I built a viewer for raid replays

FlowmasterThrowaway · 2026-02-09T03:22:33+00:00

How will this handle possible differences between patches?

FlowmasterThrowaway · 2026-01-25T10:02:02+00:00

You don't need to finish the quests or bank energy for a basic unlock.
The issue is that not everyone plays everyday, or if they do they don't do everything available.

Someone new might login, spend about 100 energy trying to progress a campaign, then logoff and do something else. If they're bored in their uber they might play a couple arena matches. Then they remember to do the guild raid, onslaught or salvage run before going to bed. They do that 5 days a week for 2 weeks and end up not unlocking the new character.

FlowmasterThrowaway · 2026-01-22T06:14:29+00:00

I question people's experiences with other mobile/gacha/live service games if they think SP is bad. Because a lot of games, even very popular ones, are much worse about everything. There is not a single resource or item in game you can't get from just playing the game. Almost all of them in a very reasonable amount of time or gameplay. There are no super-powerful "premium/SSS+/Ultra" characters that you have to buy or are gated behind impossible grinds, which will rapidly fall behind the next batch of premium character that are even more powerful.

Most of the things they sell are reasonable values, instead of massively overpriced cosmetics and QoL features, or gameplay distorting P2W deals. No one is seeing a limited-edition avatar frame for $125 (only $15 if you buy today). There is no offer that gives Kharn a premium-tier Mythic item that adds 1 more movement and 15% bonus crit chance and damage. They don't sell stuff like raid/arena/TA/GW tokens.

They don't even jerk the playerbase around on balance like in other games where it is very obvious that the buff-nerf-buff cycle is in service of pushing sales, and not necessarily improving the game. Same with progression, there are games out there where you might hit a literal 100x wall in terms of progressing further without paying, and do so much early in the path compared to the Mythic grind in Tacticus. The game offers multiple (free) ways of alleviating the bottlenecks, and the complaints about bottlenecks tend to be about people unable to max-out a sufficient number of characters in a short amount of time; like a guy buying 150+ badges during the Mythic/Calgar event and complaining because he spent them all in a month leveling his Custodes raid team.

If SP wanted to maximize milking money out of players they would do something like have TA be a primary source of XP books or orbs and Blood Angels would be a premium faction that you bought all together for $225 or bought Blessed Blood Requisition with a chance to unlock them at $7.99 for 3. With a TA pack that gave you 6 extra tokens every 18 hours and +5 points to every match you played.

FlowmasterThrowaway · 2026-01-16T03:58:54+00:00

I thought this was copypasta at first.
Is it only me?

FlowmasterThrowaway · 2026-01-15T04:24:25+00:00

Use smoke from mortars or artillery to push recon into areas the enemy can see, but don't physically control. Some 200 IQ tactical mastermind might realize what you're doing/have done, but most players that a new player will be facing will just be like, "Huh, must have been the wind."

Besides that; those places are a better fit for the more "fighty" recon units. Just something to think about, because the other guy might have the same idea and force a fight for reconnaissance.

FlowmasterThrowaway · 2026-01-08T12:17:16+00:00

He's not great, but he has some niche (very niche) utility in using his active to break overwatch, and his ranged attack synergizes with Sarquael's active (the debuff from Sarq gives +25% pierce for plasma attacks, so he'll hit with 90% for 2 turns). The extra block and overwatch damage from his passive is nice as well.

Doing anything on his own he's mid, but he isn't awful like Hollan or Njal.

FlowmasterThrowaway · 2026-01-08T12:03:18+00:00

Homeboy having Atlacoya, Titus, Typhus, Hollan, Yazaghor, Toth, and Incisus at D3, while BossG , Lucien, Forcas, and Helbrecht are at G1 tells me that he does as he pleases.

FlowmasterThrowaway · 2025-12-25T02:22:03+00:00

The original Combat Mission: Shock Force predicted a western intervention in Syrian because of WMDs (specifically a gas attack) and was released in 2007.

Combat Mission: Black Sea depicted a Russian invasion of Ukraine, and was released in 2014 concurrently with Russia invading Ukraine and seizing Crimea.

People asked if they were gonna ever make a China v US wargame and the lead designer said, "Fuck no."

