I'm Amazed!

[The Veteran]

I got hold of a copy of UFO:Aftermath when it was practically new, and at the time it was ok, kind of as expected. When the difficulty spiked in the mid-game, I never managed to keep my squad alive in the Retribution mission and so I shelved the title for many years.

 

Just a few months I came back to it and with some more sensible choices in skills, weapons and armour (plus a seriously high level team!) I managed to blitz through the whole rest of the game with ease. So I figured I'd try out the sequels and they both arrived in the post today (I've spent less than

[ERISS]

I think this game is just not for your taste.

You're right about the true flaws of the game, but they don't prevent me from playing. And where you see other flaws, I find qualities and why I love this game (it's maybe my prefered pc game, despite its remaining bugs).

The pace of this game is slow, so with playing only an hour you can't see many things.

 

Maybe, think about the 1st time you played Deus Ex (the 1st one), and remember in the game beginning how you thought it was an awfull FPS...

[Sunflash]

Wait. Aftermath was the first one, right? And you like it MORE than AfterSHOCK?

 

No wonder we never see eye to eye!

[The Veteran]

I've played on some more now, how could you possibly prefer this one to Aftermath? It's just full of inconsistencies and bugs. The R&D is becoming worse the more I use it, just now I was told all at once that I could now research A,B,C and D even though I'd been able to research them already for about 4 missions...

 

The resource system is a joke, especially given the fact that I'm led to believe resource distribution is random... I have thousands of the first 2 types of resource but none of the third and a massive defecit caused by the awful 'track' system. Why in the hell would I need to be constantly using alien technology to maintain a friggin railway?!?!

 

I finally found a mine for this stuff in Scotland after conquering the whole of Europe, and bear in mind that the whole time I had 0 of this resource I couldn't research or build or manufacture because it automaticaly shuts all that down... Nice...

 

The new BIG problem with this game though is that the research tree simply doesn't exist, it's just a random jumble of nonsense in whatever order the designers felt like placing it! I now have no ammunition for ANY weapon in my arsenal... That's from shotguns and rifles to lasers and launchers. I have dozens of firearms but not a single clip for any, and thanks to the utterly ridiculous R&D system, I can't obtain anymore either... Seriously? I'm able to build massive military and scientific installations on a barren world but my eggheads can't run me out a few clips of ammo for a bleedin' M4?

 

It's not even that it's hard to open up the research tree to build the ammo myself, it's that it just doesn't seem possible! The whole game thus far has been full of tutorials 13 pages long about how to move and shoot but NOWHERE does it explain how tracks work or what research needs to be done in order to mass produce weapons.

 

Is it just me, or should a tactical wargame place some sort of emphasis on WEAPONS that you need to win the game? In my opinion, altar spent too long poncing around with this intricate 'Base building simulator' to worry about things like actually having to kill your enemies. For God sake, they even failed to allow more than one resolution before they considered the game at an acceptable level to release! No WONDER there is so much wrong with this game! And people rip Apocalypse for being released prematurely!

 

Another massive confusion for me is the fact that my guys have now reached the point where they can knock out an alien with just a few rounds each (before they ran out of ammo of course...) but it seems to be utterly impossible for them to actually KILL an unconscious enemy. I just had all 5 (seriously WHY can I not have SEVEN!!?!?!) of my troops clustered around an unconscious Transgenant firing aimed shots at it and they ran out of ammo without killing it...

 

This might just be me, what with a military background and all, but once an enemy is lying at your feet unconscious and unarmed, one shot from any weapon should probably be enough to finish it off...

 

So if someone can tell me why it's impossible to kill unconscious enemies without dropping an A-bomb on them and how the hell I maintain ammo supplies I'd be very grateful. Frankly I'm entirely baffled by the whole thing and I kind of wish now that I'd just stopped playing after Aftermath and given the whole franchise an 'ok' rating. For those who are interested it's now dropped significantly to a 'wtf' rating...

 

And Eriss I'm really glad you can enjoy it, different games are of course for different people. One of the things I disliked about Aftermath was the complete lack of any tactical strategy on the players part. Just give the troopers good weapons, stand in a line and watch the kill count rise! In the missions where I've had ammo, that's been the same tactic here (now I have armour and good weps!) but although the foes seem to be putting up a much greater fight this time round it still lacks any kind of strategy element imo. It's just a 'go here, kill these, save the world' game, and anyone can follow simple instructions. The fun comes from writing your own rules and these games just don't seem to come with that option in mind.

