Zetor
Arcane
I wonder if the new (from DFDC) system of cover/armor has actually made combat overly predictable and thus too simplistic. I did a test a while ago: I ran my dudes into the center of the cargo ship in Whistleblower on Hard, and passed a single turn -- three of them got absolutely wrecked by SMG / rifle / spell crits. Then I reloaded, set everyone up at obviously 'good' cover positions, and defeated the same encounter with almost zero damage to my team following the simple algorithm of "focus fire the most exposed enemy while staying in med+ cover".
I prefer my TB tactics games relying as little on the RNG as possible (hi Telepath Tactics!), but the nu-XCOM style design tends to go the other way: lean on RNG to provide combat variance. Problem is, if you eliminate almost all unpredictability from your combat system, you're going to get dull by-the-numbers gameplay. This CAN be salvaged by good encounter design (Whistleblower two-way fight is one, and the mage fight in Wuxing tower is another, mostly because AOE spells don't care about cover), but HK is pretty lacking in this area compared to DF. Other things that could work include making most cover objects have their own HP and thus be destructible (can be done via scripting, but it's a huge pain), or making the AI a bit less brain-dead and actually have some semblance of team tactics -- even if it's just "geek the mage first".
I prefer my TB tactics games relying as little on the RNG as possible (hi Telepath Tactics!), but the nu-XCOM style design tends to go the other way: lean on RNG to provide combat variance. Problem is, if you eliminate almost all unpredictability from your combat system, you're going to get dull by-the-numbers gameplay. This CAN be salvaged by good encounter design (Whistleblower two-way fight is one, and the mage fight in Wuxing tower is another, mostly because AOE spells don't care about cover), but HK is pretty lacking in this area compared to DF. Other things that could work include making most cover objects have their own HP and thus be destructible (can be done via scripting, but it's a huge pain), or making the AI a bit less brain-dead and actually have some semblance of team tactics -- even if it's just "geek the mage first".