Oh good. I was thinking about these kinds of things for a long while. I even wrote down my thoughts down in the old Playable Advent thread on the nexus before the August update. Maybe I'll move that here.

Since the Aliens are, unfortunately, very similar in design, and not nearly as unique as they once were in XCOM Enemy Within, I realize that it is quite hard to make each alien fill a specific role within XCOM that cannot currently be filled by a soldier or the new SPARK. With the introduction of the LWPP, I have come across abilities that have given me several ideas for how to make the aliens more interesting and unique, however.

First, I had an idea that I think is fitting of the Viper. Vipers here have been given two trees: Hit and Run. They are only semi fitting of the viper, so I was thinking something more like Assassin and Harasser. In the Harasser tree, give her the ability to reenter stealth, give her an ability to increase the AOE of her poison cloud at the cost of it dissipating more quickly, and an upgrade to the stat debuffs, or increase the damage the poison does. In the Assassin tree, add damage to her bind and crush, increase the accuracy of her tongue grab, or just accuracy in general, and grant her the ability to Execute enemies at 50% health or less when she grabs them. Perhaps even give it a second upgrade to execute an enemy at full health in the turn following her grab, if she isn't shot and forced to release her prey.

In my experiences with her, the viper has done well against organic enemies by slowing and poisoning them over time. However...using her bind and crush leaves her vulnerable for far to long when she goes up against armored targets that haven't had their armor shredded. I think she has been headed in the right direction, but I don't feel all of her abilities are fitting of the role she needs to fill.

My second idea is for the Muton. He is the Foot Soldier of the Alien forces, and should probably have a tree that reflects his abilities. One tree dedicated to pinning the enemy down with fire, the other dedicated to killing them outright: Increased damage, accuracy, crit chance and crit damage, and possibly a bayonet charge, if such a thing can be enabled. One that works like the Fleche ability in the LWPP, so that the further he runs, the harder he hits. The Muton is bred to kill the enemy and subdue the resistance in the most Brutally efficient way possible. He is literally a born killer, and that's what he should be all about.

From my Experience, the Muton is pretty descent in the mid game, where you get him, but he doesn't have the power to stay on the team by the Late Game. He is not effective in combat, and he really needs the boosted weapon abilities.

Then we have the Berserker. She is fairly obvious in her nature. A brute, all raw energy and strength. By definition, she lacks variety and is not particularly good at fitting into the general structure of the XCOM Project. Her purpose is to charge into the bulk of the enemy and devastate them with melee attacks, breaking their spirit and bodies in equal measure. One potential boon for her would be to allow her to use a radial groundpound to stun and disorient foes, and then attack with multiple melee strikes on the next turn. A reaper-style ability would definitely amp up the damage she could deal. I also think, that rather than destroying everything in her path, she needs an ability much like the Enemy Unknown Version's Bull Rush. A targeted ability that destroys a specific piece of terrain and hurts the guy behind it. This feels particularly fitting of the berserker, but an ability she lacks. She could also probably use a Roar that causes enemies to panic around her. I know Fire breath has a cool factor, but I don't think the Berserker needs it.

I haven't made much use of her, to be honest, so I can't really say what abilities I like most on her.

The Archon. This is an interesting character. Just using his base abilities, he is a weirdly tanky blitz attacker with Melee, shooting and an explosive attack. I think it would be good to give him something like Inspire or an ability to boost the will of allies to make them immune to panic and the like. He should definitely be a supportive character, ability wise, as he already has powerful attacks. I'm not really sure what else to do with him accept giving him extra shots with Blazing pinions or extra radius. he is naturally hard to hit.

Originally posted by Zakyra Vale:

Oh good. I was thinking about these kinds of things for a long while. I even wrote down my thoughts down in the old Playable Advent thread on the nexus before the August update. Maybe I'll move that here.

Since the Aliens are, unfortunately, very similar in design, and not nearly as unique as they once were in XCOM Enemy Within, I realize that it is quite hard to make each alien fill a specific role within XCOM that cannot currently be filled by a soldier or the new SPARK. With the introduction of the LWPP, I have come across abilities that have given me several ideas for how to make the aliens more interesting and unique, however.

First, I had an idea that I think is fitting of the Viper. Vipers here have been given two trees: Hit and Run. They are only semi fitting of the viper, so I was thinking something more like Assassin and Harasser. In the Harasser tree, give her the ability to reenter stealth, give her an ability to increase the AOE of her poison cloud at the cost of it dissipating more quickly, and an upgrade to the stat debuffs, or increase the damage the poison does. In the Assassin tree, add damage to her bind and crush, increase the accuracy of her tongue grab, or just accuracy in general, and grant her the ability to Execute enemies at 50% health or less when she grabs them. Perhaps even give it a second upgrade to execute an enemy at full health in the turn following her grab, if she isn't shot and forced to release her prey.

In my experiences with her, the viper has done well against organic enemies by slowing and poisoning them over time. However...using her bind and crush leaves her vulnerable for far to long when she goes up against armored targets that haven't had their armor shredded. I think she has been headed in the right direction, but I don't feel all of her abilities are fitting of the role she needs to fill.

My second idea is for the Muton. He is the Foot Soldier of the Alien forces, and should probably have a tree that reflects his abilities. One tree dedicated to pinning the enemy down with fire, the other dedicated to killing them outright: Increased damage, accuracy, crit chance and crit damage, and possibly a bayonet charge, if such a thing can be enabled. One that works like the Fleche ability in the LWPP, so that the further he runs, the harder he hits. The Muton is bred to kill the enemy and subdue the resistance in the most Brutally efficient way possible. He is literally a born killer, and that's what he should be all about.

