>always low on resources>enemies can one shot you>timers in every other mission>millions of mechanics youre just expected to know>all the aliens have way more health than you dothis has to be the most difficult game that doesnt explicitly advertise itself as such there is, at least with something like sekiro you know what youre getting into ahead of time jfc
>>737690203You click the option that doubles the mission timers so you can actually enjoy the game
>hardYou get 3 absolutely insane and unstoppable hero units to cycle through each missionUse them you jackass. The ghost dude is always instant game win, the uzi guy can mow down anything and the black mega mind just wins with magic brain powers
>>737690203Enjoy it while you can.Game has an upside-down difficulty curve and you'll soon snowball into being super OP, which kills all the fun.
>>737690203After you get mag weapons, and easy mode is unlocked with plasma.
>>737690203Skip laser weapons to save resources and go straigh for plasma.The game becomes significantly easiert afterwards.
>>737690203Xcom is being known for raping you, what are you talking about? We're talking a game where bottom tier enemies have mind control
>download long war of the chosen>disable chosen>make campaign extra longNow I can just come home, enjoy a mission or two in an endless conflict and not worry about getting buttraped. It's nice to have options.
Early game is a clown fiesta, especially if you picked the immersive mode or whatever at the start that incorporates all the DLC without missions and you end up with big chungus wrecking you out of nowhere
>>737690203wotc is so unbearably cringe. You can see how it was just a skip and jump to their retarded marvel disaster game
>>737690203At some point, assuming you make the right choices, you start to overcome the curve it becomes easier and eventually you become overpowered. It's only hard in the beginning.You will fail. This is a game you're meant to restart a number of times until you possess the knowledge to be able to beat it. That's why they made it largely randomly generated. You learn from your failures and mistakes. It's more knowledge based rather than skill based.
Right about the time when you get better armor and can actually take a hit. Or you get the op sniper rifle.
>>737693336>Not enjoying the kino that is the Hunter's voice linesGay.
>>737690492I do this for armor, but never guns.You really should just get magnetic weapons right away, weapons are the most important tech and rushing plasma takes too long
Sharpshooters fucking suck.
I look like this.
Aliens should abide by the same gayass one move one action systemCheating bitches
>>737697534they literally dowhich is why everyone tells you not to engage at the end of your fucking turn and why overwatch is always the correct move
>>737690203The game starts hard and then gets easy on every single difficulty. Once you've tiered up your gear once, you should be able to sleep through the rest of the game.
>>737699537They don't, they get an extra free move on discovery. Overwatch creep got removed in 2, so now they effectively force you to either bring a reaper or get fucked by random pods. Nothing quite like following best practices, scouting with blue movement before sending in a single sprinter seeing nothing, then somehow seeing a pod with the last sprint of your last soldier resulting in two people taking crits behind full cover.
>>737700087>sprint into enemy >die>blame the gameYou know, you could be right anon. You are not, obviously, but you could be.
Never. The game just gets harder and harder since the enemies get much stronger. Just be glad they're not walking right into your mission objective, failing the mission yet.
>>737700346When every single movement is a gamble in the hopes you don't see anything out of the corner of your eye, relying on the hope that your first sprinted soldier isn't just out of sight of the next pod, every single move is a gamble. If you instead only blue move and overwatch, you'll never reach the objective in time. Even if you only move your soldiers in groups behind the closest covers you can, there's still a risk of your last mover uncovering an alien in the one unique tile that they saw on the way.
>>737690203Game was too difficult on the easy setting. 100% designed to be saved scummed which is just bad design.Worst part I cant even discuss it becuase most retards dont grasp what an absolute edge save scumming is and how fucked players are with negative compounding.OP is right.
this was close to before i got plasma weapons, so most of my guys couldnt one shot the lost. maybe i screwed myself with the management layer between missions but im in what i think is the midgame and its still difficult because the enemies feel like bullet sponges
>>737700874Are you redoing missions that went bad?
>>737700419Nah, I remember difficulty vanishing as your dudes rack up all sorts of extra bonuses from equipment, levelling, friend-bonding functions and souped-up gunsIn particular I had an assault guy with the chosen shotgun, jetpack armor, a bonded teammate AND the sniper's 'keep making actions as long as you keep killing' ability from the cross-class mechanic. As soon as a pod scattered, he could deep-strike behind them (a free action) so he counted as flanking them all, he could pop them all in the back, his buddy could hand him more actions if he really needed them, and he had the 'shoot something twice' CD available too in case something needed MORE than one certain-crit to die. He'd just clean up whole groups on his own.Honorable mention to Reapers, who could be kitted-out to reliably one-shot alien rulers and solo avatar facilities with their improved stealth and enormous movement range
>>737701131Were you playing impossible ironman? It's a war of attrition until the end.
>>737701109i reload turns that go really bad but in that mission it happened so late that i didnt want to redo a bunch of stuff to save a guy who wasnt one of my primaries
>>737690398>Game has an upside-down difficulty curve and you'll soon snowball into being super OP, which kills all the funJust like the original :)
>>737701270Legendary Ironman is, again, only hard for the first stint, because you legitimately have to pass all of your early missions with minimum damage. Past a certain point, you're invulnerable to all but the worst luck possible, as you'll have a leveled reaper and ranger.
>>737690203>>timers in every other missionYou forgot>timer on the campaign map
>>737690203XCOM EU/EW is the tutorial. If you can beat it, then you can beat XCOM 2.
>>737690203If you keep your soldiers alive then you start to outpace the enemies for a time. Your abilities are just straight up better than the alien's so their larger health pools don't matter as much. Also do not blindly run into the fog of war, you'll more than likely walk straight into an enemy pod.On the map you can also pretty safely ignore the avatar project entirely until it gets to like the last few pips, then attack a facility to make it go back down again. Just do your research and get stronger, don't play like a shitter and you'll be fine.
>>737705114I want a viper gf so bad
>>737705205Same
>>737690203once you start getting tech parity with the gleebs. I say that starts happening around laser tech level, and the first armor upgrade is huge.
As much as I like some parts of Chimera Squad, I generally dislike the story and most characters. I wouldn't mind a full retcon, ignoring it entirely for whatever XCOM 3 might be.
>>737697043They just take a bit to come online and require the most specific skills in the XCOM tree to actually become the highest threat. My final game I played, I had two different snipers, one was a Gunslinger and the other a Sharpshooter. Both of them would get similar amounts of kills depending on the mission and both of them could absolutely destroy a high HP target, like a Sectopod.
>>737690203nu-xcom2 is so fucking ugly
>>737705961XCOM 3 ain't happening anon...Firaxis is a dead studio walking.
I just play Xpiratez.
>tfw enjoyed chimera squadbros... am I evil?
>>737690370>the uzi guy can mow down anythingSkirmishes fall off hard by midgame>>737690398That's 90% of videogames ever.
>>737690203that alien is oddly sexy to me.
>>737691867>disable chosenOk I understand playing LWOTC because it's the objectively superior way to play, but why disable one of the mechanics that doesn't make you play every mission the same?>>737697534>>737700087Nta but if you play Long War they scramble but don't get to act unless the pod happens on THEIR turn.
>>73770041990% of the early game difficulty is because assault rifles are hot garbage. The game gets way easier as soon as you can start using shotguns.
>>737700689what happens here?
>>737710502People who complain about CS's writing and characters either didn't play the game and therefore don't understand its real problems, or they actually care about that shit more than the gameplay (and if that's the case then go play fucking modern FE if that's your perogative).The actual problem with Chimera Squad is that it's not XCOM. It's anti-XCOM. It's a title in the bizzaro universe hit series MOCX. A game where you have special snowflake individual characters with their own personalities and storylines who all have unique abilities that can single-handedly turn the tide of battle and no one is allowed to die without an instant game over, is so antithetical to what XCOM is that I daresay they set out to be as mechanically contrarian to the series as humanly possible in making the game.
It's not that hard, just minmax a bit and have a good squad's party composition. The first Jagged Alliance would've murdered your dudes before even giving you a chance, forcing you to play with the most expensive mercs and savescum every fight.
>>737690203I don't remember it being that hard. Even long war of the chosen isn't that hard, unless you get seriously bad luck rolling into a chosen who has absolute bullshit perks.
>>737711581>The first Jagged AllianceNobody plays JA1, everyone skips straight to 2 and you're correct to do so.
xbros... should I try the jagged alliance games?
Just started xenonauts 2 and im having fun
>>7377127611 is whatever, I mean it's a good game but it's not the one people always go back to2 is literally genre-defining and you have no excuse not to play it if you like these kinds of games3 is fun but understand that when it was coming out, people wanted Jagged Alliance 2: 2, and it explictly was not trying to do that because it knew it could never live up to that hype so it intentionally veered way off into doing something different, so it's not for everyone
feels good man
>>737713020can I skip 1 and 2 and go straight to 3?
>>737713105Yes but I wouldn't because I would still say that 2 is a better game. That being said if you play 3 first then you won't have the whole "I just wanted more JA2" fucking with your perception
>>737713105Do NOT skip JA2. However don't play the 1.13 mod for your first playthrough, that's for people that have 1000 hours clocked into the vanilla game and need new shit because they have the game fucking memorized. 1.13 will give you information overload as a new player.
>>737713039I just killed my first chosen and this was really hard, even with lots of saving and reloading, are they meant to be endgame level content? the stronghold covert op requires just one of your troops to be major rank so I figured I didn't need top level gear and troops but this ended up pretty tricky
>>737713687Honestly it depends. Chosen can be incredibly weak or strong depending on which strenghts and weaknesses they roll.I managed to beat my first one with magnetic weapons and predator armor just fine.The first one you fight is usually the most diifcult one because the chosen weapons you loot from them are super powerful
S H I T T Y W E S T E R N G A M E B A L A N C EI'm tired of it. It's not perfect in Japanese games, but it's much better.
