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

[Gozma]

If they randomly position themselves so you can bounce a grenade off something to hit them with more than one pixel of the aiming sphere, but there's no guarantee they will. If the AI were even better they'd stay high enough to make it impossible.

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

I think the 30 point flying defense bonus became the most annoying thing in the game once Long War taught the AI to use it (or removed the shackles that stopped it, since apparently that's what much of the AI changes were). It's why heavy floaters are as annoying as the early drones later on.

It not only allows them position freely without having to worry about cover at all, but because it provides a total defense against flanking and therefore abilities like Hit and Run and ITZ. Flying enemies are the only reason to take Close encounters on an assault.

 

[Inspectah]

I kinda like Long War's bullshit sometimes, I like being forced to abandon a mission once in a while.
Still, advancing slowly and granading everything tended to work against the drones

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

Well, take my complaining with a grain of salt since at this point I've put a couple hundred hours into long war.

 

[Average Manatee]

I think the 30 point flying defense bonus became the most annoying thing in the game once Long War taught the AI to use it (or removed the shackles that stopped it, since apparently that's what much of the AI changes were). It's why heavy floaters are as annoying as the early drones later on.

It not only allows them position freely without having to worry about cover at all, but because it provides a total defense against flanking and therefore abilities like Hit and Run and ITZ. Flying enemies are the only reason to take Close encounters on an assault.

Absolutely, flying is just silly powerful to the point where the only thing to combat it is to rely on things that don't require aiming. Which is a bit absurd because damaging a flying unit with AoE attacks should be HARDER when its in the air since you have to hit it dead on or the rocket just flies away.

It's rather comical that shooting a floater in mid air doing nothing can be a 50% less CTH than a floater on the same tile 10 feet lower behind heavy cover. Then you get floater leaders with perks that give them up to 100 defense and its just like fuck you.

 

[Inspectah]

The doing nothing is an abstraction because of the turn base combat, though, isn't it?
They probably get the bonus because they are flying around dodging shit, I imagine

 

[Jaedar]

Early drones counter is AP grenades.

Except not really, because even if they fly close enough that you can hit, you'll only do 0-3 damage depending on RNG, and you'll only have a chance at the "high" numbers if the grenade hits dead center.

Also, someone was saying something about random spiky bits?

 

[Average Manatee]

The doing nothing is an abstraction because of the turn base combat, though, isn't it?
They probably get the bonus because they are flying around dodging shit, I imagine

Units on the ground are running around dodging shit, but you'll still have 75%+ CTHs and high crit rates.

I always assumed the CTH penalty on flying targets was more to represent the fact that most soldiers aren't trained to shoot at flying targets.

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

I don't think the bonus for anything in XCOM2012 are meant to strongly simulate actual conditions. I get the impression the mechanics are meant first and foremost to provide advantages and disadvantages to units. Whether that can be plausibly justified as an abstraction of reality is secondary. So probably flyers get defense so they can be used to penetrate formations and flank/threaten to flank in order to weaken the effectiveness of just turtling (same reason floaters can reposition anywhere with their liftoff move).

Of course this is a valid goal for abilities. The problem is thatway the flyer defense actually plays out means that the most meaningful tactical decision you make is how many grenades/rocketeers you take before the mission. Otherwise its just fall back and take low percentage shots until probability works in your favor. Without knowing what the enemy teams composition is, your explosives choices are really an educated guess at best.

Which means that once you run out of explosives flying leads to more war of RNG attrition engagements. So the problem is not necessarily that its hard to deal with (hard can be fun), but that its annoying to deal with. Same issue with innate defense. When you catch a late game unit in the open with no cover and your veterans still only have a 65% THC it gets kind of annoying.

 

[ArchAngel]

I think the 30 point flying defense bonus became the most annoying thing in the game once Long War taught the AI to use it (or removed the shackles that stopped it, since apparently that's what much of the AI changes were). It's why heavy floaters are as annoying as the early drones later on.

It not only allows them position freely without having to worry about cover at all, but because it provides a total defense against flanking and therefore abilities like Hit and Run and ITZ. Flying enemies are the only reason to take Close encounters on an assault.

That is why I take +15 vs flying perk on my snipers

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

That is why I take +15 vs flying perk on my snipers

Yeah, I'm always torn, but I never take it. I think low profile is too good to pass up. When I don't take low profile, I usually end up concluding that lone wolf is more useful since you can get +10 aim/+10 crit vs everything (and its not that hard to set up by the 2nd or 3rd round). Meaning that +15 is really a +5 aim, -10 crit compared to lone wolf. Since so many flyers have robot DR I think the crit is as important as the aim. Maybe Deadeye is better on a disabling shot sniper, just so you can make sure you hit the cyberdisc when you need to.

