u/OccultStoner

This sounds odd, but I've been swapping around weapons, for the sake of diversity, Been using Rattler for CIA BOs and this thing absolutely rocked, until I switched over to custom AUGs (from SSI), because range, deadliness, versatility and I'm in love with bullpups in general.

I used to run shortened SCARs for Ranger Assault boys, slow ROF and low mag was kinda turn off, plus weapon felt bulky, yet very deadly at most ranges. Been running with M4 later, it's okay, but boring.

Now been testing AK-105 vs Rattlers. Stats say AK wins hands down, but in practice, Rattlers feel WAY more efficient, plus they are shorter (with open tip rounds that is vs. FMJ from AKs). What do you say?

On the side note, what optics would you recommend for either? I usually run with 1/4 Duals, or 1-6 for AKs, but felt very slow.

P.S. What do you run Grenadiers with? I used to run URG-Is, felt like compact sniper rifles. Very deadly and shoot far, but guns are an absolute fishing rods, literally can't move around. Now switched to CQB SCARs with GLs. No opinion yet.

Noticed some curious thing, perhaps others did too, but decided to share anyway, maybe someone may find it helpful.

So, since we get tons of thieves guild related quests and challenges, plus, also a good time to farm some motifs, I've been doing daily Heists quite often, and I always had trouble perfecting it.

My main character for this appears to be chubby Templar in full heavy armor, which you can imagine isn't great for sneaking around, who also appears to be Werewolf on occasion. So, I just attempted one of the Heists turning into WW to see how to goes.

The bad thing is that if you Slaughter someone, it still counts as seen and you get time penalty.

The good thing is that Werewolf seems to be either naturally almost invisible, or Prowl helps great deal with that. So, when I walk around in WW form, occasionally hitting Prowl, it seems like I can almost walk under NPC noses and they literally don't see me. Funny part is, you can crack locks in that form. The only disadvantage is that traps don't get highlighted and you can't disarm them, but since you get tons of health and crazy regen, that's not really a problem, even on Master difficulty. So far it's been quite fun.

Is that considered a bug? Did some of you do Heists or some stealth challenges in WW form too?

P.S. I didn't attempt Dark Brotherhood quests with this character yet, but curios if Slaughter may count as Blade of Woe kill? Pretty sure it doesn't, but there's hope...

I've got quite a bunch stacked in the tome, and last I checked only 1 quest from the board in Hew's Bane counts, which is honestly pain to get to, and limited to 1 per day.

How do you people speed it up? Is the only way using Alts? I have only two tho... Plus, it's rather mind numbing, objectives are very few and often repeat.

Do you guys re-roll these challenges?

For the last 10 years, at least. If you can remember even farther back, mention this too. With sliders or not. I feel like at least in last 5-6 years it is in hard decline now...

I'm in a bit of a pickle. Trying to bind ACOG to multiple MGs (because CIA boys have only 1/4 dual optic for MGs, which is hilarious) and also larp. So I tried it like this:

<Bind eqp="M150RCO">

<to name="M240L"/>

<to name="M249SPW"/>

<to name="LAMG"/>

<to name="MK48"/>

<to name="MG338"/>

<to name="XM250"/>

</Bind>

Didn't seem to work. Is the only way to do it is hard way? Like, specify weapon name and bind optic?

Been playing DK2 lately quite a lot, having a blast, like many. It is wild to think about it, that in modern era, this is the only real good tactical top-down shooter(?) we have. Well, also Ready or Not is pretty mindblowing, but it's more of SWAT4/DK1 type of a thing.

DK2 is like old school Ghost Recon, mixed with OG Rainbow 6, with tons of extra stuff, like destructible environments, actually smart and very reactive AI (that is such a rarity, it's crazy), different asymmetrical units you can command and superb modding support. Also optimization is so amazing, that game runs flawlessly on my potato travelling laptop even, no matter the mission size, stuff killed and walls blown.

Which leads to question:

Any idea of what KillHouse Games are up to these days? I assume they're done with DK2, as no bugs detected, at least on my side, and there's so much content, it can last one a lifetime, not to mention mods...

I'd give a lot to have hybrid of top down tactics with planning we already have with 3D/1st Persion action you can take control of the unit. There basically have been no games like this since Rainbow 6 3. How crazy is that? Do you guys think it's a possibility?