VIGILO CONFIDOVIGILO CONFIDOTHERE IS NO GOD BUT THE COMMANDER AND BRADFORD IS HIS PROPHER
>>737714664>At first, ADVENT deployed nonlethal stun units for crowd control and the occasional protest. We don't see a whole lot of that anymore.
>>737690203Sounds like you are failing on the economic/tech side of the game. If you want to win you need money coming in ASAP, the more the better. You also need to get to at least the next level of armour and weapons ASAP or else you will get your shit pushed in the minute anything bigger than a sectoid shows up (and probably also by the sectoids too). Rookies are disposable, higher ranked soldiers a lot less so. Rookies should use grenades to get kills and level up since they can't hit shit otherwise and will die in 1 or 2 hits.
>>737690492>Xcom 2>Laseranon...
>>737690203Gatecrasher is one of only three missions you can replay if everyone dies, so you can savescum to see where the pods are and until you get a clear win.
>>737710919the voice actress does good job unfortunately she is pushing 75 at this point if you played>Bubsy, Mass Effect 3, WoW, Diablo 1-2 you might recognize her
>>737715596I love Bubsy. But that was Brian Silva. "What could possibly go wrong?" would fit in any XCOM situation though.
I got the fucking Stun/Priest drop on the second level AGAIN, can you BELIEVE THIS SHIT?!
I wish sparks were good, I love the idea of a bigass robo buddy, but they're just so fucking mid
>>737715958Because they can't actually take cover you have to play them differently, instead keeping them out of line of sight except to what you are attacking.
If you aren't already, I highly reccomend you play in ironman mode. Double the avatar project timer if need be so you have some wiggle room to recover from bad missions but its much more satisfying getting your soldiers online when you know you couldn't reload after bad rolls.
The hardest part is not giving up. You have crazy leniency before actually losing the campaign. Even on Commander you can afford to squad wipe every 3rd mission for the first 3 months and still be completely fine.
>>737716174doesn't stop the real save scumming (""reloading"" mid mission)
>>737716174Fuck that, if the game makes me miss that 95% flanking shot or my enemy gets that retarded DODE: GRAZED, I'm fucking reloading
do you best to stack kills on a soldier to get squad size 5 get mag weapons as soon as reasonably possible. do not be afraid of the SLOW warning. you don't need autopsies, you don't need resistance radio
>>737716650I've hardlocked saves doing this. It's not worth it.
>>737690203When you get laser weapons, by then you don't even need the plasma ones since they are overkill.
XCOM 2 was 10 years ago
DIE SNAKE
>>737717362>pistols being locked to sharpshootersI forgot about that. holy soulless. executing a floater with a sidearm when your grunt ran out of ammo in EW was a great feeling.
>>737717362I was not by my tail that I am once again given boobs. I was called here by "humans", who wish to pay me tribute.
>>737717519Templars get pistols I'm pretty sure
>>737717362>not missing on 100% shit webm, didn't laugh
>>737690203By the time you get mag weapons you're already so far ahead in the weapons race that the game becomes a joke. Just don't dick around too much to the point where you encounter sectopods every mission
XCOM 2 really hit the sweet spot with the alien designs, they're so good. Its such a crime this series is dead and Chimera Squad murdered all the good designs on the way out.
>>737690203Just savescum. Ironman mode is a challenge mode lifted straight from Fire Emblem as a self-imposed challenge, ignore that.Tick the double mission timer thingy to make your life easier, Fireaxis added that to address one of the most common complain. Ignore all secondary objectives, survival is your highest priority.
>>737717719Mutons are the point where I consider the enemies to be completely untenable. If this thing is alive at the end of the turn, one of your guys is dead, or even multiple.
>>737690203Enemy selection plays a big deal in the early game. For example a pod with an alien, commander, and a grunt; common sense would tell you to focus fire the alien first but in reality the commander is the most dangerous unit there by far.
>>737717719I don't even wanna think about chimera squad. It's set like 5 years after XCOM2 and somehow everybody has forgiven eachother and they all live in super duper harmony bullshit.My XCOM dudes were skinning aliens alive and mounting their heads on the wall, and you're telling me they're going to a snake brothel now? that there's no humans left that are at least a bit upset about the whole invasion, genocide and dictatorship thing?
>>737690203>randomly get one shot behind cover after enemy got two turns in a rowWow so much fun. Fuck this game.
>>737717912In a deeply misguided way they were just trying to appease the many fans who wanted aliens to be recruitable.
>>737717362Snake? SNAKE?! SNNNNAAAAKKKKEEE!!!
>>737717837Honestly I still think stun lancers are the worst, followed by spectres. The lategame bastards like gatekeepers or sectopods can be dealt with with decent positioning of your troops. This faggot meanwhile WILL stun someone and layup to a squad wipe without fail if you don't have a mimic beacon or kill him before the turn ends.
>>737717912i don't know how this retarded take keeps getting parrotedthere are a bajillion things wrong with chimera squad and it's objectively bad, but whining about how "everyone le... gets along!" shows that you literally didn't even play it in the first placethe entire fucking premise of the game is that even in an isolated environment where they're specifically putting the most tolerant humans and aliens together, it's STILL not fucking working and everything is going to hell fast
How's Xenonauts 2?
>>737718152At the very least, after causing one of your guys profound anal bleeding, the Stunlancer is completely exposed and horribly raped to death on the following turn. Not still in full cover on the other side of the map like the Muton, with two armor, while completely immune to melee.
>>737718152>spectresdunno, they're kinda like sectoids in that they won't do any damage on their first turn because they're obsessed with making their dumb shadow clone. Which forces them to get right into your squad to get their cheeks spread on your turn which also deletes the clone.I really hate priests and their saftey bubble bullshit
>>737718369Better than nuCOM, not as good as X-Com + mods.
Gotta get goodAnd when you do, you can mod the game to be even harder
>>737718529commander/ironman with difficulty mods is the sweet spot for me. legend just makes everything take longer which is gay.
>>737690203Pussy
>>737690203When you personally figure out how to play correctly. Literal skill issue.
>>737718614Bright side, when you beat legend/ironman you never play it again and go back to the original.
>>737700689>Game was too difficult on the easy setting. 100% designed to be saved scummed which is just bad design.
>>737719015>Everyone that came before us is stupid>Everyone that came after us is stupidThe fate of millennials.
>>737690203The timed missions always felt comical to me.>Get to the other side of the world in 2 turns and there's 47 pods of enemies along the wayWhat did they seriously expect the player to do? No surprise everyone turns on the extended timed missions option.
>>737719136>extended timers>increase pod size by 1 so it's not just piss easy overwatch creep to winyup, time to game
>>737719015Is that true, or is it just that they're opting out of following standard schooling practices and lessons?What value do standardized tests offer when the information is available on your phone in 3 seconds?I felt that way about math when I was in uni as a millenial, and guess what? I've literally never even ONCE needed to use math and not had access to either a calculator or my fucking phone. Complete and enormous waste of time, hundreds of hours for shit I did not need and that went completely to waste.Not that I think gen Z is particularly smart, but I don't think standardized tests are a fair metric, especially with shit like common core creating a huge disparity between the knowledge of parents vs kids in completion of what should be basic tasks, because of the you know whos being unable to comprehend the ways we've taught over the last hundred years, forcing everyone to dumb down their teaching methods to try and make the masses more literate.You know, thinking about it, I wonder if it's just the mass amount of importation of dumb fuck third worlders that's doing it, lmao.
>>737719136>No surprise everyone turns on the extended timed missions option.Speak for yourself, scrub.
>>737719408>I've literally never even ONCE needed to use math and not had access to either a calculator or my fucking phoneDomesticated animal tier thinking.Who cares about farms, I'll just buy food from the grocery store!
>>737719730No, it's not. It's rational thinking. Not everyone needs to know everything. If I need math, I'll find a fucking mathematician. Someone who WANTS to deal with that shit. Just like they'd come to me if they want help sewing or stitching up a wound. >hurr you need to calculate for medical dosagesno you don't lmao you can eyeball that shit and VERY often do when in an emergency scenario.
>>737707128After Chimera Squad they can't be trusted to make XCOM 3 anyway
>>737690203>When does this start to stop being hardfull cover is half coverbreaking line of sight is full coverearly on, don't underestimate the GUARANTEED DAMAGE of grenadesyour aim will increase over the course of the gamebuild guerilla tactics school and contact the factions as soon as possible and do covert opsfocus early game on saving and promoting soldiersthen build the Tactics base or whatever its called that lets you increase the amount of soldiers you can bring on a mission from 4 to 5get a reaper to recon ahead and maintain in stealthsome key missions will decrease the avatar defcon countdown when you beat themsome cover ops will decrease the avatar defcon counterdon't rush into the blacksight mission, its ok to wait and R&D till you are strongerdon't sleep on mimic beacons, they're incredibly strongsame for freeze grenademy first playtghrough was non-ironmanbut playing it on ironman is where it truly shines, great game and i've only come to apreciate it more over the years despite its flawst. beat the game on commander ironman but still get eventually gaped in legend ironman>>737690492i'd heavily suggest against this, magnetic is the biggest jump in surviveability you can get relatively early onthe research for plasma is incredibly time consuming and there will be a long period where whittling down enemies is frustrating, your aim sucks and you will get gaped unless you know what you're doing>>737700689>Worst part I cant even discuss it becuase most retards dont grasp what an absolute edge save scumming is and how fucked players are with negative compounding.lmao, unironically get goodi think the main issue with the game is nobody in their right mind would want to play a long tutorial that truly let's you learn the game before you jump into ironmanthat's why I suggest starting a playthrough without it to learnbut ironman is absolutely the best way to play
>>737690203Somewhere after halfway. Then it just becomes boring because you have supersoldiers who do giga aoe damage through walls and shit.
