The Firaxis XCOM Series

Yeah, I managed to get her non shaken (FINALLY) along with Nick "Nitro" my grenadier (The game gave him that name too!)

And then two missions with FLAWLESS victory. Wow, I feel pumped. And one of those was.... painful for the aliens. Managed to hack a tower which refunded ALL my moves for every unit. So two turns in a row, essentially.

The group electro-shock therapy weapon is fantastic as well. That, followed by some guaranteed sniper shots was awesome. Killed a gatekeeper without it even managing to get a single shot off. In fact none of the aliens managed to fire.

That felt good.

Oh and met my first avatar. I like how it is essentially showing the same method of Elder / ethereal interaction with hosts as in the Bureau. Just this one is clearly more genetically modified to be a host, rather than the willing hosts of the Bureau, without any augmentations.

Got two psi troopers in training, so going to deploy them for, ah, field testing soon. Got the shadow gate going, reasearching a new autopsy on our masked friend and then I assume endgame.

And the Avatar project is back down to three red dots. Just unlocking regions now and still have one free base slot. Are there any late game rooms I need to keep space for? Or should I stick in another Resistance comms room to ensure I have the contact space?

Things that are hilariously broken: Concealment scout + long watch sniper. Scout spots a patrolling pod. Sniper turns on long watch, everyone else goes on overwatch. Patrol moves on alien turn, gets shot by sniper. Run towards sniper and cover. Trigger everyone elses over watch. Alien turn ends, and you have a full set of actions to finish them off. If anyone is still standing when you are running out of actions, drop a mimic beacon in high cover, but with los on all still standing enemies.

The thing that makes this amazing is that it doesn't rely on cooldowns or limited supplies, so you can pull it off on all enemy pods. For the initial concealment ambush, do this with killing zone, because unlike long watch it will trigger from concealment.

.. Yes, all my snipers are strictly left side talents. Heck, so are all my rangers.

edited 12th Feb '16 2:27:38 AM by Izeinsummer

That is evil. And fantastic.

I have only two snipers who do gunslinger. It's.... ok. But means you have to move a sniper into relatively close range which goes against my usual sensibilities.

Have to say, I find I'm using the different grenade types a tonne in this game. Also,the actual ammo types as well. The game offers a lot more tactical depth than its predecessor and when it punishes you it does feel far more that it was because you didn't effectively use your tools, rather than just unfairness.

RN Gesus is still an asshole though. 98% shot and I miss on a one health enemy....

I do think I need to get better at working out skill combos and what works best, like you did.

The concealed scout tactic works if you are lucky enough so that the aliens don't spot it when they run to cover.

I went for a more straightforward approach in the late game: A gunslinger + 2 Shredders + a PSI + a hacker specialist. Gunslinger and Shredders will destroy the "big" enemies in one turn 90% of the time. The PSI is here either to finish it with her 100% hit abilities, or to use Insanity on somethis else, which is an almost guaranteed turn lost. The hacker deals with mechs.

For extra lulz, the second shredder was actually my concealment scout who got the ability from the Advent tactics room. So I also had a backup medic or Grenadier or Serial Sniper to handle any possible survivor.

BTW, bluescreen rounds are expensive but totally worth the supplies they cost.

That doesn't take luck, it just takes proper positioning - the scout doesn't have to be in a good position to do anything, just to have line of sight on whoever the sniper is going to trigger off and be somewhere she is unlikely to be seen. As for the big mechanicals.. uhm. tbh, I usually just haywire stun them.

edited 12th Feb '16 3:59:38 AM by Izeinsummer

My sharpshooters are mostly snipers, but I like to take Lightning Hands over deadeye: At low levels, the deadeye penalty makes shots no longer certain, while LH can synergize well with Death From Above whenever enemies get in pistol range.

Some enemies might rush towards the shooters whenever they are triggered. All the melee ones (Berserkers, Lancers, Chryssalids) obviously, but also Andromedons or Gatekeepers since they don't care about obstacles. And more often than not, the Ranger ends up revealed, even if s/he was far from them.

Of course, if you are lucky with the Overwatch then these enemies will die before seeing the Ranger. But while I was reasonably lucky with my 70% shots during the game, my Overwatch results were reliably horrible. When I had the entire team (so 6 people) on Overwatch, 1 hit and 1 graze between them all was a great result. So I quickly dropped the idea of creating any strategy relying on it.

Except that once during the final mission where for some reason they decided to one-shot a Sectopod - all of them hit. I suppose RNG saved luck for that one.

