X-COM XCOM 2 + War of the Chosen Expansion Thread

[Fedora Master]

Are there any must have mods for this game?

All the SHUT UP GAME and MOVE FUCKING FASTER mods

 

[Riddler]

So, I played a bit and i i found it reasonably fun but I'm considering bumping up the difficulty since the endgame the game seems to become trivially easy in the endgame.

One thing I've noted though is that the Reaper seems really OP. This level of scouting is just too powerful when the entire game seems to be about how you set up encounters and manage to separate different groups.

Am I just a noob or is this a common sentiment?

 

[Parabalus]

So, I played a bit and i i found it reasonably fun but I'm considering bumping up the difficulty since the endgame the game seems to become trivially easy in the endgame.

One thing I've noted though is that the Reaper seems really OP. This level of scouting is just too powerful when the entire game seems to be about how you set up encounters and manage to separate different groups.

Am I just a noob or is this a common sentiment?

Pretty sure everyone agrees with this.

I bump the difficulty late midgame in ABA by increasing the pod sizes to accommodate +2 squad size (while playing with default).

 

[Mazisky]

So, I played a bit and i i found it reasonably fun but I'm considering bumping up the difficulty since the endgame the game seems to become trivially easy in the endgame.

One thing I've noted though is that the Reaper seems really OP. This level of scouting is just too powerful when the entire game seems to be about how you set up encounters and manage to separate different groups.

Am I just a noob or is this a common sentiment?

this is typical of all Xcom games unfortunately.

There are some mods that add powerful late game enemies like ABA or forcelevel with podsize which increase the number of enemies in the endgame.

 

[Matador]

I was thinking about picking this on Humble bundle sales, but I encountered this detailed steam review, that paints the game's systems as real mess. Is it fair and I should keep playing Open Xcom, or is the review unprecise and is XCOM2 worth a try?

Normally i'd upvote in this situation, merely because the asking price of the game is well worth what you get. In this circumstance however, unless you're so willing to look past broken AI limitations, dysfunctional game mechanics and artificial difficulty, the quality of life and feature upgrades in Xcom 2 aren't worth buying it over Enemy Unknown.
The core gameplay between the two are basically indentical, but EU seems to actually have a clue what they're doing.

Examples:
-Enemies have the same accuracy at twice the range.
-Enemies will frequently insta-kill your troops early on, resulting in a really boring early game.
-The "Panic" status is actually just an RNG roll to see if your soldier is either going to be
useless, or actually straight up doom your squad with no logical reason for.
-Line of Sight seems to make no sense. An enemy right up against a wall can see my soldier
3 floors up on the roof, 6-7 squares away.
-Enemy types appear way too early for how powerful they are at that point. Enjoy those
Sectoids mind controlling your troops from five blocks away, as early as mission 3. Hopefully your blade users are close enough.
-Theres an artificial difficulty modifier in place that influences the chance to hit (and apparently damage rolls and incoming chance of being hit) value without showing you it is, based on how well you are doing. That's right, those weren't 80% chance misses. The devs couldn't design an actual difficulty curve, so they just punish you for being good. (this is no exaggeration, due to my heavily no-death squad based gameplay, the last 2 hours i've played had about 10 out of 200 incoming attacks that weren't either crits or misses, and all but 2 of my nades were minimum rolls. Not to mention 80+% shots missed more often than not. This ♥♥♥♥ is ♥♥♥♥ing invasive.)
-The game clearly doesn't place all the enemies ahead of time (and even seems to randomise the enemies based on difficulty. One time i had to restart a mission and the enemy types and positions were significantly altered), and probably spawns them as you go through the level. You wouldn't believe the number of times the game has spawned an entire squad of enemies in a 2x2 space of fog of war in the back corner of a room. (Dear devs, pushing up is already ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥t enough, you don't need to punish me for not magically knowing there are dumbshet enemies in a corner that can't hear a gunfight happening 4 squares away)
-Hit chance caps absurdly low for typically entirely arbitrary reasons. If im ♥♥♥♥ing flanking a dude from 3 squares away and my character has no penalties, why the ♥♥♥♥ is my chance only 75% chance, when firing at some dude much further away concealed past two walls well over 89%? The numbers detailing the penalties to explain the logic, they just show how terrible the RNG is.
-Enemies just 'happen' to go in the exact direction to catch your squad, even when those same enemies wouldn't take that path if your squad wasn't there.
-The start of round concealment is the dumbest thing in existence, because there's no way to tell if you're running into an enemy or not until you move, so in timed missions there's literally no reason not to move up aggressively until you know where the enemies are and then reload and move more cautiously.
-For literally no reason, even if you have all the meds spare at the end of a round to heal your soldiers to full, you wont once you've won. This was also an issue in EU, iirc, which sucked too, but since in EU 2hp down didn't mean a goddam 12 days out of action, in Xcom 2, this dumb BS is massively more annoying.
-The UI for customising soldiers and their weapons is pretty unclear. I don't recall any tutorial to tell me how to use PCS's or put attachments on my weapons. And since it isn't in loadout (like you'd expect it to be) there's a damn good chance you'll forget repeatedly before missions.
-And much more.