From my Experience, the Muton is pretty descent in the mid game, where you get him, but he doesn't have the power to stay on the team by the Late Game. He is not effective in combat, and he really needs the boosted weapon abilities.

Then we have the Berserker. She is fairly obvious in her nature. A brute, all raw energy and strength. By definition, she lacks variety and is not particularly good at fitting into the general structure of the XCOM Project. Her purpose is to charge into the bulk of the enemy and devastate them with melee attacks, breaking their spirit and bodies in equal measure. One potential boon for her would be to allow her to use a radial groundpound to stun and disorient foes, and then attack with multiple melee strikes on the next turn. A reaper-style ability would definitely amp up the damage she could deal. I also think, that rather than destroying everything in her path, she needs an ability much like the Enemy Unknown Version's Bull Rush. A targeted ability that destroys a specific piece of terrain and hurts the guy behind it. This feels particularly fitting of the berserker, but an ability she lacks. She could also probably use a Roar that causes enemies to panic around her. I know Fire breath has a cool factor, but I don't think the Berserker needs it.

I haven't made much use of her, to be honest, so I can't really say what abilities I like most on her.

The Archon. This is an interesting character. Just using his base abilities, he is a weirdly tanky blitz attacker with Melee, shooting and an explosive attack. I think it would be good to give him something like Inspire or an ability to boost the will of allies to make them immune to panic and the like. He should definitely be a supportive character, ability wise, as he already has powerful attacks. I'm not really sure what else to do with him accept giving him extra shots with Blazing pinions or extra radius. he is naturally hard to hit.

Seeing as how you copy/pasted this, let me respond in kind.

THINGS WE DON'T LIKE

Overly Intricate Recommendations: Telling us that we should turn the Viper into a Melee-IceStun class with an ability to freeze all units in sight is not particularly helpful. We've got a lot of stuff on our to-do list, and a complete and utter class reset just isn't feasible at this point in time. Also, if you want to recommend abilities, keep them grounded and realistic. A temporary stat buff is easy and absolutely doable, while adding an ability that makes a viper bind all units in squadsight range is not.

You are recommending 6 new abilities for the class that already has the most custom abilities, it's a little overkill considering we have 11 classes to balance out. Probably not happening.

As for Mutons, definitely agreed, we'll try adding some more useful melee abilities/upgrades to keep him relevant late game. Recently added an upgraded Muton rifle for when players hit plasma, so that should help somewhat.

For Berserkers, adding more punches would absolutely be doable, something like a free punch with a cooldown sounds pretty handy. Bull Rush ain't happening, if you want to do that, just have her run through cover.

For Archons, he's had a few more melee-centric abilities added to him recently, so turning him into a support seems a little weird and unlikely.

I've personally got a bias against Chryssalids due to past crashiness for me, but functionally their mobility is quite useful. Due to the amount of bugs that can come with creating a Chryssalid spawner-pod-thing (don't remember what it's called ingame), I always have them run in as far as possible to do recon, then park them somewhere exposed and have them draw fire for my more experienced troopers. That said, their attack strength is still powerful, so if it would be at all possible to make creating a spawner-pod into an ability rather than a random chance from killing, that would be useful.

Originally posted by bloodsplatBOOM:

I've personally got a bias against Chryssalids due to past crashiness for me, but functionally their mobility is quite useful. Due to the amount of bugs that can come with creating a Chryssalid spawner-pod-thing (don't remember what it's called ingame), I always have them run in as far as possible to do recon, then park them somewhere exposed and have them draw fire for my more experienced troopers. That said, their attack strength is still powerful, so if it would be at all possible to make creating a spawner-pod into an ability rather than a random chance from killing, that would be useful.

I've never had any bugs with the spawners personally, might be worth going into specifics in the bug thread at some point.

Originally posted by The Dreamer:

Seeing as how you copy/pasted this, let me respond in kind.

THINGS WE DON'T LIKE

Overly Intricate Recommendations: Telling us that we should turn the Viper into a Melee-IceStun class with an ability to freeze all units in sight is not particularly helpful. We've got a lot of stuff on our to-do list, and a complete and utter class reset just isn't feasible at this point in time. Also, if you want to recommend abilities, keep them grounded and realistic. A temporary stat buff is easy and absolutely doable, while adding an ability that makes a viper bind all units in squadsight range is not.

You are recommending 6 new abilities for the class that already has the most custom abilities, it's a little overkill considering we have 11 classes to balance out. Probably not happening.

I'm not suggesting six new abilities for the Viper. You already have 'Blend In' and 'Enhanced Venom'.

I mentioned the tree 'Blend In' was under as a suggestion of which side to put debuff venom under. I was suggesting splitting Enhanced Venom between dealing more damage, or bigger stat debuffs. Personally I don't feel it is necessary to have both at the same time. Beyond that, I was suggesting some kind of accuracy buff, and some way to speed up how fast a viper can kill a bound target.

I am not suggesting something as insane as killing a target the turn she grabs it and giving her a bonus action. The Viper already has a system where damage increases the longer she holds a target with bind and crush. My viper was holding a tier 2 shield bearer for 4 turns, dealing no damage. On the fith turn, she did 14 damage, instantly killing him. If the bound target is the only visible enemy, she will also get this large damage bonus.

What I would like is a perk to increase the ability's Base damage by 1 or 2 to get past the armor, OR, for her to get the damage boost earlier or on a damaged target.

My suggestion was NOT "Do this, this and this" it was "Try this, this or this, in any order or number you fancy" with the suggestions being potentially doable from what I have seen in other perk mods.

I am glad you agree with me on the Muton, and I'm sorry Bull Rush is not likely or possible, whichever it happens to be, and I look forward to testing out this Melee Archon.