1) It applies to all marines. The "reload" penalty doesn't apply to the actual fire rate of your units - it makes your ammo counter (top-left of the screen) refill 50% slower.
2) The Officer grants a speed boost to all nearby marines all the time. It gives the extra bonus to fire rates once a hive is destroyed (a hive can be destroyed anywhere on the map to activate this, it doesn't need to be near the Officer).
3) Don't know - I never really use more than 1 Officer at a time.
4) Nope, just experiment.
5) I like the UI. Sue me.
6) They're entirely optional, so do them for fun, for extra money in the campaign, or for achievements.
7) The story campaign missions are all fixed (except the last mission that doesn't have a set mutation order). All other missions in the game are randomised, including map layout, enemy placement and mutation order. There's only 1 ending to the story campaign.
8) No, things like medical pods stay where they are when the marine dragging them dies. Medical pods can be destroyed though if the aliens decide to target them, especially if the aliens have the "Rust" mutation.
9) Don't bother using Snipers on enemy swarms. They're for 1-shotting high-value targets like spawners or towers.
10) Marines respawn fairly frequently when they're killed.
11) Everything gets refunded in full, unless you're playing an Iron Man mission. However, if buildings are destroyed their blueprint will remain in place unless you delete it to get the resources back.
12) You can assess unit strength by success and failure. They're all useful in different circumstances, depending on things like what mutations the aliens have. Flamethrowers are amazing against Brute Spawn (the slow-moving armoured aliens), but against Spitter Spawn (the shooty ones) they're much less useful.
13) By default they usually respawn at the point closest to where most of your living marines are. If you have the Trickster's Arsenal DLC though there is a "Rally" ability you can use to set the point at which your marines respawn.

1.) Grenade Upgrades apply to all players units, and the 50% is referring to the ammo on the top left of the screen.

2.) attack and movement boosts applies after a hive is destroyed for a limited time and the also fires a grenade round every few seconds. Passive ability is extra movement speed for troops.

3.) Don't know the numbers, they are barely important.

4.) Don'T know, Don't care.

5.) The UI seems fine to me. And there is no need to be rude.

6.) Basically get money, get achievements, try out different strategies. and the extra maps are implemented with the DLC if i remember correctly.

7.) You are attacking an alien world what sort of stats are you expecting? if you are looking for randomization look for the weekly challenges. That is where the real fun is.

8.) If a unit dies the cart just stops moving until a new player unit tows it. The spend points will be fully refunded after deleting it.

9.) Sniper for is anti single unit and Grenade is crowd control.

10.) units respawns after dying

11.) read the other reply

12.) Follow the strength in the description, if your units are dying too much then you need to lower the difficulty.

13.) if you are using the DLC just use rally beacon it be respawn at the closes spawn point

And no game developer is the same the same applies to tutorial.

Originally posted by Kasrkin84:

1) It applies to all marines. The "reload" penalty doesn't apply to the actual fire rate of your units - it makes your ammo counter (top-left of the screen) refill 50% slower.
2) The Officer grants a speed boost to all nearby marines all the time. It gives the extra bonus to fire rates once a hive is destroyed (a hive can be destroyed anywhere on the map to activate this, it doesn't need to be near the Officer).
3) Don't know - I never really use more than 1 Officer at a time.
4) Nope, just experiment.
5) I like the UI. Sue me.
6) They're entirely optional, so do them for fun, for extra money in the campaign, or for achievements.
7) The story campaign missions are all fixed (except the last mission that doesn't have a set mutation order). All other missions in the game are randomised, including map layout, enemy placement and mutation order. There's only 1 ending to the story campaign.
8) No, things like medical pods stay where they are when the marine dragging them dies. Medical pods can be destroyed though if the aliens decide to target them, especially if the aliens have the "Rust" mutation.
9) Don't bother using Snipers on enemy swarms. They're for 1-shotting high-value targets like spawners or towers.
10) Marines respawn fairly frequently when they're killed.
11) Everything gets refunded in full, unless you're playing an Iron Man mission. However, if buildings are destroyed their blueprint will remain in place unless you delete it to get the resources back.
12) You can assess unit strength by success and failure. They're all useful in different circumstances, depending on things like what mutations the aliens have. Flamethrowers are amazing against Brute Spawn (the slow-moving armoured aliens), but against Spitter Spawn (the shooty ones) they're much less useful.
13) By default they usually respawn at the point closest to where most of your living marines are. If you have the Trickster's Arsenal DLC though there is a "Rally" ability you can use to set the point at which your marines respawn.