Say, if you have a rookie with good stats but not scheme fit, do you upgrade him further as he is, or try to make him scheme fit with upgrade points? Does it impact his OVR or regression somehow across career?

I've been on and off player somewhere since 0.7a, but lately, even with great additions I find hard to enjoy this game as much as I used to, even though it improved MASSIVELY and added tons of stuff, along with story to enjoy. I play it rarely, so it's definitely not the case of burn out.

However, loop gets old very fast. The game is very combat heavy, and while combat itself is some of the best you can find, both in depth and visual/sound presentation. But when you get fights back to back, it feels identical, like every Station fight is pretty much carbon copy of the one before. Same with pirates, remnants, etc.

Another problem is requirement for very fast fleet growth (before you can get the hands on cutting edge tech), which consumes resources like crazy, even with full upgrades. It guzzles your supplies and fuel like crazy, where you pretty much forced to make stops for restock often.

You physically cannot run medium sized fleet, because even far from the living space sectors have extremely powerful enemies, or you can easily meet some armada that you may not be able to outrun, and often have to engage in combat. That, not to mention that far away, combat is pretty much the only way for sustain, to have resources for return and exploration itself. Feels like it's just not balanced properly.

It hurts exploration bad, because not only you need silly amounts of resources to explore worlds, where you need huge inventory space, but big powerful fleet doesn't allow you long-distance travel without going dry very soon. And that with several big haulers and tankers...

And now with Abyssal Hyperspace, which is amazing exploration opportunity, it kinda kills the purpose of it.

Trading is pretty useless, boring and doesn't pay well. Exploration is very fun, but it's very early money making method, that falls off fast for reasons stated above, which leaves combat as the main activity and money making method. It pays well too.

The issue, IMO, is how fast you generally progress and can easily afford getting huge fleet with several capitals. There's no pace in progress at all. And you have to, because game doesn't scale to you. You have to be able to destroy Armadas and very powerful Remnants ASAP.

Combat is great on paper, but it also kinda sucks:
- If you pilot strongest and biggest ship in the fleet, it can get trivial, because while AI is decent, you can constantly abuse with kite and alphastrike, which AI is incapable of.
- If you like more even and fair combat, where you pilot smaller or weaker ship and let AI handle it, combat can drag on literally forever. AI can't push properly. It often goes down till CR goes to zero for both sides. It's pain to watch this back and forth tug-of-war...
- If you come across overwhelming enemy fleet or you attack enemy with stronger forces (which is 90% of actual combat encounters), it is just straight up boring and waste of time, because outcome is set. Sure, fun to watch a few times, but that's it.

I wish there was auto-resolve or something like that...

Totally not interested in colony management side, don't even wanna try, but it's very cool addition.

Probably most fun thing for me in previous versions was building fleets from random ships I salvage or buy somewhere which look cool. Slap weapons and upgrades on it that I randomly find, and go out to salvage, pick some bounties, explore, etc. But now it doesn't work, because against Remnants you must build fleets in specific way to counter them, as well as some other specific enemies, and there's little way around it, because otherwise you're blocked from quite a lot of story and almost all exploration.

Is there a way to have fun as a hobo Scavenger? How do you deal with repetitiveness of combat? How do you deal with constant and huge drain of resources in long-distance travel when you run a big fleet?

P.S. Any mods or game tweaks suggestions are welcome, like rebalances, overhauls, etc., other than Nexerelin. People suggest it often, and while the mod is fantastic, I don't want Starsector to be another Total War for me.

It's less for a doctrines (I know how to edit, don't need to) and more for sense of progression (who doesn't like to level stuff up more?). Checked all files I would suspect have these lines. Nothing. I can't believe it is baked?...

Edit:
Figured out myself, weird no info anywhere. So, for those like me, who want to add more levels to the squad, just open units.xml and add lines under Ranks (not Trooper Ranks, that's extra levels for individual soldiers) with increment you desire.

Was messing around with equipment, and decided to give (with edits of course) Martyr's Armor to SWAT Militia. Initially I though it's a meme, and well, they do run fast with it, and it definitely has some uses, but that suppression thing isn't, because they keel over after first shot long before suppression can even kick in.

Just waiting for some battle honors to give Militia those SAPI Vests.

