many turns they spend OW creep/reload, but rather how long it takes to decide the next move. After a while, especially learning each UFO type's layout you already know where you want to take cover, and the process speeds up even if you are spending time reloading and set up.
Vinny's advice are fine. They are ignoring a lot of the good ones pretty often, and it doesn't feel like any of them really have a better grasp of the game than others. Dan seem to have some strategic layer knowledge, but haven't really got a chance to see him work that.
Demolishing the Workshop DO take away the engineers. If it doesn't that means you can keep building and demolishing the workshop in the same location and grab engineers every 10 days without taking up an extra spot. Do build and keep workshops around at least for a while. You need engineers for extra satellite uplink and other projects. Depending on the pace of the game 2 to 3 are enough, unless you are going for max bonus. You get engineers monthly depending on satellite coverage, but coverage relies on uplink which has engineers requirement, stalling isn't really a good idea, you might be able to edge through if you beeline Asia. You can demolish the workshops when you have banked enough monthly rewards to keep you afloat, but...
Workshops also share adjacency bonus with the Foundry and Cyberlab. So a 2x2 grid of 2 workshops, 1 foundry, and 1 Cyberlab is pretty nice. At the moment what they really want from the foundry is probably tactical rigging. The med kits, ammo conservation, and scope bonus are also nice, but it gets expensive. Even tactical rigging is 200 without Asia bonus. The MEC upgrades will also be costly.
A fully decked out Gene mod squad is better than MECs. Mimetic Skin changes the entire game. MECs are best when there's a scout for them also. However they have committed to MECs at the moment, there's not enough resource to start gene mods.
Research should be focus rather than scatter. Right now they should switch from the launcher and go with either Light plasma, flight computer or power source. Foresight about what each research gives you helps in that decision. Light plasma gives the gun and unlock Plasma rifle research which in turns unlocks researches for the rest of the plasma arsenal. Flight computer unlocks satellite nexus, power sources unlocks elerium generator and elerium research, elerium research unlocks titan armor research. Flight computer + power sources unlock firestorm research. They are all critical.
I don't know how the Exalt mission will fair. The escort type let you take it slow, but you need to know how the enemy spawn works. The defend type you need to be fast or else enemies will start stacking out of control, you pretty much need to dash the first turn and know where to go, and how far you can push it, which is map depended.
Alien base assault isn't impossible at the moment. The spawn is base on what month they are in. The defend mission afterward will likely be in the next month, and will spawn next month's enemy unless they carefully timed it to assault at the beginning of the month. They probably missed the window for May, so will have to deal with Mechtoid and Cyberdisc in June, and Berserker in July. I don't know if Mechtoid can actually spawn in Alien base. The timing isn't too terrible. Heavy floaters will show up in Aug. which makes the air units portion of the defend mission harder, but they will still have to deal with Mechtoid and Cyberdisc. If they can get Plasma and Titan up along with some veterans by late June/early July, it isn't so bad...on second thought it might be too tight of a window.
Fighting Sectoid commanders for every UFO mission afterward however is harder than the outsider.
Abby has no time for reading, but I don't think she is impatient with the tactical game, she is way more patient than she was in her first foray. It seems like she is push on by the meld, as soon as she recovered the second meld she pointed out she can takes as long as she wants now, and is willing to take things slowly in the last couple of turns. She also kept reloading in mind, perhaps Dirt Bike ridiculously small ammo count drill that into her. I think Dan is currently the rusher at the moment, and I don't know if Dan actually know how to use Squadsight or if he just luck out because he doesn't want to move "himself" into danger so it just happened that way.
Between MEC's acting as high cover vs jet boot, the jet boot is probably better.
I think Vinny's input is fine, he behaves differently depending on who is behind the controller, and honestly I think the series as a whole needs that. A different approach might be to have him handle the base management portion so there's a better reason for his involvement.
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