The Firaxis XCOM Series

Both depending on if you move him or an enemy.

I'll have to keep that in mind.

Yeah both. I generally use it to reactivate his overwatch (Torque's tongue does the same, of course, but she grants the extra action, which kind of cancels it).

I could have Shelter's clone Relocate with Blueblood to activate his overwatch and then have it blast some enemy. And then have Shelter himself Relocate with an enemy to get Blueblood to shoot it too.

That was the first time I've had an Avenger Defense mission in May. And it had to happen a week after my A-Team rushed to get the Blacksite cleared before the end of April so the Informant wasn't mad with me. And of course said A-Team got sent out by Central to get properly Exhausted by all the enemy contacts.

The rest of May wasn't much better, since Signal Jamming and a lack of contact slots brought my map progress to a standstill, so baldie was upset with me that month instead. But that Dark Event looks to be passed, I've got some Resistance Contact rewards from Covert Ops to make up for the fact that my Resistance Comms still isn't finished, and I'm flush with Intel due to a bunch of datapad loot and inspired research for it. June looks like it's going to be busy-busy.

Signal Jamming suuuucks. You must've had quite the Sophie's Choice to let that event go through.

There was logic behind it, at least. The other options were another Avatar Project breakthrough and the Chosen showing up much more often, and since my Resistance Contacts were maxed out at the time, I had plenty of supplies and intel, but my A-Team leader already had a Fear of the Chosen phobia after getting his ass kicked during the Hunter's first appearance, I thought scanning wouldn't be too important. The fact that the Covert Op reward was an Engineer just sold it for me.

And then immediately afterward I get additional Resistance Contacts from a scan site and a Covert Op. Trolled by the game's belated generosity.

June's going to be stressful, a race to an Avatar Facility before baldy shows up to complain about my strategy, since the overall Project progress is past 75%. But I'm finally getting the Avenger's infrastructure up and going, and once I get space and power for the Shadow Chamber I'll have another way to start turning back the clock.

Skirmisher and Templar cover ops for Avatar Project sabotage back-to-back. Progress set back FOUR notches in a couple weeks. Man, those backdoors the Skirmishers got out of their psi-network chips are insane.

I'm picturing the current ADVENT commander salting out hard that I just EXALTED his plans so thoroughly.

Edited by AceOfScarabs on Jul 3rd 2020 at 7:57:13 PM

Well that was a legendary ragequit.

Right after successfully clearing the Hunter's stronghold, which benched my A-team for 10 days, but before I could attempt an Avatar Facility mission with "Low Profile" and the squad of Sergeants I've been keeping in the fridge for a month, I get a Council mission to whack or capture a VIP. Nine enemy units on the map - Elite Troopers, Elite Stun Lancers, Shieldbearers, Elite Priests, Vipers, Spectres.

It has the "Surgical" sitrep.

Not only is it mathematically impossible for any combination of soldiers from my B-team to kill any one of these pods in a single turn, nearly every enemy unit has the ability to instantly take out a soldier, whether with a stun attack, psychic power, Shadowbind, or grapple. I have never had the game say "fuck you" so loudly, or sworn so much in response.

Once I cool off, I'm either going to try and send my Reaper to assassinate a VIP for the first time in any XCOM 2 playthrough, or take advantage of the fact that I had the console enabled to troubleshoot a mod.

...Or download the Surgical SitRep fix mod and reload to just before that mission generated, I guess.

The Chosen are all dead except for the Commander (read: ME). Assassin was taken out first and got ol' Butcher his new weapons. Hunter and Warlock went in quick succession, and the psychic commandos I've been training obliterated them utterly.

The hilarious part is that they adapted to me having a Templar take down the Assassin by BOTH adopting melee-proof armor, but that didn't save them Eat Null Lance, doods.

Also Julian accidentally'd his first SPARK chassis when it got shredded and then hit by a high-damage Sectopod beam gun, the second one has been given better armor and weapons so he won't break it so easily again.

Ugh.

After the "Surgical" BS was dealt with, the campaign went smoothly, if not always in the graphical sense. There were occasional moments of lag involving Overwatch, or oddities like that time the Resistance militia went rushing past a soldier aiming at a target in slo-mo before the last enemy threatening some civilians was shot. And I found that for whatever reason, there was a moment of lag when selecting soldiers using the Russian voice pack I'd installed. But for the most part, I was happy with how my new motherboard and graphics card were handling the game on max graphics settings.

Then I went to Waterworld.

Seven-second lag between giving a move order and the soldier actually moving. The framerate dropping to single digits when they finally did so. Offscreen alien activity took several minutes to process before it was my turn again, and the game actually froze up and crashed twice.

I ended up turning the graphics down to medium, which didn't make an appreciable difference, and reading Guards! Guards! between turns, which also didn't help the game run better but kept me from caring. Really, the only improvements came as I killed pods and the game had fewer things to process, so that by the final two firefights, things were almost normal. And then once we got through the loading screen door WotC added, the game was able to run on max graphics again. Final Avatar died from Naruto-running right into half the squad's overwatch fire instead of sending a flunky in first, so it was pretty anticlimactic.

It rankles that I got the worst performance from the game with the best hardware I've ever had. But at least I'm not getting plagued with the sort of issues I'm seeing on Steam after the game did something with its launcher. Thank you, Alternate Mod Launcher.

