LAST EDITED ON Sep-02-26 AT 01:20 AM (EDT)
 
Yall, it's XCom in a Star Wars and this shit is fire.

Behold my synthwave monstrosity team

If you like XComes and Star Warses it behooves you to check it out.

Non TLDR Edit:

It's not just a Clone Wars mod slapped onto XCom, it's a legit fun game with a great story, cool characters, neat powers and abilities, and some generally "oh snap they did that" moments.

I won't spoil anything more other than saying you play a disgraced ex-commander in the GAR that forms a merc company of weirdos and scumbags and MBA hustlers (but I repeat myself) who take on jobs and fight a cult for profit during the last year of the Clone Wars.

It's good.

On the one hand, as I hear, everyone who's played it has said, basically, "this is the Star Wars game we have wanted for ages".

On the other hand, the absolute shit-show the studio and its owner(s?) have apparently become makes me strongly hesitate to give them my money.

...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The
Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-
Covered Balls!"

>On the one hand, as I hear, everyone who's played it has said,
>basically, "this is the Star Wars game we have wanted for ages".
>
>On the other hand, the absolute shit-show the studio and its owner(s?)
>have apparently become makes me strongly hesitate to give them my
>money.

I made the mistake of browsing steam on payday and caved. I'm enjoying it, but there is an element of real world regret there.

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

Yeah, if I hadn't preordered and was fifteen hours in when that news broke I would have hesitated and felt guilty. At least they're getting paid now, a patch is coming out.

Sonic the Hedgehog was right, there's no ethical consumption under capitalism

>Sonic the Hedgehog was right, there's no ethical consumption under
>capitalism

All you can do is try to juggle things to the best of your abilities. Would be nice if the handles of the chainsaws weren't smaller chainsaws, but oh well.

... At least we've got picking on B-1 droids to help us.

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

I am happy to report that Astromechs continue to be little psychos behind the innocent beeping.

One of mine wants a lightsaber. Or as they call it, a 'melt wand.'

Another apparently wants spider legs.

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

>Another apparently wants spider legs.

Field expedient Irken all-terrain modification. In the UF universe, Industrial Automaton sells it as a factory upgrade kit in partnership with the Irk Heavy Industry and Snacks Conglomerate.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I can't think of any good reason to give an R2 unit a 'melt wand'. Plenty of bad reasons, most of them hilarious, but no good ones.

It does make me think of an instance from a Star Wars ttrpg game though, where one of the players, call him Crafting Guy (CG) because he loved delving into crafting systems, built a custom astromech. Naturally, this caused everybody else to beg for custom R2s as well, including Problem Player (PP).
I'm DMing the game, so CG comes to me to ask "hey can I install backdoors into these astromechs so I can take them over if things go wrong?" I say sure, but he'd need a security roll to determine how hard it would be for the other players to notice. Due to abject stupidity inter-party loyalty, nobody asks CG why he was conspiring with me, and they take possession of their shiny new astromechs.

Cue the inevitable betrayal some sessions later when raiding a Star Destroyer- they'd just slipped into the docking bay in their fighters and PP took the captain of the Destroyer at his word that "oh, just betray your friends, throw them out the docking bay, and you'll be richly rewarded"¹. CG rolls his eyes, triggers the backdoor, and PP's R2 unit opens the S-foils on his X-Wing and starts lighting PP up. Now PP is a novice force user (I won't give him the title of "Jedi", he might've been to Luke's academy for a bit, but he's just a monkey with a melt wand² at this point), so he figures he'd parry the laser bolt and bounce it back at the traitorous droid. I hadn't figured out exactly how hard that would be, but PP threw dice before I even said anything and completely biffed it, so that became a moot point.

¹Naturally, the reward consisted of 2 squads of Stormtroopers sent to the docking bay to shoot anything still moving.

²"Monkey with a melt wand" probably describes half the Star Wars rpg players out there.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

LAST EDITED ON Sep-07-26 AT 01:33 PM (EDT)
 
>I can't think of any good reason to give an R2 unit a 'melt wand'.
>Plenty of bad reasons, most of them hilarious, but no good
>ones.

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Skippy_the_Jedi_Droid

(admittedly, not R2 but R5, but...)
...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The
Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-
Covered Balls!"

Huh, I did not know that story, cool, thanks!

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

My primary gripe is that some advancements like operator HP are things you get from raising their relationships unless you take one particular specialization. It kind of disincetivizes you from using a wide spread of operators and makes you focus on a core team with one or two alternates.

That's said, it's very well paced, by the time you feel things are getting monotonous the game throws more story beats at you and suddenly you're invested again.

Is it as deep as X-Com? No.

Is it a good game and experience that I would recommend people try? Definitely.

>It kind of disincetivizes you from using a
>wide spread of operators and makes you focus on a core team with one
>or two alternates.

I think people have generally found it to be the opposite. Lower bond levels take less bond exp to achieve so if you have a big crew and rotate them you can get a lot of cross trainings at once. And unlocking and upgrading the Lounge lets the bench get some bond exp (with everyone else not on the mission). If you can get each operator to at least a low bond level with everyone else (and a few higher bonds will probably just happen), you'll have a lot of cross trainings to choose.