And, oh boy, lets talk about the bugs, shall we?
-Enemies shooting through walls
-Enemies seeing you through walls
-Enemies taking full cover on empty spaces which never previously had cover in it
-Enemies animations bugging out
-Enemies literally teleporting spaces when you aren't looking.
-Overwatch ability not triggering
-Cone of sight version of overwatch not triggering
-Being incapable of targeting someone who is completely in the open
-Supressed enemies will sometimes ignore the fact they're suppressed. Being able to fire or move without triggering an attack.
-Mind Controlling the Enemy causes the unit to just stand there instead of doing anything.
-VIPs STILL die if you extract them last, for no ♥♥♥♥ing reason, even though this bug has been around from the start.
-And much more like this.

This game has almost zero genuine difficulty design. It is a complete unmitigated mess.
Just play EU, ffs. What's made worse is that i don't remember any of these bugs being a thing back on release. HOW do you mess up this badly?
The unfortunate result of all these poor design decisions and bugs is a game which is a massive frustration, due to the solid ideas being completely ruined by RNG and player-irrelevant bull.

And before anyone thinks that i just want to find things to hate, it's completely the opposite. When the game isn't being a broken piece of garbage, it's a ♥♥♥♥ing blast to play. The problem is that you as a player can do literally nothing to counter this BS.

 

[ArchAngel]

I mean humble bundle is very cheap so you don't lose much if you don't like it. Gameplay is like this describes (but most don't care about these "problems") but most of the bugs have been fixed with the expansion. If expansion comes with the bundle than I would say it is a good deal, otherwise skip it.
Although expansion has its own share of problems with balance and design and hero units, both yours and enemies.

I would recommend you download* Phoenix Point instead and play that if you want a modern take on Xcom, it feels more similar to Open Xcom than both Firaxis attempts do.

*by that I mean get it from our favorite Swedish pirates, arrrrr.. or if you got Win 10 get xbox game pass for PC for 5$ and get access to it for 1 month that way.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I was thinking about picking this on Humble bundle sales, but I encountered this detailed steam review, that paints the game's systems as real mess. Is it fair and I should keep playing Open Xcom, or is the review unprecise and is XCOM2 worth a try?

Normally i'd upvote in this situation, merely because the asking price of the game is well worth what you get. In this circumstance however, unless you're so willing to look past broken AI limitations, dysfunctional game mechanics and artificial difficulty, the quality of life and feature upgrades in Xcom 2 aren't worth buying it over Enemy Unknown.
The core gameplay between the two are basically indentical, but EU seems to actually have a clue what they're doing.

