Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Aoi]

I think I saw other types in ones newer than L(?); I usually put off joining the Mutant Alliance until I can leapfrog that entire phase since I don't like dealing with the "mandatory" pogroms... But the last few versions have had me eating massive infamy penalties from them anyways, so there wasn't much point.

[Dostoevsky]

Spoiler: Some other missions with penalties for skipping (click to show/hide)

Ah, I forgot about the later 'mutant culling' types that you can get later on. Snakemen-related, unpleasant affairs with hefty score hits for skipping.

There are a number of other missions with a score hit for skipping, though none are massive (e.g. Devil's Reef, which is an annoying mission, only has a -350 hit so I tend to skip it).

There are ninja raids and ninja attacks on your benefactors; the raids have a relatively light penalty while the attacks have a massive -2500 hit for skipping.

If I recall the Eurosyndicate deal has a reverse-pogrom which gives you a raw deal either way, but I've never taken the deal. (It is possible to 'renegotiate' the deal at a certain point if you do take it.)

Thankfully, every mission with a penalty for skipping lets you know up front if there is, and what it is.

[MCreeper]

So, what are you supposed to do with ninjas? I assume it's not something sane. By first July in M3 there were 4 bases around which tanked my score into game over. And base base is machine gun turrets perched around rooftops which i'm supposed to kill how? and also many ninjas. Advanced base is the same, but start is in uncovered field. And also first base attack was ninja warriors, not academy or ratmen. Those attackers also had nuclear dead man's switch made from bullshitium.  At least i assume it was one.

[Dostoevsky]

What difficulty are you playing on? That affects both how quickly ninjas start showing up, as well as (at higher difficulties) how many major bases show up.

Spoiler: Dead man's switch (click to show/hide)

It's a suicide vest that detonates when nothing is wearing it. So to prevent an explosion you need to rush over and put it on. Anyhoo, getting ninjas as your first raid is pretty darn unlucky.

Spoiler: Ninja bases (click to show/hide)

There are a few types of ninja bases. Airfields are the basic and lowest tech (though that ain't saying much), with minigun turrets and mostly regular gals and warriors. There are a handful of higher ranking types like assault, assassin, and medic though. Also a bunch of workers. The minigun turrets are relatively fragile.

If left unattended, they become a Fortress which is just a giant pile of pain over two missions. Would not recommend. I just debug-kill them if it comes to it. Instead of the more fragile minigun turrets they have heavy 14mm turrets that are high on the BS meter.

Airfields and fortress can send out missions to establish Outposts. I haven't fought one of these yet as I was generally lucky enough to block missions setting them up, but from what I read they're smaller than Airfields yet higher tech. If an Airfield sends out slow ground vehicles, take them out.

The recommended way to deal with them is rushing tanks and then leveling everything, pretty much, but it's possible to take out an airfield with RPGs and hammers as your heaviest bunkerbusters. Don't engage them at night, given how good ninja night camo is. Ultimately, don't feel bad simply debug-killing a base if it feels like too much BS.

Spoiler: Ninja craft (click to show/hide)

Unlike other factions, ninja craft are more specialized, either being fast & dodgy yet fragile or slow & ponderous yet durable. Jetbikes and Migs can be nearly impossible to hit unless you have accurate weapons and trained pilots - looting a sonic oscillator from underwater missions can help a lot there, if you're lucky enough. Groundcraft are immune to the lightest weapons like the 14mm chaingun, and most get defensive turret(s) on top during the following ground mission. So you need some basic antitank weaponry like a 14mm rifle to deal with even the smaller ones.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Ninjas. While they have a finite number of main bases (with timing largely tied to tech advancement), those bases can send out missions to setup smaller outposts, and if you don't try to keep a handle on them it can get out of hand. Furthermore, if you leave the base long enough - 12 to 18 months - it'll upgrade into a massively more dangerous version that sends out attacks against your backers. Think worse versions of mutant pogroms.

Their growth/attack rate, and the score penalties associated therein, are not as punishing as they were in the last version. Additionally, they send out fewer interceptors with slightly lower radar coverage, meaning less of a chance of getting your airbus ambushed early on.

The biggest issue is that their growth can easily spiral out of control - if you stamp out the initial bases before they can upgrade and stop their expansion efforts, the game doesn't change too much. But taking on the initial bases safely basically requires tanks or similar levels of heavy armor. This means doing some tech rush is much more incentivize than before.