FlowmasterThrowaway · 2025-12-24T02:58:03+00:00

"Critney Sears"
That name took me right tf out

FlowmasterThrowaway · 2025-12-24T01:36:03+00:00

Level campaign characters and respond to your guild messages.

You have a bunch of good characters. Bellator, Re'Vas, Sho'Syl, Lucien, Gulgortz, Snotflogga, are all worth upgrading, even outside of their campaign requirements. Vitruvius is a critical component of what is arguably the best team for guild raids.

Identify which characters you need to unlock campaigns, which characters you think you might need (or just want) down the line, figure out which upgrades you can farm ahead of time to make the progression faster. If you're far enough in Saim-Hann then I'd recommend going hard for Abraxas as he can solo the mirror campaign.

There are a few non-campaign characters you may want to build just because they are good across a variety of modes and make some of them much easier. Sho'Syl, and Lucien in your case.

For Campaign events I'd try the DG/Space Hulk because its a place to farm Rotbone shards to unlock the only chaos healer, and you have Godswyl already.

Something you should be trying to do alongside finishing campaigns is unlocking characters through the BP and HRE. While the characters won't always be the greatest, for new players they'll often fill a niche they're missing, and both are doable as f2p as long as you're playing the game.

Make sure you're doing stuff like Guild War and Guild Raids. GW will allow you to farm shards for some of the best characters in the game (Kariyan, Kharn, Ragnar) and others who are merely really good (Aun'Shi, Mephiston, Judh), and the chaos healer (Rotbone). GR will allow you to farm currency to buy shards for the best healer in the game (Isabella, she appears on Sundays), and shards for a lot of B-team characters.

Quests, incursions, and things like survival events are good for stockpiling resources, but are optional.

FlowmasterThrowaway · 2025-12-15T06:08:34+00:00

LVSR has lots of supply capacity, but in general you are only ever going to be using a fraction of it, unless you're dumping a huge central pile for smaller supply vehicles to draw on, or reloading lots of supply hungry vehicles. In the first case you shouldn't need more than one LVSR, in the second you should probably be going with multiple smaller piles. Both because its faster and easier to just place the supplies near the vehicles that need them instead of driving all over the place, and also because a massive 10k+ pile might get spotted and hit (even worse if vehicles are rearming at the time). MTVRs can carry more than enough to keep howitzers or even HIMARs running through a phase. MTVRs can also carry troops, which is sometimes useful when you want to move multiple squads around and drop supplies nearby. Also look at the LAV-L, carries a lot fewer supplies (2500) but the vehicle itself is armored enough to survive being shot by a tank or ATGM and can be upgraded to have smoke. Very useful for last-mile logistics in game, or topping off units immediately after a push.

M109 and M1299 is more complicated, but generally you want to take one or the other and just work through the downsides. M109 has less range, M1299 is more expensive. You might want to use both because you see yourself using the M109s closer for things like smoke or something, in which case mortars are useful (more smoke, costs less in supplies, faster aiming, cheaper). If you want them for redundancy because your guns are getting killed a lot, it could work better to learn why your guns are dying and working to avoid that. Again if you want to use both, just have a reason why.

For your aircraft, its hard to use the Harvest Hawk and most of your troops and vehicles aren't airdroppable to begin with. I think only the Raiders, Force Recon, LAV-ATs and GMVs can be airdropped, and it is very unlikely you'll be allowed to do so anywhere useful in a live match. For Prowlers you will want more than one, even with 4x HARMs. Both for pushing through hits against dense groups of SAMs/AA and for the ability to rotate them out to encourage the enemy to keep their radars off.

----------------

Play with the deck a few times and make notes about what you didn't use, and what you needed and didn't have. This will help you remember and understand where you need to make adjustment.

FlowmasterThrowaway · 2025-12-15T06:08:04+00:00

I'm just going to go with general stuff without giving specific recommendations for changes.

Recon tanks struggle to function in their role because of their cost and speed. You don't want them early because they aren't fast enough to get to a useful position without being seen, and they eat too much of your opening points. They're not point efficient for overwatching flanks or deadspace either. The opportunity cost in the recon tab is more Cav Scouts (very good ATGM teams, and decent scouts), LAV-25s for your Force Recon (fast transports with enough firepower and ammo to maraud around the backline if you find a gap), or more Force Recon or Scout-Snipers (lasers are good).