Examples:
-Enemies have the same accuracy at twice the range.
-Enemies will frequently insta-kill your troops early on, resulting in a really boring early game.
-The "Panic" status is actually just an RNG roll to see if your soldier is either going to be
useless, or actually straight up doom your squad with no logical reason for.
-Line of Sight seems to make no sense. An enemy right up against a wall can see my soldier
3 floors up on the roof, 6-7 squares away.
-Enemy types appear way too early for how powerful they are at that point. Enjoy those
Sectoids mind controlling your troops from five blocks away, as early as mission 3. Hopefully your blade users are close enough.
-Theres an artificial difficulty modifier in place that influences the chance to hit (and apparently damage rolls and incoming chance of being hit) value without showing you it is, based on how well you are doing. That's right, those weren't 80% chance misses. The devs couldn't design an actual difficulty curve, so they just punish you for being good. (this is no exaggeration, due to my heavily no-death squad based gameplay, the last 2 hours i've played had about 10 out of 200 incoming attacks that weren't either crits or misses, and all but 2 of my nades were minimum rolls. Not to mention 80+% shots missed more often than not. This ♥♥♥♥ is ♥♥♥♥ing invasive.)
-The game clearly doesn't place all the enemies ahead of time (and even seems to randomise the enemies based on difficulty. One time i had to restart a mission and the enemy types and positions were significantly altered), and probably spawns them as you go through the level. You wouldn't believe the number of times the game has spawned an entire squad of enemies in a 2x2 space of fog of war in the back corner of a room. (Dear devs, pushing up is already ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥t enough, you don't need to punish me for not magically knowing there are dumbshet enemies in a corner that can't hear a gunfight happening 4 squares away)
-Hit chance caps absurdly low for typically entirely arbitrary reasons. If im ♥♥♥♥ing flanking a dude from 3 squares away and my character has no penalties, why the ♥♥♥♥ is my chance only 75% chance, when firing at some dude much further away concealed past two walls well over 89%? The numbers detailing the penalties to explain the logic, they just show how terrible the RNG is.
-Enemies just 'happen' to go in the exact direction to catch your squad, even when those same enemies wouldn't take that path if your squad wasn't there.
-The start of round concealment is the dumbest thing in existence, because there's no way to tell if you're running into an enemy or not until you move, so in timed missions there's literally no reason not to move up aggressively until you know where the enemies are and then reload and move more cautiously.
-For literally no reason, even if you have all the meds spare at the end of a round to heal your soldiers to full, you wont once you've won. This was also an issue in EU, iirc, which sucked too, but since in EU 2hp down didn't mean a goddam 12 days out of action, in Xcom 2, this dumb BS is massively more annoying.
-The UI for customising soldiers and their weapons is pretty unclear. I don't recall any tutorial to tell me how to use PCS's or put attachments on my weapons. And since it isn't in loadout (like you'd expect it to be) there's a damn good chance you'll forget repeatedly before missions.
-And much more.

And, oh boy, lets talk about the bugs, shall we?
-Enemies shooting through walls
-Enemies seeing you through walls
-Enemies taking full cover on empty spaces which never previously had cover in it
-Enemies animations bugging out
-Enemies literally teleporting spaces when you aren't looking.
-Overwatch ability not triggering
-Cone of sight version of overwatch not triggering
-Being incapable of targeting someone who is completely in the open
-Supressed enemies will sometimes ignore the fact they're suppressed. Being able to fire or move without triggering an attack.
-Mind Controlling the Enemy causes the unit to just stand there instead of doing anything.
-VIPs STILL die if you extract them last, for no ♥♥♥♥ing reason, even though this bug has been around from the start.
-And much more like this.

This game has almost zero genuine difficulty design. It is a complete unmitigated mess.
Just play EU, ffs. What's made worse is that i don't remember any of these bugs being a thing back on release. HOW do you mess up this badly?
The unfortunate result of all these poor design decisions and bugs is a game which is a massive frustration, due to the solid ideas being completely ruined by RNG and player-irrelevant bull.

And before anyone thinks that i just want to find things to hate, it's completely the opposite. When the game isn't being a broken piece of garbage, it's a ♥♥♥♥ing blast to play. The problem is that you as a player can do literally nothing to counter this BS.

Nah

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

I was thinking about picking this on Humble bundle sales, but I encountered this detailed steam review, that paints the game's systems as real mess. Is it fair and I should keep playing Open Xcom, or is the review unprecise and is XCOM2 worth a try?

Normally i'd upvote in this situation, merely because the asking price of the game is well worth what you get. In this circumstance however, unless you're so willing to look past broken AI limitations, dysfunctional game mechanics and artificial difficulty, the quality of life and feature upgrades in Xcom 2 aren't worth buying it over Enemy Unknown.
The core gameplay between the two are basically indentical, but EU seems to actually have a clue what they're doing.