That said... thanks to how their growth mechanic works, if you simply assault their bases and debug-kill them, you can effectively delay or wipe their presence in the game with very little hassle.

Bottom line, they don't play fair. To the extent you can fight unfair, you should too. (Whether that includes making use of debug functions is up to you.)

[E. Albright]

Okay, so I finally got to where I need to care about ninjas in the current version. Got the message from Jack, and shortly afterwards I had the mobile fortress overfly my base, eek. So a question: what's the best way to find out where that damned thing eventually landed? Based on its trajectory, I *think* it ended up in Indonesia, but I'm not sure. Do I need to send a Hunting Party out to hang out in likely areas to look for it?

(It's already set up an airstrip at the top of my base's radar circle, so I can't just ignore it, even in the short term.)

[Edit: OMFG. I just debug-killed the airstrip. 60 enemies. On the second-lowest level. Even setting aside the minigun turrets and wide-open flat terrain, that's absurd. It's hilarious to hear Dioxine's claims that they don't want to railroad players into particular playstyles...]

[Dostoevsky]

If you're on second-lowest difficulty (as I am) in about a month you'll get a popup informing you about the base, as well as its location. Don't recall if that works for outposts as well. Alternatively, if you have something anchor within about 1600km of it for a few hours it should pop up if I remember right - there's a #XXX tip about it. I've heard that the zeppelin gets a huge bonus to detecting outposts when it's anchored, too.

Spoiler: Airfield strategies (click to show/hide)

As to numbers in an airfield, a sizable percentage of the total number are just base workers, and so are poorly armed and trained. Unfortunately for lore reasons I don't think any of them surrender or panic. The main threats are basically the starting bunkers and the end facilities - the former are sealed up with Warriors inside who can be hard to get at unless you bust down the concrete bunker wall, and the latter are dense little structures containing nasty Assassins and a Medic sprinkled in among chaff. There are also a few Assault Ninjas in hovergear, but in my experience they tend to expose themselves to fire.

As for the miniguns, RPGs or even sniper rifles can usually take them out in one hit, and as of this patch they all can be spotted from any range as long as you have line of sight. Should be feasible to take out all the initial ones during the first turn.

While the facilities in the rear are arguably the trickiest part in terms of ambushes taking out soldiers, one could just pack several mortars and plenty of shells to bombard it all to dust from a distance.

At any rate, Dioxine is readying another nerf to the ninjas in the next patch, this time heavily throttling the number of bases that show up. Sounds like there's still an initial base in the first year, but no longer will additional bases pop up based on early techs. Should cut down on base spam quite a bit, hopefully, though note that higher difficulties will still add extra bases. On the flipside, there's no longer a hard limit on the number of bases as there will be a chance of new bases popping up from 2603 onward - but by then you should have the tech to deal with an airfield or possibly even take out the mobile fortress that builds one.

If it really is just one initial base in the first year (with potential outpost add-ons), I think that can be workable in the game. It'd turn the continent they base on into a tricky proposition, but it shouldn't kill a campaign. I still think the Fortress missions are both BS and entirely unfun, though.

[Aoi]

Is there even some extended plan that this whole skyninjas thing is leading into, or has the entire process been some ill-conceived annoyance that nobody even seems to like?

[Rolan7]

To be honest I like the idea of a parallel, antagonistic force.  It reminds me of the Liberal Crime Squad's CCS in a good way.

It was just initially balanced atrociously, just the worst.  I'm actually okay with having a region denied to me, with the threat of interception if I stray too close.  But that's not a valid playstyle.  The correct play is to stamp out the interesting rival wherever it crops up, and suffer punishment if we let it grow into an interesting deuteragonist.

That's just based on what I'm hearing, though, maybe the rebalance helped a lot.

Part of it is probably that it used to be completely valid to ignore interception until getting the flagship.  Just sending unguarded Blowfish and Turtles.  Then enemy bases got hunter-killers, but that was mostly an edge case.  Mostly.  Usually you knew where they were, and it's nice that the crew return if you decide to accept the very rare loss.  Minus their equipment.

Then suddenly all this.