>>737690203>play pre WOTC vanilla>play Long War pre WOTCThat's hard, WOTC is baby play
>>737719863Long War WOTC is hellI don't know how they expect you to do some missions in that
>>737719820>high-heeled and masked scantily clad lady soldiersWhats the squad's name /v/?
>>737720489whorriorsIs it whore warriors? horror wariors? warrior horrors? who knows, plausible deniability.
>>737719817Chimera Squad wasn't fundamentally bad, it just a glorified mod experimenting with new gameplay mechanics, that had exceptionally bland characters and boring marvel writing.
>>737720635it was fundamentally bad, it was a tech demo for midnight suns.
>>737720741How is a glorified XCOM 2 mod a tech demo for a RPG card battler?
I like chimera squad's discrete battle segments over pod scrawl
>I never played Chimera Squad and never will but I hate the game despite that.
>>737719820I forgot the beauty of the moddabilty of this game. Spent like 2000 hours in a year when it came out
>>737709315>500 hookers
>>737717362I thought LiveLeak got taken down
Never played XCOM before but I've been feeling like doing it lately. What am I in for? Which ones should I play? Just the main ones (Enemy Unknown, 2, and Chimera Squad)? Is The Bureau: XCOM Declassified good?worth it?I've noticed that XCOM 2 and Chimera Squad have Steam Workshop support. Are there any must-have mods you recommend?
>>737722828Declassified is alright but it's basically a very weak mass effect-like.I personally think you should begin with Enemy Within (XCOM1 expansion) or XCOM2 (base game, no expansion) before playing XCOM WOTC (main expansion)
>>737722828You should play vanilla Enemy Unknown first. I'm vouching for that one, because it's the first one I played, and its very intuitive game design makes it feasible to play on normal with ironman on and have a good, challenging, but likely successful campaign. It's also enough to get you hooked on the series. I can't vouch for the others as your first games, since I haven't played them as my first games, so I'm not sure how effective they are as a starting point. Enemy Within adds a bunch of things to Enemy Unknown, but it might make the strategic layer too confusing on your first playthrough.
>>737722828play enemy withinxcom 2: WOTCand the original xcom ufo defense with "open xcom" for qolmy favourites are the original and 2wotc but the first of the firaxis games is probably the most accessible if you never played these kinds of games beforestart on a non-ironman playthrough if you're new to the genre before doing an ironman one after itlook up a short tutorial for the original ufo defense beforehand because the game expected you to read a tutorial, but remember that the beauty of that game is slowly uncovering the mystery so don't go into pro strats or looking up tech treesstart beginner difficutly
Xcom on hardmode is really just making the RNG much worse and leads to things like that screenshot of the guy right up in the aliens face with a rifle and it still being 95% instead of 100%. Quite literally just stupid false difficulty.
>>737690203>millions of mechanics youre just expected to knowYou were supposed to have already played and beaten the base game by the time this came out.If you went into it with that knowledge, then this dlc actually makes the game easier with two new absurdly broken classes.
>>737723612XCOM 2 is worse about it than XCOM EU. In XCOM EU, if you get a rookie up for a point blank shot, they will have a 100% chance to hit. In XCOM 2 it's only something like 85%. Not only that, your already promoted soldiers that use mid-range weapons will also not achieve 100% unless they are using some combination of scopes, higher tier weapons, and having a very high rank.
>>737690203> Go to steam workshop> Find mods to disable turn timers and remove the chosen from the game outside of story missionsDONE.It's literally that simple, mang
>>737724802how fucking slow are you that the in-game doubled turn timers option isn't enough?
>>737690203IIRC around the time you get plasma weapons and get the rank 4/5 skills of your units it turns into a total cakewalk.
>>737724891Cope, retardTurn timers weren't a thing in XCOM 1, you're a secondary nobody likes
>>737724960we're talking about 2
>>737725097...So am I. :'^)
>>737724802>EZ mode not easy enough need mod to make babby modeffs
>>737725393Secondary cope, turn timers have never belonged in XCOMI guarantee that if XCOM 3 ever comes out, they won't be in XCOM 3 due to the universally immense backlash of their inclusion in 2
>>737725568Literally just keep moving towards where you need to go. You can even give yourself twice the time to do it if that's too much for you.
>>737725626OK?Still doesn't change the fact that virtually nobody liked them and they realistically won't be coming back in any future iteration lol
>>737725863Stop being a shitter that just tries to camp in a corner until the time runs out.
Unpopular opinion, but xcom would be more fun if they made it impossible to miss on 80%+ shots, dodging didnt exist (dodging a laser? What the fuck?) and they simply made enemies tougher to compensate
>>737690370Skirmishers are absolute trash currently on a legendary game and skirmishers were my last to unlock so I ended up never using a skirmisher ever they just don't bring anything the basic classes don't do better
>>737725898>> Angry secondary cope continuesTimers still won't be coming back lil broOG XCOM players have WONTICK-TOCK TIMERFAGGOTS
>>737726050
>>737725898NTA but I removed the turn limit with mods before I even launched the game
Does anybody have that gif of a sniper taking down a sectopod in a supremely cinematic way? It was already exploding to some other attack but his overwatch triggered so it explodes the exact second his shot hits it.
>>737726068Why because you're shit and can't cope without modfag babby mode?
>>737725863i genuinely prefer 2 to 1 because of the timers and i'm ok with them being different gamesog is still the best one
anyone else kinda hate that the optional way to play the game is to ignore all the story missions for as long as possiblelike seriously, on higher difficulty levels why the fuck would you EVER want to speed up the timeline of encountering your first sectopod or gatekeeper? and even codexes are right bitches if you unlock them too early same with destroying facilities because they're guarded by the alien rulers, a midgame squad can handle a viper king but berserker queen or archon king are just -1 squadmate if they show up randomly on the wrong mission if you don't have plasma weapons
>>737690203I played the entirety of vanilla XCOM 2.Then, I played through WOTC.I will never understand for the life of me, how the FUCKING ARCHON KING ALIEN RULER, was the absolute hardest boss in the entirety of XCOM 2, even with WOTC included.What in the fuck were the developers thinking??
>xcom 2 wotc + long war mod
>>737726416"hey lets give an enemy who takes a turn for every action (not even turn ACTION) you take a frigging AOE NUKE"Archon king genuinely is not fun to fight, on my current legendary run I have identified what facility he's guarding and I will not be touching that thing, and this is despite me having defeated all 3 chosen already
>>737726391>Alien rulersFire and acid weapons are very effective against them. Also psychics once you get them. But yeah they are tough.
long war is shit filled with artificial difficulty and tedium
This games only hard because of the retarded time limits which gimp any strategical gameplay and make it artificially difficult.
How come no one ever made a mod that reintroduced TUs? I remember Solomon making a big deal about the modding tools saying it would be possible but no on ever did it
>>737726416>he didn't have a repeater equipped to one tap the rulersISHYGDDT
>>737726802sure but the fact they can show up on missions randomly is what makes it BS, especially given they can just decide to auto-fail your mission by say just running through all the supplies you were meant to be gathering and blowing them up before you can begin to fight them or by just killing the VIP you were escorting without any counterplay
>>737724891>>737725393>>737725626>>737725898>>737726235Hello, everyone.I, Timerfaggot, am here to make an important announcement:I hereby proudly proclaim my unyielding submission to my magnanimous, handsome masters collectively known as the "NO TIMERGODS".They have swiftly defeated me, and it is by their compassionate, merciful rule that I am allowed to continue living.I, Timerfaggot, am forever grateful towards my eternal lords, and I humbly kneel before them in immense gratitude.> t. Yours truly, signed, Timerfaggot xoxoxo
>>737726889overwatch crawling everywhere is not strategy
>>737726932alien rulers are literally the only reason why you'd ever want a repeater so you're nerfing yourself hard by forcing yourself to run around with repeaters
>>737727030They got nerfed a bit in WOTC. They won't appear until you encounter one at an avatar facility and rather than get a reaction for literally any action you take it's now only for moving or attacking.
>>737727168and for using teamwork, for some reason they left that inand yes it's godsend you can at least delay when the archon ruler appears if need be for the entire game
>>737726446what does the long war mod do?
>>737727161Means you get a chance to one shot stuff which is obviously useful against basically any of the late game enemies like sectopods and mutons.
>>737727258bloats enemy HP by multiple times and makes research take longerhence the LONG part of the title
>>737727258Makes the game longer and more difficult.
>>737727258Faggot shit that makes a campaign longer, rebalances classes, adds new mechanics, and needlessly makes the game overall far more difficult than it needs to beLong war made sense with X1, but is just gay and retarded in X2
>>737690203XCOM2 was my first introduction to the breakfast question.When it was announced, the press release said that they would pick up the story from if you lost XCOM1. Because of that a lot of people complained that they did win the campaign of XCOM1. Then I said that it made sense that they make XCOM2 from there since you have to be the underdog to have a game but they responded "but I did win XCOM1". It was puzzling to me, 70 IQ people are beating XCOM1.
>>737727262still usually you want to use a scope to avoid missing a critical shot and either free reloads or extended magazine to minimize the downtime you have as much as possible, especially when Lost are involved and the bitchass game refuses to give you the headshot faction order early game I honestly absolutely LOVE getting a superior stock if possible so you can give the rookie or barely better than a rookie you have to take with you something guaranteed to do, but obviously you don't get that every gameoh and course laser sight + talon rounds for your rangers to get 90%+ crit rate on them, but I figure everyone knows about that one
>>737727438the super funny thing is that they justified it by saying that the overall playerbase had less than 50% win rate on ironman classic and above and people still complained because "why are they not counting non-ironman"
>>737727478yeah that's great and all but I want to inhale my female Reaper's smelly, sweaty feet after a long day in her stuffy, nasty boots
>>737727478By the late game you can stick 3 or 4 mods to a weapon so a repeater can make the grade. It's good for a sniper.
