Difficulty, Cheese, and Jumps

[AnOddRadish]

Just breezed through a hard/ironman game. Team was Assault/Brawler/Ninja/Sniper, Meg was Pilot, and dragon and Tethys were the bosses. This was my first real attempt at finishing a game, and not just seeing what each exo/pilot was useful for. I found hard to be absolutely no challenge, I needed minimal minmaxing to get through, and I rarely was in a position that required much thought about how I would deal with it, beyond basic shoot the bombots first type mechanics. I didn't abuse trap stats at all, and never really had a reason to. The closest I got was having a fairly high (520) number of virus pts on on my ninja. Had all epic upgrades by the end, and hit almost every robot command center. I really enjoyed this play through, even if it was a bit of a stompfest.

So the questions that I have are these:
What other cheese (either semisoft or limburger) exists in the game beyond trap stats ATM?
Did I just get lucky, or is hard really quite easy?
How big of a jump is it from Hard to Expert?

thanks guys, I have to stop boosting my ego now and get back to reading freaking Thucydides for history.

[Billick]

Expert is actually a big step up from hard.  Be prepared for a kick in the teeth... or somewhere lower...

[Necro_Man_Ser]

If you're a focused player, that subtracts alot of difficulty from the game, because if you don't mess up customization alot, you'll not make stupid mistakes that cost you the mission. Also considering that you've gotten familiar with the game before finishing it, it's not really surprising it was a breeze for you, ey?

I played it through on normal, where you bascially just stomp them and watch out for dangerous situations like hunter bots or those leader bots which add another action etc, and then started again on hard. It was a nice bump in diff, because ammo is just short of becoming an issue and low level bots already do decent damage. I had to restart a map two times once because I had found no way to deal with early doom bots. I virused one and he went on ahead and alerted three others. With them one-shoting me, having 3000 shields and my strongest weapons doing not even 500 damage, that was game over right there I guess that was bad luck, or what would you have done? Sneaking / stealthing only gets you so far if you attempt to ignore them completely.

I'd say just hit expert. You can see the changes in stats and such if you mouse-over on the difficulty. I expect it will add alot of challenge.

[Misery]

If you're a focused player, that subtracts alot of difficulty from the game, because if you don't mess up customization alot, you'll not make stupid mistakes that cost you the mission. Also considering that you've gotten familiar with the game before finishing it, it's not really surprising it was a breeze for you, ey?

I played it through on normal, where you bascially just stomp them and watch out for dangerous situations like hunter bots or those leader bots which add another action etc, and then started again on hard. It was a nice bump in diff, because ammo is just short of becoming an issue and low level bots already do decent damage. I had to restart a map two times once because I had found no way to deal with early doom bots. I virused one and he went on ahead and alerted three others. With them one-shoting me, having 3000 shields and my strongest weapons doing not even 500 damage, that was game over right there I guess that was bad luck, or what would you have done? Sneaking / stealthing only gets you so far if you attempt to ignore them completely.

I'd say just hit expert. You can see the changes in stats and such if you mouse-over on the difficulty. I expect it will add alot of challenge.

Yeah, the higher difficulties are definitely a big step up like that.


Expect LOTS of things to be able to one-shot you on Expert.  DoomBots are just the start.  And enemies will have thousands of HP each, as the game goes along.  Heck, WyvernBots right now in my game have about 28000 HP to them, near the end-game.  Though enemies having HP like that isnt just an endgame thing, that's for sure.

There are a few specific situations on Expert where the game can generate an impossible situation, but.... yeah, those really are specific, and for the most part it'll never do this.  Though it might often make some that LOOK impossible, hah.  Generally though, there's always a way out.  Just make sure to have a salvage mission available whenever possible.

As far as cheese strategies, the Sentries are really the big one right now;  just try to avoid using them too much for the time being if you want to keep the challenge level high.  The upcoming update looks to alter the things a bit, but I'm guessing they'll still need more nerfs yet after that.

[Taikei no Yuurei]

My first playthrough was on casual (I didn't notice it had gotten switched from normal to casual when I was looking through the difficulties the first time around) and my second has been on hard, and I agree that it has been quite easy for the most part.  I've mostly just been going through with a supercharged assault bot with several hundred DR and a couple thousand regen.  The only thing I fear is a blunderbot.  I've only lost one mission so far, and that was a supercharged mission where I didn't realize there was a bot behind a wall for a silentbot to redirect its damage to, followed by a couple other small mistakes.  For the most part it is mostly just 'plasma anything that does over 2k damage a shot, let everything else burn itself out of ammo'

[Misery]

My first playthrough was on casual (I didn't notice it had gotten switched from normal to casual when I was looking through the difficulties the first time around) and my second has been on hard, and I agree that it has been quite easy for the most part.  I've mostly just been going through with a supercharged assault bot with several hundred DR and a couple thousand regen.  The only thing I fear is a blunderbot.  I've only lost one mission so far, and that was a supercharged mission where I didn't realize there was a bot behind a wall for a silentbot to redirect its damage to, followed by a couple other small mistakes.  For the most part it is mostly just 'plasma anything that does over 2k damage a shot, let everything else burn itself out of ammo'

Hmm, if you've got thousands of regen, something might be a bit off.  I doubt it was intended to ever go that high.   I've not messed with that too much though.  Might be something for the devs to look at?  Not sure.  Even Expert might be trivial if certain stats are rising that high.

[Elcs]

Apart from 1-shotting Doombots and some issues with Claw bots AoE healing One-shotting Doombots, I didn't find Hard to be too hard with Meg & Assault/Sniper/Science/Ninja combo but Hard/Ironman with Emma &  Siege/Brawler/Sniper/Ninja I am finding to be much more of a challenge. I find that I lack the damage/range/ammo/shields in many different scenarios and despite not wanting to, I am finding an overwhelming urge to use my Ninja bot as a souped up and specialised turret dropper rather that keeping it as an eclectic mix of high stealth, decent punch with mines and a handful of turrets to try and make the most of multiple scenarios.

That being said, I think I might wipe all of my saves/current games and start on either Hard or Expert with the latest beta version, which was linked above and will be downloaded post-haste when I receive my new keyboard.

[PokerChen]

What about mines as a potential cheese? If you're still getting 200+ trap skill by the end game, they will still wind up doing 20K+ damage each. Much less OP, IMO, but it's there for some wine & cheese tasting evening.

[sradas]

I still think the biggest cheese is explosions going through walls.  You are at literally 0 risk because bots wont do the same.  Just get a massive radius on your grenades / rockets / welder / plasma rifle / whatever and clear half the floor  in a couple shots