Originally posted by VoiD:

So I've played a "pure" CE run, with just some QoL interface mods and texture skins, and as a new player this is how my experience went:

1: Early game was a rough learning experience, Tough pawns are no longer OP, you can't just facetank bullets anymore, armor is everything, it's your first and last line of defense, your true HP, so the early game is a mad rush to get access to armor, ammo and decent weapons.

This is specially true against centipedes, 20mm armor is just not something small arms can deal with.

2: I've specifically avoided exploiting the game (like stealing the empire's armors and stuff) but late game the game just kept getting easier and easier, once you have the right weapons (like a flamer, a KPV, ion charge bullets, an RPG7, etc..) even centipedes are easy to 1shot-kill, everything else becomes trivial under a hail of bullets, enemies don't even fight back due to supression, and any high caliber shots will most likely kill or cripple any target it hits, meanwhile, by having power armors I am now imune to most damage, centipedes no longer 1shot my guys, fire damage seems irrelevant, explosives don't do anything to me, the bulk and weight mechanics are meaningless as I can carry as much as I want.

I've even tried to spawn 3 max size raids against my base in the middle of the map and I didn't even have to draft my pawns, as a bunch of well placed turrets all around my base could deal with them all, and those who made it past were auto-fired upon by my workers, no threat, no damage taken.

CE is a wonderful mod, and I can't imagine going back to vanilla combat, but I can't help but to think that I wish the sense of urgency, the need for flanking maneuvers, to switch to grenades and such from the early game could last well into the late game as well, the game became far easier than vanilla once you learn how things work.

Originally posted by Grimwulf:

Speaking of balance, I feel like the price of 60mm mortar shells (mechanoids use them and drop upon death) should be nerfed. AFAIK, there is no use for them other than selling. And traders pay stupid high prices for them

Originally posted by Scout Gaming:

Originally posted by VoiD:

So I've played a "pure" CE run, with just some QoL interface mods and texture skins, and as a new player this is how my experience went:

1: Early game was a rough learning experience, Tough pawns are no longer OP, you can't just facetank bullets anymore, armor is everything, it's your first and last line of defense, your true HP, so the early game is a mad rush to get access to armor, ammo and decent weapons.

This is specially true against centipedes, 20mm armor is just not something small arms can deal with.

2: I've specifically avoided exploiting the game (like stealing the empire's armors and stuff) but late game the game just kept getting easier and easier, once you have the right weapons (like a flamer, a KPV, ion charge bullets, an RPG7, etc..) even centipedes are easy to 1shot-kill, everything else becomes trivial under a hail of bullets, enemies don't even fight back due to supression, and any high caliber shots will most likely kill or cripple any target it hits, meanwhile, by having power armors I am now imune to most damage, centipedes no longer 1shot my guys, fire damage seems irrelevant, explosives don't do anything to me, the bulk and weight mechanics are meaningless as I can carry as much as I want.

I've even tried to spawn 3 max size raids against my base in the middle of the map and I didn't even have to draft my pawns, as a bunch of well placed turrets all around my base could deal with them all, and those who made it past were auto-fired upon by my workers, no threat, no damage taken.

CE is a wonderful mod, and I can't imagine going back to vanilla combat, but I can't help but to think that I wish the sense of urgency, the need for flanking maneuvers, to switch to grenades and such from the early game could last well into the late game as well, the game became far easier than vanilla once you learn how things work.

Could not agree more. Early game is much more tactical and fun, late game just becomes boring spam. Mainly the reason why I prefer to play with spacer tech removed, industrial only runs are surprisingly fun.

Originally posted by VoiD:

For context, this is what my base looked like, I've played it with the mad storytellers (Cele Jackrabbit) sending 4 raids one after another every week, and those outter walls weren't there until I've decided to turn on the ship's reactor, tbh they weren't needed either.

In fact, I think the walls made my defenses worse as enemies would no longer come in a straight line to get shreded by missed shots and bullets.

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2857545250

This wasn't some easy-single-entrance-mountain-killbox-exploit thing, just regular CE combat.

PS: There was one piece of content that was still challenging, and that was the Mech Cluster, which required some heavy use of psycasts, or jump packs, or a healthy stock of tripple/apocalyptic launchers (which pirate raiders were happy to provide) to deal with all of those dangerous turrets, in vanilla I can just smoke them and destroy them all but unless I was doing something wrong, smoke didn't seem to stop them from targetting me in CE, so breaching walls, using melee, EMP grenades, etc.. Was a necessity.

Originally posted by =(e)= Lemonater47:

Originally posted by VoiD:

For context, this is what my base looked like, I've played it with the mad storytellers (Cele Jackrabbit) sending 4 raids one after another every week, and those outter walls weren't there until I've decided to turn on the ship's reactor, tbh they weren't needed either.

In fact, I think the walls made my defenses worse as enemies would no longer come in a straight line to get shreded by missed shots and bullets.

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2857545250

This wasn't some easy-single-entrance-mountain-killbox-exploit thing, just regular CE combat.

PS: There was one piece of content that was still challenging, and that was the Mech Cluster, which required some heavy use of psycasts, or jump packs, or a healthy stock of tripple/apocalyptic launchers (which pirate raiders were happy to provide) to deal with all of those dangerous turrets, in vanilla I can just smoke them and destroy them all but unless I was doing something wrong, smoke didn't seem to stop them from targetting me in CE, so breaching walls, using melee, EMP grenades, etc.. Was a necessity.

Don't use killboxes at all.

Then CE never gets easy.

Pirates with a bunch of Mercenary pawns gets scary. When they come along with various rocket launchers and sniper rifles.

Let alone centipedes which basically outrange everything you have.

Originally posted by =(e)= Lemonater47:

Originally posted by VoiD:

For context, this is what my base looked like, I've played it with the mad storytellers (Cele Jackrabbit) sending 4 raids one after another every week, and those outter walls weren't there until I've decided to turn on the ship's reactor, tbh they weren't needed either.

In fact, I think the walls made my defenses worse as enemies would no longer come in a straight line to get shreded by missed shots and bullets.

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2857545250

This wasn't some easy-single-entrance-mountain-killbox-exploit thing, just regular CE combat.

PS: There was one piece of content that was still challenging, and that was the Mech Cluster, which required some heavy use of psycasts, or jump packs, or a healthy stock of tripple/apocalyptic launchers (which pirate raiders were happy to provide) to deal with all of those dangerous turrets, in vanilla I can just smoke them and destroy them all but unless I was doing something wrong, smoke didn't seem to stop them from targetting me in CE, so breaching walls, using melee, EMP grenades, etc.. Was a necessity.

Don't use killboxes at all.

Then CE never gets easy.

Pirates with a bunch of Mercenary pawns gets scary. When they come along with various rocket launchers and sniper rifles.

Let alone centipedes which basically outrange everything you have.