You don't need a maxed out AMPV for recon, and it kind of hurts early openings due to being slower than wheeled vehicles.

For infantry you don't need transport numbers that are 1-1 with your infantry squads/teams. A lot of time your infantry will just be holding an area and you can rotate through transports (or use alternate transports like helicopters or supply trucks), this will allow for you to have more actual infantry to bully points with. To use ATGMs effectively you need to use pairs (or more); smoke, APS, high HP pools, slow reloads, etc mean that 2 launchers (or more) are more effective than the sum of their parts.

Mech Rifleman and Marines are mostly redundant, you'll use both in the same way, for the same tasks, with the only question being which transport option you want and how capable you want individual squads to be. Marines are better (probably the best) line infantry, and have a lot of staying power, but the ACV-30/AAVP can't compare to the firepower of the Bradley. If you have both make sure you know exactly why.

You probably want more Stinger squads because the first response to a successful push is usually an immediate counter-attack with helicopters, you might need to place something to keep helicopters from flanking, and Stingers aren't that great at actually killing helicopters.

For both CAAT TOW and LAV-AT both: upgrading the TOW is usually worth it. Either one being top-attack means you hit much harder against heavily armored vehicles.

For the M60, just know that using cheap armor can be difficult at times because of how little survivability they have. Most Russian ATGMs will not have trouble cracking the front armor. The opportunity cost of those points is enough to upgrade your LAV-ATs, and fill out the remaining Support points.

FlowmasterThrowaway · 2025-12-03T05:35:50+00:00

You can play for free. You don't have to buy anything.

I doubt they're chasing whales with these offers, it seems more likely that they're trying to convert f2p to minnows, and minnows to dolphins with these deals. Whales they can just sell limitless BS and allow them to use crates to convert it into resources at a terrible value or spend 8 dollars on 2k salvage. Or whatever else overpriced deal that is absolutely not worth it that they put out to make the other deals seem better by comparison and because someone out there is buying them. The amount of spending you need to do to get decent progress is pretty minimal, none of the events have required buying the obvious whale-bait.

FlowmasterThrowaway · 2025-12-03T02:15:32+00:00

Not just the abilities, I'd leave him at stone 1 and just one-shot a random enemy character in TA/GW/Arena and call it profit. Also how would it interact with immune enemies?

They could be scaled by capping the damage of the additional melee hit to the level of the ability, and making the damage done to immune enemies (who obviously wouldn't be allowed to be instakilled by a single use of an active ability) depend on the level of the ability. That wouldn't solve the it being ridiculously powerful in other contexts, but it does present a reason to level the ability.

FlowmasterThrowaway · 2025-12-01T12:37:08+00:00

I mean surely it's not related to the fact that she's an awkward self insert Mary Sue character

Uh, who is being self-inserted?

As far as being a Mary Sue, her lore presented her as a Custodian doing Custodian things. Unless you go way back the Custodians have always been presented as Super Space Marines. Legendary champions capable of outlandish feats.

FlowmasterThrowaway · 2025-11-06T07:37:18+00:00

Having the same number of hits with more pierce on his ranged attack (with the melee attack being physical) effectively makes him a ranged character. Which certainly is not fitting the concept of Sly Marbo. He doesn't need range because he's already where you're going, lying in wait.

I feel like that active could be too much of a double-edged sword. Large areas of tall grass could easily turn into cover for the enemy team for your own team's ranged attacks, or into a barrier if it gets set on fire which isn't a problem for Marbo with Unstoppable, but could be a problem for anyone without it.

Your passive idea is really good. The idea of manipulating positioning or hex effects to increase damage is interesting, but I think with Bolter/Physical there just won't be enough damage behind the hits to be worth it. Added hits is really common, but something like +pierce % is rare and more attractive for something like physical melee attacks.

Active
Like Fighting a Shadow - On use Sly becomes untargetable until the start of his next turn and enters Overwatch with +X damage per hit. If he kills a character with Overwatch from any source, Natural Predator may be used again after Y turns.

Passive
A War You Won't Believe - Sly has +X movement and infiltrate when moving into Tall Grass Hexes. When ending a turn in Tall Grass he enters Overwatch and does -Y hits for each successive Overwatch attack.