 

[ArchAngel]

Yeah, I'm always torn, but I never take it. I think low profile is too good to pass up. When I don't take low profile, I usually end up concluding that lone wolf is more useful since you can get +10 aim/+10 crit vs everything (and its not that hard to set up by the 2nd or 3rd round). Meaning that +15 is really a +5 aim, -10 crit compared to lone wolf. Since so many flyers have robot DR I think the crit is as important as the aim. Maybe Deadeye is better on a disabling shot sniper, just so you can make sure you hit the cyberdisc when you need to.

I stopped using lone wolf after I got butt raped by 4 Seekers in one mission and in another ship mission by a wandering band of Mutons that found my sniper. Too easy to lose the sniper in LW with the masses of enemies and their bonuses. Now I just keep the sniper behind everyone else and use them, engineers and rocketeers to take out flying enemies and I take low profile for my scouts instead.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/xcom-2-exclusive-class-reveal-the-chryssalid/1100-6429038/

XCOM 2 Exclusive Class Reveal: The Chryssalid

If you’ve played an XCOM game in the past, then you know the chryssalid, the most frightening-looking alien the games depict. In XCOM 2's multiplayer, you will get the chance to command one of these extraterrestrial meanies for yourself, but most of the time, you will face a chryssalid as an opponent. Developer Firaxis hopes to make this gruesome unit an even more intimidating force in the upcoming strategy sequel, and lead producer Garth DeAngelis recently divulged how the team is doing just that.

GAMESPOT: So the chryssalid returns, but outside of multiplayer, there's no chance of somehow recruiting one to join the XCOM forces, I presume?

DEANGELIS: The chryssalid is very much still one of the alien occupiers of Earth. They are against XCOM. They will never become a part of your army.

We had to have them come back. They've been a staple of XCOM, harkening back to the original UFO defense. A couple of decades have taken place since you lost in Enemy Unknown. A lot of the enemies have evolved. Now, the chryssalid, they're a little bit too crazy of a species to integrate human DNA into them, but they have evolved. They've received some upgrades. What they did in Enemy Unknown, is they implanted XCOM with something that would then breed another chryssalid out of them, if you remember. It was a pretty terrifying sequence. Design said, "How can we make this crazier?"



Now they've become even more poisonous. They can't just poison you with the Chryssalid Kiss as they did with Enemy Unknown. Every time they strike you, the tips of their claws have a poison on them. You can receive a chryssalid poison effect with any attack. If you happen to die while that chryssalid poison attack is active, then the soldier that died, or the civilian, can then enter this gestation period, and they will become a cocoon. If that cocoon does not get destroyed by XCOM within a to-be-determined amount of turns, then three chryssalids can pop out. We now have chryssalids running more rampant than in Enemy Unknown. They found a way to breed faster, to multiply more. It is very terrifying to now see chryssalids on a mission. Certainly, if there are civilians nearby too, these things can multiply like crazy.

Of course, design-wise, we had to do a few tweaks that are happening now to make sure that it's not unfair. I think if people hear three chryssalids at the same exact hit points that we had in Enemy Unknown, it was enough trouble dealing with them what they were. They're a little bit more brittle in XCOM 2. They can be taken down a little bit easier, but it is overwhelming just to see the sheer number of volume that can come at you if you allow them to go through this cocoon process.



That's not the only thing they can do. They can do one other really cool thing. What else would make a chryssalid more terrifying? If they could disappear. Now they can actually burrow underground. When you're walking through maps, you don't know where they are, if they've burrowed underground. We will have counterplay that we're not talking about now through items and gear to be able to get in front of that if you choose to, but at any moment, and this actually happened to me the other day, you're walking along, and a chryssalid literally jumped out of the ground and took me down. I had no idea they were there. They are nightmarish. They are very terrifying. We wanted to push them further. We love them as an iconic alien in XCOM franchise, and those are the things that they can do.


You're saying they're terrifying and now obviously that they can burrow underground, and that just adds another element to that. But I think of something like a cliff racer, if you've ever played Morrowind, and there's a fine line between, "Oh, my god, that's horrifying. I want to avoid its attack," and, "Wow, this is super annoying and I hate it. I'm pressing the off switch." What are the lines do you think in creating the chryssalid in this way between "we want to challenge the player, but we don't want to annoy the player?"