[silencer_pl]

I think you should take few more breaths and relax. This game is good though it has some performance flaws that was never fixed - they did it in Afterlight which is even more hard.

 

To outline a few of my immediate peeves, weapons take forever to load and fire, we have 4 soldiers that we can't replace (not endlessly anyway) yet they start off with no protection and die almost instantly, the medikits don't heal 'permanent damage' so after a few seconds of waiting the guy will be stuck throughout the mission with a tiny sliver of life, and the whole base building/resource gathering and R&D aspect of the game is complete crap!

 

What - you want uber soldiers at start? Start is always the hardest and you start with few rebels that never hold a gun. The guns will fire faster when your soldier level up. It was the same in AM - soldiers with low agility and dexterity were slow at aiming, walking etc. I think you don't get the idea of sudden rebelion.

About the medkits - that is the medic skill for.... there wasn't permament dmg in aftermath - it is good now - soldier got injured and only special trained medics can heal your wounds. Are you able to fix you broken bone by using simple bandages?

 

The base building is not a crap - it limits your expansion. What, you want to have all the territory in 1h of gameplay ? Researches are divided into categories - more planing = bad ? Everything has its place

 

Pathfinding is actually worse in Aftershock than in Aftermath and for some reason the maximum resolution is tiny with virtually no ability to zoom out at all. The stupid constant pausing is back just like in Aftermath so I've already switched off everything but 'alien spotted' (because really what else matters??) Thing is, in this game you aren't even shown where that alien is when the game pauses, why not? That was a nice feature in Aftermath!

 

I think you are imagining things - the pathfinding is the same. You can zoom in zoom out just the same and as always on pause camera can auto target alien - maybe you have switched too many options off?

 

The 'cutscenes' if they can be called such, are just awful. Not only have the speeches been written by children, they've been read out by monosylabic morons. They look awful, sound rubbish and just don't fit into the game at all!

There have been worse releases.

 

I think I'm going to boot the thing up again and fast forward until I have some better weapons and armour for me boys. Sadly it takes over a day to produce 1 suit of the stuff so it'll be some time but hey I'm in no hurry. These mutants and Cyborgs have survived down here for 50 years (and destroyed the Biomass). In fact I wonder why it is exactly they can't beat the aliens when they so easily kick my arse every time we meet... Strange...

 

If such things irritate you - don't play Afterlight on Impossible - you will have to plan everything up 0.0001s to survive the 75% of the game. And I have even finished Impossible on the rebalanced mod that some one said it is impossible to play on impossible. Too bad that mod never got finished.

 

The new BIG problem with this game though is that the research tree simply doesn't exist, it's just a random jumble of nonsense in whatever order the designers felt like placing it! I now have no ammunition for ANY weapon in my arsenal... That's from shotguns and rifles to lasers and launchers. I have dozens of firearms but not a single clip for any, and thanks to the utterly ridiculous R&D system, I can't obtain anymore either... Seriously? I'm able to build massive military and scientific installations on a barren world but my eggheads can't run me out a few clips of ammo for a bleedin' M4?

 

There is a reaserch tree. Everything has its own category - weapons lab for weapons - energy labs for energy weapons, propulsion labs for spaceships etc. maybe you forgot to resaerch ammo somewhere and head straight for guns ?

 

Another massive confusion for me is the fact that my guys have now reached the point where they can knock out an alien with just a few rounds each (before they ran out of ammo of course...) but it seems to be utterly impossible for them to actually KILL an unconscious enemy. I just had all 5 (seriously WHY can I not have SEVEN!!?!?!) of my troops clustered around an unconscious Transgenant firing aimed shots at it and they ran out of ammo without killing it...

 

I'm guessing it is the flat fish some kind of alien - it is like firing at lobsterman with gauss - use laser on that fucking thing.

 

This might just be me, what with a military background and all, but once an enemy is lying at your feet unconscious and unarmed, one shot from any weapon should probably be enough to finish it off...

 

Too much X-Com grenade killing and I can say that in X-Com I couldn't kill stunned alien with anything except explosives (Apocalypse excluded).

 

So if someone can tell me why it's impossible to kill unconscious enemies without dropping an A-bomb on them and how the hell I maintain ammo supplies I'd be very grateful. Frankly I'm entirely baffled by the whole thing and I kind of wish now that I'd just stopped playing after Aftermath and given the whole franchise an 'ok' rating. For those who are interested it's now dropped significantly to a 'wtf' rating...

 

See above.

 

Reticulans - resistant to laser - anything else kills them fast

Flying stars (can't remember names) - kiled by everything - the problem is they are very accurate and deal heavy dmg - priorty target

Fish like mantas - very resistant to everything - kill with lasers.

Brainsomething alien - kill with anything

Human mutant - kill with anything

 

I am guessing that if you start fighting with cultist your head will explode because of the difficulty - and later you will probably throw the CD out of window because of one special defence mission

 

Also what I would like to say that AS isn't that broken at late game as AM was with stupid PSI. When you had like 75% of map and aliens had many bases + mostly you saw battleships - you could forget about weapons - you had to have psi weapons just to survive any base attack missions. I preferred to do any other thing than fighting this stupid crap. Not to mention deathbellows gallore.... In one open forest mission I had like 30 of them.... I had to like run run run run run run - shot, repeat about 100 times to get rid of them.

[Sunflash]

(PS You ARE patched up, right? There is a glitch with the energy cell research iirc.)

[Sgt. Strike]

The large base mod helps a little. Aside from that, tracks keep things flowing from one point to another, and keeps your bases going. Inland bases should have, with the mod, enough room to put in several things. Eventually you want to update some of the bases to research bigger and badder stuff. Manufacturing is key as well. Good manufacturing and research are key to the game, not how many territories you take over, at least at the start. The territories come in a little later. And you can buy new people soon enough. You just need the resources. The better your people, the better the people you can recruit.

[silencer_pl]

Actually the better your diplomatic relation with faction the better people you can get. Also hiring new people lowers a little your relation.

[NKF]

It certainly has its flaws, and can throw brick walls at you unexpectedly too. Still, give it a bit more time - and bear with the amazing repetitiveness of the missions (at least that's what I felt once I had built up a decent android pair).

 

One tip so that you don't pull your hair out in frustration (even more) when you meet the new weird aliens that come after the Wargots (this game's version of the Mutons): Keep some form of energy weapon in your team at all times. First time I met them, I thought the game was broken until I pulled out the stun guns!

 

- NKF

 

P. S: There is a reason why this game is called Aftershock. The shock comes towards the end. I'm using the term 'shock' rather loosely here, mind!

[ERISS]

Veteran, don't even try Afterlight: Aftershock if far more easy to learn than AL...

 

Maybe you should start a new game on the easier difficulty.

Or go DL and reading the good guide: https://forum.ufo-aftermath.com/index.php?showtopic=1862

 

Is your AS patched with 1.3? https://www.strategycore.co.uk/files/index.php?dlid=764

[Space Voyager]

Do not forget Okim's ACM mod!

[The Veteran]

Well the first thing I'm picking up this morning is that my game is NOT patched so that may help

 

I also managed to find a tech tree of sorts (here at StrategyCore!) but it's a garbled mess. Don't get me wrong, the guy that made it did a great job but it's just a really stupid tree... It brings me back to my comment that the designers focussed too much on diversifying in-base operations and so they have created new branches of the tree for no reason. Theres a human weapon branch, med branch, energy branch, implant branch, and who knows how many more! Not only that, most of the above also have 'advanced' versions of the lab needed for the research as well!

 

Anyway it seems I only need to spend another 5 days researching human weapons until I can build assault rifles which is nice... The tree goes 'Basic human weaponry' - 'Firearms' - Assault rifles'... I'm not being funny, but researching basic human weapons only allows manufacture of a pistol... What's the difference between a pistol and an assault rifle really? I mean, obviously mechanically a lot changes, but realistically I already HAVE assault rifles in my stores! I think I could personally reverse engineer an M4 in about half an hour (even without my training) so why do these retards take over a week to do the same job? I tell them I want some ammunition for my M4 and they tell me "fine but we'll have to research a few completely different things first" What? WHY!!!

 

On top of this, I seem to have encountered a bug with my tracking system, which as mentioned was broken for quite some time before I learned how to trade for my missing research. It now seems that my Paris base, which was building a basic weapons lab, has frozen construction with 2 hours to go. Even now it's connected up and the other R&D products are back on track it seems impossible to reboot this. I experimented with cancelling the construction and restarting it which somehow left me with 2 of the labs in Paris instead! Nevertheless it DID get the build progress moving again so kind of sorted the problem...