Long Watch and Killzone? Dood that's awesome.

Do anyone know if it causes issues to install a mod mid game? I want to install the "evac all" mod but I am worried it will ruin my save.

There's something even crazier you can do with the Phantom spotter with Sharpshooter buddy combo if you're very good at positioning. If the Ranger can only see one enemy in the pod and the Sharpshooter lands a kill on that only visible unit, the pod will not aggro (it has to be a kill, though, as a miss or merely wounding the unit will set them off). I was doing this the other night in Blacksite practice and I picked apart all the weenies in three pods that patrol out front and the bigger enemies didn't give a crap about it. Additionally, turrets are total food to this tactic. Sure, the base Sniper Rifle takes a whole magazine to down it, but it's not like it's going anywhere or going to attack the Ranger.

I installed Evac All mid-game (and I've used it) and haven't seen a problem so far.

I could notice that with a turret near a patrol. And even with the basic sniper rifle, a successful deadeye shot will one-shot the turret in Normal-equivalent (veteran?) difficulty.

edited 12th Feb '16 7:46:44 AM by Medinoc

Alternatively, you can grenade any elevated turret. Falling through a floor instantly destroys them.

Ladies and gentlemen, ADVENT engineering.

Ah. Well, regardless, those shenanigans pretty much make it a non-threat (unless there's a pressing turn limit).

Grenades can't blow up the center line of the tops of trains though, so don't expect that to help you if you come across it.

BTW, anyone has a bug when you blew a turret's floor off but it didn't fall through?

ladies and gentlemen, ADVENT Engineering Mk II

Yeah had it happen once. It then glitched and fell after I got it to one health and died.

I've been reading some LP's about XCOM Apocalypse. Now there's a game design that's screaming for an HD re-release. How is it that modern games, despite all the prettiness, seem to lack that complex system layering? I mean, Cities Skylines has it, but Sim City didn't. Is it just indies these days being ambitious enough to try?

I imagine a Firaxis version of it would remove certain aspects but make others quite fun. But still - they had building destructibility in the 90's. And we celebrate XCOM 2's as if it's revolutionary.

Still, love the game, may have to grab apocalypse / install it in my library and give it a whirl.

I always felt that Titan and Archangel armor were both significantly tougher than the Warden and WAR suits. They even get free Hazmat protection even if Warden and WAR have armor pips and a heavy weapon slot :V

Wraith is a good counterpoint to Ghost armor even if I'd usually prefer cloaking to noclip hax.

Do you guys know that repeaters proc on stock damage? So every shot is a flat 15% chance to kill someone.

I like to have a specialist who Threat Assessment himself then goes into Overwatch. Along with Guardian, he can empty his rifle on an overwatch turn, killing an entire pod by himself.

One of my psykers has a stock-and-repeater setup in case they need to shoot things while waiting for their mindbullets to reload.

I find it amusing that stocks ignore armor.

Wait, when has anyone ever claimed that? I mean here, it's more like people making fun of how the destructibility seems to be a bit off. A lot of things seem too fragile (although, I did receive an unpleasant surprise in realizing that, unlike XCOM 1, XCOM 2's UFOs aren't made of tissue paper).

On the Stock and Repeater combo, I'm glad to hear it works. I hadn't had a chance to to see it at work, since my Ranger hasn't gotten enough attacks since I set her up with it, but I did throw that combo together thanks to both having the spare mods lying around waiting to be used and curiosity. Granted, even knowing this, I'm only using the 5% one, so I don't expect it to be especially amazing (but it would definitely make my day if something died instantly to a Stock shotgun Overwatch snipe).

One thing I miss is that back in the day it took a Blaster Bomb hit to crack the outer shell of a UFO's hull.

Added gun accessories to the work page.

edited 12th Feb '16 9:22:18 AM by AceOfScarabs

Reliably, anyway. Heavy Plasma and the Plasma HWP could pierce it, but the chances are iffy enough to be risky in combat. I think it was somewhere in the 30-40% range (per shot) and a soldier who didn't move could take up to 6 shots at it through double burstfire; currently unable to check the numbers, though, because apparently Ufopaedia exploded.

Heavy plasma could only shoot out the inner walls of UF Os back in the day, the Outer walls were really tough.

What are you guy's favourite continent bonus? I'm love Lock and Load which allows me to experiment with all sorts of of weapon mod and PCS combos on my dudes without losing them. Such a good bonus for a first playthrough.