Xcom 2

[Cikomyr]

I asked my friends what kinds of soldier they wanted named after them. They found out hacker was a type.

My army is going to be like, 75% computer engineers, I guess?

Buy lots of Skull jacks. Keep hacking everything you see.

[Dienekes]

I asked my friends what kinds of soldier they wanted named after them. They found out hacker was a type.

My army is going to be like, 75% computer engineers, I guess?

Lucky for me, my friends are: a nurse, a computer engineer, a guy who likes swords, a chemical engineer who likes explosives, and a guy who loves archery and generally plays assassin types.

[Hunter Noventa]

I'm going to spend the entire evening making the casts of Super Robot Wars Original Generation and Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha in my character pool, I just know it.

Because why NOT have Sanger Zonvolt smiting evil while Nanoha takes out packs with the Divine Buster? (There is a psi attack that is basically Divine Buster, and if I had the skills, I'd make a voice pack just to put that in when you use it)

[Drasius]

A Ranger with the ability to remain cloaked after everyone else reveals themselves as well as become cloaked again 1/mission is nice in conjunction with a pair of long watch snipers as long as there's no time limit. The ranger goes for a stroll and the snipers brutalise anything they have LoS to from the highest vantage point you can get.

The AI seems to know where all your dudes are though, since I've had vipers snatch guys through 40 ft high cliffs without them ever seeing the dudes appoaching. That's pretty silly.

After playing a bunch more, I still don't like the amount of timed missions. If you're going to create a game that's incredibly deadly, rushing players is not much fun.

My wounded pool is growing rapidly (been down to just rookies more than once), my star Ranger is shaken (and gravely wounded) and I've not got enough scientists, engineers, power or resources but at least I haven't lost anyone yet.

Also, I've not had a single psychic power fail to affect my dudes. Has anyone successfully resisted an enemy psy power?

Also also, my team is made up of an oddly large % of women. I haven't created anyone at all and my roster's literally 3 guys and 17 women. Not complaining, just thought that it was odd enough to mention.

[factotum]

My complaint is less missing the percentages and more that an enemy which is not moving, does not know I'm there, and is in the wide open in broad daylight...has as 60% hit rate to begin with.

Problem is, it's a turn-based game. Just because the enemy is not moving during its turn doesn't mean it's not actually moving--if the game were real time that guy might be ducking around all over the place! Plus, the guy doing the shooting might have been effectively sprinting in heavy armour and would thus have a heart rate of 180+ and be gasping for breath, neither of which are conducive to good aim.

[Cikomyr]

Also also, my team is made up of an oddly large % of women. I haven't created anyone at all and my roster's literally 3 guys and 17 women. Not complaining, just thought that it was odd enough to mention.

I think thats your fault for adding the entire historical cast of America's Next Top Model to your pregen pool of character

[MCerberus]

So work's winding down, recheck Amazon for delivery status

Still out for delivery.
Since 6 AM

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[5ColouredWalker]

My complaint is less missing the percentages and more that an enemy which is not moving, does not know I'm there, and is in the wide open in broad daylight...has as 60% hit rate to begin with. I mean, I assume that my guns will get more accurate as I upgrade them and my troops will get more accurate as well, but that still seems kinda absurd.

No, that's ok, not bad.
Bad is that when your rookies are standing right next to something, they can sometimes only have a 80% hit chance.
Dafuq?

Also, I rage-quit last night. Did the first plot based mission outside of the start, because the way things were going it looked like I'd lose within 3 months to something other than playing poorly.
Guess who get's MEC's, Mutons and other high tier dudes in month two while I've got Rank 2 Soldiers and don't have Magnetic Weapons due to having no clue how to get alloys?

[Drasius]

I think thats your fault for adding the entire historical cast of America's Next Top Model to your pregen pool of character

Considering that I did not and still have not touched the character generator, I don't think that's what caused it. Just good old X-Com and the random number generator having fun.