thanks for this - I had a few extra questions if anyone can flesh it out:
1) That makes much more sense in the game though I would not have guessed that because losing access to most special equipment, especially in time sensitive missions, would be rather painful unless I knew in advance that ammo crates were around. Without knowing what grenades actually do - and other posts have complained that throwing the grenade isn't obvious, and so I assume the impact is also not obvious, I don't know how I would make the decision to lose half my ammo available in a mission after that construction.
Does this reload penalty also apply to getting ammo from crates or marine death or other future sources I don't know about?

2) By speed boost do you mean walking speed, or everything? My marines seem to be firing virtually all the time so a movement boost does not seem very compelling, and I don't know how long the firing bonus lasts.

4) not directed at you Karskin84 but I didn't get the game in order to play it several times in order to figure out whether I liked it because I have so much of my life I want to waste figuring out what unit descriptions would say if they properly existed in a game - a game is by definition an artificial set of rules to achieve particular goals, and hiding important rules or not bothering to explain them is either a sign of incompleteness, or a metagame layer involving a pure waste of time, including for players who might otherwise enjoy the basic gameplay, because having even optional unit/rule data cannot "injure" players, while missing this information always does.

5) The ui comment was directed at the options screen prior to entering gameplay, not the general ui.

6) The optional missions - they are on branches which suggests to me that something, like an extra story mission, might be buried at the end, or perhaps some special benefit - are these branches/chains of optional missions always just that?

8) So I cannot force a marine to drop a cart? Or trade that marine for another of a stronger type, assuming I don't have the points to buy the upgrade directly?

9) Actually I wasn't asking only about the grenade the sniper, as the basic purpose descriptions are clear enough; the problem is that without numbers or estimates about values (high medium low in damage, armor, health, etc.) I cannot compare them to riflemen- take the shotgun, as an example. It costs me 4 extra points - a lot, given that massive all unit upgrades cost only slightly more, and it appears to do more damage rather than just spread out, but I cannot tell whether it's more valuable than an extra rifleman because I am fighting in a group and against enemies almost always in a giant blob - so how exactly do I assess how well they do outside of beta testing the game by replaying levels multiple times in the hopes of understanding the basic game rules? If no game in the world existed I suppose I can understand why a developer would abuse their player base for no purpose, because eventually people would play it enough to neither need or desire a basic explanation of effects rather the generic purpose of the unit, which is already rather obvious from the title.
The sniper, for instance, which I have not tried yet. Apparently it "one shots" certain targets (so, like, a sniper). I might see that happen with a large tower, but against a "heavy" enemy in a mass of them I probably would not, and so far a rifleman group holds it own against a mass anyway, so the value of buying a sniper early the game isn't clear - and in random timed missions I really don't have the desire to gamble on a unit with questionable value, given that I don't currently have any desire to replay a mission, and I'd prefer to grab the bonus primarily because it's unclear atm whether I will need the money to finish the story.

10 and 11) So they always respawn? They seem to "die" sometimes without leaving a red marker, or I cannot see it in a mass, so I wasn't sure if the death marker meant that sometimes I actually lost the unit. (you mentioned the refund always happens, but that doesn't mean the respawn does) I seem to have lost buildings (basic guns) before but not gotten points back, and I have seen the outline but it asks me for more points to rebuild it, so it isn't clear on what is happening. Why is the outline still there if I have to spend the points again to build it? It sounds like I lose the points unless I destroy the blueprint and start over?