It's also more challenging because everyone has different opinions with their personal play experience, and how they play, and how something felt to them psychologically. We think we did a fairly good job with the chryssalid overall. It was terrifying, that high move distance. It was deadly if it got close, but you had solid counterplay to take care of it. You generally had a chance to retreat. Overwatch was very effective against it. In Enemy Within, you had things like the proximity mine. You had ways to really counter against it. We need to push those things forward with X2. That's what I was alluding to with the burrow. You will have counterplay for it.

We've done things like nerf the hit points a little bit on the baseline chryssalid to make sure that since they can now spawn into three instead of one it is not unreasonable. That all comes with playtesting and talking with design and hearing people's experiences internally to make sure that we have that just right. You're absolutely right. That's paramount. You can't push these things to a point where it's a very fine precipice between challenging fun and, 'You know what? I don't want to go back into that game.' We have to be super cognizant of that.


How will we be able to put these abilities to use in multiplayer?

It's pretty straightforward. We're pretty excited about giving the players the tools for everything they encounter in the game. Then you can make your dream team. They will have costs based on the units that you choose, and then you'll have some chances with soldiers who select different abilities and items at different costs. Things like the chryssalid, you'll be able to include that in your loadout, and then use burrow, and if you kill somebody with a chryssalid poison, you can then choose to multiply. You'll have more chryssalids. That sort of stuff is intact.

I'm curious, in a multiplayer scenario, about that burrow and how that ends up being used against other soldiers. What is it like to play as the chryssalid and use that particular ability? What are the kinds of surprises you would spring upon an enemy in that case?

You kind of think about it like the seeker, how if you go invisible with the seeker using Ghost Armor, it's just thematically now you're going underground, and you can't move while you're invisible. You want to set it up as an anticipatory tactic where you see your opponent potentially move towards, and then you'll get a free attack on them if they move within this radius. That's a way to use it. You can unburrow anytime you want, but it's a nice way to ambush the player with the enemy with that specific skill.

Come back to GameSpot tomorrow (5am PT, July 29 2015) for the next in our series of XCOM 2 exclusives, an interview with series creative director Jake Solomon.

 

[Zeriel]

I don't think the bonus for anything in XCOM2012 are meant to strongly simulate actual conditions. I get the impression the mechanics are meant first and foremost to provide advantages and disadvantages to units. Whether that can be plausibly justified as an abstraction of reality is secondary. So probably flyers get defense so they can be used to penetrate formations and flank/threaten to flank in order to weaken the effectiveness of just turtling (same reason floaters can reposition anywhere with their liftoff move).

Of course this is a valid goal for abilities. The problem is thatway the flyer defense actually plays out means that the most meaningful tactical decision you make is how many grenades/rocketeers you take before the mission. Otherwise its just fall back and take low percentage shots until probability works in your favor. Without knowing what the enemy teams composition is, your explosives choices are really an educated guess at best.

Which means that once you run out of explosives flying leads to more war of RNG attrition engagements. So the problem is not necessarily that its hard to deal with (hard can be fun), but that its annoying to deal with. Same issue with innate defense. When you catch a late game unit in the open with no cover and your veterans still only have a 65% THC it gets kind of annoying.

These are all Long War specific gripes though, a scenario for which Firaxis never planned or designed their units. In the vanilla version of the game floaters are one of the easiest units to kill. In that case, I think the flying defense bonus is merely there to offset the fact flying units are never (or almost never) in cover, which is a fundamental part of the game's to hit calculations. Without the flying defense bonus, you'd have constant 100% or near 100% chance to hit on all flying units. In vanilla the defense bonus doesn't make flying units super hard to hit (save MAYBE the heavy floater, and even there by the time it appears your aim is so high you still hit it all the time), it just means it is possible to sometimes not hit it.

 

[Inspectah]

So now there are more Chryssalids, but they are weaker and can burrow?
That's not so bad

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

These are all Long War specific gripes though, a scenario for which Firaxis never planned or designed their units. In the vanilla version of the game floaters are one of the easiest units to kill. In that case, I think the flying defense bonus is merely there to offset the fact flying units are never (or almost never) in cover, which is a fundamental part of the game's to hit calculations. Without the flying defense bonus, you'd have constant 100% or near 100% chance to hit on all flying units. In vanilla the defense bonus doesn't make flying units super hard to hit (save MAYBE the heavy floater, and even there by the time it appears your aim is so high you still hit it all the time), it just means it is possible to sometimes not hit it.