Examples:
-Enemies have the same accuracy at twice the range.
-Enemies will frequently insta-kill your troops early on, resulting in a really boring early game.
-The "Panic" status is actually just an RNG roll to see if your soldier is either going to be
useless, or actually straight up doom your squad with no logical reason for.
-Line of Sight seems to make no sense. An enemy right up against a wall can see my soldier
3 floors up on the roof, 6-7 squares away.
-Enemy types appear way too early for how powerful they are at that point. Enjoy those
Sectoids mind controlling your troops from five blocks away, as early as mission 3. Hopefully your blade users are close enough.
-Theres an artificial difficulty modifier in place that influences the chance to hit (and apparently damage rolls and incoming chance of being hit) value without showing you it is, based on how well you are doing. That's right, those weren't 80% chance misses. The devs couldn't design an actual difficulty curve, so they just punish you for being good. (this is no exaggeration, due to my heavily no-death squad based gameplay, the last 2 hours i've played had about 10 out of 200 incoming attacks that weren't either crits or misses, and all but 2 of my nades were minimum rolls. Not to mention 80+% shots missed more often than not. This ♥♥♥♥ is ♥♥♥♥ing invasive.)
-The game clearly doesn't place all the enemies ahead of time (and even seems to randomise the enemies based on difficulty. One time i had to restart a mission and the enemy types and positions were significantly altered), and probably spawns them as you go through the level. You wouldn't believe the number of times the game has spawned an entire squad of enemies in a 2x2 space of fog of war in the back corner of a room. (Dear devs, pushing up is already ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥t enough, you don't need to punish me for not magically knowing there are dumbshet enemies in a corner that can't hear a gunfight happening 4 squares away)
-Hit chance caps absurdly low for typically entirely arbitrary reasons. If im ♥♥♥♥ing flanking a dude from 3 squares away and my character has no penalties, why the ♥♥♥♥ is my chance only 75% chance, when firing at some dude much further away concealed past two walls well over 89%? The numbers detailing the penalties to explain the logic, they just show how terrible the RNG is.
-Enemies just 'happen' to go in the exact direction to catch your squad, even when those same enemies wouldn't take that path if your squad wasn't there.
-The start of round concealment is the dumbest thing in existence, because there's no way to tell if you're running into an enemy or not until you move, so in timed missions there's literally no reason not to move up aggressively until you know where the enemies are and then reload and move more cautiously.
-For literally no reason, even if you have all the meds spare at the end of a round to heal your soldiers to full, you wont once you've won. This was also an issue in EU, iirc, which sucked too, but since in EU 2hp down didn't mean a goddam 12 days out of action, in Xcom 2, this dumb BS is massively more annoying.
-The UI for customising soldiers and their weapons is pretty unclear. I don't recall any tutorial to tell me how to use PCS's or put attachments on my weapons. And since it isn't in loadout (like you'd expect it to be) there's a damn good chance you'll forget repeatedly before missions.
-And much more.

And, oh boy, lets talk about the bugs, shall we?
-Enemies shooting through walls
-Enemies seeing you through walls
-Enemies taking full cover on empty spaces which never previously had cover in it
-Enemies animations bugging out
-Enemies literally teleporting spaces when you aren't looking.
-Overwatch ability not triggering
-Cone of sight version of overwatch not triggering
-Being incapable of targeting someone who is completely in the open
-Supressed enemies will sometimes ignore the fact they're suppressed. Being able to fire or move without triggering an attack.
-Mind Controlling the Enemy causes the unit to just stand there instead of doing anything.
-VIPs STILL die if you extract them last, for no ♥♥♥♥ing reason, even though this bug has been around from the start.
-And much more like this.

This game has almost zero genuine difficulty design. It is a complete unmitigated mess.
Just play EU, ffs. What's made worse is that i don't remember any of these bugs being a thing back on release. HOW do you mess up this badly?
The unfortunate result of all these poor design decisions and bugs is a game which is a massive frustration, due to the solid ideas being completely ruined by RNG and player-irrelevant bull.

And before anyone thinks that i just want to find things to hate, it's completely the opposite. When the game isn't being a broken piece of garbage, it's a ♥♥♥♥ing blast to play. The problem is that you as a player can do literally nothing to counter this BS.

Seems like someone needs to git gud, 95% of this is a blatant lie. XCOM2 has its own problems, but this stuff mentioned above just isnt true

 

[Galdred]

I was thinking about picking this on Humble bundle sales, but I encountered this detailed steam review, that paints the game's systems as real mess. Is it fair and I should keep playing Open Xcom, or is the review unprecise and is XCOM2 worth a try?

Normally i'd upvote in this situation, merely because the asking price of the game is well worth what you get. In this circumstance however, unless you're so willing to look past broken AI limitations, dysfunctional game mechanics and artificial difficulty, the quality of life and feature upgrades in Xcom 2 aren't worth buying it over Enemy Unknown.
The core gameplay between the two are basically indentical, but EU seems to actually have a clue what they're doing.

Examples:

-Enemies have the same accuracy at twice the range.

Like in X-COM...

-Enemies will frequently insta-kill your troops early on, resulting in a really boring early game.

L2P? That said, the problem is not what he says, but that you quickly enter a spiral of death, as rookies are really bad, so replacing casualties is a pain.

-The "Panic" status is actually just an RNG roll to see if your soldier is either going to be
useless, or actually straight up doom your squad with no logical reason for..

Like in X-COM, learning to play make it less likely that a panic chain will be triggered.

-Line of Sight seems to make no sense. An enemy right up against a wall can see my soldier

The LoS system is made this way: units see whatever could be seen from any of the neighboring tiles when behind an obstacle. That leads to some weird results indeed (destroy the wall, and sometimes, the opponent cannot see you anymore!), but this one is not an exemple of that.