Okay, listen, I had fun with LWOTC at first, but now I just barely unlocked mag weapons (but can't afford many of them yet, so that's around a 5-9 range of damage) and that fucking warlock nigger spawns in with 57 fucking hp, spawning with a fucking snake with 12 hp that receives his fucking warlock champion shit so that's another extra 5-7hp shield, and you need to kill that shit before you can even damage the fucker, and then whenever you hit him he's spawning 3 fucking 7-9hp spectral lancers every time I fucking hit him, oh and he needs close combat specialist too! oh and his shots hit me anywhere between 4 and 9 fucking hp, 12 on a crit, considering my guys have about that much health + a bit of ablasive armor, then an armored berserker runs in with 4 armor points and 35hp spawns in too, just fuck you video game, this is just a fucking chore >hurr just don't play in hard modeNo, fuck you, I played the original long war in hardest difficulty just fine and at NO POINT whatsoever did I feel like the game was completely unfair, well maybe there was that retarded mocx HQ mission but w/eModding is both a boon and a curse, you get thousands of extra hours of content for free but seeing as you need to be extra autistic to make mods, it means you're probably a very experienced player and you feel like legendary vanilla is already too easy, so you make mobs that are just a bit harder than vanilla, then some faggot decides to make new classes to counter those enemies and they're just a bit stronger than vanilla classes, but then another guy adds more even stronger mobs, and then you get a mod to refresh the vanilla classes because they're too far behind, and now you need to add a fucking requiem for man bullshit mobHoly fuck, why is it so hard for them to try to stick to vanilla-ish balance? Why do you always have to end up with x2-x4hp bullshit
>>737727084why is the only argument for timers "UMM OVERWATCH CRAWLING", that is not a excuse for making the game dogshit with overrestrictive timers that fuck over any gameplay that isn't run directly at the enemy
>>737690203Once you figure out how shit works, forexample doing Mindshield as an early research so that Warlock being your First Chosen is a non-issue.>>737697043They are actually pretty busted, you basically have two builds, the Sniper that wants you to stack Aim (using scope as a crutch) and then get them to a highspot using a Grapplinghook/Icarus Jet and the Gunslinger where you abuse the fact you can make a shitload of attacks a turn together with Ammo (Like Bluescreen) to just melts even Endgame shit shit like Sectopods if you have the right Ammo, and Ammo is available early an you basically get Bluescreens as a side thing anyway, so at miniumum thay can handle Tech enemies with ease.
>>737717837I like how mutons, being genetically engineered to be dumb shock troops have almost negative mind control resistance.
>>737727168>now only for moving or attacking.And the alien ruler happens to run into 6 overwatch soldiers, he gets 7 turns.
>>737727640>It's good for a sniper.Eh, not really, for your sniper you just want to get the hunter weapon as soon as possible, hunter's pretty doable with just magnetic weapons even on legendary and you're just never using any other sniper after that also modular weapons sadly isn't guaranteed to be given, it's a good third weapon mod as you said, though it's a bit of a tossup between it and stock, since the situation where you have to gamble on a lucky repeater kill comes up about as often as the scenario where you absolutely have to deal 3 damage now
>>737727706Use the stealth ability to scout ahead and avoid them.
>>737718614>commander feels too easy and I get bored a few months in the campaign>legendary is batshit retarded hardI'm so happy that steam added collections, makes it so much easier to handle this shit but man, even if a collection is popular really doesn't mean that the guy that made it understand how the fucking game worksJust fuck the frost legion, I love it, but it's so unbalanced it's fucking garbage, pathfinders are also too much of a fucking pain to deal with early game
>>737727697Warlock showing why he's THE ELDERS GREATEST CHAMPION
Is Klaus still making new enemy mods?
>>737727869You can also use those detector grenade things if you absolutely hate the pod thing.Doing that its kind of like playing the original with the flare grenade spam.
Xcom 2 really should have had individual weapon construction instead of the blanket upgrades, you're a resource starved resistance group and that and the attachments would make every gun you manage to produce into an investment.
>>737727783Bluescreen rounds on a darkclaw sharpshooter just to lightning hands, regular shot, fan fire a sectopod into oblivion without even shredding his armor is just the sweetest I kinda like doing hybrid snipers though, once you get the darklance it's pretty doable>>737697043oh and don't forget the cheesiest of cheese strategy of having a reaper with a bunch of sharpshooters on an Avenger defense mission, send your reaper over to get visual range on the spike/power supply, then have your sharpshooters blow it up without ever being at risk
>>737728010I don't get how people keep sleeping on the detector grenades using them doesn't end your turn, they also sniff out hidden enemies like faceless and chryssalids and most hilarious, if you're good at guessing how she'll move, you can flush out the assassin while she's invisiblenothing quite as hilarious as making her suddenly stand in the open to get crit by your entire squad
>>737728050there's a lot of missed opportunities with xcom 2 honestly, a lot more could have been done with the whole resistance movementactually force us to make hard choices for one, and have us work with local resistance fighters who are basically just rookies you have to babysit with like 1 or 2 of your elite soldiers you can actually spare for that regionand course, I want to actually have to properly commit terrorism dammit
>>737728315inshallah let me behead advent sympathizers in the arabian desert
>>737729447>>737728315My next run I'm probably going to do a Ranger only build where all my brave mujahideen fighters run and cut down all the infidels.they will all be named variations of jihad-joesmashallah
>>737726065skirmishers are the weakest, but they are useful early game. They fall off hard though. I try to start with a skirmisher, since they'll be handy early on, and are GREAT trooper killers. Basically guaranteed to kill 1-2 of them every single turn.
How long should it be to control the map? How many radio relays are we building and at what pace? I feel like I can maybe conquer one continent but anything beyond that is insane. Are people taking control over the whole earth to win or what?
>>737700087actually this guy is completely correct because the pods move pathetically slightly and in nearly random directions that don't suit sneak points. So what, am I supposed to spend my measly 6 turns overwatching hoping the pod comes over the corner the right way, when they only wander like 5 tiles? Look it does work 60% of the time, but it's crapshoot isn't it? I mean this system really doesn't represent anything worthwhile. Just a crude idea for something different to do with the new game
>>737728069>oh and don't forget the cheesiest of cheese strategy of having a reaper with a bunch of sharpshooters on an Avenger defense missionworks on the avenger assault missions too - blow up the truck in the first few turns then you have essentially no timer for the rest of the fight.also, the avengers turrets (if you build them) get squadsight also, so they can help with that long distance shooting too.
>>737731158>actually this guy is completely correct because the pods move pathetically slightly and in nearly random directionsif only it was just that bad.pods move explicitly just outside of the range of vision. You can test this on missions with the location scout sitrep (reveals the map). pods will stop in such a position that you activate them if you sprint in their direction. it's so lame.
didn't they change it so the timer doesn't start ticking down while you're in stealth?
>>737731301I don't understand how this game is meant to be played. It's fucking maddening
protip; reapers (probably soldiers too - haven't tested that) can pick up non-mission-objective bodies and retain their concealment. good for missions like the one where you rescue the scientist from the lost and there's that bodyguard that's unconscious that you can choose to bring back with you.
>>737731362struggle then get op. no middle ground.one thing I've found is that if you hold off meeting other regions for as long as possible, it makes the game much easier. there's some nuance to it, but that's the general idea.
>>737690203Why doesn't anyone SHUT THE FUCK UP in this game? Even when I turn off extra dialogue I've got people queued up around the block to tell me some bullshit at HQ. I liked EW but I feel like XCOM 2 is trying its absolute hardest to piss me off.
>>737717912>somehow everybody has forgiven eachother and they all live in super duper harmony bullshit.the entire premise of chimera squad is exactly the opposite of thatgame has plenty of reasons to dislike it without making up fake retarded reasons in your head, anon
And while I appreciate all the strategy and all the good things about this game, you're telling me they were making an *educated decision* when they said 'make the random encounter boss move and shoot every time he is seen or when any player unit makes an action in front of it, unless they have a frost grenade'. Go on. Tell me that's what they meant, with a straight face.
>>737731484Yeah but its a shitty gimmick. It's not real strategy, it's disrespectful handicaps followed by cheap reward. And the entire thing is rubberbanded so even you are telling me 'just avoid growth according to the meta because the game doesn't really work if you play it like that' so what the fuck bud?
>>737716174nah I play modded and the game crashes a lot
>>737718369>>737718517I just didn't like it
>>737731717>because the game doesn't really work if you play it like thatNo, I didn't mean that. I just said it makes life easier if you do as I suggested.Obviously the game functions if you don't. There's also different struggles associated with the method that I suggested. The game is difficult, but not impossible.As for the handicaps, yeah, games have been doing that forever. Commercial vidya AI has never been able to keep up with human in terms of strategy, so they've always been given a leg up. It's always been obnoxious. And Firaxis in particular has a history of leaning on crutches like that instead of implementing more intelligent AI (look at the Civ series for example). So while it might be a 'shitty gimmick', it's one that you should already be accustomed to, and not this surprised.It's not THAT bad though, as if it was, people wouldn't be able to beat the game on Legendary with a single soldier, which has happened (I think it was syken or something like that who did a series of 'one soldier' runs).
>>737718276>they're specifically putting the most tolerant humans and aliens togetherwho is running that show?t. never played chimera
Any other good games like XCOM?
>>737732165How do they handle the pods without basically manipulating the AI through tireless experience, though?
>>737690203It's only difficult while you're learning how the game works.Eventually you'll get it and the game becomes "hard" only in that it's RNG based.Play something like Into the Breach for a good tactical game that doesn't lean on RNG.
>>737718276>t. boiling frog
>>737732349What do you mean?
>I share a board with people who had trouble with XCOM 2's extremely generous mission timers
>>737697043Spider armor. Ap rounds.
>>737719820Do you play with the ironman setting enabled or honor the ironman without it?There are times the game just bugs out and creates a situation where the map becomes unplayable or glitches that end up wiping out your entire squad through no actions of the aliens.
>>737726065Wrong. They can use both of their actions for attacking. So you mod your weapon to have a chance at instant kill and take shots at the strongest enemies around. You literally double your odds of it going off since you're firing twice. Put the weapon mod of chance for a bonus action on it as well and your odds go up even further. Execution is also the best way to take down the Alien Rulers. Once you take down a full health Archon King with a single attack, you'll never look back on them.
>>737732465How patient do you have to be to get the aliens to walk into your overwatch reliably when they are really not that predicatble until you've got all sorts of items and scanners?
>>737690370>The ghost dudeIT'S MA'AM.
>>737726391Recently had a mission in which the Berserker Queen was walking around at an Advent facility. I however had a Reaper, so I was able to stalk it and snipe it with free potshots from across the map from my sharpshooters. Just gotta go in there carefully with a plan and you'll be alright.Now if you're not playing with the integrated DLC, they'll just show up anywhere and then you just lose. Tried this recently. A bad encounter saw me down 2 guys, but hey, we're clear now. Just need to reach the evac point. Round a corner and there's the Berserker Queen. A loss of 2 soldiers quickly became a loss of 6 and all the equipment they were carrying. Next mission, had to go in with lower rank soldiers, so again I find myself down 2, but I hacked the station and finished off the last enemy. Or at least, what should have been the last enemy. The neutralize all enemy threats order is bullshit. I knew that it would be another Alien Ruler, and sure enough, Archon King. Lost the entire squad and barely scratched him. Having lost 12 soldiers in 2 missions, back to back like that, I scrapped the run.The real lesson is always play with the integrated DLC option.
>>737726416I legit only use repeater/banish/extended mag cheese on just that one unit.
>>737726889Timers are STILL filtering people to this dayamazing
>>737729783that's a nice pile of soldiers you got there...would be a shame if something happened to them...>>737726065Nah skirmishers actually get the job done when built right (ripjack shit isn't it since it never hits besides on justice procs). Play them like sharpshooters where you give them a good vantage point and let them shoot. Once you give them a superior mag and acid rounds they will stack kills.
>>737732591NTA but I always honor the spirit of ironman (one streamer calls it honestman) without activating it. The one time I did use ironman, my save just got deleted by the game when it crashed. I think it had to do with the amount of lost on the map when the turn ended, but for whatever reason the game hard crashed to desktop and the save was deleted. Only happened once, but that was enough for me to never use it again (I was doing really well at the time and quite salty).It only works if you actually don't save scum.
>>737726416>What in the fuck were the developers thinking??They were thinking that they'd like to include some boss enemies for the player to fight against. That was their first attempt at it. It may not have turned out well, but they definitely learned from their mistakes with the Alien Rulers when they were designing the Chosen. The 90HP Sectopod boss fight was also pretty fun.
The timers were just added because Firaxis saw the overwatching strat of very cautiously advancing, so they introduced timers to punish it. As guerrillas you were supposed to be hit & running not crawling across the map at a pace of 5 steps forward.
>>737730338The only way to balance skirmishes is to give them one more ap, which the mod does via a reaction ability that triggers once per turn and then they just fuck. Hence why firaxis didn't build them that way.
>>737732781Sometimes it's not a matter of patience. There are situations where they just don't patrol towards you, and, as I said before, sometimes just sit outside your vision range.That's not always the case though. Just sometimes.
But the game is not actually balanced for Ironman, right? With all these 12-actions-per-turn lizards popping in and shit?
>>737732804>No tactical rigging Into the trash it goes.
>>737733156Right, which (as much as I love the aesthetics and feel and dream of XCOM2 being a great strategic game) means the whole thing is a fucking LARP, isn't it? The best and biggest of fans really just sit here and say 'yeah well haha that's the way it goes sometime' like come on man admit it the product is just not all there!!!
>>737731396I discovered that you can have a Specialist use a Gremlin heal on the downed soldier to revive them. They'll stand back up and you'll have full control of the soldier and they're ready to fight.It seemed like such an obvious move to do too, but I guess for a long time I got it stuck in my head that you had to carry out the downed bodyguard.
>hitting rapid fire with the assassin's shotgun and one-tapping a sectopod for the first timeThe euphoria of this game going from mental capital punishment to pure isekai power fantasy needs to be studied
>>737731808Playing honestman is spiritually playing Ironman. I think most people that play XCOM2 and talk about playing Ironman don't actually use the Ironman mode. Overall the game works well, but every so often you encounter some stupid glitch that would cost you a soldier's life or even an entire mission if you could reload the previous turn. Heck, most of the time just creating an immediate save and reloading that works.
>>737733346Yeah, I understand the frustration of the move away from overwatch creep, if that's what you're used to in a series. Also, Firaxis did a poor job implementing their changes (eg. getting a 7 turn timer on a mission that starts more than 7 yellow sprints from the objective - had that happen only a handful of times in 3k+ hours of the game (some of those hours are just leaving the game running while I sleep or leaving AML open accidentally)), but I do appreciate the attempt to speed the game up and add a sense of urgency to the missions. And at the ssame time, I don't know what the best solution to that would have been - they took a shot and missed (not by too much mind you) but it was refreshing. WotC really fixed a lot of their original mistakes with XCOM2 as well.And really, there isn't much to say to someone that doesn't like the change other than "that's the way it goes sometimes". There's discussion to be had about how it COULD have been better, but that's just wheel-spinning unless you're into modding and are able to implement that hypothetical.Speaking of mods, there are some that really enhance the game - XCOM2 is really similar to Skyrim in that regard. It's really enhanced by some mods, while the base game flounders (though less-so than Skyrim base game does).For most people, I personally think the best solution is to just play something else or heavily mod it.
>>737697043My gunslinger sharpshooters are usually tied with my rangers or w/e they're called for most killed in my runs.
>>737733736Default turn timers are too low, but the in-game option to double the timers is too much. I like the idea of having some pressure put on me to advance. That's basically what Meld was for in XCOM1:EW. I feel like a 25% increase to the number of turns on timer missions would have been perfect.
what's the deal with turn BASED games filtering /v/ so much??
>>737733568I mean I don't savescum unless something bugs out hard, and that's basically never happened. Ironman mode just sucks since even in vanilla I've run into irritating bugsBut yeah you'ree right.
Is xcom 2 worth it if I've never played a game in the series before? It's on sale for like $3 at he moment so I'll probably get it anyway.Any of the DLC worth it?
>>737734058Honestman is a test of our personal character too. Ironman mode forces us to deal with the loss. Honestman is us forcing ourselves to deal with the loss.You ever manage to capture the exact moment that you knew you lost the run? This was that time for me.
>>737733880Yeah, I think I would have just made the timers bonus based instead of malus based. ie. you get an extra reward for winning on VERY tight timers, but you could also just play the mission for baseline success. Perhaps have different story progression based on performance, instead of just "you get 10 extra elerium crystals for winning fast!". Maybe there's different gearing paths that help achieve the best results for the different style of play (eg. you get better swords and shotguns for winning fast, but better sniper rifles for regular completion). Something like that. My main thought is just that the issue is deeper than the timer length. I think there were probably better ways to go about it than the hamfisted "you lose for being slow" that they went with. I'm not a game designer though, so the examples I gave probably stink, but there must have been SOMETHING that could have been done better.That said, I'm generally fine with the timers. Also XCOMEW was great.
>>737734234Yes, it's worth it. Get all the DLC too. Make sure to select the integrated DLC option. Otherwise the Alien Rulers will rape you anon.
The best thing about XCOM 2 were the reverse terror missions.Fuck collaborators. I have zero sympathy for collaborators caught in the crossfire.
>>737734341Followup question any other hot beginner tips?
>>737734234Make sure you're getting a bundle that at least includes WOTC since its pretty much the gold standard version of the game. Get some mods that help with readability (like rainbowjumper squad select) or goofy things that let you make more unique soldiers but avoid touching things that straight up change the balance.
>>737734241Captured, no, but hilariously enough the berserker queen basically wiped out my run too. That damage she does is insane and then I got double stun lancered. It was just over.
>>737734424I'll just get all the DLC so that won't be a problem.
>>737734234Make sure to get WotC with it. Not worth playing the base game by itself (the load times alone are a fuckin travesty in the base game).For less than the cost fo a fancy coffee it's worth it. You might turn out like me and love playing it. It's one of those games that you play for ages, put down, then can come back to and play for another large chunk of time. Or you'll hate it and only lose a few bucks on it.Definitely want to form your own opinion on it by giving it a play though, since the XCOM community has wildly divergent opinions on it.
>>737734281You know what, I think I have an idea on how they could have implemented the timers better. The auto mission fail is not good for the timer running out, we all agree on that. (Unless it's mission specific and makes sense for it.)So let's think about this lore wise. What happens if XCOM is discovered on the battlefield and takes too long to evac? Well, Advent has more time to react and dispatch troops. More time to track you as you make your eventual escape. So I'd have it be that finishing a mission past the timer would give the Chosen bonuses for filling up their sabotage bars. Or maybe something like once you cumulatively go 10 turns above the timers across missions, a ufo immediately tracks you and triggers an Avenger Defense mission. I think that would have been a good way to handle it.
>>737734392I'd say just play it, get bodied, and understand that that's normal. No need to get mad or stop playing because you lose - until you get a grasp of it (and you will, because it's generally a good teacher) just dive into the setting and enjoy the premise it presents. Minmaxing comes later.
>>737734705That's fair. I'll just dive in and see how much shit I eat. I don't mind if a game puts me through the wringer as long as I get a chance to learn
>>737734392just wait for sale and buy it thenthey go on sale insanely cheap. dont buy it full price.
>>737734392Sure. Stop avatarfagging; it's against the rules.