Also, I rage-quit last night. Did the first plot based mission outside of the start, because the way things were going it looked like I'd lose within 3 months to something other than playing poorly.
Guess who get's MEC's, Mutons and other high tier dudes in month two while I've got Rank 2 Soldiers and don't have Magnetic Weapons due to having no clue how to get alloys?

Yeah, that mission is rough. Not sure if I lucked out on my starting position or enemy deployment, but after the initial chaff clearing, my pair of snipers simply sat up the top of the starting building and squadsight/longwatched everything down one side of the map as my concealed ranger crept forward. Since everyone was out in the open, the crits were flowing freely and the combination of no cover and height advantage negated the overwatch and squadsight penalty. I think there's ~24 enemies in that mission and I'd wager my snipers accounted for ~20 of them.

[SlyGuyMcFly]

I think I may just have stabilised this campaign. Playing Honestman Commander, now in May. Got Predator Armour, Mag weapons and North America is mine all mine. I've stopped losing soldiers on missions now that I have a core group of levelled badasses and I now have a few Engineers after the awful RNG-induced shortage of the early months. 3 pips before the doom ticker starts the countdown and 3 areas to contact before I can get another Facility mission though, so the pressure is still high. I've had terrible luck there. NA start, first facility is all the way over in Egypt and the only other one I know of is in Australia. I really need some more leads, pronto.

So work's winding down, recheck Amazon for delivery status

Still out for delivery.
Since 6 AM

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Hang in there buddy!

Also, I've not had a single psychic power fail to affect my dudes. Has anyone successfully resisted an enemy psy power?

During the Blacksite mission I got a triple-Sectoid pod with a slightly awkward activation that left two of them alive. One tried to space-voodoo my Gunslinger and got zilch for its effort. She was my highest rank soldier on that mission at Lieutenant.

Yeah, that mission is rough. Not sure if I lucked out on my starting position or enemy deployment, but after the initial chaff clearing, my pair of snipers simply sat up the top of the starting building and squadsight/longwatched everything down one side of the map as my concealed ranger crept forward. Since everyone was out in the open, the crits were flowing freely and the combination of no cover and height advantage negated the overwatch and squadsight penalty. I think there's ~24 enemies in that mission and I'd wager my snipers accounted for ~20 of them.

Yeah, Blacksite is no walk in the park. I didn't have any Rangers (I agree that Sneaky Rangers best Rangers) up for that mission so I exploded all the things with a pair of Grenadiers and mopped up with two Sharpshooters. The Specialist mostly sat back throwing Aid Protocols, hacking Turrets. He did almost one-shot a MEC with his Combat Protocol, which was cool to see. Worked out nicely, all in all. I waited for Predator Armour and Mag Weapons for my Grenadiers before attempting it though, which was a major factor in beating the mission with no casualties. I think I had 4/5 wounded at the end.

Also, I rage-quit last night. Did the first plot based mission outside of the start, because the way things were going it looked like I'd lose within 3 months to something other than playing poorly.
Guess who get's MEC's, Mutons and other high tier dudes in month two while I've got Rank 2 Soldiers and don't have Magnetic Weapons due to having no clue how to get alloys?

Alloys (and Elerium) seem to be fairly RNG-dependant. The surest way to get them is excavating the Avenger, but that nets you pretty small amounts. You can also buy them at the Black Market but I think they're not guaranteed to be in stock. Otherwise random Geoscape events may offer them and Supply Raid missions can net you a very tidy amount. I got about 80 alloys, 50 Elerium and 150 Supplies from the last one I did.


EDIT: So I had a quick look at the Steam Workshop before heading to bed. Aside from the three LWS mods we now have the ability to freely rotate the camera, wear top hats, and use a small Corgi as a gun (the ACORG-47).

[Teln]

The guys over at Nexus Forums just launched their Xcom 2 site, and the Nexus Mod Manager's been made fully compatible.

[Hiro Protagonest]

No, that's ok, not bad.
Bad is that when your rookies are standing right next to something, they can sometimes only have a 80% hit chance.
Dafuq?

That happens to me pretty often when I play FPS games.