12 "You can assess unit strength by success and failure. "
"Follow the strength in the description, if your units are dying too much then you need to lower the difficulty."
That depends on my definition though, doesn't it? And units dying has no penalty and therefore success, atm, is simply finishing the mission as fast as possible. Because I have no desire to replay a mission as the game has not instilled any by giving me a reason to do so, then you agree with me that there is no way to assess unit value unless one happens to have been a beta tester (in effect) and learned the basics of the game by iteration. This is a problem because the game description does not tell me I am expected to play through the game multiple times in order to determine whether I like it (or like playing with certain units and conditions which I may never have a chance to try, partly because the direct and indirect time pressure does not encourage experimentation so far (in the base campaign)).

13) I have seen the rally ability but never used it because it costs a full point and I knew the rally spot would not last long - I assumed I would lose the point when replacing the rally location but perhaps that isn't true? Can I setup multiple rally points and activate them as needed or just have one, as the description implies?

Thanks

Originally posted by emanoneht:

thanks for this - I had a few extra questions if anyone can flesh it out:
1) That makes much more sense in the game though I would not have guessed that because losing access to most special equipment, especially in time sensitive missions, would be rather painful unless I knew in advance that ammo crates were around. Without knowing what grenades actually do - and other posts have complained that throwing the grenade isn't obvious, and so I assume the impact is also not obvious, I don't know how I would make the decision to lose half my ammo available in a mission after that construction.
Does this reload penalty also apply to getting ammo from crates or marine death or other future sources I don't know about?

Grenades make a pretty big impact if you're plowing through giant blobs of the weak enemies with a lot of marines. If resources are scarce and you're low on marines (like at the start of a game) it might be better to just train a shotgun guy or two. Also it only negatively impacts the base ammo regeneration rate, so you still go into battles with a full 10 or 20 ammo and you still get the same amount from ammo crates. If you pair it with the building that gives you free helicopter strikes you probably won't notice the regen rate much.

Originally posted by emanoneht:

2) By speed boost do you mean walking speed, or everything? My marines seem to be firing virtually all the time so a movement boost does not seem very compelling, and I don't know how long the firing bonus lasts.

Officers only give a passive area movement speed increase. The speed is very good for when burrowing hives start erupting behind your lines and you need to move the team back to base quickly to get it under control. The fire rate bonus after taking a hive is very noticeable and gives the units a visible blue effect around them. The appeal of it is you can use the fire rate bonus to maintain pushing momentum, and kill the remaining towers of a heavily defended hive or immediately kill another hive if two or more are bunched up. It makes up for the fact that you might have soldiers dying in the process of taking the point. I consider this to be a core class and always take one on my teams.

Originally posted by emanoneht:

6) The optional missions - they are on branches which suggests to me that something, like an extra story mission, might be buried at the end, or perhaps some special benefit - are these branches/chains of optional missions always just that?

The branches are only just side missions. I think this is pretty intuitive from the campaign map layout and I don't know why you would expect story missions buried far off course.

Originally posted by emanoneht:

8) So I cannot force a marine to drop a cart? Or trade that marine for another of a stronger type, assuming I don't have the points to buy the upgrade directly?

If you just right click it again the marine will drop it. I think if you just want to pass it off to the next guy then selecting just the guy you want to take it and right clicking on it with him might work too.

