Halo6 Follower Posted December 16, 2016 Report Share Posted December 16, 2016 (edited) "One of the first episodes I've legimately watched the whole way through." -Vinwarrior, 2016... Pretty sure that's heresy, Vin... Another great episode RSR, starting to see the full power of the Regular line for Infantry now? Interestingly, this episode did not appear in my emails at all? Did anyone else not receive a Youtube notification regarding ep 25? Edited December 16, 2016 by Halo6 Follower 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedStarRocket91 Posted December 23, 2016 Author Report Share Posted December 23, 2016 This week, we're finally following up on the co-ordinates pulled from the Codex brain. With someone apparently having replaced the Avenger's water supply with a vodka still, will our soldiers be able to hit anything at all as we embark upon Operation Crimson Prophecy? No. Not a great mission, really. What I will say in mitigation is that we were very, very unlucky with our accuracy this time around: while I don't normally expect soldiers to hit during overwatch (and this is a big part of why I tend not to use it), I have come to expect hits from Bulwark, and so for him to be missing as often as he did here is really disappointing. I don't mention it during the video, but it's worth noting here: a few weeks ago I complained about the 'Defence' stat of Archons, which impose a flat -25 penalty to a soldier's hit chance when shooting at them. This is higher than being in half cover, and it's a real pain to deal with. So bear that in mind as I tell you that Gatekeepers have a Defence stat of 40, equivalent to permanently being in full cover - and since they can't actually take cover, they don't count as being flanked when being shot at, meaning we don't get our normal crit chance bonuses. Yeah. Overall, I think our tactics were reasonably solid, and mostly let down by unusually poor luck. But that said: I made the decision to rely on luck, and so I have to take the blame for the consequences. While obviously we're at the stage of the game now where we have to start rotating our squad a little (as Colonels don't gain any further experience and I do want everyone to get at least a few missions in the limelight), I also feel the actual squad selection may not have been great here in hindsight, and in retrospect I'd probably have gone with Tyrone over T, since I knew in advance this mission would be one with a lot of unflankable units and so his extra accuracy and the ability to shred armour (which the Gatekeeper has a wholly unreasonable amount of) would have been much more useful than crits which couldn't be guaranteed. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Halo6 Follower Posted December 26, 2016 Report Share Posted December 26, 2016 One too many Baileys for Keko I think lol.I blame Drizzy. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedStarRocket91 Posted January 3, 2017 Author Report Share Posted January 3, 2017 Following on from the mess of Crimson Prophecy, this week we're on a slightly less intimidating mission as we head for a toxin production lab in the slums of Brazil, in order to protect a resistance transmitter and prevent ADVENT from producing a new, poisonous brand of ammunition. With Drizzy leading the squad as we field a squad of some of our lower-ranking Spartans, are we at risk of getting complacent and overconfident? Fortunately, no. There were a few moments of concern during the reinforcement pod's turn as we struggled to get enough damage out, but I feel we dealt with the rest of the pods well enough - in particular I'm really happy with how comfortably we dealt withe the last two, as we were fighting what were two very heavy pods from a disadvantageous position, and for the former we had a really horrendous round of overwatch. I've frequently expressed distaste for the use of overwatch as a tactic throughout this series, and while I've been very happy to have been proven wrong by Bulwark's abilities, episodes like this and the previous one are good demonstrations for those who've wondered about my attitude. I still don't know what happened during the blaster bomb's initial explosion. In replaying the footage there were definitely two screams: one from the ADVENT Trooper who fell to his death, and what seemds to be an ordinary human woman's scream immediately after the detonation. Certainly, I couldn't see any other bodies in the aftermath of the explosion: at a guess I'd have to say that perhaps the MEC fell on her when it died and covered the body, but that really is just speculation. In any case, we'll be aiming to commit a few less war crimes during the next episode, where we'll also be aiming to actually hack a Codex, rather than just blowing it up! 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedStarRocket91 Posted January 7, 2017 Author Report Share Posted January 7, 2017 This week, we're heading into another ADVENT blacksite, in search of an enemy Codex to hack for more information about the Avatar project. What mysteries await us in the aliens' neural network? Join me for this week's episode and find out! Or not. While I was aware going into the mission that there weren't any Codexes reported at the site, I thought that for so long as this particular mission objective is active, provided we took a skulljack along they'd be guaranteed to spawn on any given mission, but that doesn't seem to be the case. It's particularly unusual as we've had an abnormally high number of Codexes in recent missions, so to go from that to none at all is a little disappointing. Let's hope for more luck next time! I'm not hugely happy with how I played here. Opening up with the shredder gun looks very cool, but it's not actually a particularly sensible tactic, since its primary purpose is still as a cover-busting tool and it can't score critical hits - plus, as its name implies it can shred armour, so a better decision would probably have been to save it for use against one of the Sectopod pods. Worse, I was far too rash in moving forwards: it's bad enough to move without thinking, but to specifically consider the need to move cautiously and state it out loud, then do the exact opposite is unforgivable. Frankly, it's a testament to how overpowered mimic beacons are that we didn't take any damage from the first Sectopod, and in hindsight the way we dealt with the turret was sloppy, too. This sort of situation has happened quite a few times now - I've made stupid decisions in order to show off weapons or tactics without really thinking things through, and at some point our luck is going to run out. Even worse, when the second Sectopod arrived it was onto a group of soldiers who not only weren't in cover, but also weren't on Overwatch. This is one of the cardinal rules of XCom - the only reason you'd break cover with enemies still active is to get a better firing position - and I had our entire team just standing around in the open with actions unused. Obviously I was wanting to avoid accidentally killing any potential Codexes, but that's no excuse for being out of cover. In the end, I'm fairly happy with how we actually dealt with that pod, as overall it went very well, but a situation where we were caught completely flat-footed like that ought to have never been allowed to arise in the first place. On the bright side, once we do get a Codex, we'll be able to return to our normal, more practical set of tactics. Let's hope for better luck - and better play - next week! 