 

As for the tracks themselves, well yeah it would be fine if they were actually explained somewhere, all they need to do is say 'connect main bases with tracks to collect resources' I know if you have resource provinces without captured capitals they need tracks too but personally I've not been bothering as it's a lot of outgoing for minimal gain. I just take the capital instead

 

Still disliking the whole immortal unconscious thing (and they weren't the ray things, every unit in the game refused to die!) but shotguns seem to do the job nicely, lucky as they're all I have left! As for starting on an easier difficulty, it's not really the inherent challenge that's winding me up, more the lack of direction. And who said the beginning of the game should be hardest? That's not true, look at all similar games including the original X-Com titles. All were relatively easy right at the start with few incursions by the weakest, most poorly armed enemy. This gives players a chance to get used to the game mechanics and develop better weapons, armour and tactics before the tougher foes emerge mid-game. By late game it's generally got pretty easy again due to high tech levels and the like.

 

As for the mod? Thanks Space Voyager but no thanks! This following quote is why...

2. techtree was reworked to increase time which player needs to get basic firearms, grenades and other advanced weapons.

... Right...

 

Just patched to 1.3 but apparently I already had it to 1.2 so not too much changed.

 

Going to give it another go today and try to finally start building some friggin' ammo. The number of missions I'm missing right now is obscene, even the ones I go on don't seem to drop any good items. Just did a 'capture reticulan' mission and got 2 launchers, 5 lasers and only 1 energy clip... wtf...

[ERISS]

the designers focussed too much on diversifying in-base operations and so they have created new branches of the tree for no reason. Theres a human weapon branch, med branch, energy branch, implant branch, and who knows how many more! Not only that, most of the above also have 'advanced' versions of the lab needed for the research as well!

Play the game and you'll finally think the reverse.

 

Anyway it seems I only need to spend another 5 days researching human weapons until I can build assault rifles which is nice... The tree goes 'Basic human weaponry' - 'Firearms' - Assault rifles'... I'm not being funny, but researching basic human weapons only allows manufacture of a pistol... What's the difference between a pistol and an assault rifle really? I mean, obviously mechanically a lot changes, but realistically I already HAVE assault rifles in my stores! I think I could personally reverse engineer an M4 in about half an hour (even without my training) so why do these retards take over a week to do the same job? I tell them I want some ammunition for my M4 and they tell me "fine but we'll have to research a few completely different things first" What? WHY!!!

Because the game would be too easy. Play it and you'll think it too.

 

On top of this, I seem to have encountered a bug with my tracking system, which as mentioned was broken for quite some time before I learned how to trade for my missing research. It now seems that my Paris base, which was building a basic weapons lab, has frozen construction with 2 hours to go. Even now it's connected up and the other R&D products are back on track it seems impossible to reboot this. I experimented with cancelling the construction and restarting it which somehow left me with 2 of the labs in Paris instead! Nevertheless it DID get the build progress moving again so kind of sorted the problem...

You seem missing ressources to continue the research.

 

As for the tracks themselves, well yeah it would be fine if they were actually explained somewhere,

It's said in manual; and so in tutorials IIRC, you must carefully read it will help.

 

Still disliking the whole immortal unconscious thing (and they weren't the ray things, every unit in the game refused to die!) but shotguns seem to do the job nicely, lucky as they're all I have left!

Knives are usefull (no ammo spent, all my soldiers have one), if not already you should soon have one.

Unconscious are else dying, else going to get up again.

 

that's winding me up, more the lack of direction. And who said the beginning of the game should be hardest? That's not true,

You have a direction: Save the planet. Do what you can and you'll finally find your way.

 

look at all similar games including the original X-Com titles. All were relatively easy right at the start with few incursions by the weakest, most poorly armed enemy. This gives players a chance to get used to the game mechanics and develop better weapons, armour and tactics before the tougher foes emerge mid-game. By late game it's generally got pretty easy again due to high tech levels and the like.

No. i remember at least 2 XCOM were far more though than Aftershock. One was under water.

 

The number of missions I'm missing right now is obscene, even the ones I go on don't seem to drop any good items. Just did a 'capture reticulan' mission and got 2 launchers, 5 lasers and only 1 energy clip... wtf...

That's where the game is excellent: You have to think about what you do.

I play on the thoughest difficulty, and I lose very few missions (less than 10%).

[Sgt. Strike]

FA, first things first. Get the large base mod. You may have to start from scratch. Second, diversification is a good thing. Keep a couple spaces open for future development. Keep good relations with the factions you can. Any mission you can do to help them is a good one. You should be able to get more resources as time goes along. Keep in the black as much as you can, as well.

[Pete]

Some missions are a slog and the repetitiveness can get quite boring, but the game is great once you've played it til the end. Well, that's my opinion anyway.

 

The story unfolds into some weird and wonderful directions that you just don't get in Aftermath and certainly don't expect. Sure those directions might not make all that much sense, and I was maybe hoping for a bigger set of bad guys at the end of the game, but story-wise once the various elements unfold it's really pretty unique how they've done it and I applauded them for trying something that I'd not seen before. You'll have to play on to see what I'm talking about though.

 

Try and play it until the end if you can avoid the bugs (there was a rather large Wargot bug I heard lots of people encounter although I was fortunate enough to bypass that somehow).

[Azrael Strife]

I personally thought the game was boring as hell, the end missions are so stretched it's ridiculous; and once I got Assault Rifles, there was nothing I could not kill easily.

AM was far more entertaining and atmospheric, just my opinion anyway, not the worst game I've ever played, but should have been better considering the relatively good start they had with AM.

[ERISS]

I personally thought the game was boring as hell, the end missions are so stretched it's ridiculous;

That's one thing I like in this game. I'm lucky not being bored since.

 

and once I got Assault Rifles, there was nothing I could not kill easily.

That's why once we know the game, we must play in Super-Hero difficulty.

 

AM was far more atmospheric, , AS should have been better considering the relatively good start they had with AM.

Yeah, I was disappointed about this matter too. AS has worst mood (I don't say AM one was bad, it was very good).

 

AM was far more entertaining

Not in my taste, as AM had more boring sides: I remember I hated battles inside big UFOs, and difficulty before end game so I never finished an AM game. Ok, AS has not sky fighters chasing UFOs..

I think AS, with few missing features, has better remaining features than AM (so I prefer AS).

[The Veteran]

I'm pleased to see people pitching in their opinions from both sides of the fence, thanks for the replies everyone

 

I've now got a good hold on all of Europe and am spreading into Russia and the Americas. The only ammunition I had left after my last post was a handful of shotgun cartriges so I was forced to develop an ambush strategy to get through the few 'help' missions that sprung up while Assault rifle research was underway. I now have that finished along with sniper and shotgun research but, despite building a bunch of both snipers and assault rifles, I'm still sticking with shotguns. They deal massive damage if you can get into position without taking too many hits and they eradicate the problem I was having with killing unconscious enemies with energy weapons.

 

I know everyone's saying that assault rifles are the best weapon to have here but for now I'm sticking with the shotguns, they're good for most things as long as there's adequate cover to devise a good gameplan! I've just started encountering the Cultists now, 2 help missions to defend against them and I captured their first base yesterday too. Generally they aren't too tough but the heavily armoured humans are a pain to deal with at the moment. The ambush strategy still works for them but I can't rely on that forever!

 

In Aftermath I used 2 weapons for the whole game, snipers to start and plasmas to end. It made my squad untouchable as I could lay down serious firepower over a massive range. I'm in the process of building the last few sniper rifles on AS now so I'll field test them soon. What's the deal with needing an 'ordnance factory' to build ammunition by the way? Seriously, the weapon factory can't make bullets? What a joke!

 

And can someone tell me at what point I'll be allowed to field 7 troops instead of 5? I'm guessing I need to upgrade the drop pod or something as it's very small right now, I don't see any likely research leads for that though.

 

Anyway there's 10 days till the alien vessel arrives so I'm just trying to get my resources in order and such, still only got 2 alien resource sites though and I'm losing a LOT every hour. Luckily I can trade with the psionics for more but I wish I didn't have to rely on that...

 

Going to get back to it, I still much prefer Aftermath though, this game just starts off in a horrible way...

[Sgt. Strike]

Vet, I have to make this short and sweet. To enlarge the drop ship, so to speak, you need a Jet propulsion lab. I'd recommend two or three. However, you need a school and university to do it. This why I recommend the large base mod that's on here. If you have plenty of weapons, dial back on manufacturing those, and in fact take out a couple of the factories, but not all. Go down to like one or two. Add some more ordinance factories. I'd say the replace a weapons factory. I churn out a little ammo every round, but the weapons production is down. The Jet Propulsion Lab is needed even later in the game, but I won't spoil that too much, right now. But you will know when it's time. The important thing is weapon and ammo manufacturing.

 

I'll post more later.

[The Veteran]

Cheers Sarge, I actually figured this out in-game today as over the research topic for 'Jet Propulsion Lab' it tells you that it carries out research that will improve the drop pod! I'm now carrying out the research that will enlarge capacity which will be nice, only 1 lab for now though so 6 days to do it!

 

I now have a bunch of bases all over the place and have wiped out the cultists in N.America so now they're just in Egypt (on my way there now) and a few provinces near russia. I'm aware of the bug that occurs when all Cultist bases are captured too early and although I'm patched up to a point that it shouldn't matter, I think I'll leave one for now just in case

 

Much as I've enjoyed shotgun ambushes, I've now moved onto assault rifles and my God isn't it easier? What I said earlier about not needing tactics? Well you do with shotguns, but not anymore with assault rifles

 

Still really struggling for alien resources so am trading with psionics frequently but right now I have no missions to do for them so the diplomacy is stuck now. They need to be friendly to give me resources but I can only improve relations by sending them my own surplus. Seems stupid that there's no straight trade option that won't effect diplomacy to me...

 

Latest peeve with this game is the 'knowledge' feature, it's stupid and I can really understand why the large bases mod was created (I'm not using it though!) The idea that you have to build a library before a college is even more absurd, filling 2 spaces means half the base is wasted right from the start!

 

Still, I'm doing fine for now, my Cyborg team is just waiting for new research into implants to toughen them up a bit but the aliens are still 6 days away so it should be fine. We'll be ready for them!

[ERISS]

I'm aware of the bug that occurs when all Cultist bases are captured too early and although I'm patched up to a point that it shouldn't matter, I think I'll leave one for now just in case

There were the bug, but there is still an hidden feature: Leave forever the Cultists in a last one base (a poor if possible). If not, their belief will scatter and take you 3 random bases.

 

Still really struggling for alien resources

Where there is HighTek resources, fill the base with your best knowledge buildings (if you can afford).

 

The idea that you have to build a library before a college is even more absurd, filling 2 spaces means half the base is wasted right from the start!

You don't need required Knowledge PER building, you need a TOTAL knowledge for the greater requierment.

So, you need only one library to build how many colleges you want. When your colleges are built, you can destroy the Library as colleges will then fullfill the K requierment instead.

[The Veteran]

I know how the mechanics work, I'm just saying it's stupid that you should need to waste 2 build spots when the library is utterly pointless, you can even tear it down after a college is built so why waste time and resources in the first place?

 

As for the resources, I now have 4 alien resource sites in my possession and a 5th has just come up on the market. Sadly only 2 are currently connected and it'll take another 6 tracks to connect the others! I have a bunch of colleges in the capitals that have these mines though and that's helped cut my defecit from almost 50 down to just -13. When I capture this 5th one I'll be able to reach it with just 2 tracks but I'll still have to build up knowledge in the capital there to finally break even :s

 

I'd read about the reappearance of cultists if you completely eradicated them, had forgotten about it though Sadly, the only base they have left now is in Egypt, cutting off my aforementioned alien resource mines from being connected! I have a bunch of bases that aren't even connected yet so I may capture the Egypt base and save just before ending the mission. That way I can reload until they take worse bases and complete the supply chain in Africa.

[silencer_pl]

Just a warning Vet - don't go on cultist killing frenzy - if you will take out all their territory they will gain 3 new and it can be one of yours. So the safe place with cultist is to leave them 1 main base province and 1 sub province. Cultist are playing major part here and main story follows with them almost to the end.

[ERISS]

the library is utterly pointless, you can even tear it down after a college is built so why waste time and resources in the first place?

Because colleges without requierments would be too powerfull. The game is balanced for this.

The same way you could find idiot the rifles can't shoot further than 50m... Hey that's the game.. you have to believe in how its concepts are fleshed.

Someday you will be accustomed to the game and won't care about cork rifles and burning libraries..

[NKF]

I know everyone's saying that assault rifles are the best weapon to have here but for now I'm sticking with the shotguns, they're good for most things as long as there's adequate cover to devise a good gameplan!

 

I see you've already moved onto assault rifles, and yes they're jolly good, especially the one with the X in the name. But just to drop my experience in, I went early with an android specialising (I think as a ranger?) and concentrated on small firearms (for the shotguns). He ended up dual wielding SMG's and was just fantastic towards the end - the actual SMG brand didn't seem to matter after a while. Even dual laser pistols were tearing down most opponents. The other android I kept on the team specialised in heavy machineguns - and once he was trained up a bit I never looked back. Amazing weapons. Not overpowering on the same scale as Aftermath's deployable machineguns (and most of the other infinite-ammo deployable turrets), but still pretty good with amazing range. It reached a point these two guys were all I needed for most missions. Of course, they stuck around from the very beginning, so stat-wise it wasn't surprising.

 

- NKF