[Edit: OMFG. I just debug-killed the airstrip. 60 enemies. On the second-lowest level. Even setting aside the minigun turrets and wide-open flat terrain, that's absurd. It's hilarious to hear Dioxine's claims that they don't want to railroad players into particular playstyles...]

Basically this: This game has always been so good about alternate playstyles, like swarms of peasants with Linux SMGs or doing a passive air-game.  And the ninja arc is kinda ruining that both in geo and battle scape.  But I have faith.  This is a big change, I'm confident that balance is coming.

I haven't been checking the Discord though, I don't want to get baited into an unproductive rant.

Edit:  I do think a common thread in my own battlescape difficulties is that I should be using explosive weapons/grenades more.  I prefer to solve things with SMGs supported by snipers.  Heavy foes get a mix of melee operatives or full-on machinegun fire.  Sometimes even RPGs/LAM/Panzerfaust... but that's where I'm weak, I am super resistant to go explosive or chemical.  I struggle against armored targets until I get tanks, or the "I win" that is Vulcan Mechs.

[Dostoevsky]

Don't have the exact quote, but the purpose of ninjas was to add 'any difficulty' to the strategic layer. He wants a real threat, since the major factions don't really have that dynamic.

I'm still undecided whether it's a good thing, though I think throttling down the number of bases should help reduce score tanking; once you get about a year in your monthly score should be high enough to survive not handling their activities.

As to the tactical layer battles with them, I'm currently less sanguine. They are definitely a real twist on the usual encounters, but there are still some rough edges. 14mm turrets in particular feel punishing in a way that even hovertanks don't. Thankfully, being an xcom mod means I can fiddle with stats and settings.

[Rolan7]

Those turrets are frustrating as hell even with savescuming and generous use of single-use rocket devices.  I can't imagine what I'd be doing in the Ironman situation of, say, the Bay12 community game.  Fleeing from bullshitium-armored enemies like Traders is one thing, being forced to confront them is another.  I thought fleeing from unprofitable battles was something Dioxine encouraged!  I think it's a great mechanic to flee sometimes!  But with Ninjas, that just leads to additional pain.

I feel like the game was becoming almost unplayable, ironman, even before the Ninja arc.  I don't know if that's Dioxine overestimating how good I am at the battlescape, or me getting really impatient after restarting the campaign too many times.

[EuchreJack]

I think it comes down to explosives, which has generally been the response to solving most battlescape issues.  I'm reminded of the Mortar currently.

[E. Albright]

If you've got the accuracy to hit with it, the humble assault cannon (firing ball, specifically) flattens them nicely. Before I realized the magnitude of my problems and debug-killed my airfield, I fairly readily picked one of the turrets off with that. Ofc, given how bulky it and its ammo is, it's not terribly practical unless you plan on neutralizing turrets then grabbing different arms to take out infantry.

Having said that, the humble Skyforge Labourers on that airfield were definitely packing sawed-off blunderbusses and possibly kustom SMGs, so even if I could have neutralized the turrets the 60-ish infantry would have been an endless lethal rain of death.

[Rolan7]

I did eventually integrate the mortar and it made a lot of missions sooooo much easier, especially the Humanist mansion.  It just needs a little space and time to set up, and the airfields seemed designed to deny exactly that.  Maybe it's actually worth it to deploy at night as crazy as that sounds.  Incendiary shells should illuminate even ninjas just fine.

[E. Albright]

I'd not recommend it unless you're e.g. wearing Night Ops gear or the like. Turrets, Warriors in the bunkers, airborne Assault Ninjas, and Labourers in the control tower all had no problem raining death on my start zone at night. Smoke grenades during the day didn't seem to fare better.

[Dostoevsky]

Ninja Warriors and up will fire at units spotted by anyone ninja, so neither camo or smoke affect much outside of the overall hit chance. Ninja night camo, meanwhile, gets pretty ridiculous.

Re: explosives, I'd suggest not overlooking the 40mm grenade launcher. Much as in real life, the "platoon leader's artillery" is incredibly handy. One unit settled in a decent spot can, if not moving, fire an aimed shot & reload every turn and hit a wide range of the battlefield. Unlike a mortar the explosives aren't overkill, but 40mm HE is powerful enough to kill or significantly wound most infantry and do so pretty accurately. Collateral damage is relatively low too. I used to ignore it, but giving it a chance this campaign really changed my mind.