Yeah, I wasn't really talking about vanilla. Nothing's a problem in vanilla provided you roll the right troops. More the way the flying bonus intersects with various other Long War changes (robot DR and mid/late game innate defense and HP increases in particular) in a way that is kind of annoying.

Of course in vanilla the flying bonus was lower IIRC, since the half-cover bonus was lower. Which is a problem in the opposite way, since half cover was worthless unless you hunker and flyers can't hunker. Plus I think the AI was shackled a bit to encourage it to go to ground periodically, whether or not that made sense.

To be fair to Long War, it's trying to increase the challenge without being able to fundamentally change certain mechanics, so this kind of thing isn't unreasonable.

 

[ArchAngel]

I like the flying units, they are actually dangerous now. Now they will move forward and get into flanking positions which they did rarely in EU and EW.

 

[Zeriel]

Yeah, I wasn't really talking about vanilla. Nothing's a problem in vanilla provided you roll the right troops. More the way the flying bonus intersects with various other Long War changes (robot DR and mid/late game innate defense and HP increases in particular) in a way that is kind of annoying.

Of course in vanilla the flying bonus was lower IIRC, since the half-cover bonus was lower. Which is a problem in the opposite way, since half cover was worthless unless you hunker and flyers can't hunker. Plus I think the AI was shackled a bit to encourage it to go to ground periodically, whether or not that made sense.

To be fair to Long War, it's trying to increase the challenge without being able to fundamentally change certain mechanics, so this kind of thing isn't unreasonable.

That "flyers move around way too much" that might have been a result of the go-to-ground shackling is what really made floaters useless in vanilla imo. They'd way too often use their 2 moves to just move around instead of shooting, even once they were already engaged in combat. The chances they'd die uselessly before doing anything, especially once overwatch came into play were like 80%. Come to think of it, that must be something inherent to the floater AI, since I never recall cyberdiscs behaving in the same absurd manner.

Bombard alien grenade range on heavy floaters was pretty cool, though.

So now there are more Chryssalids, but they are weaker and can burrow?
That's not so bad

I kind of rolled my eyes at that. Vanilla Chryssalids were one of the most trivial and easy enemies to deal with in nuXCOM, making them even more fragile seems like the wrong direction to me. It's especially bothersome because they were legitimately dangerous in the old X-COM.

I guess modders will get to have fun trying to figure out how to make melee work in XCOM's engine, I'm sure there's a reason things are the way they are.

(Just offhand, I'd argue the reason melee is fundamentally flawed in EU/EW is that you need to know exactly where your enemies are to attack them properly. If you move with a melee unit on your blue move and then see someone, you can't really attack them, since attacking as melee requires to be right next to them AND having only used your blue move. Anyone who has played MP quickly figures out melee units aren't very good for this reason, plus the whole flyers thing. At least XCOM 2 is supposedly addressing the movement issue since movement + attack can all be done in one action now. I'm still not sure if that means you can move and attack on your dashing/yellow.)

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

That "flyers move around way too much" that might have been a result of the go-to-ground shackling is what really made floaters useless in vanilla imo. They'd way too often use their 2 moves to just move around instead of shooting, even once they were already engaged in combat. The chances they'd die uselessly before doing anything, especially once overwatch came into play were like 80%. Come to think of it, that must be something inherent to the floater AI, since I never recall cyberdiscs behaving in the same absurd manner.

TBH, the going to ground thing is my speculation. I just know that 1) some of the fundamental changes Long War made involved removing AI shackles and 2) flying units no longer act (as) retarded. For all I know they go to ground less often because they removed the "move twice all the time" shackle. Of course it all might just derive from the changes they made to make aliens more likely to take lower percentage shots. Or maybe even it just comes from the fact that since half-cover is useful in Long war, flying becomes a significantly more viable option to the AI vs ground cover.

Bombard alien grenade range on heavy floaters was pretty cool, though.

Yes, yes it is. That is the good kind of XCom bullshit.

 

[Inspectah]

Vanilla Chryssalids were one of the most trivial and easy enemies to deal with in nuXCOM, making them even more fragile seems like the wrong direction to me. It's especially bothersome because they were legitimately dangerous in the old X-COM.

That's true, but LW showed the potential tension of fighting an army of them (I remember something like 36 of them in that fishing village mission), and since they were, as you said, trivial anyway, I see that as an improvement

 

[Zeriel]

That's true, but LW showed the potential tension of fighting an army of them (I remember something like 36 of them in that fishing village mission), and since they were, as you said, trivial anyway, I see that as an improvement

I liked the "closet chryssalid" theme they had in the original X-COM, where chryssalids would kind of just stalk in the shadows and often avoid your force entirely for most of the mission, while being huge HP sponges that you had to be careful about engaging. Of course a lot of that is down to the way AI worked in X-COM, with the pod system in XCOM that would have never worked and they would have just been another variant of berserkers.