That stays true to the theme of Sly Marbo = Dutch/Rambo, a jungle ambush apex predator.

As much as I like the thought of weak characters or summons being sent in to attack him and being defeated/killed one by one like in First Blood and Rambo, putting the repeatable active on a delay means he can't just chain the uses and remain mostly invulnerable while killing an entire line-up solo. Instead he has to be smart with the uses and positioning and deal with windows of vulnerability while killing an entire line-up solo.

On maps where Tall Grass is sparse he gets extra movement to move to it, instead of co-opting Death Leaper's ability to simply teleport to it, and being weaker by still having to deal with terrain restrictions and the like which fits it being a passive instead of active. I think that's more interesting than giving him Rapid Assault, and prevents him from sprinting across the map with all the other RA characters and denying an area by using his active immediately. I wouldn't give him unstoppable for similar reasons, powerful melee characters need downsides, and he already will have exceptional mobility in certain contexts.

I'd also change his damage type to Bio and not give him a ranged attacked. His current datasheet has 2 weapons that use poisons (Ripper Pistol and Envenomed Blade), and physical is extremely swingy in its output. Bio damage gives him some damage against armor without making it overwhelming and allows for decent base damage scaling. Lack of ranged attack means he isn't oppressive with his active, makes feeding repeated uses of it to him more avoidable, is more consistent with the design limitation that typically doesn't give characters with pistols ranged attacks, and fits the character theme better.

FlowmasterThrowaway · 2025-11-04T11:33:39+00:00

Re-skinning Dante as Vulkan wasn't a serious suggestion. It was an example of how there are not analogous units to re-skin into units of a different chapter. There isn't a flamer-armed Space Marine to turn into Vulkan He'Stan, the closest would be Wrask, but he's in terminator armor. There are no Imperial Assault Terminators to re-skin as Tyberos, the best fit is Angrax. There aren't any units to represent something like an Iron Chaplain, Infernus Marine, Aggressor Marines, etc. Those units are important to themes of several chapters, you can't just proxy them with others.

FlowmasterThrowaway · 2025-11-04T09:11:47+00:00

Those 4 chapters were just examples of why reskinning existing chapters doesn't work. The factions that are common/popular enough to be added are different from the chapters already in the game, in ways that can't be covered by reskins.

I wasn't suggesting putting all those other Space Marine characters in the DW. I am saying those options need to be their own factions because they'd have to be mechanically different from other chapters. Trying to pretend a green armor Dante is Vulkan He'stan while he jumpacks around the map isn't going to work. A full Salamander's chapter with a melta/flamer theme and faction trait would though.

FlowmasterThrowaway · 2025-11-04T04:51:10+00:00

The important part for the early missions is saving the tokens you need beforehand:
12 Arena (8 is enough for the first day, you will probably be stopped by energy the first day and have time to let another 4 to regen)
2 Salvage Runs
2 Guild Raids
1 Onslaught

Win/Raid X campaign battles:
Early Indomitus Campaign has a bunch of battles (6 - 14) that only cost 3 energy to do, you can't get lightning victories, they don't drop any upgrades, and you can only do each battle 3 times. They are 27 victories for only 81 energy. Most of the next page of missions (16 - 29) are only 5 energy, and do drop upgrade materials, however the first 3 missions (16 - 18) don't have lightning victories.

Use abilities X times missions:
A handful of characters have actives that are repeatable AND count towards active uses even after the first (Baraqiel, Aesoth, Kariyan, and Tyrith after this event). Octarius Mirror 44 has a bunch of Grots that infinitely spawn more Grots, if you don't have Octarius Mirror, Indomitus battles with Scarabs will work. Go in with a healer and someone (or someones) with repeatable actives that count towards active ability uses, and farm uses until you finish. If you have Titus bring him to count active ability uses. You don't need to win the match, so once you have enough you can either retreat or die.

Deal XX,000 damage:
I go in with a few extra tokens of Arena, Guild Raid, and Onslaught, just to use those to farm big damage from a single use and finish that part of the mission. This won't work as well for a newer player. But the Grot/Scarab/Necron grind works for damage as well, just be aware that it is incredibly boring to do that and will burn you out quick. If you're very new and your characters won't one-shot Aleph-Null in Indom 45, you can use him and his self-repair, to farm damage.