>>737734769I just bought the whole ass thing for like 8 bucks so mission accomplished.
>>737734790Well you better report me then lol
>>737734625Yeah, some kind of campaign-ramifications for mission failure would have been good. But I think that's what they wanted to achieve with those Dark Events. Personally I'm a fan of those, even if they're forced onto you regardless of performance.You'd also run into an issue where people who play well never really get challenged and you hit a point where it's just boring. That's why I think it was a difficult problem for them to solve, since they were dancing around the whole fun/challenging balancing act.
>>737734392Nothing that a bunch of others haven't already said. On the strategy side of thing, prioritize getting Engineers. They're really good and you'll be keeping them all busy.When you get someone to Sergeant you unlock the upgrade to deploy 5 soldiers. Buy that ASAP. Sell whatever you need to to make it happen if the next supply drop is too far away. Overall with selling though, hang on to at least a few corpses of each class until you know what they get used for.Also, don't fall for the psychic trap. Psychics are fun, but the research tech is slow and they are slow to train. You can get them eventually, but just wait until later for them.Really though, just play and learn for your first time. Probably play through on Easy or Normal, but do so with an Ironman mindset. If you start playing the game with the idea that you'll accept whatever losses come your way, you'll enjoy it a lot more, even when it's kicking your teeth in.
>>737734834have fun committing domestic terrorism friendembrace the jihad
Hmm okay there is one day left on these supplies might as well scan>RETALIATIONPhew okay now to just finish this sca->COUNCIL MISSIONCmon just half of a >COVERT OPS AMBUSHEDFFS just let me sca->COMMANDER ADVENT IS PROGRESSING ON THE AVATAR PROJECT WE NEED TOHoly shit everyone is tired or wounded can you stop>THE CHOSEN ARE ATTACKING THE AVENGERAHHHHHHHH->Commander-kun suck on my snitties
THE GODS ELEVATE ME....SO THAT I MAY STRIKE YOU DOWN!
>>737734392Oh, I thought of one other big tip for you. Level up a bunch of your guys. Don't go all in on a single squad. This was a bigger problem in XCOM1, but some people still fall into doing that with XCOM2. So even in the mid-late game when you have a bunch of Captains, Majors, and Colonels, don't take just them on missions. Take 4 or 5 and then have the final 1 or 2 be a Squaddie or a Corporal. No, you won't be using your most powerful possible squad by doing this, but if you take a loss, you'll ensure that you already have a Sergeant or Lieutenant ready to step into the spot on your A-team.
>>737734764Also, get invested in your soldiers. Build up headcanon. It seems dumb, but it really adds stakes to the missions. When 'your boy Blue' gets blasted on a misson or you get a mission wipe, it stings a bit more. It's great.Oh, and keep playing a campaign even after a mission wipe. The feeling of being beaten down, then coming back for the W is what it's all about.
>>737735312>Also, get invested in your soldiers. Build up headcanon. It seems dumb, but it really adds stakes to the missionsI'm an etrian odyssey chad I live off of stupid hedcanon bullshit.
>>737690203you're playing the tutorial
>>737735312>The feeling of being beaten down, then coming back for the W is what it's all about.This. Don't save scum. Take the L's. They make the W's so much more satisfying.
>>737734370>the reverse terror missions.Wat? I don't remember those.Were there missions where you just went in and blasted civies? Or do you mean the "plant the bomb" missions?
>>737735596think he means the attacks on resistance cells
>>737735693>>737734370>>737735596There are no missions of that type though?
>>737735194these sprites are from starbound
>>737734392Download these, I consider them mandatory. Smooth scrolling might not work anymore though so you need to use the alternative mod launcher (just look it up with xcom 2 in search)https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1384631824https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1126938196https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=957580056https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1126395106https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1122974240
>>737719136I never once ran out of time on a mission in any campaign. This is prime shitter behavior.
>>737690203WOTC is easier than XCOM2 IMO. Those cards that constantly delay the doomsday clock and shit? So much more leniency.
>>737736607Of course it is.Starting the game with a Reaper and making him a Corporal by the end of Gatecrasher trivializes the game
So, how good is Chimera Squad?
>>737737163it was testing the water for an alternate mission type. Breaching locations was okay. the companions are Marvel tier writing. also no permadeath as it's an assigned character cast; no recruiting random mooks you train in to soldiers.
>>737690203Never fixed overwatch spam so the only bandaid was adding mission timersFucking nucom.
>>737737163Mechanically sound, but you can see where their downwards slide started - the same slide that resulted in the next XCOM game being a fucking gacha game. Yes, I'm serious.It's also DEI slop, with all the aliens speaking in various American dialects and reflecting different sets of values and whatnot. They made a big thing of highlighting alien cultures and how they integrate into Earth, but in a bad human resources way, not the cool Mass Effect way.
>>737690203Grenades are ur best friend when you still have rookies that can't hit anything.
>>737737163Not very. It's playable, and it's not terrible at least in the basic mechanics, but like anon said, the writing is fucking cringe-inducing. And it awards you squad members from the small, static squadmate pool at random, so if you were banking on snek, you better hope RNG is kind.
>>737737361People spam overwatch? I just rush the objective every single mission with double dash.Yes, my single biggest peeve with the game IS activating pods prematurely and being put into bad situations, how could you tell?I've started using Shinobi (LWOTC) recently and rush with them first.
>>737737163play once, never install it again kind of dealbreach mechanic and new squadmate abilities are neat, but that's about itstory is farcical at best, 3+1 groups are wrecking havoc in new city that tries incorporate both aliens and humanity into worker poolone group is trying to bring back Advent, second just wants to fuck off from this planet and hijack a spaceship, third just hates aliens or something, 4th group was previously used as peacekeeping force after Advent fell but they were a blunt tool
>>737711161The dark age
>>737737361>nucombehold a /vst/ fag came back go to cryconcealment fixed it btw
>>737711383>CS is bad because it's not exactly like XCOMI'm fine with a spin-off game not being exactly the same as the mainline series. It often happens that spinoff games aren't even in the same genre to begin with. It's an 'okay' game in it's own way, but kinda barebones and sameyThe writing and characters ARE the problem here because, aside from being objectively bad, they are establishing a terrible setting and canon for future XCOM games
How different is the vanilla experience from war of the chosen and should I do a vanilla run first? Is there any way to turn off dlc you've bought also
>>737690398Came here to say this. Game starts hard as balls then devolves into easy as piss
>advent officier marks my dude that's in full cover>trooper crits him to death in one hitI'm starting to believe that cover does nothing
>>737727258It makes it more similiar to the original XCOM, not by a lot but that's the idea behind the design
>>737719816The point isn't that it's useful, dumbass. The point is that it forces you to use your brain and is probably the only time in your life you've ever used it. Kids need math because their brains are developing and they will be smarter adults for exercising it not because it's supposed to be useful. Please don't reproduce
>>737740607WOTC is pretty substantially different, from a 'feeling' perspective especially; the Chosen are an attempt to give you specific personalities to bash your head against/be the main focus of your actions, but I personally significantly prefer the faceless force of Advent in the base game. WOTC also introduces zombies and zombie missions; the experience of the base game keeps the focus more on the entrenched invading army and the struggle of humanity against propaganda and false promises of aid.If you enjoy the base game, WOTC is a great *gameplay* experience but a worse roleplaying one; but you'll also probably have your preferences for mods figured out for that second playthrough too, and it'll be more fun with the additional content to look forward to with it.
>>737740897>I personally significantly prefer the faceless force of Advent in the base gameYou don't enjoy the Hunter's constant black humor at every turn? I love him. Wish I could get him to turncoat.
>>737733136>As guerrillas you were supposed to be hit & running not crawling across the map at a pace of 5 steps forwardThey should steal a few pages from metal slug tactics, where distance moved immediately translated to more survivability.
>>737690203Play LWOTC and then tell me about hard
Maybe i am a filthly xenofucker, but I cant get around why noones is rolling any scifi tactic game with xenos being the recruitable characters. I know that typical npcs cant into anything thats not human, but npcs dont play tactical games like xcom. Look at how smth like viper is loved, to the point that even devs make an ingame joke/referances to it in their game. I would kill for some space opera game with playable characters, but the statistic say money isnt there, so they will again make another copy of humanshit.Their only experiment with small stuff like including a hybrid class, or small games like chimera squad.
>>737697043Get Spider suitSURPRISE, You can now Sharpshoot.
>>737690203The game is more about managing threat levels. Some enemies you absolutely need to kill first, some enemies you can afford to leave alive because they're likely to waste their turn or do something dumb.>Shieldbearers run away and shield their team>Pectoids try to raise a zombie if an advent soldier is dead>Advent Priests try to stasis one of your units>The codex disables your weapons with a rift>Archons use blazing pinions>Beserkers (and sometimes faceless) can be spaced out for a turn or two>Spectres will try to body snatch a unitThose guys you can safely ignore on turn 1, they're irrelevant. Your priority targets should always be enemies like the vipers, advent captains, mutons, cyberdiscs, anything that has an ability to directly hurt you or put you in a bad position with status ailments or position changes. Research and the proving grounds are really important too, you want ammo types like bluescreen rounds for dealing with anything mechanized (spectres count as robots) and having better armours and weapons is always a priority task if you're not comfortable with the way the game's played. It's entirely possible to win with conventional weapons, but it gets harder in the late game when double sectopods start spawning.The chosen can be bastards sometimes if they spawn with bad perk combos, but the Warlock can be neutered entirely by putting mindshields on everyone and the Assassin is vulnerable to the Reaper's permanent spotting ability and scanners.Just remember that you should be looking for flanks whenever you can and use your grenades to break the cover down when you can't do that. You have to move fast and take scrappy fights if you don't have orders to affect the mission timers, so be liberal with your resources and use them often. As for the overworld, just use your resistance orders and covert ops, that'll keep the avatar project down and you won't need to worry about it at all.