I have yet to face a huge mass of chryssalids even in Long War that is a threat, you just apply explosives and double shots until the problem is dealt with, the increased number of soldiers makes it even more trivial. Burrowing has a lot of potential, however. That forces the only dangerous situation on you: when a chryssalid pops out in melee range right next to you.

 

[Inspectah]

I liked the "closet chryssalid" theme they had in the original X-COM, where chryssalids would kind of just stalk in the shadows and often avoid your force entirely for most of the mission

I hope that's what they are going to do with the whole burrowing thing. I too miss the good old UFO/TftD enemies, but I guess I just accepted that they aren't going to come back

 

[Zeriel]

I hope that's what they are going to do with the whole burrowing thing. I too miss the good old UFO/TftD enemies, but I guess I just accepted that they aren't going to come back

I can't wait to see someone try to mod out the pod system. I don't think the alternative will work, but it will be instructive to see WHY it doesn't work. And for the record, I think the reasons will be more complex than "because every enemy beelines for you the moment you find one", there are some fairly obvious and simple solutions to that, but I'm assuming Firaxis tried the solutions to the problem too before giving up.

 

[ArchAngel]

I can't wait to see someone try to mod out the pod system. I don't think the alternative will work, but it will be instructive to see WHY it doesn't work. And for the record, I think the reasons will be more complex than "because every enemy beelines for you the moment you find one", there are some fairly obvious and simple solutions to that, but I'm assuming Firaxis tried the solutions to the problem too before giving up.

We don't know if anyone will bother with big changes. Long War devs decided to make their own version of Xcom and nobody else cares enough. Maybe some new group will form.

 

[Ulminati]

My enthusiasm for this game continues to cool with almost every new thing that gets released. I like it less and less with every video and every screenshot.

Eh, Xenonauts was always a more worthy successor anyway. I paticularly like whatever mod Undead Phoenix is using right now. It seems to have brought the game up to a more assrapery standard.

First, they released that the story from EU and EW didn't matter. XCOM apparently failed a couple of months in. That sucks a ton right there - but I can almost get past that.

Second, the gameplay/trailer with the sword man. Yes, because rather than drawing a sidearm, using a sword is superior...

That's what NUXCOM gets for trying to defend the world with 6 people! I agree the sword is stupid. The stunrods at least had a justification in the original XCOMs (we need them alive for research!)

Then they show MORE footage of gameplay with ...what do I call them now? XCOM Insurgents? How edgy. Anyway, they are sneaking in, risking their lives, to blow up a statue. Yeah, cause that's what wins wars, blowing up statues.

Next they show enemy reinforcements. Before, enemies just got a free move when they were uncovered. Now, they just drop in enemies into flanking positions or within melee range of your troops. Sure, sure, sure, this was probably tightly scripted for dramatic effect, but the mechanic we'll see in play could be even more random.

Makes you wish it was more like Xcom Apocalypse. That game had some pretty cool mission types. The statue is dumb, I agree. Maybe some modders will chang eit so you're blowing up a mind control mcguffin to loosen the aliens grip. It's 2 lines of lore and a model that needs to be swapped to reduce retardation.

The enemy spawning in NUXCOM was pants-on-head retarded too. More reason to play the original trilogy or Xnauts instead.

Did you see how far that snake man yanked that XCOM Jihadist out of cover? It looked like 10 squares. Then the snake man proceeded to crush him out in the open.

Good news, your teammate dies and you want to keep that gear? Better be prepared to carry his ass off the field! Realistic? I guess, but it sure isn't going to be fun.

Some of my best memories fromt he original XCOM is hauling unconscious bodies and scavenged tech to the skyranger after a mission went south. I'm also a huge fan of some alien types being terrifying and not remotely fair. It makes the game more challenging and tense, and forces you to switch up/cheese your tactics. Some of my fondest memories of the original UFO: Enemy Unknown are from the first times I encountered chrysalids spawning from the zombified bodies of civilians.

Maybe I've been hanging around here with you guys too long and I'm getting jaded... but I'm not pre-ordering this game.

screw this game...maybe I'll go player the original... or Xenonauts.

For Xnauts, get the community edition or the mods phoenix are using. Flamethrowers. Blowing holes in ufos to enter through. More enemy types. More maps. Some nice extra lore snippets.