3 floors up on the roof, 6-7 squares away.
-Enemy types appear way too early for how powerful they are at that point. Enjoy those
Sectoids mind controlling your troops from five blocks away, as early as mission 3. Hopefully your blade users are close enough.

That is BS, the game is harder in the beginning.

-Theres an artificial difficulty modifier in place that influences the chance to hit (and apparently damage rolls and incoming chance of being hit) value without showing you it is, based on how well you are doing. That's right, those weren't 80% chance misses. The devs couldn't design an actual difficulty curve, so they just punish you for being good. (this is no exaggeration, due to my heavily no-death squad based gameplay, the last 2 hours i've played had about 10 out of 200 incoming attacks that weren't either crits or misses, and all but 2 of my nades were minimum rolls. Not to mention 80+% shots missed more often than not. This ♥♥♥♥ is ♥♥♥♥ing invasive.)

That's totally a sound approcah to statistics and probabilities!
Actually, the system works the other way, and only helps the player to avoid crybabies complaning about RNG is broken, when under Legendary difficulty (if the player misses too many consecutive shots, the next ones get a hidden bonus to hit. CtH is always superior or equal t CtH displayed)

-The game clearly doesn't place all the enemies ahead of time (and even seems to randomise the enemies based on difficulty. One time i had to restart a mission and the enemy types and positions were significantly altered), and probably spawns them as you go through the level. You wouldn't believe the number of times the game has spawned an entire squad of enemies in a 2x2 space of fog of war in the back corner of a room. (Dear devs, pushing up is already ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥t enough, you don't need to punish me for not magically knowing there are dumbshet enemies in a corner that can't hear a gunfight happening 4 squares away)

No! The game has opponents activate as PoD, which is a bad mechacnics indeed, but not the same as described here. They are not spawned as you go, but activated as soon as they get LoS on you, while otherwise, they will keep playing cards, or whatever while you murder their friends nearby. IT is bad indeed, but that still shows that this review doesn't get how the game works.

-Hit chance caps absurdly low for typically entirely arbitrary reasons. If im ♥♥♥♥ing flanking a dude from 3 squares away and my character has no penalties, why the ♥♥♥♥ is my chance only 75% chance, when firing at some dude much further away concealed past two walls well over 89%? The numbers detailing the penalties to explain the logic, they just show how terrible the RNG is.

He is probably not firing at the same target with the same weapon and the same shooter in both cases, so that is kind of meaningless.

-Enemies just 'happen' to go in the exact direction to catch your squad, even when those same enemies wouldn't take that path if your squad wasn't there.

That is actually true, and pretty bad. Opponents "drift" towards you when patroling.

-The start of round concealment is the dumbest thing in existence, because there's no way to tell if you're running into an enemy or not until you move, so in timed missions there's literally no reason not to move up aggressively until you know where the enemies are and then reload and move more cautiously.

Well, not moving to position outside of your LoS does help. not running into enemies you hadn's seen. What is weird is that the opponents don't know you are here, but still decide to blow their assets up (granted, it can be explained in universe by the retard pilot had not landeing your squad 100m away from the objective. Note that the Slyranger pilot of OG X-COM is even dumber and will happily land in the middle of an enemy firing squad).

-For literally no reason, even if you have all the meds spare at the end of a round to heal your soldiers to full, you wont once you've won. This was also an issue in EU, iirc, which sucked too, but since in EU 2hp down didn't mean a goddam 12 days out of action, in Xcom 2, this dumb BS is massively more annoying.

Actually, healing in missions wouldn't solve the problem either, as it doesn't change the recovery time.

-The UI for customising soldiers and their weapons is pretty unclear. I don't recall any tutorial to tell me how to use PCS's or put attachments on my weapons. And since it isn't in loadout (like you'd expect it to be) there's a damn good chance you'll forget repeatedly before missions.
-And much more.

The UI is unclear in a lot of areas.

And, oh boy, lets talk about the bugs, shall we?
-Enemies shooting through walls
-Enemies seeing you through walls
-Enemies taking full cover on empty spaces which never previously had cover in it
-Enemies animations bugging out
-Enemies literally teleporting spaces when you aren't looking.
-Overwatch ability not triggering
-Cone of sight version of overwatch not triggering
-Being incapable of targeting someone who is completely in the open
-Supressed enemies will sometimes ignore the fact they're suppressed. Being able to fire or move without triggering an attack.
-Mind Controlling the Enemy causes the unit to just stand there instead of doing anything.
-VIPs STILL die if you extract them last, for no ♥♥♥♥ing reason, even though this bug has been around from the start.
-And much more like this..

