RPGHQ

I just started this today on the hardest difficulty and boy, it sure is hard. There is permadeath for your templars, and while you can recruit to refill your ranks, new arrivals start at level 1. You can customize the stats, skills, traits, and gear of your templars, and you can respec between missions, though each templar remains locked into his class. There's a whole upgrade tree for unlocking new skills and equipment for your templars to spec into. Combat math is done with d10 dice pools, the mechanics of which are thoroughly explained in the in-game library, and the combat log exposes all the calculations to the player.

The screenshot shows me trying (failing) to defend a Tact(ical) Point. Tact Points generate SP which can be spent on a number of useful functions: recruiting new templars, deploying veterans, buying ordnances, and upgrading the Tact Point to provide a higher SP income. Unfortunately for me there is no convenient choke point on this map, unlike the previous one, so I'm probably about to be overwhelmed. This is actually my second attempt; my captain died on the first, which is an instant game over.

So far my only issues are that the interface is just a little bit clunky (the curse of also being a mobile game) and that I can't pan the camera during the enemy's turn, so sometimes I get stuck looking at nothing of interest while my templars are getting slaughtered by xenos. It were also nice if selecting an enemy highlighted its possible movement and threat area, a la Fire Emblem. Otherwise I'm having a good time and I look forward to the the later levels, which I'm told are quite brutal.

I love this game! You are in for a treat.

WhiteShark wrote: ↑ July 27th, 2023, 06:36

I just started this today on the hardest difficulty and boy, it sure is hard. There is permadeath for your templars, and while you can recruit to refill your ranks, new arrivals start at level 1.

This was a major problem in nucom because level 1 guys were useless.

Recruits will scale up in level but never to the level of your captain, they'll always be a few levels behind but won't arrive at level 1. Spent a lot of time in this game, still remember losing an ironman run on the penultimate mission. Learning good upgrade paths on the requisition board was the hardest part.

I haven't gotten to play since I made OP, but reexamining the situation, I think I'm royally screwed. I put it on Ironman so there's no way out. That's ok though, it's only the third mission and I'm getting a better idea of how things work. Debating whether I should turn off the ironman/change difficulty to learn the missions first.

Started over on Nightmare. Only took a little bit to catch up to where I was and then beat that mission. Doing better than before. I've only lost one unit, my scout, and that only because I got too experimental with his stealth ability.

The AI behaves strangely when faced with Overwatch. A lot of times it will hang out at the edge of the zone or end its movement early after stepping into it. This is much to my benefit, for if the hunters simply charged through, they have good odds of surviving even three shots in a row and slaughtering the overwatching soldier. Actually, a theory suddenly occurs to me: perhaps Overwatch makes them change their movement pattern to one where they stop at the exact point from which it is possible to reach a target on the next turn. Will test next time I play.