>last guy's turn>he triggers a group of enemies and now they get a turn>I have to hope my guys don't get fucked by bad rollsIt keeps happening.
>>737742610Quit running into the unknown on your last turn
>>737740982Hunter's fine, I was more complaining about Assassin and Warlock, they both have basically no character. And it was unfortunate because I killed Hunter the fastest of the three because it was late game for me. I only really saw him for two missions.Also the Chosen are visually so much less interesting than any other alien. Not Elder enough to convince me of their competence, not Advent-crossbreed enough to care that they're technically human. The Skirmishers are much better. A bit of a stain on an otherwise basically perfect cast of enemy designs.
>>737742837The biggest thing I dislike about the Warlock is he blows out my eardrums every time he uses a summon ability.
>>737742610Never ever send a soldier farther than the first guy to move. Scout ahead with rangers or reapers.
>>737737163It's shit. I completed it. It's not worth playing. It's like a watered down mobile version of XCOM and none of the writing is any good.
Was there really no other way to counter overwatch creep other than completely ruining the game?
>>737711383>is so antithetical to what XCOM isThey tested that shit specifically because that's how most people play nucom in the first place. A col. is so much infinitely better than a rookie with the same gear that losing him and not having a replacement means you might as well reload or reset. If the entire game is now balanced around never losing any XP on anybody ever then you might as well go to the logical conclusion of hero units that can't properly die.
>>737742837They do have really shit designs. Feels like they tried to take as much of a minimalist design with the Chosen as they did with regular ADVENT forces, which is a shame, because they had the potential to have so much more impact - ESPECIALLY given the "Shadow-of-Mordor"-esque intro whenever they pop up in a mission.Shame you killed the best one first - Hunter's both the easiest chosen and the best to listen to. I normally kill the Warlock first despite the Assassin being more annoying, simply because the Warlock's constant Elder asskissing grates on me so much.
>>737743053Wait until you learn of the ACTUAL mobile version of XCOM...It's like seeing a venerated folk hero selling crack to school children behind the local gas station.
>>737743141Overwatch Creep was what was ruining it, it was (awkwardly) bandaged by timers.The whole point of XCOM is that things do not go perfectly.
>>737737163It's okay but I think they were too restrained with the timeline system and the breaching mechanics. Better games that use timelines tend to have initiative scores that let you change the timeline order. Chimera Squad could have done that with gear, lighter armour vests for example, or it could've expanded on the breaching mechanics to give certain actions an initiative bonus for the first round. Instead the timeline is purely active, specific characters and abilities can move enemies and allies around the timeline and that's the only real way to manipulate it.The other big problem with the game is certain characters are strictly better than everyone else. Claymore comes to mind as a character that I absolutely detest, but he has the best abilities in the game so you either have to use him or deliberately shoot yourself in the foot by avoiding him. Torque is the opposite end of that spectrum where I think she's very weak in the game's balance. Especially in the late game where her abilities really start to fall off and certain campaign arcs completely counter her abilities outright.Mechanically it's more XCOM 2 with a timeline system and no ambushes. If that's interesting to you then you'll probably have fun with it. I did, despite my complaints I think it was an enjoyable spinoff but really needed some outside help to steer the new systems and character balance.
>>737743271Overwatch creep was the logical answer to a game where one wrong step will activate an entire pod that will immediately proceed to run a fucking train on your poor guy who was out of position.
>>737743345Yeah, that would be the "things do not go perfectly" I mentioned before.
>>737743191I love their intros, their mechanics, the cool UI detailing their strengths and weaknesses, the fact that they're hunting you down, all of it. They just yap SO MUCH and it's so NOTHING in what they're saying. Also didn't help that 2 of the 3 Chosen Vault missions were bugged and I had to go to console to spawn them because they just didn't show up. Hunter's actually working one was decent, but I was still sad that each room was a copy-paste; would've liked their rooms being designed to match their combat styles and make the fights harder/make it feel like they're on their home turf.I'm realizing I'd probably be fine with them if there was a mod that just made them speak less, especially on the Avenger mission map. Central, why are we letting them broadcast propaganda into my ear?
>>737732264XCOM is a provisional world government that's hands off with the new city-states that formed out of the advent megacities. The entire plot of the game is that the police/SWAT work used to be done by a mercenary company and the city is now trying to transition to a proper police force using an XCOM 3rd party for their tactical unit in the meantime
>>737743345Defensive items exist, I know most players are allergic to using them because alpha striking the enemy is preferred to letting them get a turn. But if you insist on making dangerous moves then you really should bring some smokes and other defensive items to give those guys a chance and turn the enemy's tunnel vision against them.
>>737720851the battle maps suffered a bit for it though
>>737741471This, these sissies playing easy mode with training wheels and complaining sound like first world problems to me.
>>737737471>third just hates aliens or somethingpsychic human supremacists
>>737743161>losing him and not having a replacement means you might as well reload or reset>the entire game is now balanced around never losing any XP on anybodyA lone colonel dying really isn't that big of a deal considering you still have 5 great units and gear does a lot of heavy lifting. Like you've already started snowballing at that point. Even assuming you somehow don't have a decent replacement when the game gives you upgraded units as rewards now and then. Not to mention covert ops where you can rank up guys a bit just letting them tag along and where you'll eventually have to bring other guys along on missions because one of your main units is away. XCOM2 pretty much ensures you'll have an okay backup ready even if you haven't been trying.
>>737743303>Torque is the opposite end of that spectrum where I think she's very weak in the game's balanceTorque is a b at worst, verge is the garbage one
>>737690203It's never hard to begin with. Firaxis games are about as casual as you can get.
>>737743632I played LWOTC>yeah so?Without having finished the base game
>>737727161Bro Skirmishers can't 1 shot dickall in the late game anyway, Sup Repeater with the boost from regions or the order 20% chance, twice from this idiot and a third time if he actually manages to set his target on fire. It's pretty reasonable.
>>737743875>Without having finished the base gameWell I'll be, I did the same haha...After completing LW1 I could not stomach vanilla.
>>737711383>The actual problem with Chimera Squad is that it's not XCOM. It's anti-XCOM. It's a title in the bizzaro universe hit series MOCX. A game where you have special snowflake individual characters with their own personalities and storylines who all have unique abilities that can single-handedly turn the tide of battle and no one is allowed to die without an instant game over
>>737743831Verge is pretty poor, I agree. It's a shame too because he's one of the better characters in the game in my opinion. Which I realise isn't a high bar to pass at all.>>737743802>Gear does a lot of heavy liftingI'm inclined to disagree on that. Abilities and the aim boosts from levelling up are more pivotal for getting kills in my opinion, but I won't knock the strength of ammos and throwables. Having to spend several months rebuilding a character to colonel to replace them isn't worth the squeeze a lot of the time, but saying that I agree with the rest of what you say. That XCOM 2 throws units at you all the time, so being short on talent really shouldn't ever happen.
>>737743387The punishment is way too harsh. If you want a majority audience NOT to turtle, then the punishments must start small and only scale to harsh with specific telegraphs - not "I moved to a specific tile which opened vision through to a window on the other side of the building that is aligned with ANOTHER building window, and this one has 50 Sectopods and an Ethereal twerking in it and because that was the last soldier with an action point, now the turn has ended and they drop a Fat Man on top of my squad."Many such cases.
>>737743464>They just yap SO MUCH and it's so NOTHING in what they're sayingI think they'd work a lot better if most of their dialogue was directed at Advent or talking to themselves and not intended for you. They should only openly contact the player after actually succeeding at setting them back like a failed mission or eliminating a unit. As is, they try so fucking hard to rile up your silent self-insert even when you're fucking them up that it ruins any presence they might have.
>>737743519You're absolutely right, but I'm not even talking about double-dashing here - my chief gripe with the pod system is when you accidentally activate a pod because one specific tile has some angle you didn't take into account with two pods stacked right on top of each other that immediately activate. Now you've got one movement action left to move the soldier that activated the pod out of the way, but the rest of the squad? Kiss your butt goodbye.It doesn't feel earned. I learned pretty soon to take battlescanners, but they're such a small AOE that it still happens sometimes. This and the mis-click bug are the sole things stopping me from playing ironman.
>>737743303>>737743831>Torque is the opposite end of that spectrum where I think she's very weak in the game's balanceTorque on higher difficulties is great, the mean bitch gets 2 attacks per turn that pierce cover, with stuns, repositions, and armour-piercing poison damage.'b-but bind 6 damage per turn' playing her wrong>verge is the garbage oneProbably yes on normal but only because the game is already so easy and he can't get his scaling abilities going. 1-2 turns getting Networks going and he can rock out with 100% crit rates through cover plus healing to full every turn. Too powerful for a game that can't handle him, ironically you need difficulty mods or to be a bad player to really make him goodActual worst for the base game is Cherub>Claymore has the best abilities in the gametrue tho
>>737690203can't play this game without the custom voice packs, it adds so much into the game.
>>737744293>>737743464I can really get behind their goading as a concept, although it stretches my suspension of disbelief to the breaking point (if THEY know how to contact you via fucking radio or whatever, surely it can't be hard for this post-spacetech civilization to hunt you down immediately) but the fact that they have seriously inane bullshit to say just kills the immersion.I recall one line the Assassin has about how she sees "something of her own creation" in the commander because of his own dogged determination or some such drivel, and I just thought DIDN'T ASK DON'T CARE
>Well done commander, well done.>However>I wrote my dissertation on Saber in FSN and you're going to listen to all of it
>>737690203simply slice your enemies into small manageable pieces
>>737744350>1-2 turns getting Networks goingOr i could just blueblood all over them and resolve most of the encounter in that time
>>737744208>>737744312The thing is you have to stick with your squad and bound with them when you're out of concealment. You can't avoid that fact. Sometimes you have to make a desperate move to beat the timer and deal with the consequences, I get that, but most of the time that happens it's because you were too greedy making a dumb move that you shouldn't be doing without having equipment on the unit to manage the situation, like a mimic beacon. >>737744350>Actual worst for the base game is CherubI'd actually argue that it's Godmother. She's too much of an xcom 2 character for a game full of crazy abilities and a timeline system. Cherub has a couple good defensive abilities that synergize decently with characters like Axiom and Zephyr but I agree that he's not my go to pick when I'm building a squad.