No idea about whetyher these as I played a long time ago.

This game has almost zero genuine difficulty design. It is a complete unmitigated mess.
Just play EU, ffs. What's made worse is that i don't remember any of these bugs being a thing back on release. HOW do you mess up this badly?
The unfortunate result of all these poor design decisions and bugs is a game which is a massive frustration, due to the solid ideas being completely ruined by RNG and player-irrelevant bull.

And before anyone thinks that i just want to find things to hate, it's completely the opposite. When the game isn't being a broken piece of garbage, it's a ♥♥♥♥ing blast to play. The problem is that you as a player can do literally nothing to counter this BS.

Well, there are a lot of reasons you could not like the game, but this guy criticism is definitely not on point. I'd say, the main issues are that is is much more gamey than the original X-COM, and there is way too much emphasis on not losing anyone.
Also, the Pod System is pretty bad indeed.
FWIW, I still enjoyed it a lot, but I played with 30 or so mods.

 

[Matador]

Thanks for the answers, I knew I would got quality posts

 

[Endemic]

And if you are really concerned about broken AI limitations, openxcom is the king of those, since the core battlescape AI has not changed much from 1994.

It's not perfect, but Openxcom fixed the "closet camper" issue in TFTD which makes cruise ship missions far less of a chore. The "sneaky AI" option does seem to cause the aliens to stay in cover more often. Even the stock AI managed some sensible tactics like throwing grenades at grouped up soldiers and sniping from elevation.

 

[eXalted]

If this guy thinks WOTC is unfair (easiest game of the series) he really needs to check the old original games.

> Spend 5 minutes throwing smokes around the Skyranger door.
> Go out with the first guy.
> Get one shotted after the first step.

Good times.

 

[Average Manatee]

-Enemies have the same accuracy at twice the range.

Like in X-COM...

Not really. X-Com simulates the bullet paths so that shots from across the map have significantly lower chance to hit and point black shots are practically unmissable.

-Enemies will frequently insta-kill your troops early on, resulting in a really boring early game.

L2P? That said, the problem is not what he says, but that you quickly enter a spiral of death, as rookies are really bad, so replacing casualties is a pain.

Its a legitimate chriticism considering that 1 rookie is 1/4th of your team and the only way to help avoid this is abusing the pod activation system through really passive gameplay.

-The "Panic" status is actually just an RNG roll to see if your soldier is either going to be
useless, or actually straight up doom your squad with no logical reason for..

Like in X-COM, learning to play make it less likely that a panic chain will be triggered.

It's not like X-COM. In nuXcom taking a single shot, not even a single casualty, can cause a panic, and a panic chain can happen WHENEVER a soldier sees another soldier panic, REGARDLESS OF ANY SKILL OR HEALTH OR RANK ON THE SOLDIER VIEWING THE PANIC (at least AFAIK for nuXcom 1, dunno if its still the same in 2), and having just 2 out of 4 panicing soldiers is essentially a mission failure. This is ridiculous, there's no way to "git gud" beyond "never get hit and when you actually do get hit just hope the RNG favors you".

In X-Com injuries only affect the morale of the injured soldier, they can't cause a panic chain in healthy soldiers, and especially if you have a high-ranked commander on the field to boost morale (and he stays alive), you can generally avoid anything more than an isolated panic from very weak-willed soldiers unless you've taken very significant casualties. Plus, while your global morale levels go down from casualties, it goes back up from kills (and soldiers themselves directly gain morale from hits on aliens), so even very deadly situations can be fought through if the player is at least skilled enough to still be taking out aliens.

Also notable is that in X-Com morale worked both ways to reward highly aggressive tactics by making Aliens panic chain (particularly important on higher difficulties which had more aliens to kill). In nuXcom the only reason to exhibit any kind of aggression is through the heavy handed turn timers that were created to try and patch up the holes in the gameplay.

-Hit chance caps absurdly low for typically entirely arbitrary reasons. If im ♥♥♥♥ing flanking a dude from 3 squares away and my character has no penalties, why the ♥♥♥♥ is my chance only 75% chance, when firing at some dude much further away concealed past two walls well over 89%? The numbers detailing the penalties to explain the logic, they just show how terrible the RNG is.

He is probably not firing at the same target with the same weapon and the same shooter in both cases, so that is kind of meaningless.