Originally posted by emanoneht:

9) Actually I wasn't asking only about the grenade the sniper, as the basic purpose descriptions are clear enough; the problem is that without numbers or estimates about values (high medium low in damage, armor, health, etc.) I cannot compare them to riflemen- take the shotgun, as an example. It costs me 4 extra points - a lot, given that massive all unit upgrades cost only slightly more, and it appears to do more damage rather than just spread out, but I cannot tell whether it's more valuable than an extra rifleman because I am fighting in a group and against enemies almost always in a giant blob - so how exactly do I assess how well they do outside of beta testing the game by replaying levels multiple times in the hopes of understanding the basic game rules? If no game in the world existed I suppose I can understand why a developer would abuse their player base for no purpose, because eventually people would play it enough to neither need or desire a basic explanation of effects rather the generic purpose of the unit, which is already rather obvious from the title.
The sniper, for instance, which I have not tried yet. Apparently it "one shots" certain targets (so, like, a sniper). I might see that happen with a large tower, but against a "heavy" enemy in a mass of them I probably would not, and so far a rifleman group holds it own against a mass anyway, so the value of buying a sniper early the game isn't clear - and in random timed missions I really don't have the desire to gamble on a unit with questionable value, given that I don't currently have any desire to replay a mission, and I'd prefer to grab the bonus primarily because it's unclear atm whether I will need the money to finish the story.

Snipers are bad at crowds and can't damage hives, but they kill towers, other structures, and clones very efficiently. They're good for high difficulty missions and missions with a lot of mutations where the AI will be throwing hit teams at you and blocking your path with groups of spitter turrets and guardians. Not necessary but can be nice to have.

Originally posted by emanoneht:

10 and 11) So they always respawn? They seem to "die" sometimes without leaving a red marker, or I cannot see it in a mass, so I wasn't sure if the death marker meant that sometimes I actually lost the unit. (you mentioned the refund always happens, but that doesn't mean the respawn does) I seem to have lost buildings (basic guns) before but not gotten points back, and I have seen the outline but it asks me for more points to rebuild it, so it isn't clear on what is happening. Why is the outline still there if I have to spend the points again to build it? It sounds like I lose the points unless I destroy the blueprint and start over?

All marines automatically respawn after they're dead, and retain the class they were given before like flamer or shotgun. Buildings might cost ammo to rebuild but never cost BP, but you have to have a marine rebuild it by walking up to it unless you have the building that automatically constructs things. You never lose BP, it was probably automatically refunded and you didn't notice or the points are still sitting there on the destroyed building indicator waiting to be refunded or rebuilt.

Originally posted by emanoneht:

12 "You can assess unit strength by success and failure.
"Follow the strength in the description, if your units are dying too much then you need to lower the difficulty."
That depends on my definition though, doesn't it? And units dying has no penalty and therefore success, atm, is simply finishing the mission as fast as possible. Because I have no desire to replay a mission as the game has not instilled any by giving me a reason to do so, then you agree with me that there is no way to assess unit value unless one happens to have been a beta tester (in effect) and learned the basics of the game by iteration. This is a problem because the game description does not tell me I am expected to play through the game multiple times in order to determine whether I like it (or like playing with certain units and conditions which I may never have a chance to try, partly because the direct and indirect time pressure does not encourage experimentation so far (in the base campaign)).

One of the dlc adds morale as a penalty to marines dying, but other than that the drawback is that you lose that manpower for a brief time. If you have guys continually dying it'll take longer than if you had your full fighting force. All units have a place and I think they're fairly intuitive, like all the rest of the game. There also isn't really a ton of time pressure aside from a couple missions I can think of, for the most part the game handles like a long game of tug of war, you can afford to give and take until you win. Try placing some marines behind to guard your bases or make use of the sentries and mine fields to keep the pressure off. One building also gives bunkers much better defensive abilities which can help if there's a lot of capture points on the map and you're understaffed.

Originally posted by emanoneht:

13) I have seen the rally ability but never used it because it costs a full point and I knew the rally spot would not last long - I assumed I would lose the point when replacing the rally location but perhaps that isn't true? Can I setup multiple rally points and activate them as needed or just have one, as the description implies?

It only costs one ammo point, you'll get that back in no time since ammo is infinitely regenerating. I think the rally location stays there until you click it again with the ability, and I don't think you can set multiple.

thanks Doomrider. re: this comment-
"The branches are only just side missions. I think this is pretty intuitive from the campaign map layout and I don't know why you would expect story missions buried far off course."

