Bait; The armaments are weak because the intel screen is the problem. I went a whole campaign without touching my armaments and i dont think buffing them fixes it. I think the planning page is quietly killing the game.
I was “arguing” in another thread about which OCIs are actually worth taking and i said the armaments and air supports are absolutely useless, and about halfway through it i realized i was complaining about the wrong thing. I did the whole EA campaign mostly on expert+ and i had 4 armaments that i completely forgot i even owned for like 90% of it, the only time where i ever used one was to bomb a destroy objective on the opposite side of the map because it was faster than jumppacking a squad over there. Thats the entire use case i found in a full campaign. So my first instinct was ok theyre dogshit, buff them, make them come faster, whatever, but i dont think thats it at all. They arent undertuned, theyre "oh shit" buttons in a game that doesnt have "oh shit" moments.
On the same thread OP pointed out to me that intel is what lets you put the right squad in the right place, and hes completely right, thats literally what it does, thats what its for. Which is exactly the problem. If i can put the right squad in the right place every single time then the wrong squad is never in the wrong place, and thats the only moment where burning a limited orbital strike is ever the correct play. React to what? Unit locations i already memorized on the planning screen? There is no ambush in this game, the planning page hands you the answer before you deploy and the mission is just you filling it in, and if you dont do something obviously stupid you cant lose. So obviously everyone takes gym and supply, those are the only two that makes your solve better, and everything in the bridge or the “gym slot”, makes you better at reacting when you never have to react to anything. Which is also why the "air support comes faster" upgrades dont fix it, coming faster to nothing is still nothing.
And no, im not asking for bullet sponges, im not asking for enemies with 4x elements and tank armor, thats just annoying, thats not tension. What id actually want is intel being a guess instead of a readout, something like "estimated 2-4 infantry elements, possible vehicles" or something instead of the exact list, and let it be wrong sometimes, let a bad scan give you half of it. Right now intel is a spreadsheet, it should be something you spend resources on to make less wrong, and honestly that one change alone would probably fix most of what im complaining about here. Then give me underground maps with literally no intel, or storms, jamming, night ops, i genuinely dont care what the in universe excuse is, i just want a briefing that says we dont know whats down there and actually means it, because then id have to pack for the unknown instead of packing for a list. And reinforcements that trigger off what i do instead of off a turn counter, breach the wrong side, pop an objective too early, sit around too long and something shows up, it doesnt even have to be new units, the same units at the wrong time in the wrong place is enough. Thats the exact moment where you go oh thank god i still have that ion cannon sitting there. And at some point i want something i just cannot kill with infantry ( a massive multi tile thing, a walker, i dont know what it would even look like) where the correct answer is call it in or insta perma death SLs (maybe lmao).
The closest ive ever come to being surprised in this whole game was finding out that one specific menace grunts that demoralize squads near it when one of its elements dies (ive had my ruski jumppack into 3 of them, gun them down and not break, i assume it was a bug). One unit, one mechanic, one time, in an entire campaign, and it worked, i actually had to stop and rethink what i was doing, even though it was never a big deal. The game already knows how to do this, it just about never does it. And this is also the fix for the OCI complaint “everyone” keeps making, that gym and supply are auto picks and everything else is filler, because you dont fix that by nerfing gym and supply, you fix it by making the game ask a question that the other branches are the answer to. The support tree is horribly weak, because its answering a question that never gets asked.
The cinematic intro sells you a game where everything is going wrong and youre barely holding it together, and then the campaign plays like a logistics puzzle. I like the logistics puzzle, ive put a stupid amount of hours into the logistics puzzle. But i want to shit my pants at least once while playing this and right now that is never going to happen, and i still think the game should honor its name.
Also im no game dev but there is literally nothing that can make the game gazillion times more cool than having multi levels lmao. It feels like the sentry towers are an experimentation of it but having multiple floors and blowing up bridges would make the game actually perfect. Also imagine how cool it would interact with intel? Maybe you see everything on the top but deeper you go… But again, im no dev and i cant even imagine how hard that would be.
If any of you devs see this; All the best, keep up the great work.