It's not an entirely meaningless comparison, its the same problem as his first point: the game plays out like a boardgame and doesn't actually simulate bullets, so a ridiculous 20-tile away shot through a half dozen windows to an enemy whose shoulder peaks out past a corner is exactly the same change as a soldier 3 tiles away looking at the same corner, as long as skills are equivalent. In X-Com ridiculous shots actually require ridiculous luck (unless you straight up get 100% accuracy, which is true 100% accuracy in all instances).

 

[Average Manatee]

If this guy thinks WOTC is unfair (easiest game of the series) he really needs to check the old original games.

> Spend 5 minutes throwing smokes around the Skyranger door.
> Go out with the first guy.
> Get one shotted after the first step.

Good times.

You really only need 1 smoke and you can develop motion detectors immediately to figure out where any aliens that could do this are.

 

[baud]

-Enemies have the same accuracy at twice the range.

Like in X-COM...

Not really. X-Com simulates the bullet paths so that shots from across the map have significantly lower chance to hit and point black shots are practically unmissable.

XCOM 1 & 2 apply a flat distance modifier, so chance of hitting enemies still go up when the target is closer.

-Enemies will frequently insta-kill your troops early on, resulting in a really boring early game.

L2P? That said, the problem is not what he says, but that you quickly enter a spiral of death, as rookies are really bad, so replacing casualties is a pain.

Its a legitimate chriticism considering that 1 rookie is 1/4th of your team and the only way to help avoid this is abusing the pod activation system through really passive gameplay.

You can easily increase your squad size in the early game and get high rank soldiers as mission rewards. And then get squaddies instead of rookies when recruiting new soldiers.

-The "Panic" status is actually just an RNG roll to see if your soldier is either going to be
useless, or actually straight up doom your squad with no logical reason for..

Like in X-COM, learning to play make it less likely that a panic chain will be triggered.

It's not like X-COM. In nuXcom taking a single shot, not even a single casualty, can cause a panic, and a panic chain can happen WHENEVER a soldier sees another soldier panic, REGARDLESS OF ANY SKILL OR HEALTH OR RANK ON THE SOLDIER VIEWING THE PANIC (at least AFAIK for nuXcom 1, dunno if its still the same in 2), and having just 2 out of 4 panicing soldiers is essentially a mission failure. This is ridiculous, there's no way to "git gud" beyond "never get hit and when you actually do get hit just hope the RNG favors you".

In X-Com injuries only affect the morale of the injured soldier, they can't cause a panic chain in healthy soldiers, and especially if you have a high-ranked commander on the field to boost morale (and he stays alive), you can generally avoid anything more than an isolated panic from very weak-willed soldiers unless you've taken very significant casualties. Plus, while your global morale levels go down from casualties, it goes back up from kills (and soldiers themselves directly gain morale from hits on aliens), so even very deadly situations can be fought through if the player is at least skilled enough to still be taking out aliens.

Are panic really common? I don't think I saw it happens in my latest playthrough of EW. Of course to avoid panic, not getting hit is very important, so it's again L2P.

-Hit chance caps absurdly low for typically entirely arbitrary reasons. If im ♥♥♥♥ing flanking a dude from 3 squares away and my character has no penalties, why the ♥♥♥♥ is my chance only 75% chance, when firing at some dude much further away concealed past two walls well over 89%? The numbers detailing the penalties to explain the logic, they just show how terrible the RNG is.

He is probably not firing at the same target with the same weapon and the same shooter in both cases, so that is kind of meaningless.

It's not an entirely meaningless comparison, its the same problem as his first point: the game plays out like a boardgame and doesn't actually simulate bullets, so a ridiculous 20-tile away shot through a half dozen windows to an enemy whose shoulder peaks out past a corner is exactly the same change as a soldier 3 tiles away looking at the same corner, as long as skills are equivalent. In X-Com ridiculous shots actually require ridiculous luck (unless you straight up get 100% accuracy, which is true 100% accuracy in all instances).

No, at 20 tiles vs 3 tiles, you'd get some distance bonus/malus, so the chances to hit aren't the same.

 

[Average Manatee]

IIRC there is no range penalty for long range except for Shotguns. There was a range bonus at short range for shotguns/rifles so its more like 5 tiles vs. 20 tiles has exactly the same accuracy.

Are panic really common? I don't think I saw it happens in my latest playthrough of EW. Of course to avoid panic, not getting hit is very important, so it's again L2P.

Not getting hit in nuXcom is not fucking L2P, unless by L2P you mean Learn to Savescum. Its impossible to totally avoid the chance of getting hit in any X-Com game.

You can easily increase your squad size in the early game and get high rank soldiers as mission rewards. And then get squaddies instead of rookies when recruiting new soldiers.

