This bothered me so much during the quick look. Admittedly Dan is much further than I am and was not playing "for real" but multiple times he puts his guys into flanked positions or just standing in the open. I've been playing on commander and I always, always put my guys being the best cover I can find.
XCOM 2
Game » consists of 4 releases. Released Feb 05, 2016
The aliens have won and the remnants of XCOM must strike to take back the Earth in this sequel to Firaxis' 2012 reboot.
Quick Look: Do you ever put your guys out of cover?
I play Ironman and occasionally put my guys into compromising positions, mostly only during the hostage missions where you need to save X amount of people before they all die. Sometimes that person is blocking the only piece of cover in said area.
I'm playing on Commander. I never intentionally put my guys out in the open unless it's during the opening phase or if there is truly no other option. It's a death sentence. I guess you can get away with that stuff when you're playing on Easy.
That plus using a sword attack on an Andromedon with nearly full health really kicked in my XCOM OCD.
There are cases when putting someone out of cover can benefit you.
I'll admit that I haven't watched the QL so I don't know any specific examples of what Dan was doing, but sometimes putting a soldier in a flanked position so they can flank an enemy is a risk worth taking, especially if that enemy has hella health and it's the only way you can take down any for a turn.
I'll also move people out of cover if I need someone to die so I can complete the mission. More often then not the aliens will focus on anyone flanked or out of cover, giving me an opportunity to plan with everyone else without worrying that 3 people will take damage and get wounded. I'd rather have one man die than have a bunch out for 7-31 days or whatever.
Generally, yea, don't leave your guys out of cover. Especially if you are a beginner level player.
However if you absolutely 100% know what you are doing there are rare situations where you would gain more by leaving a guy out of cover, like was already mentioned to say secure a guaranteed last kill you would not otherwise be able to, or get into grenade range that would guarantee further kills and full clears you know, or say you simply have a guy far behind and you just need to catch up into the rest of the squads already secured area. Or when you know cover doesn't matter, like with melee only enemies remaining and it would get you a better kill chance. Or say a reinforcement drop is coming and you want your blademster to welcome some people to the party :D
Considering Dan is the furthest thing from a master strategist, he absolutely wasn't doing it out of some genius tactical plan. But it was also most likely because it wasn't his real save so he didn't care about it and he was trying to move things along for the QL.
There are plenty of reasons not to put your guys in cover. The most obvious one is if there are no active aliens and you're just moving your soldiers they are at no risk unless you're moving into uncharted territory. Secondly, if you're confident you will be able to kill all the aliens around, but you just need that grenadier to be close enough to blow away some cover, or that ranger needs to flank/sword to do it. And thirdly, there are plenty of enemies in the game that doesn't give a shit about cover. If you're fighting things like faceless or archons or stun lancers either move in as close you can to kill them or run as far away as you can. There are even several aliens that have very predictable "non-shooting" AI behaviors.
Yes, once you really get rolling. Later on in the game you may find yourself in a situation that requires you to leave at least a few troops out in the open, say to land a grenade or aim a heavy weapon, but by then you usually have all sorts of tools to make this a fairly risk-free option, although I don't think you'll ever get to a point that makes getting into cover a bad choice.
However, don't mistake what Dan was doing with what I am saying as the same thing. He'd get an assload of people killed that way. I'm just saying that cover gets less important as you start facing enemies that can ignore it, and when you get enough tools to help keep people alive.
I play on Commander and beaten it. I've pulled my troops out of cover to get better shots or flanking positions. Also you can get some win states simply by killing certain objectives and it can worth to just pull people out just to go for a kill if it gets you a higher % shot. This is rare though.
One reason you might not be in cover is because the game starts going into shaky-cam mode and it becomes almost impossible to select the tile you actually want... :|
@beachthunder: zoom in so the squares are larger.
Dan is the guy who got trapped in a closet during the Invisible Inc UF so maybe he's not the guy to go to for tactical advice in tactical games.
@crimsonjesus: Oh lord, I forgot about that. I take it all back; Dan should do every tactics game Quick Look from now on, because I need more comedy gold like that in my life.
I'm playing on Commander. I never intentionally put my guys out in the open unless it's during the opening phase or if there is truly no other option. It's a death sentence. I guess you can get away with that stuff when you're playing on Easy.
That plus using a sword attack on an Andromedon with nearly full health really kicked in my XCOM OCD.
:D
yeah, watching the quick look wasn't good for my blood pressure. It almost looks like he doesn't know how to play the game...
I started doing it in the first game when i realized cover didn't matter against Chyssalids, and certain missions were they were the only enemy i would just move wherever. Not sure if that happens in this game as well as i'm not that far still.
I sometimes leave my sniper wayyyyyy back and in the open if it means being able to put them on overwatch as soon as I get into contact with the enemy. Otherwise, never, that's crazy.
Yup. On certain missions, there'll be a raised up chunk where the sniper can longwatch from and see everywhere, so I'll leave them there even though there's no cover.
Generally, yea, don't leave your guys out of cover. Especially if you are a beginner level player.
However if you absolutely 100% know what you are doing there are rare situations where you would gain more by leaving a guy out of cover...
This is pretty much how I feel. It's funny because back when I first started getting into these games, around the time Enemy Unknown came out, I was obsessive about cover. I would make scenarios drag out for no reason just because I didn't want a single soldier ever out of cover. I feel like there were probably instances of no threat, but I had to go wall to wall just in case.
Now that I'm mildly experienced with these games, I find myself comfortable putting soldiers out in the open in rare circumstances. I think it comes with being better able to assess threats, and it probably varies game to game. Like, SteamWorld Heist, I think I use cover a little less because it's both more forgiving and less dependent on cover than something like XCOM.
Obviously it's never ideal to enter a combat situation without cover available, but sometimes games intentionally design environments to pull you out of that comfort zone. A boss battle in SteamWorld Heist only provided a couple pieces of cover for my four or five characters, and then forced me to do a lot of moving around the arena.
I'v saved many soldiers and accomplished a few last minute, harrowing mission objectives by virtue of pulling someone out of cover. A good example is just when you have 1 enemy left who can do real damage, and if only you were standing *there* you'd have a pretty good chance to get em and save your team.
I think it is important to remember that Quick Looks are not examples of how the Quick Lookee would normally play the game. They aren't let's plays, they are trying to give a feel of a bit of the content. As it has been pointed out, that wasn't Dan's actual save and he wasn't even really trying to beat the mission. He just wanted to show some stuff off.
Dan tends to be super conservative when we see him streaming stuff, like his incredibly risk averse Dark Souls streaming. I'd actually really like to see him stream some xcom, to see how his aversion to exposure and his love of smashing things intersect there.
Although giving the blood curdling horror I've experienced simply from him talking about fast food I wouldn't be shocked if the judgment he displays while playing xcom would be unwatchable.
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