What are your thoughts on Martyr's Armor? Would you ever equip it on any SWAT troops for actual efficiency, rather than just for laughs?

Aside from that, what are your armor preferences in general, maybe for class or role, outside of SWAT too?

Been playing mostly missions so far, tried some normal Campaign runs in-between with fully trained Rangers, and had variable success, but it was more like a quick test.

Now when I'm done with missions, I created fresh Nowheraki SWAT squad, no doctrines, all level 1 and sent them in Tour of Duty on Ironman. Well, I got my ass absolutely slaughtered...

The problem isn't the fact that maps are too big, or objectives (which some are very hard, not gonna lie), while I'm perfectly fine with the idea of losing people, permanently, but my guys literally lose engagement all the time even when I technically have an advantage, like 2-3 guys covering a door, 4th kicks the door from the side, enemy stands back to 3 guys, slowly turns around and kills all 3 who've been firing at him. It happens regularly.

After few days of trial and error, better gear and doctrines didn't seem to make much difference. I did try SWAT in missions, occasionally, and they did pretty good, but it seriously feels like Campaign enemies are overtuned.

I literally had situations, where some habibi in rags runs past 3 of my guys, who dump full AK mags into his body, and he falls only when all 3 went dry. Probably due to lead extra weight than anything else...

When you go in mission generator, you can actually select difficulty, and since Campaign doesn't have that, I assume it uses pretty high preset.

So the question, do any of you manage to survive even a week with doctrineless, level 1 SWAT Squad? How do you generally have fun in Campaign? Because concept is insanely good, and I'd like to keep playing on Ironman (fuck restarts), but I don't seem to be getting anywhere. And idea of having fully levelled and trained squads in Campaign doesn't feel fun to me.

Are there any mods or options to switch enemy difficulty? Or make it gradually increase farther you go? Something like that?

Gotta ask:

How many of you beat every single mission in this game with 3 stars AND with all challenges done? I just finished with Rangers, but it feels like some maps would be literally impossible for me to get all challenges, don't think I'm even gonna try...

As a side question, did you manage to 3 star every mission with CIA or SWAT too?

I understand Font of Power, which is pretty good, but not sure about second mastery.

Running petless magsorc glass cannon. Can't choose between Static Reverberation and Calculated Defense. With Reverberation I assume not having pets cuts down quite significantly on the proc chance? And kinda lost with Calculated Defense one... Does 0.5 sec Shield actually block any damage? Is max health scaling a joke?... If I understand correctly, this passive is basically a +6% damage bonus for 20 secs? How significant it is, when Weapon and Spell damage stat exists to be buffed around +20% by other skills, passives, gear, etc?

The rest of passives seems like not suitable for my build at all. Any input?

...CPU opponents' Franchise X-Factor quadruple superstar 99 QB gets injured and taken out of play, to be replaced with 65 OVR backup rookie, that starts utterly slaughtering your secondary asses much harder than the main QB?

I swear, if you're unfamiliar how Madden works with player ratings, especially on All-Madden, it will make you pull hairs out, but if you know, you're just gonna be laughing your ass off at this, eh.

Last night was playing my beloved HC Lite and noticed some wild shit, like bots somehow took down 2 of our choppers?! They also been blinding me with flashbangs pretty actively, and generally shooting more rockets and explosives our way. Also seems like they call support more often now? That did so before, but very-very rarely.

Anyone else noticed something weird like that?

I've been dodging excavation and scrying for quite a while, because it seemed quite boring and didn't really feel like it, but recently I figure there's not much left to do in ESO and started getting into it.

Gotta say, grind till purple leads is absolutely gruelling and so slow, even with best grind methods from guides... but after that, it becomes really fun and varied, plus levelling becomes significantly faster. No idea why they had to make it so.

For now I just dig literally everything I have leads for in every region, making a good progress. It seems not only fun, but quite profitable. Posts I came across mention some leads are painful to get because of RNG. How bad is it, really?

Does any stuff you dig up sells well at guild traders? Haven't come across anything worth to sell just yet, but wondering.

And lastly, are there any of you who dug up every single lead in the game? If yes, how long did it take you by rough estimation? Is there much reason to keep digging when you got all you needed? Are there many of you who do this regularly just for fun?

Any tips for novice antiquarian are also very welcome.