That changes nothing material about the situation. 6 soldiers is still low enough that 2 of them panicking is a mission ender. Indeed, since panic rolls are all individual having more soldiers increases the chance that taking 1 point of damage from a poison cloud will cause a panic that causes a panic chain that causes your soldiers to start killing each other.

 

[eXalted]

You really only need 1 smoke and you can develop motion detectors immediately to figure out where any aliens that could do this are.

Nope, story is not that funny this way.

 

[baud]

IIRC there is no range penalty for long range except for Shotguns. There was a range bonus at short range for shotguns/rifles so its more like 5 tiles vs. 20 tiles has exactly the same accuracy.

There's also a short range penalty for sniper rifles, but usually snipers aren't at close range (or they just switch to pistols).

Are panic really common? I don't think I saw it happens in my latest playthrough of EW. Of course to avoid panic, not getting hit is very important, so it's again L2P.

Not getting hit in nuXcom is not fucking L2P, unless by L2P you mean Learn to Savescum. Its impossible to totally avoid the chance of getting hit in any X-Com game.

I think it was mostly my MEC getting hit, so they won't usually panic. And using the officer's will for the rest of the team (Lead By Example in the Officer Training School) helped me avoid any panic (especially since the officer is usually a MEC with high will).

You can easily increase your squad size in the early game and get high rank soldiers as mission rewards. And then get squaddies instead of rookies when recruiting new soldiers.

That changes nothing material about the situation. 6 soldiers is still low enough that 2 of them panicking is a mission ender. Indeed, since panic rolls are all individual having more soldiers increases the chance that taking 1 point of damage from a poison cloud will cause a panic that causes a panic chain that causes your soldiers to start killing each other.

true

 

[Space Satan]

 

[Hobo Elf]

Manage to write this in the wrong thread once, hopefully this time it arrives in the correct address:

Just started playing this game yesterday, any tips I should be aware of? This game feels very busy, like I don't have enough time to get any proper research or buildings going on as I'm constantly bombarded with missions to do every 1-2 days that I keep having to do with the lowest tier equipment, in addition to a doomsday clock Avatar project that I also have to worry about and now the budget payments also have to be collected from drop off locations which also eats up time. Also some missions are giving me a run for my money whereas the first game was very baby difficult. Maybe it's because I bought the game with the expansion + other DLCs? Am I just being overloaded by the additional content?

 

[ArchAngel]

Level up your hero soldiers over others, that means let them get kills if you can. They are noticeably more powerful than others. Your main goal is to get squad upgrades sooner than later, that is your most powerful soldier/squad upgrade.

 

[Parabalus]

The doomsday clock is pretty lenient, you get ample opportunities to reduce it (main quest does it as well).

If you see an engineer take him, otherwise there's not much you can do, it gets easier to manage your time as you progress further.

The Hunter DLC has lots of goodies to make stuff easier, be sure to get that.

 

[Mazisky]

Manage to write this in the wrong thread once, hopefully this time it arrives in the correct address:

Just started playing this game yesterday, any tips I should be aware of? This game feels very busy, like I don't have enough time to get any proper research or buildings going on as I'm constantly bombarded with missions to do every 1-2 days that I keep having to do with the lowest tier equipment, in addition to a doomsday clock Avatar project that I also have to worry about and now the budget payments also have to be collected from drop off locations which also eats up time. Also some missions are giving me a run for my money whereas the first game was very baby difficult. Maybe it's because I bought the game with the expansion + other DLCs? Am I just being overloaded by the additional content?

Remember :

-DLC missions can and should be delayed, no need to rush them, they don't expire like normal missions

-Focus on getting Weapon and Armor tiers first in research

-You have many ways to decrease doomclock, by conquering red alien bases, with covert ops, with resistance orders, by completing plot missions.

-There are many ways to get money or resources u need other than the "scan" locations, for example by selling stuff at market or even doing supply gain missions.

 

[rashiakas]

Also dont get intimidated by the Avatar timer too much, when the bar is full oyu get another timer and you can cancel that by simply removing 1 progress bar. Its rather easy to gambgle that system tbh.

 

[typical user]

IMO you shouldn't push it and if it reaches near completion then you should remove those bars - once the Avatar project enters final stage you have 24 hours to respond and that clock doesn't reset if you setback aliens research. Just try to gain access to labs in regions out of your reach first and attack those which have most progress made outside of your controlled sectors as destroying them will remove all of the contributed Avatar research.

I also recommend making a hacker and a medic from support class. The hacker should do hacking whenever possible as their chances increase if they hack stuff regularly. By mid-late game you will often have chances to take control of robotic enemies and turn them against opfor.