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

[Raghar]

Who is talking about saving civilians? Do you remember the first game and rocket launchers?

 

[Zombra]

Who is talking about saving civilians? Do you remember the first game and rocket launchers?

I remember that saving civilians was the point of terror missions in EU.

 

[Anthony Davis]

Actually they said that video does not really represent the full game. Vipers will not be able to pull troops and damage them in same action and reinforcements will not be able to act as soon as they appear.

I thought they said they can't pull them out and kill them in one turn, instead they start damaging them, like the invisible choking dudes in EW.

 

[Anthony Davis]

Then I never got a Sniper or Assault again...

That sucks. How many other rookies have you hired?

I trained 15 more rookies and I got 12 heavies and 3 supports. My assault and sniper were long dead. Do you know how terrible it is to play a Terror mission with 4 heavies and 2 support?

Actually that's probably close to optimal squad. There isn't much running on these missions, thus heavies were fine.

WHY IS THIS EVEN A MECHANIC?!

I'd rather have someone with talent for heavy to be appointed as heavy. Well you should be more careful with these rare squad roles. Letting to kill these really caused trouble.
Also what happened to that occasional reward of a trained squad member?

I don't think fighting Chrysalids at point blank range with rocket launchers and heavy machine guns is ideal at all. Especially now with the new rocket launcher mechanics. My admittedly anecdotal evidence was that 1 out of 3, 90% rockets shots, went wildly astray.

I was playing Iron Man - the sniper died to a lucky crit from a floater that was a super far away. I don't even know how the floater made the shot - the sniper was very far away and in full cover... oh well.
The assault guy just got focused fired down - 3 shots in one turn. He was not flanked and he was in full cover. Just happens.

I did get ONE offer for a Sgt. Sniper and I thought about it but I REALLY needed engineers.

I agree jobs roles should go to whomever makes sense, but in XCOM all Rookies are identical unless you turn on some 2nd wave mechanics.

 

[Jaedar]

I Someone else should fork Long War into Fun War that divides the game length by 5, makes the strategic level much easier, air game trivial, removes EXALT extraction missions, and makes base assaults/supply barges take 10 minutes instead of 3 hours. And that would be the version for people that only want to play one campaign in a reasonable time and don't care for it to be really loseable or deal with unfair shit. Lots of stuff like LW's rocket scatter/cover destruction baseline/acid/MECs/classes/lots of other stuff is just hands down better than vanilla and it being only for ultraspergs isn't necessary.

With the latest versions, you can dynamically alter the game length, remove exalt, and make airgame easier with second wave options. There's also an option that lets you pick the class for each rookie.

The balance is a bit off of course.

 

[Anthony Davis]

Another note about the wheel of jobs mechanic - I've had lopsided runs before. Runs where you get 6 or 7 assault guys or 6 or 7 snipers. Just nothing as pronounced as the 12 heavy, 3 support that I got this last time.

Does The Long War have this mechanic?

 

[Zombra]

Long War has more classes. When promotion time comes you can pick one of two for a guy. He's a assigned a general area of talent but you pick the specialty (e.g. a "Support" type guy can become either a Medic or an Engineer). It's pretty cool but you still have the problem of no Snipers or whatever.

 

[Anthony Davis]

I don't think fighting Chrysalids at point blank range with rocket launchers and heavy machine guns is ideal at all. Especially now with the new rocket launcher mechanics. My admittedly anecdotal evidence was that 1 out of 3, 90% rockets shots, went wildly astray.

I wrote this backwards.

1 out of 3 shots was on target.
The other shots would go off either a little or a lot. The ones that went off a lot were comically so.

 

[Anthony Davis]

Long War has more classes. When promotion time comes you can pick one of two for a guy. He's a assigned a general area of talent but you pick the specialty (e.g. a "Support" type guy can become either a Medic or an Engineer). It's pretty cool but you still have the problem of no Snipers or whatever.