Very few games do this. If the missions are randomized and optional then they only need 1 node, or can be presented as spokes on a wheel ( with various ways of suggesting difficulty or order )- the ONLY reason for branch node structure would be to suggest something special exists either along the way or at the end, which is why the prior missions exist as deliberate blockers - even the branch end was only an optional "story" mission which filled out the game lore, and not technically required for the ending. Actually my suspicion was that each branch either intermixed story missions with resource generation missions (money) and perhaps introduced new mechanics prior to a less random harder story type mission (most games would do this), OR that the branch end would provide a special weapon or ability for use in the story missions to make them easier (fewer games do this, but they still provide an incentive to chase the branch rather than replaying other earlier missions, for instance).


re: "Buildings might cost ammo to rebuild but never cost BP, but you have to have a marine rebuild it by walking up to it unless you have the building that automatically constructs things. You never lose BP, it was probably automatically refunded and you didn't notice or the points are still sitting there on the destroyed building indicator waiting to be refunded or rebuilt."

Several times I have lost a gun, tried to rebuild it, only to be told I don't have the points to do so. At first I thought it was refunded and I didn't notice, but after several such incidents I am certain that it's not happening in the latest build of the game. Perhaps it doesn't cost me points and only wants them available, but it's definitely not allowing me to rebuild a bluepoint without double the points (in effect), and not refunding the points on death.


I saw something about a bonus that removed some of the supposed morale penalty on unit death, but I have not seen a description in the game of what the morale penalty actually is- Is it described anywhere? How long it lasts, what area, etc.?

re: "Buildings might cost ammo to rebuild but never cost BP, but you have to have a marine rebuild it by walking up to it unless you have the building that automatically constructs things. You never lose BP, it was probably automatically refunded and you didn't notice or the points are still sitting there on the destroyed building indicator waiting to be refunded or rebuilt."

Several times I have lost a gun, tried to rebuild it, only to be told I don't have the points to do so. At first I thought it was refunded and I didn't notice, but after several such incidents I am certain that it's not happening in the latest build of the game. Perhaps it doesn't cost me points and only wants them available, but it's definitely not allowing me to rebuild a bluepoint without double the points (in effect), and not refunding the points on death.

Buildings don't automatically refund their points when destroyed - instead, their blueprint remains on the field. You can order your marines to rebuild it by selecting one and right-clicking the blueprint (although this will happen automatically without needing marines to do it if you have the Engineering building and spare ammo), or you can recycle it to get the BP back.

I saw something about a bonus that removed some of the supposed morale penalty on unit death, but I have not seen a description in the game of what the morale penalty actually is- Is it described anywhere? How long it lasts, what area, etc.?

This is only a thing in the Planetary Campaign DLC. Losing marines and buildings (except bunkers) will cause your army to lose morale. If you get to zero morale, the mission is failed. The Engineering building prevents morale loss from buildings being destroyed. There are a few buildings that reduce morale loss from marines dying, but I forget which ones they are.

Minigunners don't benefit from the Grenade upgrade; every other marine does, IIRC.

...actually, I'm not sure if Officers or Medics get anything from it; one would figure that since their main weapon already seems to be an identical/comparable grenade launcher, it would either do nothing or effectively give them two grenade launchers.

Officers also grant invincibility to nearby marines as part of the hive death buff, so that really improves your ability to push into nearby hives. I don't remember exactly how much a second Officer extends the buff, but it is worth it if you have a surplus of points and marines(i.e. if the potential firepower loss from turning another marine into an Officer won't be too significant).

EDIT: On checking again, I realize it's not 'invincibility', per se; it's simply impossible for them to die for the duration of the buff. They take damage normally, up until the last segment on each health bar.

And I believe the buff duration simply stacks for each Officer(six seconds per, IIRC). Two doubles it, three triples it, etc. 12 seconds from just two is probably plenty, though.