[5ColouredWalker]

Alloys (and Elerium) seem to be fairly RNG-dependant. The surest way to get them is excavating the Avenger, but that nets you pretty small amounts. You can also buy them at the Black Market but I think they're not guaranteed to be in stock. Otherwise random Geoscape events may offer them and Supply Raid missions can net you a very tidy amount. I got about 80 alloys, 50 Elerium and 150 Supplies from the last one I did.

Hmm, that'd be the one I decided to bug out on because I had to deal with multiple Vipers with a 4 man squad and not doing Ranger/Squadsight cheese.
Every turn with them, I have them either move and shoot, pull and grab, or fail a pull and spit poison. Two of those 3 options give them garunteed damage every turn and disables a soldier on that turn, and the only garunteed damage I have can be used twice per mission which doesn't come with a disable.

[thorgrim29]

Oh so Vancouver is in the Western US now eh? It's personal.

[RagingKrikkit]

Welp, finally time to plug in that $1000 rig I bought off a coworker six months ago, the laptop I've been running forever is technically running XCOM 2, but at sub-30 fps on minimum settings. Honestly I'm not really surprised, though, this being the first current gen AAA game I've put on it.

[Rodin]

Oh so Vancouver is in the Western US now eh? It's personal.

Evidently, the U.S. used the war with the aliens as an excuse for a smash and grab.

As I've leveled up and gotten better guns, my complaints about accuracy have gone away. My guys can now hit a guy walking across an open field, and after chasing a Sectoid hither and yon my Sharpshooter was able to stroll up behind it, place her pistol against its head and say "Dodge this."

...Of course, my guys still manage to miss 80% shots when it's absolutely CRUCIAL that they do not, but XCom's gotta XCom.

My only real remaining complaint is with the GUI, and mostly because it hasn't improved from the original. Is it so hard to get 2nd floors of buildings to show up properly? Whose idea was it to have right click remove you from the Geoscape when "right click and drag" is one of the more common ways of navigating map screens? Grenade placement is still often a case of finding the pixel where you can hit the target at max range, where putting the wrong pixel drags it back out of range. Doors can apparently be seen through AND shot through, even though they're closed and made of steel. There's just a lot of really squirrelly stuff.

The improvements to everything else though...my God. They made the Geoscape fun again, and did it in a way totally different from the original while still keeping the same spirit. The classes actually feel different from each other now, rather than just the "Sniper, Rocket Launcher, Shotgun, Medic" that we used to have. The base building is fun and there isn't the irritating level of micro-management that I felt from the previous game. I don't miss Interceptors one bit (though I still miss the music from the original Enemy Unknown). They also seem to have managed to make the game feel very "Long War-like" without making it super difficult - I typically have a couple guys wounded per mission, and they're out for a long time. Harder missions are near guaranteed to have a trooper make the ultimate sacrifice, but it does FEEL like that - I traded a soldier's life for the greater good, rather than the massacres that had me throwing my keyboard across the room in Long War.

[ex cathedra]

My only real remaining complaint is with the GUI, and mostly because it hasn't improved from the original.

my only real complaint is the ~5 second delay that occurs after every action. game speed is soooo slowwww

[thorgrim29]

So I might be a bit slow but I can't upgrade guns even though I researched the modular weapon tech. Do I have to wait until class II guns?

[5ColouredWalker]

Oh so Vancouver is in the Western US now eh? It's personal.

Let's do one better.

Beijing in the New Arctic...
That's right, the capital of China is now in eastern Russia.

[Farix]

So I might be a bit slow but I can't upgrade guns even though I researched the modular weapon tech. Do I have to wait until class II guns?

Its under to Edit -> Weapon Customize tabs when you're kitting up for a mission. You permanently attach various mods that you snag on missions to a character's gun. Can't remove, but can replace, and they do carry over when upgrading weapon tiers.

[Hiro Protagonest]

This game is amazing. I can do this without mods.

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[Vitruviansquid]

Well heck... I've been finding this game impenetrably difficult on Commander until I realized to just stop bringing rookies.