I might give this a shot, it sounds a little better. Someone here at Obsidian was playing and enjoying it, but they said the "Long" in "The Long War" is not an understatement.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Actually they said that video does not really represent the full game. Vipers will not be able to pull troops and damage them in same action and reinforcements will not be able to act as soon as they appear.

I thought they said they can't pull them out and kill them in one turn, instead they start damaging them, like the invisible choking dudes in EW.

Nah, they said it takes a couple of turns to drag them out of cover.

 

[Zombra]

Long War has more classes. When promotion time comes you can pick one of two for a guy. He's a assigned a general area of talent but you pick the specialty (e.g. a "Support" type guy can become either a Medic or an Engineer). It's pretty cool but you still have the problem of no Snipers or whatever.

I might give this a shot, it sounds a little better. Someone here at Obsidian was playing and enjoying it, but they said the "Long" in "The Long War" is not an understatement.

There's also a Second Wave option for Not So Long War.

I also forgot to mention that if you don't like the two choices you also have a third option to choose a totally random specialty that's not one of those two. So if you don't need another Medic or Engineer you can spin the wheel like before.

Also also: I strongly recommend turning down the alien progress rate if you play Long War without a walkthrough. Bascially unless you do all your research in the exact right order, the aliens will progress too fast for you to keep up, since their advancement is time-based and not checkpoint-based as in vanilla EU.

 

[Raghar]

Who is talking about saving civilians? Do you remember the first game and rocket launchers?

I remember that saving civilians was the point of terror missions in EU.

I said first game. That game where you could return for more missiles, and where you had an inventory. Of course civilian deaths were penalized by negative points, but...

And considering XCOM2 would be about undercover organization fighting, I doubt terror missions from XCOM would be more than just past.

 

[34scell]

I don't think fighting Chrysalids at point blank range with rocket launchers and heavy machine guns is ideal at all. Especially now with the new rocket launcher mechanics. My admittedly anecdotal evidence was that 1 out of 3, 90% rockets shots, went wildly astray.

I wrote this backwards.

1 out of 3 shots was on target.
The other shots would go off either a little or a lot. The ones that went off a lot were comically so.

In vanilla XCOM rockets are always 90% chance to direct hit, with a failed check always having a massive potential scatter. In Long War potential scatter varies based on range and accuracy, but I think it always scatters (unless you have enough accuracy to reduce the scatter value to zero).

 

[Inspectah]

I think there is a second wave option in long war that allows you to assign any class to the soldiers.
And it's pretty easy to change the configurations on the long war .ini file to make it easier/shorter/harder

 

[ArchAngel]

I don't think fighting Chrysalids at point blank range with rocket launchers and heavy machine guns is ideal at all. Especially now with the new rocket launcher mechanics. My admittedly anecdotal evidence was that 1 out of 3, 90% rockets shots, went wildly astray.

I wrote this backwards.

1 out of 3 shots was on target.
The other shots would go off either a little or a lot. The ones that went off a lot were comically so.

In vanilla XCOM rockets are always 90% chance to direct hit, with a failed check always having a massive potential scatter. In Long War potential scatter varies based on range and accuracy, but I think it always scatters (unless you have enough accuracy to reduce the scatter value to zero).

In Long war the +x.x number is potential scatter. It can scatter from 0 to that number of squares.

 

[Jaedar]

I don't think fighting Chrysalids at point blank range with rocket launchers and heavy machine guns is ideal at all. Especially now with the new rocket launcher mechanics. My admittedly anecdotal evidence was that 1 out of 3, 90% rockets shots, went wildly astray.

I wrote this backwards.

1 out of 3 shots was on target.
The other shots would go off either a little or a lot. The ones that went off a lot were comically so.

In vanilla XCOM rockets are always 90% chance to direct hit, with a failed check always having a massive potential scatter. In Long War potential scatter varies based on range and accuracy, but I think it always scatters (unless you have enough accuracy to reduce the scatter value to zero).

In Long war the +x.x number is potential scatter. It can scatter from 0 to that number of squares.

I'm pretty sure its actually the mean of a gaussian for the amount of squares it will scatter.

 

[Raghar]

1 out of 3 shots was on target.
The other shots would go off either a little or a lot. The ones that went off a lot were comically so.

Yes that was a comon result with original, when a rookie get a launcher into hand, it was bad idea for anyone to start in front of him, and it was somehow complicated to move and launch because of low strength, but when he hit it was awesome.

Get this without expansion http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/ufo-extraterrestrials pirate it just to get the feel of original, if you don't want to play original. (It's bit different because of lack of psychos who would get into squad, and then would be potentially resurected from 2000 pieces of theirs bodies lying on the floor after missile impact.) If you finish the mission, you'd be able to keep your units, the question is how long they would stay in the hospital. Don't worry, it would take a while to get new ones, because they are not exactly queues for that job.

Or you can play original, where whole organization has been financed from black funds, and the whole game had significantly more X-Files feeling. You send these men in black helicopters to remove evidence just before they arrived.

 

[Bigg Boss]

So is it safe to say console sales didn't meet their expectations and they realized they needed to cater to their PC fanbase to survive?

 

[Inspectah]

yes

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

I think there is a second wave option in long war that allows you to assign any class to the soldiers.
And it's pretty easy to change the configurations on the long war .ini file to make it easier/shorter/harder

Yeah, it's called "Commander's Choice" and its new in beta 15.

 

[Average Manatee]

I don't think fighting Chrysalids at point blank range with rocket launchers and heavy machine guns is ideal at all. Especially now with the new rocket launcher mechanics. My admittedly anecdotal evidence was that 1 out of 3, 90% rockets shots, went wildly astray.

I wrote this backwards.

1 out of 3 shots was on target.
The other shots would go off either a little or a lot. The ones that went off a lot were comically so.

In vanilla XCOM rockets are always 90% chance to direct hit, with a failed check always having a massive potential scatter. In Long War potential scatter varies based on range and accuracy, but I think it always scatters (unless you have enough accuracy to reduce the scatter value to zero).

In Long war the +x.x number is potential scatter. It can scatter from 0 to that number of squares.

I'm pretty sure its actually the mean of a gaussian for the amount of squares it will scatter.

From what I've heard it was the standard deviation, meaning:

-68% chance of being inside x
-94% chance of being inside 2x
-98% chance of being inside 3x

The good thing about Long War is that aim modifiers affect rockets, so steady aim, levels and perks can give you very precise rockets (which are pretty much your only semi-effective means to hitting floaters eventually).

Another important thing about the way they work: as long as the point you are aiming at isn't blocked, the rocket won't be blocked on the way to its destination, it will pierce right through. If you do aim at a blocked area the scatter can hit anything on its way to the destination and blow up in your face.

 

[ArchAngel]

I love Rocketeers. I always have at least one

 

[Space Satan]

LW turned shitcrap like frones into a goddamn pests. I hated when damage reduction mechanic allowed little fucks to survive combined salvoes of entire squad and then flank and crit my soldiers. Rocket guys were partially a solution but thanks to random damage option rocket could deal no damage at all(or all of it will be dealt to armor).

 

[Zeriel]

LW turned shitcrap like frones into a goddamn pests. I hated when damage reduction mechanic allowed little fucks to survive combined salvoes of entire squad and then flank and crit my soldiers. Rocket guys were partially a solution but thanks to random damage option rocket could deal no damage at all(or all of it will be dealt to armor).

With heat ammo rockets will always gib drones. There's also some items (ammo) you can equip on soldiers that negate all that heavy DR. The 50 health drone boss that shoots for 18 damage is still pretty bullshit, though.

 

[Gozma]

It's the early drones that are bad, not the late ones. They got much worse in b15 because they fixed their AI. They just fly directly at you with their 30 point flying defense bonus, immunity to flank bonuses, immunity to flashbangs, and enough health to need two assault rifle hits to kill. If you roll a couple spawns of all-drones in a very early mission you just won't have enough shooting to kill them unless it's a very big map you can fall back indefinitely on, and it won't be a "losing is fun" loss.