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VinWarrior Posted January 7, 2017 Report Share Posted January 7, 2017 When I saw that Sectopod hop down from the roof unto the squad, I was honestly shocked. Was not expecting a mech of that scale to jump on them by surprise. Awesome episode, really action-oriented. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedStarRocket91 Posted January 24, 2017 Author Report Share Posted January 24, 2017 It's been a few weeks now since our last video, thanks to a combination of essay deadlines and research projects in my personal life, but part 29 is finally here! Will we finally be able to successfully skulljack a Codex as we take on the not-at-all-ominously named Operation Death Walk? It took a while, but yes, we finally managed to do it. However, that still doesn't excuse the sheer amount of sloppy play throughout this episode: forgetting the position of the stun lancer and thus blowing our cover on the very first pod is just unforgivably stupid, and while I still think choosing to try and take a hit with Slik was a better decision than using the mimic beacon, a halfway competent player would have avoided getting into that situation in the first place. And that goes double for activating the final Archon pod: I honestly don't know what was going through my head when I made the decision to move Morrigan onto the ground floor. There was just no need for it at all - she could have stayed where she was or even just moved to the half wall facing the Sectopod, and it would have been a perfectly viable choice, but giving up the high ground for a move into an unexplored portion of the map on her last move? Appallingly stupid. The Sectopod's explosion and the subsequent chain reaction were unfortunate, but I'm frankly still surprised that the truck exploded as it did. It took me a while to work out what had happened with Slik, since I've never seen an attack do literally no damage before, but I think it's because the armour reduced the incoming damage down to one. His 'Blast Padding' perk reduces explosion damage by 66%, and while in Maestro's case that was probably two damage past the armour which was rounded up ton one after the reduction, for Slik it was probably one damage rounded down to zero. I've never actually seen it happen before, but there you go. If nothing else, we're at least seeing here that I'm still pretty good with Rangers, as that's a few times now they've been used to clutch effect. Regardless, it's far better to avoid getting into this kind of situation in the first place than it is to fix it once there, and given that this has been a somewhat worrying pattern over the past few episodes, I'm going to try and be much more cautious in the future. On a slightly more meta note: I'm not sure what's going on with the stuttering around the seventeen minute mark. I cleaned it up as best as I could (with my admittedly limited skillset), but couldn't quite get rid of it. It's one of those things that I just don't see until editing, as there weren't any signs of trouble in-game, but I'll try out a few other things in the coming weeks in an attempt to avoid it happening again. For anyone who'd like to jump into Ms. Perez' shoes for the final missions: please do bear in mind that, while if you'd rather not play as a Ranger I can use console commands to override her class and set you to whatever you wish, you'll be knocked back to Squaddie rank, and given we're now getting on to the very end of the game I can't guarantee you'll get back through the ranks in time for the finale. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maestro Posted January 24, 2017 Report Share Posted January 24, 2017 I was expecting a Sectopod to be on the roof of that building when Morrigan grappled up there. Glad to see I was wrong. And I'm glad to see that I didn't miss a shot for once! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedStarRocket91 Posted January 30, 2017 Author Report Share Posted January 30, 2017 Following on from last week's somewhat scrappy Avatar capture, on today's episode we're heading into the outskirts of Alexandria to protect a resistance transmitter in the hopes of providing a second setback for the Avatar project. There's not really a whole lot left to say about this mission: barring the slightly strange heavy MEC behaviour (I still don't know why it ran instead of shooting, or why it chose to run that direction) everything was fairly textbook. The only thing that was really cause for concern was going up against the Gatekeeper, and even that was dealt with fairly comfortably. Today's episode is really much more important for what happened outside the mission: with the Spokesman MIA and ADVENT putting the final stages of their plans into action, we're getting very close to the final mission now. Between videos I'm going to strip off all of our soldiers' current weapon attachments and PCS modules and sell them off, along with most of our gear, to try and ensure that we're going in to the final missions at as close to full strength as possible: at this point we have no more research, no more proving grounds projects, so all that really matters is raw supplies and intel. After that, we'll probably wait a few more days just to get rid of the 'Vigilance' Dark Event (as smaller detection radii will make infiltrating the network tower a fair bit easier) and then step over the point of no return. While obviously there isn't a whole lot of it left, there is still time to sign up if you'd like to do so. Just post your Spartan in the official sign-up thread and I'll do what I can to get you into the final missions - though if you're going to pick anything other than a Ranger, please do bear in mind that you'll be bumped back to a very low rank. We're getting very close now. I'd like to offer a heartfelt 'thank you' to everyone who's helped support this series so far, and I hope you'll continue to join me until the end! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedStarRocket91 Posted February 13, 2017 Author Report Share Posted February 13, 2017 It's been a little over six months now since we began this series (where has the time gone?), and today we've finally reached the endgame as we move to assault ADVENT's network tower. There have been quite a few ups and downs throughout the series, and a lot of changes: I've changed microphones, switched editing software (twice), moved house, gone back to university, and a dozen other things which had the potential to bring things to a premature conclusion, but somehow we've managed to get here, and that's what matters. Today, we have two videos, but please do feel free to skip the first if you just want to get straight to the action as it has no gameplay. Instead it's a very, very lengthy episode of soldier customisation as I run back and forth between the black market and the armoury to get our soldiers fully kitted out for the last mission, which begins in part 31: I've never actually tried a one-soldier mission before: I think there's an achievement in Enemy Unknown for completing a certain mission type with just one character, but even when playing that, it wasn't something I'd ever tried. I've thought about it a few times in XCom 2, given the introduction of stealth mechanics, but until now there haven't really been any missions where I've looked it it and honestly thought it would be the best course of action. Having had difficulty with this specific mission a few times on previous playthroughs, though, I figured this might be a good time to try it out, and it generally seemed to work okay: obviously there were a few uncomfortable moments in terms of line-of-sight, and there was a bit more time spent hiding on rooftops than I would have liked, but it actually went off pretty flawlessly. Obviously I'm metagaming this mission a bit (not knowing, after all, that the mission ends immediately upon hacking the terminal would have completely changed things tactically, and if it had to be evacuated like a normal mission Morrigan would have been killed), but on the other hand - it's a weird mission, so I don't feel too guilty about it. In any case, next up is the final mission, where we take the fight to the aliens themselves. And we'll certainly be bringing out every trick in the book for that! 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedStarRocket91 Posted February 20, 2017 Author Report Share Posted February 20, 2017 Well, this is it. Following on from our assault on ADVENT's network tower, the aliens have been thrown into a full-blown panic as humans across the globe rise up against them. With ADVENT now opening fire on rebel and civilian alike indiscriminately in an attempt to restore order, it's up to us to take the fight to the aliens' base and defeat them once and for all, before there isn't a world left to save. You could say that going in with twelve soldiers is completely overkill, and you'd be right. But while it was obviously nowhere near as challenging as intended, after I managed to get the LW Toolbox working again I just couldn't resist the idea of bringing along as many of our soldiers as the game allows. The premise of this Let's Play, after all, wasn't to watch me play XCom: it was to watch yourself in XCom, and what better way to end the game than to give as many of you as possible one last mission in the limelight? I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who's been part of the series, whether by signing your Spartan up to join me on the battlefield, or tuning in every week to watch the latest episode: I've never done anything like this before, and I'm really grateful to everyone who's supported me since everything began. It's a cliché, I know, but I really couldn't have done it without you. While this is, sadly, the end of my part in proceedings, I do have one last upload for everyone in the form of the complete character roster, which you can download from here. It contains all thirteen of our Spartans in full customisation, ready to join you on your own adventures in XCom 2. It's a common saying in the Halo universe that 'Spartans never die', and one of the most unexpected pleasures of this campaign is that we've managed to finish it without anyone being lost. I dreaded from the very start the knowledge that at some point I was going to have to apologise to someone for getting their character killed, and the fact that everyone survived to the end is a really wonderful feeling. I really hope you've all enjoyed watching this series as much as I have recording it, and that you'll join me on our next adventure, whatever that may be. But for now, my name has been RedStarRocket91, thank you very much for watching, and I'll hope to see you next time. Until then: take care, and goodnight! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlueSpartan119 Posted February 21, 2017 Report Share Posted February 21, 2017 Jeez next time maybe not try as hard... The fact that not a single person died through the entire game really killed the atmosphere, turned this series into a mundane crawl real quick. 3.3/10 Chryssalids should have killed my character. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drizzy_Dan Posted February 21, 2017 Report Share Posted February 21, 2017 GG Red. It was a long series. Hopefully you carry on this LP series. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Halo6 Follower Posted February 22, 2017 Report Share Posted February 22, 2017 What an amazing series Red, thanks for doing it! This will be an event that I will never forget. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maestro Posted February 22, 2017 Report Share Posted February 22, 2017 Now it's time to get that LP started. Nicely done, Red. Maybe try a higher difficulty next time, as you're clearly too good at XCOM. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guts Posted February 22, 2017 Report Share Posted February 22, 2017 Was my character the only one to get injured? Really enjoyed this. Hope there's more LP videos Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drizzy_Dan Posted February 22, 2017 Report Share Posted February 22, 2017 Do Halo Wars 2 Legendary 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts