The Firaxis XCOM Series

It's also suboptimal because in the easier difficulties the odds are rigged in your favor, so there's a greater chance of the AI not being able to kill you. Not that it doesn't happen fairly often still, but it is rigged, so the most common scenario would be "floater shoots instead of running for cover, deals non-lethal damage, you pick him off next turn". But then a series of unlucky rolls happened and you got where you were.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Oct 24th 2018 at 7:06:17 AM

That or even just whiffs its attack (not all that unlikely in this scenario) and looks like an idiot who gave you a free kill.

And let me tell you, Cyberdiscs are always suicidally overconfident, even on Impossible. There seems to be something about the Hardened attribute that makes those units try to get in for pointblank shots.

As to the grenade spam, it's something you can do too, so I wouldn't really call that bullshit. It is for this reason why either keeping a lot of distance (forcing the Elites or Disc to use all their AP to approach) and then focus firing it all dead in one turn is pretty important (or using soldiers popping in and out of LoS to scout Sniper kills until the enemy's picked apart, which is my preferred method).

XCOM 2 can now be Suvorov-approved - the mod surely all of you asked for, bayonets.

Edited by VutherA on Oct 26th 2018 at 7:00:30 AM

Decided to just restart the campaign, as I screwed up right at the beginning by starting in South America and not having immediately started on Xeno-Biology to capitalize on the continent bonus until nearly a week later, which cost me enough time to fall behind as described above. Granted, I still fucked up this time because when the first abduction came up, I picked the cash reward instead of the engineer reward which left me one engineer short of being able to complete a Satellite Uplink before the end of the month, so I decided to leave expanding to the second month and poured the cash into rushing a steam vent instead.

This time, I decided not to be stingy with cash: instead of going for armor tech first, I went for lasers right away. Either that or the RNG decided to have mercy this time, but I absolutely creamed the aliens for the first few months.

I mean, I took a Captain Sniper and three rookies on an abduction, activated three pods at once on the second turn and a fourth one on the third turn - and the rookies KICKED ASS. ROOKIES. Killed all of them with only one minor injury, barely even missing any shots with their laser rifles. Granted, the Captain helped them out quite a bit.

"Oh, you're using Launch to flank one of my teammates? Here, have a Disabling Shot."

Then a while later, the now-Colonel Sniper and five Sergeants went to assault a landed UFO, starting in sight range of the thing. I put my Sniper on the nearby high ground, bam, three Mutons come out of the fog of war and only the Sniper can see them. Considering that I'm trying to get the achievement for a soldier being present in every mission and the sniper in question is my protagonist of choice, I could not let her get injured even slightly. So I scramble the others to get vision on the Mutons and end up activating a Thin Man pod and a Floater pod then during the alien turn, a second Floater pod charges out of the UFO.

Literally every alien on the map except the Outsider came at us all at once. The hairiest moment was two soldiers being suppressed and two Floaters in flanking positions - which was the moment where I declared "you ain't gonna fuck with me this time, game, BRING IT".

At the end of the turn, only the humans were standing on that battlefield. Everything else was in various states of extra crispy and/or chunky, with the Mutons in particular having been introduced to Zhang's rocket launcher.

One of the Thin Men ran away into the fog of war and overwatched, but promptly got Squadsighted as soon as he popped up again. I know I would've gotten a Total Party Kill in this situation on Classic, but I don't care. After how much frustration I had yesterday, being on the roll like this felt good.

Then again, any experienced player watching my gameplay would immediately be able to tell that my difficulties stem primarily from not operating with an "A Team, B Team" setup: I always take the lowest-ranking soldiers to abductions and UFO missions and only pull out the aces for Slingshot and terror missions. I do have lots of difficulties in the early game, yes, but the XP is distributed so much that even Colonels become expendable because I always have another. The only exception is where the RNG is a dick and gives me only one Support.

I'd say it really depends on your current strategic situation. If you have the resources and the mission isn't particularly hard, training extras is a very good idea. At least my experience has been that, with the exceptions of Snipers, soldiers have a tendency to get nicked and hurt, putting them in the infirmary for a month. For short-term deployment, this means they may as well count as dead. There's two ways to solve this: keep the bench at least somewhat deep (I like to go to third-stringers, if I can get away with it) or field SHIVs to tank and get shot up (this is my preferred strat because rushing them is conducive to rushing Tactical Rigging, which makes even Rookies able to engage in Frag spam). The end result is usually a sort of meta where 1-2 Snipers and a Heavy babysit up to four lower ranks/SHIVs.

Edited by KuroiTsubasaTenshi on Oct 27th 2018 at 1:03:17 PM

I usually take a roleplay-centered approach to that. I train everyone up to Sergeant rank and let the ones who stood out the most form the A and B squads, occasionally fielding a C squad if there are enough people or if I've been unlucky with damaged soldiers.

Hey, when Steam says that Tactical Legacy Pack is "available for free for all owners of XCOM 2: War of the Chosen until 12:59pm EST on December 3, 2018", what does that exactly mean? I see two possible interpretations:

1. Any Steam user with both XCOM 2 and the WOTC expansion that logs into Steam Store or the Steam Desktop App during that period will be given TLP for free permanently; after that period, you'll have to pay to acquire it.

2. Any Steam user with both XCOM 2 and the WOTC expansion that logs into Steam Store or the Steam Desktop App during that period will be able to use TLP for free for the duration of the stated period; they will have to buy it like normal after the stated period ends.

The first one would be an extraordinarily generous gesture from Firaxis. The second one is still generous, in that it allows players to give the DLC pack a thorough look without having to pay anything, and then decide whether or not to buy it for keeps; the generosity, however limited, would obviously increase the odds of a player deciding that it's worth buying, if only to return the gesture of good will to Firaxis in kind.

Sounds like it's essentially a bundle up until that date, at which point it will then cost extra for the Tactical stuff. Saying that the Tactical stuff is free with War of the Chosen is better PR wording, though (with current owners retroactively getting it because there would probably be choice words if the bundle went as is only went to new purchasers).

Looks to be the first one - or at least I hope so. I agree with Kuroi here, the intent seems to be that anyone who buys WOTC now also gets TLP for free, but later on TLP will be separated into its own module ala Alien Hunters and Shen's Last Gift.

Finally got around to playing the Tactical Legacy DLC (my laptop broke about a week before it came out, and took it's damn sweet time getting fixed), and it's... fine, I guess.

I'm ambivalent towards the legacy missions. I like the challenge offered by the rules on that mode, even if it could have allowed me to customize characters a bit more (I feel no attachment to the randoms the computer makes for me, and I can't even alter who carries what piece of kit, so I'm not really managing my squad so much as playing with someone else's), but the story is complete bullshit (yeah, Bradford, you totally fought two Cyberdiscs, a Sectopod and three Avatars that one time. Then you forgot all about it so you could be surprised nineteen years down the line.) I'm slightly disappointed at the lack of new enemies presented. They had a good chance to reintroduce some of the old favorites, but in the end the only really new thing are the white Chryssalids, who are basically regular Chryssalids with less health. I don't see the point much.

The unlocks are a bit more disappointing. The weapons especially, what with there only being one of each type and them not being customizable, especially since the characters in the Legacy missions have more than one of each. The armors are nice, although I wish they weren't locked to each class. The helmets are, overall, the best of those additions, but they absolutely do not deserve being such a late unlock. And I don't care much for the new attitudes.

The nicest thing, I guess, was the music. Hearing the EW/EU music was nice, and the UFO: Enemy Unknown-inspired one fits the game quite well.

I don't really care about the other two modes, mostly because I couldn't care less about the challenges. So yeah, it was fine. Nothing particularly great about the DLC. I'm kind of glad I got it for free, really, because it would have been hard to justify paying anything much for this.

I haven't played since finishing vanilla XCOM 2, so missions in a purely tactical setting with an opportunity to use every class from War of the Chosen has been exactly the catalyst I've needed to get me into a new campaign with all the bells and whistles.

The irony is that the TLP DLC is meant to be a celebration of XCOM 2, but actually playing the mini-campaigns makes me want to uninstall the game. I've already given up on getting golds on everything, I just want to finish "The Lazarus Project," get the last stupid unlockable, and run my final campaign before putting the game to rest. But it's looking like Mission 3 is all about RNG - will the two Berserkers go on a rampage when the Reaper bombs them, will they hit or whiff the other aliens during that rampage, will the Reaper reveal himself when egging them on with another potshot, or will the Codex sprint by and reveal him immediately after the Claymore goes off.

At least it's more "honest" bullshit than Campaign 1, Mission 5 and the wonky LoS in the police station. I don't know how I got through that to get a silver medal, all I know is that it's not going to let me get through it again.

I just completed the Legacy stories myself, and if I wasn't convinced Iron Man was hell before, this certainly made sure that I won't ever touch it in a normal playthrough.

Anyone know if the new soldier attitudes make use of unique voice lines?

As far as I can tell, they use the Normal voice clips, which is kind of a letdown. There's a mod that tries to fix that, but it sounds like it may interact weirdly with RPG Overhaul and its submods, so I haven't tried it yet.

Ooh good mod!

Cheers for that!

I have to say, there is one big disappointment I've had with WOTC and TLP thus far, and it's that nothing there applies to the vanilla game. There's a lot of stuff, such as the enhanced customization options or the photobooth, that I would have enjoyed being able to use in the vanilla game without having to deal with a Chosen campaign as well. It would have been nice to be given that choice, especially since Long War 2 is vanilla game only, but because of how these two are organized, that's not a thing that can be done.

The one thing I lament most about the whole game, expansions and all, is the lack of a choice as to where you start out on the globe. Sure, in gameplay terms it's pointless since continental bonuses are randomized, but I just like starting out in my home turf. I don't care for being stranded in the middle of Africa or Asia.

Edited by RainingMetal on Nov 28th 2018 at 8:11:48 AM

Got a gold for Lazarus Project. It wasn't worth it.

The final mission was almost relaxing, though. Chosen base assaults are fun with a Reaper because of Tactical Door Use - send your stealther in first while the rest of the team is huddled against a wall, slip through the door, close it behind the Reaper. Then the rest of the team can stack up on the door to either set an Overwatch trap, or more commonly, drop a Bradford Bladestorm Bomb on the unsuspecting pod still being spotted by the Reaper.

And the final fight "with two pods at once!", pfft. They're both in different rooms, with doors, that can be closed to cut them off from each other. The only really memorable moment was when an Avatar decided to teleport above one of the doors, directly over where my Reaper was still in Shadow. Said Reaper was the only one on the team who could see the target for some reason, even though graphically the Avatar was just kind of hovering against the wall over the door, and when that Reaper killed it, its ragdoll phased halfway through the terrain and spent the rest of the fight twerking at Bradford. Good times.

Currently going through another RPG Overhaul campaign, leveling correctly this time, and wow the AI likes to assign the new attitudes to soldiers. Most memorable moment so far was during the Black Site mission, when the Assassin popped out of stealth behind my team's Overwatch trap and proceeded to shoot Kelly in the back with her shotgun. It was the first time I've seen the Assassin actually shoot something in what must be four War of the Chosen campaigns, and presumably it was payback for the time Kelly one-shotted the Assassin with a shotgun crit during their first fight.

@Marq - Early TLP adopters own it for good.

So, what's the point of the Templar's Ionic Storm, exactly? I've been trying to make it work with my current game and I never seem to find a good use for it that isn't already done better by a different item or ability. I would have understood it if it was ranged, like if it was XCOM's version of the Codex's Psionic Bomb, but it's close range, which kinda screws the whole idea for me...

It's one of those Templar powers that might actually be worth using if it always worked at 3-focus strength rather than being weaker with less focus.

Edited by shigmiya64 on Dec 22nd 2018 at 12:05:28 PM

Once again a quick PSA that the primary damage dealing skill of the Templar class is bladestorm.

As lackluster as most of the Templars' focus-costing abilities are, it's hard to argue they should be buffed when the class is so strong at melee damage.

Templars with Bladestorm and Reaper do seems like the best possible choice to me. I've racked up some really good combo kills with that little combination.

So this was a mission:

Five soldiers. Training mission, one Captain, one Lieutenant, two Sergeants and a Squaddie. Protect The Device. Simple.

Start the mission, run into two ADVENT pods, kill them with ease. No injuries. All good thus far. I get to the device and there's nothing around it. Take a turn or two to scout around, when all of a sudden one of the Sergeants triggers the last pod by accident: One Andromedon (first in this game), one Codex, one Trooper.

They close in on us, and my other Sergeant, who was on Overwatch, shoots at the Codex and grazes it, resulting in another Codex. Fine. End turn (The Sergeant was the last move). Andromedon moves, I get an Overwatch. Miss. It shoots back and hits the Captain. Codex #1 teleports, shoots, misses. Codex #2 teleports and shoots, misses. Trooper moves around and shoots, hits my Lieutenant.

My turn. Move everyone to a better position. Five shots. Four misses. The Trooper dies to the Captain. Alien turn. The Codexes hit my Squaddie and one of the Sergeants. Then the Andromedon pulls the most annoying shot and Acid Blasts three of my guys (all of them just on the end of the splash zone), kills all three of them. My Lieutenant panics.

My turn. Lieutenant is panicking, Sergeant isn't. He shoots and kills a Codex. Alien turn. Codex #2 teleports and grazes Lieutenant, who's left standing with 1 HP. Andromedon shoots the Sergeant and kills him. Lieutenant is still panicking, so aliens get another go.

Both take flanking shots at my Lieutenant and miss. He evacs out of there.

So, y'know. That happened.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Jan 29th 2019 at 9:08:24 AM