In Xcom 1, I got in the habit of bringing one or two rookies on every early game mission so I wouldn't need to have many of them once the game got more difficult. In Xcom 2, there's simply no need for using rookies at all because you can get the ability to train them up into a class of your choice. In fact, it's more desirable to control how your rookies advance than to put them in a mission and have them randomly promote.

This also makes the game much more fun because, honestly, rookies were just The Worst.

[Drasius]

One of my pregen heavies came with guile hair and looks to match. This pleased me far more than it should have. He is now kitted out for maximum boom of course.

[Rodin]

One of my pregen heavies came with guile hair and looks to match. This pleased me far more than it should have. He is now kitted out for maximum boom of course.

I don't trust the guys with the classic UFO Defense hairstyle. I had two of those guys, and they were 2 of the 3 in that firing squad that managed to totally whiff. One of them missed by pointing his gun directly at the alien's head from 1 foot away, then throwing his gun wildly to the side so the spray went over its shoulder.

I suspect collaboration with the enemy. Fortunately, the aliens executed him for how incompetently he hid it.

The other guy got "captured". Yeah, sure he did. "Debriefed" is the term you're looking for there, bub.

[Dienekes]

Well heck... I've been finding this game impenetrably difficult on Commander until I realized to just stop bringing rookies.

In Xcom 1, I got in the habit of bringing one or two rookies on every early game mission so I wouldn't need to have many of them once the game got more difficult. In Xcom 2, there's simply no need for using rookies at all because you can get the ability to train them up into a class of your choice. In fact, it's more desirable to control how your rookies advance than to put them in a mission and have them randomly promote.

This also makes the game much more fun because, honestly, rookies were just The Worst.

I have had this core group of soldiers I've been using basically since the first mission. They've been great. Except I just did a black site mission that wrecked me. I somehow managed to scrape all of them out of there alive. But everyone I've been using is in the hospital for quite some time.

I feel the next couple of missions are going to see the mortality rate skyrocket

[5ColouredWalker]

I've set a theme for my Sergeant customization awards.

I got a pregen that was supposedly created for some guy that missed the pregen, it's got his name and is covered in hearts... That man is now my top sniper, with the Nickname Cupid, who's delivering a very different shot to people's hearts.
His companion, a female Asian sniper, is getting the nickname Hou Yi, for with one shot, she scores one kill on the high and mighty.

Edit: Also, just got Squadsight by Hacking...
Say what?

Extra Edit:
One thing I've noticed due to the mission statistics given to me, I often make 100% of the shots I attempt... I'm sure at least part of it is sniper's stocks turning their misses into low damage hits.
Also, the Stealth Ranger + Squadsight Sniper combo isn't as good as advertised, especially when it leaves you in positions like 3 turns until mission fail due to relay remaining active, and it turns out what you thought were clear firing lanes are blocked, meaning your Scout has to tank multiple round of being all on their loansome trying (And just succeeding) to kill the Relay, while your snipers pick off little guys far too slowly.

[5ColouredWalker]

Double post, purely so people don't miss it.

It turns out instead of researching and building weapons individually, once researched, you can upgrade all weapons in one single project.

I just have to say, thank god, that makes logistics soooooo much easier.

[Rising Phoenix]

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has anyone found effective ways to deal with codexes? They are freaking annoying if you cannot one shot them

Also lost my 2nd game cause I wasn't able to establish contact points fast enough. It's seriously overwhelming sometimes...

[5ColouredWalker]

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has anyone found effective ways to deal with codexes? They are freaking annoying if you cannot one shot them

Be lucky enough that the clones land such that you're already flanking them.

Yes, that's my answer.


In other news, I just got an X-Com mission where I have to kill or capture someone, definitely a terrorist simulator (If highly inacurate.). Also had my first experience with floor distructability.
A Muton just threw a grenade up three stories and accross the street (Huh... Apparently his arm is a grenade launcher.), blowing up two dudes, and then sending them falling to their deaths from the extra fall damage.
Yipee!

[nightwyrm]

Flashbangs. Flashbangs are gold in this game. Disables psychic BS, disables stun lancers swords, make the Ayys aim like your rookies. Build them, love them.