I tried rushing the gene lab and doing that instead of MECs.
To support this, I even went into the .ini and edited the costs of gene mods, since they're flat out overpriced in every way - tank time, fatigue add, and meld/money cost - given that they're such minor and situational upgrades that only help one soldier.
Muscle fiber density is super neat on assaults, especially your Exalt Covert Ops agent, and adrenal is cool - but they just aren't impactful enough for what you give up - even with my 33% nerfs across the board.
It was fun as a challenge, but if you're playing Impossible Ironman you can't always afford such challenges.
I think the only way that they would truly be comparable is if you could get good upgrades much earlier and much more cheaply - like a rush where you could have your whole team getting kitted out in May with impactful upgrades such as Adrenal Neurosympathy and Muscle fiber.
Even then I'm not sure, but as it stands they're just completely obliterated by the strength of other tech rushes, and are just a "nice to have" late in the game.
Yeah, the gene mods never looked that great to me and I've never gone down that road.
That being said, other experienced players use them and so they must be pretty good. Based on some reddit comments. I think the main advantage of gene mods is in creating bio-tanks which benefit greatly from the adaptive bone marrow and iron skin mods. The thing is, these mods by themselves are not sufficient, but with other skills/equipment you can really stack enough DR on an Assault/Gunner to create the only real tanks in the game. With Iron Skin (1), Reinforced Armor(1), Psi Screen(1), Will to Survive(1.5), Low Cover(.66), Titan Armor(0.5), your biotank will have DR of 5.66, then after being hit once, Damage Control will proc on the Titan Armor, granting another 1.5 DR, taking the Assault to 7.16 DR. Which seems really good, especially with the Resilience perk preventing Critical Hits.
Having psi support can help heal up the tank (Regen Biofield) or add even more DR (Mind Merge). And maybe there are even more ways to stack DR that I am unaware of.
The big problem I have with this build is that it relies on pulling aggro, presumably by getting really close to the enemy, which can lead to getting flanked, and is also hard to do given the low mobility from Titan Armor and Reinforced Armor (though this can be mitigated by taking Sprinter). But this soldier doesn't require too much investment and can still be extremely effective offensively.
I tried rushing the gene lab and doing that instead of MECs.
To support this, I even went into the .ini and edited the costs of gene mods, since they're flat out overpriced in every way - tank time, fatigue add, and meld/money cost - given that they're such minor and situational upgrades that only help one soldier.
Muscle fiber density is super neat on assaults, especially your Exalt Covert Ops agent, and adrenal is cool - but they just aren't impactful enough for what you give up - even with my 33% nerfs across the board.
It was fun as a challenge, but if you're playing Impossible Ironman you can't always afford such challenges.
I think the only way that they would truly be comparable is if you could get good upgrades much earlier and much more cheaply - like a rush where you could have your whole team getting kitted out in May with impactful upgrades such as Adrenal Neurosympathy and Muscle fiber.
Even then I'm not sure, but as it stands they're just completely obliterated by the strength of other tech rushes, and are just a "nice to have" late in the game.
Yeah, the gene mods never looked that great to me and I've never gone down that road.
That being said, other experienced players use them and so they must be pretty good. Based on some reddit comments. I think the main advantage of gene mods is in creating bio-tanks which benefit greatly from the adaptive bone marrow and iron skin mods. The thing is, these mods by themselves are not sufficient, but with other skills/equipment you can really stack enough DR on an Assault/Gunner to create the only real tanks in the game. With Iron Skin (1), Reinforced Armor(1), Psi Screen(1), Will to Survive(1.5), Low Cover(.66), Titan Armor(0.5), your biotank will have DR of 5.66, then after being hit once, Damage Control will proc on the Titan Armor, granting another 1.5 DR, taking the Assault to 7.16 DR. Which seems really good, especially with the Resilience perk preventing Critical Hits.
Having psi support can help heal up the tank (Regen Biofield) or add even more DR (Mind Merge). And maybe there are even more ways to stack DR that I am unaware of.
The big problem I have with this build is that it relies on pulling aggro, presumably by getting really close to the enemy, which can lead to getting flanked, and is also hard to do given the low mobility from Titan Armor and Reinforced Armor (though this can be mitigated by taking Sprinter). But this soldier doesn't require too much investment and can still be extremely effective offensively.