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Notes -
Gaming subthread.
I think I got about 20 hours out of MENACE before burning out. It's a good game, but I'm going to wait till more substantial updates or large mods come out before trying a new run.
Right now:
The AI collapses when you get effective scouting units with high damage weapons: the AI always knows your sightlines, even for units in stealth, and are desperate to not get shot even when the sensible thing to do would be to bumrush the most likely origin of suppressed fire
The actual Menace enemies are remarkably unfun. Super-tanky and hit super hard. I had to cheese a mission by deploying smoke (which is OP) on all my units to survive till the countdown ended, otherwise we'd have been slaughtered with no recourse.
I discovered that the medium mech with two linked autocannons trivializes engagements with anything smaller than a heavy tank (except for the Menace)
Many weapons, particularly deployable weapons, are poorly tuned or not as effective as they should be.
The map gen needs work. If you've seen 5 maps, you've seen them all. The world needs more terrain diversity, choke point battles, rivers, cliffs, any kind of elevation really.
The ship upgrade/OCI system is half-baked. We need a lot more slots to play with and we also need more of the options we have to be buffed, alongside the addition of new ones.
Still a good game and I enjoyed a good helping of it both in demo and EA, but I'm going to need those mods or a lot more content to keep me going.
I found Menace underwhelming. Yes it can maul you but it lacks real heavy hitters.
Best, most fun battle I had was a meeting engagement over a strongpoint against Rogue Army. Had the guys had 2 scouts instead of one I'd have lost that one. Won it on like 7th reload I think. Very Rorke's drift, very fun!
Rogue Army was by far my favorite faction to fight. The bugs drop lots of resources but no actual gear (and need work), the pirates are fun but their loot is trash barring maybe the laser lance and commando armor.
RA though? When our favorite African Warlord Who Definitely Isn't Sseth tells you to that upside to fighting them is getting gear to replace the embarrassment we call our armory: he's goddamn right. They were fun to fight, until I outranged, out-scouted and outgunned them.
Right now, I'm going to grab a bunch of rebalance mods as well as a mod that fixes AI sight lines and cowardice, plus one that adds the TCR as an enemy faction.
Wait, there are mods already?
Indeed. Mostly on the Nexus.
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