Currently playing the Enemy Within expansion for the first time, and I just got a Council mission for a site recon on a fishing village.

Did they... did they just reference the infamous "Screw this! We're out of here!" terror site of not just X-COM: UFO Defense (i.e., a town filled with Chryssalids at night), but XCOM Terror From The Deep's as well (i.e. "At least it's not a Cruise Ship")?

...Firaxis, I love you.

Edited by Servbot on Jul 12th 2020 at 11:07:04 AM

Oh, Site Recon... one of, if not the, most suspenseful XCOM missions in the entire franchise.

Sooo... first time in EW? What are you gravitating towards, MECs or genemodding?

Edited by amitakartok on Jul 13th 2020 at 3:51:24 PM

Only made one MEC (a former Heavy), and a few soldiers with Gene Mods (particularly a Squadsight Sniper). Waiting for the Psi results of my soldiers before I decide what to do with each of thrm since Mimetic Skin is expensive and my money has mostly been going to building facilities, satellites, and enough weapons to keep up with the arms race.

That said, there's just something satisfying about having my MEC soldier straight up punching to death any alien/EXALT she comes across

Edited by Servbot on Jul 13th 2020 at 7:35:10 AM

Depending on how you create them, punching aliens can end up being the most viable use for your MEC.

(MECs have even worse Aim growth than Heavies, but they keep the current Aim stat of the converted soldier. If you convert a Sniper Colonel they'll be shooting flies off of Floaters, but if you convert a Rookie, it's gonna be Collateral Damage and Kinetic Strike Module all day.)

Edited by shigmiya64 on Jul 13th 2020 at 1:56:38 PM

One thing I didn't like with the newer games is the static skill growth. As in, soldiers cannot improve beyond a finite number of promotions.

Yeah, I found that out after I created my first MEC using a newly promoted Squaddie. Thankfully, she was a Heavy, so it wasn't too big a loss, but the rest I make will be Colonels of the other three classes (for the Achievement).

I've always found MECs to not really be worth trying to build around straight shooting, because just about every other class (including Assaults) can do it better. Their ability to insta-gib durable, early game threats with 100% accuracy make them invaluable (plus the ability to actually take a hit). Once the squad has one or more Snipers running, then being able to demolish cover is a big boon (though admittedly technically replicable by grenades, they have infinite uses so long as they have time to reload).

I almost always chop up a Support or Heavy into a MEC asap since they make ok tanks in the start and can actually get shot once or twice without dying.

And funnily enough, not only you can chop up people while they're laid up in the infirmary, but doing so cancels out wound recovery time completely.

I wonder if that was intentional and conscious, or they just forgot about the possible exploit and left it that way afterwards?

Heh, almost forgot about that. If I ever replay EW, if I get an injured guy ending up as a MEC, I'm totally naming him Adam Jensen.

Self Imposed Challange: MEC augmentation can only be performed on critically injured (ie. knocked out during a mission) personnel and only while they're still in the infirmary with the same injury, no exceptions.

For bonus points, make MEC augmentation mandatory for critically injured soldiers if your Meld reserves permit it.

So... only augment those who never asked for this?

Think of it as an extra incentive for soldiers to not get shot?

Mini mod review:

"Multiple Sitreps Guaranteed" definitely spices up a campaign by giving almost every mission an interesting modifier. It is occasionally powerful, like when "ADVENT Loot" and "Resistance Contacts" trigger at the same time, but to make up for that, it sometimes gives you a terror mission with "Low Profile," "Surgical" and "Savage" all at the same time. And it changes how you play the game, by forcing you to keep a squad of Sergeants in reserve just in case a vital mission comes up with "Low Profile."

I'm liking "Psionics Overhaul" after one and a half campaigns with it. As much as being able to make a PsiOp on demand fits the setting, I always disliked how it was restricted to Rookies, so these all-powerful newbies showed up late in the campaign to take slots on the strike team. But by reverting to the original Enemy Unknown psionics system^note except for having to spend days testing to see if someone was psionic, now you instantly know who has the Gift and spend a few days unlocking Mindfray as their starter power, it feels a lot more rewarding. Sometimes a star operative becomes even better, other times a third-string soldier suddenly becomes important. And it makes developing your psions more strategic - can I afford to put one of my A-listers through weeks of training to make them even more powerful? What powers can I choose to complement the psion's existing class? And while it looks like you can do the usual "lock the guy in the lab until they learn all the powers," that doesn't make them automatically level up, so unless your psyker has some field experience, they're going to be mighty but fragile. Oh, and be sure to get "No More Psi Amps" to avoid the eyesore of every soldier carrying a glowing Psi Amp they may not necessarily be able to use.

And now a random tangent.

I've been playing shutterbug to get pictures of ADVENT forces for the character page, using console commands to spawn enemies and spamming F12 when they go through their activation animations. And I've discovered that ADVENT Priests just don't seem to do said activation animations in most situations, for whatever reason. The only place I was able to actually get those little scenes to play was, you might be able to tell, the teleport room in a Chosen stronghold. Weird and annoying.

Edited by Tacitus on Jul 14th 2020 at 10:22:43 AM

Properly utilized, a confrontation between any alien unit and your mecha-marines should look something like this.