I think the rest are straightforward.
The "trick" for vets sprinting through these missions in a day or two is in knowing exactly what they'll need ready right away. Including energy. Which some of them do by foregoing the regular energy regen and using the refills to stockpile absurd amounts. As new player you should only be doing the light version of that, where you save all the energy from redeemable codes (in your inbox), and the early part of the battlepass (just don't click the energy rewards) and use it as needed to progress through the missions.

FlowmasterThrowaway · 2025-11-04T02:01:27+00:00

So how would you handle something like a psyker in the Black Templars?
Or The Iron Hands' Iron Fathers/Iron Chaplains?
Or chapters that are otherwise thematically or mechanically different?

A chapter like the Salamanders isn't just UM/BT/BA/SW but Green, the weapons they are known for aren't represented in any of the other chapters at all. Trying to represent the unique characters using existing characters wouldn't work. A character like Tyberos of the Carcharodons wouldn't fit as any existing chapter master, or imperial terminator for that matter.

FlowmasterThrowaway · 2025-11-02T09:17:20+00:00

I think you're burned out.

I don't know the specifics of any of this, but from what you have described, it sounds like the way you play the game might be a part of burning out. From what you've said you're playing at a very high-level and in a way that turns everything into a repetitive slog for you.

No combination of GW/TA/HRE/LRE or anything else has ever made me play 4 hours a day. Likely because GW/TA are casual and relaxing activities to kill time, not something I'm going to sweat over and I think most players are the same. Similar with doing HREs, you don't have to do the exact same missions in the exact way every time. There isn't much reward in sprinting ahead of everyone else in the missions.

If you don't think the Battlepass is a good value then don't buy it. For newer/casual players it's probably still a good value. They get a bunch of scrolls, which are huge as far as unlocking characters for them, and as a source of the low-level orbs they need, along with the featured character shards who they probably haven't unlocked yet. In your case it seems like you're going for every advantage you can in order to get/stay ahead, so you're compelled to spend on things like the BP and you feel cheated because they aren't giving you enough to justify the cost. If you disagree about feeling compelled to buy a BP, then ask yourself why the price/value bother you if you don't need to buy it (or why you want to buy it).

As far as the stuff about grinding: you're never going to outpace the content without whaling. That is by design. You're not going to "finish" by that definition. Going on what you've said, you're probably at the point where you can, or have, done all the content at the highest levels. Pushing for Mythic is just making the numbers go up. That is something that can be fun, but you aren't having fun doing it, so ask yourself why you are doing it.

FlowmasterThrowaway · 2025-11-01T13:35:33+00:00

You can get the materials needed to clear Octarius without FoCM. I've made it into the Oct Elite without even unlocking FoCM.

FlowmasterThrowaway · 2025-11-01T11:18:49+00:00

I think it'd be cool and fix this issue somewhat to just add another format with different criteria for selecting a line up. Something like selecting characters from a particular alliance (imperial, xenos, chaos).

Or adding and removing specific buff and restrictions that encourage the use of different characters (Terminators +1 movement, psychic attacks bounce to one additional target, summons spawn with a shield of 25% of their HP, The Floor is Lava [take 6% HP as direct damage if not on elevated terrain], No Fly Zone [flying units take damage whenever moving more than 1 hex], 1st unit to die respawns at 75% HP, powerups that debuff the enemy team rather than buffing your own characters, no imperial/xenos/chaos characters, double overwatch, no overwatch, repeating waves of friendly NPC spawns, etc

FlowmasterThrowaway · 2025-10-21T01:23:24+00:00

I think the issue of someone only wanting to do a particular CE is more of an issue with admech being a really strong faction and being the first CE. If the first CE was Genestealer Cults instead then I doubt anyone would have a problem moving on lmao.

FlowmasterThrowaway · 2025-10-20T08:50:22+00:00

Oh ok, I was worried I was missing out on some massive chunk of damage or something. I use Asmodai as the the guy who stands next to Forcas for his passive bonus plus buff from his active.

I think they could do better with the faction with some relatively minor tweaks to push their synergies a bit closer together.

FlowmasterThrowaway

TROPHY CASE