>>737737163it's fine for like 5 hours but that's about allnot great by any meansa fully fledged cyberpunk swat xcom game would be sick, however
>>737744614Actually scratch that. I think Terminal is the worst character in the game, and not just because she's an annoying character. The only reason she has any relevance whatsoever is because she's the designated healer. Take that away from her and the only useful team ability she has in her tree is Pin Down. She's fucking useless for 95% of the encounter until you need a heal or status ailments cleared.
Am I retarded or are skirmishers just kinda ass?
>>737744870They fall off the hardest yes. By the time your soliders get mid game tech armor/weapons they've already surpassed your max level skirmisher.
>>737744870You are not retarded.There are 3 skills that the Skirmisher gets that are worth anything>Marauder (passively shooting is 1 AP doesn't end their turn)>Justice (yanking humanoids toward themselves and hitting them)>Inspire (give 1 AP to an ally)And you get 2 of those the moment they're recruited. The rest of the skirmisher skills range from okay to ass.Don't get me started on Battlelord
>>737744870Their unique ability in the ripper is kinda bad, but it can be useful to snag a priority like the assassination targets. With the right gear and the right advanced warfare perks they can be pretty good though. Repeaters, hair triggers, use the buddy perks to feed lots of turns and you can squeeze damage out of their weak gun. They're always going to play second fiddle to templars and reapers though, they're just a slightly better spider armour unit with a weird weapon.
>>737744870They don't suck as units to use, but they aren't anywhere near as strong as Reapers or Templars.They don't feel too bad in LWotC.
>>737744490Blueblood is OK but you can replicate his main strength with a weapon mod (reflex grip), which everyone SHOULD have near the end of the second act>resolve most of the encounter in that timeYeah that's what I mean, you either need to play on the harder difficulty or use the Grobo difficulty mod to be able to take advantage of how good he really is. In any case I wouldn't call 'suffering from success' a worst-slot candidate.>>737744614>Cherub has a couple good defensive abilitiesCherub's problem is that he needs to shield, move and bash/shoot to be useful, but he can only ever do two of those things. He's always falling short.>that synergize decently with characters like Axiom and ZephyrBoth characters struggle scaling into the late game the same way anon thinks Viper does, and by doing this you're putting him on babysitting duty like how you're describing Terminal.Though at least with her she can sustain ANY character (including OP ones) through healing and lifting CC debuffs. Agree she's not a high priority once you get Regen Weaves though
>>737697043In WOTC I think they're not as good as other units, especially when the AWC can poach some of their best perks. They're undeniably the best unit to take on a lost mission if you have the 'between the eyes' resistance order though. Once you get the Hunter's weapons I think they come back as a really useful unit too.
>>737744105>Abilities and the aim boosts from levelling up are more pivotal for getting kills in my opinionI don't necessarily disagree but I think, after a point, they go from making a unit serviceable to making them busted. Having a raw rookie does suck (though you should also have a bunch of squaddies by then at bare minimum) but like a sergeant or an LT? I'm not panicking because I have to swap out one dude on my A-team with a sergeant and it takes hardly any time to get one. An LT ranger is already a monster.
>>737745085After the nerfs to banish on Reapers, Skirmishers are unironically better at dealing damage. The free shot at flanked units, the grapple and the zap move that fucks up mech units (only costs 1AP) I'd say all classes are pretty equal. Templars can be trash if there are too many enemies to tank. Reapers have gotten nerfed hard in terms of damage output.
>>737690203around laser weapons tierunless you are fundamentally behind, in which case it will only even out at around max tech
>>737690203>this has to be the most difficult game that doesnt explicitly advertise itself as such there isdude...Terror from the Deep is hard, this is a joke, there are some absolutely broken units in the game, you just have to know how to use them.
>>737745185I agree with your points. The only major reason I think Viper is a weak pick is because she's situational. One of the factions (whichever one the robot one is) is almost, if not entirely immune to her poisons. At which point you may as well put her on spec ops duty and rotate in someone else with more impact. I find that her final perk with the bite isn't very useful either. It's been a while since I played it but I didn't think it had particularly major effects and it had a chance to miss outright, which felt a little underwhelming to me. Overall she's a decent pick but she has a lot of noob traps in her perks I think.>>737745265I agree, the only thing that's really irreplaceable is losing good AWC rolls. A colonel with 4 or 5 AWC slots, especially good perks, can be irreplaceable. Though that said the game is plenty easy enough even without that, so I think most experienced players that aren't purposely handicapping themselves would manage without them.
>>737690203I don't mind the difficulty or even the crazy spikes in diffculty so soon but there needs to be a way to fix that shit where if you discover a squad of aliens too late in your turn they basically get double turns and you're gonna get fucked over, if they have a lancer one of your guys is gonna get stunned if they're mutons they're gonna flank your forward guys and leave them with no health. That encourages you to drag your guys as slow as possible and makes having a concealed reaper obligatory to scout around. Any other playstyle is suboptimal and will lead to savescumming
>>737745486>devs release C&B torture because they overlooked piece of code and borked the difficulty settingsshit will never be not funny
>>737742937theres a mod which fixes thathttps://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2729803041
>get serial>on a rangerYou have now won the game.
>>737745374Assuming you're talking about LWotC here.Reapers needed the nerfs because they were fucking insane and flat out the best faction class, so I can get behind that. Knife build still feels pretty decent to me, and a good Banish in the right circumstances is still really powerful, although you've gotta be close range to take advantage of it. It feels closer in power to a beefed up Ranger using Both Barrels, which is always a heap of fun to get off.Late game Templars are still really fucking strong, although as you've said, if there's too many guns for Templar to tank then their use takes a sharp hit if they don't have any focus. The Apotheosis buff with Amplify makes them hit like a runaway steam train, and Volt's guaranteed AOE damage taking out clusters of dudes behind high cover will never not be useful - it really doesn't need an aim buff attached to it, but it's just the cherry on top. I love Templars.Skirmishers genuinely feel really good to me - a step above normal soldiers, but not quite Templar level. They've always got utility in Total Combat, Combat Presence, Hit & Run + tanking with Battlefield Awareness. I haven't ever tried Whiplash - you're saying it's good? I'm playing a new campaign right now, I might aim to get that on my Skirmisher.I really don't like the ripjack skills, though. Wrath feels to me like it'll get you killed, Justice would be good if not for the fact that most of the enemies I want to use it on are behind cover and therefore have high defense, and the basic ripjack strike is only usable if an enemy finishes their turn next to you - otherwise you have to move up to them to use it, which means the strike'll be your last action, and it doesn't activate hit & run, leaving you in a bad spot.
Chimera squad plays like an experimental take on an old formula that is XCOM 2, however>mutons dress like humans poster>faceless helping a cat down a tree poster>snake hostess club adIt should've gone harder on the setting and aliens trying to fit into a human society. I would've enjoyed it a lot more if it had soldier customization.
>>737745852Battle scanners, mimic beacons, smokes, flashbangs, parry, stasis, protection, poison, dodgeShit dude there's so many tools at your disposal to weaken enemies and/or protect yourself. Stop using your units in the order the game gives it to you and actually think about who's likely to be left over with moves available at the end of a fight, and try to keep the guys with resources to protect the team available for that. If you keep running your guys forward with no support and no means to do anything about a pod ambush then no shit you're going to get fucked over.>>737746000Death from above is also really strong on one. I don't think I've ever seen both spawn on a single unit but that'd be crazy.
>>737746150I always find it funny how differently Chimera and Apocalypse deal with post-victory alien question.Chimera:>Diversity is our strength! No borders!>Hybrids are just like you!>Those bloodthirsty Mutons? On a hod-dog stand!>Those mind raping Sectoids? On a talk show!Apocalypse (so pre brain rot)>alien execution squads>hybrids sterilized and thrown into a ghetto
>>737746217I never quite found smokes that useful honestly, soft cover is basically no coverflashbangs are also not for disorienting enemies, they're for breaking sectoid mind control early on, they fall off hard lategame
why is she a weeb?
>>737746128>Assuming you're talking about LWotC here.yupSkirmishers are really good on action economy, that's their biggest strength. And on legend that's really important. With a high level skirmisher you can often grapple behind the enemy(free action) Walk to a spot that forces Advent to reposition next turn (1AP) Take a shot(free action) and then depending on the situation you can chain-shot a tanky target/Whiplash a mech/grenade(1AP) or anything else.> I haven't ever tried Whiplash - you're saying it's good? I'm playing a new campaign right now, I might aim to get that on my Skirmisher.I find that it's almost always around 80-100% hit chance guaranteed damage. One-shots drones. Bonus damage against all mechanized. It's good.I run a heavy overwatch style in my teams so a guy that can force enemies to suicide run out of cover is really good for me.
>>737746431I feel like Chimaera Squad could have worked if there had been an Xcom 3 first or maybe at least a post-Elder DLClike say, have the Elders activate some kind of contingency plan to wipe out all life on earth, something automated or so, and have, now that the psionic mind control is gone, have the various aliens help you outturn it into a bit of a longer war of survival sort, maybe do something with robots and nanites as enemy forces and make it so that by the end every soldier has fought alongside an alien, not because they wanted to but rather because everyone was trying to surviveyou do something like that and Chimaera squad looks reasonable
>>737745612>Overall she's a decent pick but she has a lot of noob traps in her perks I thinkTrueHowever poisons aren't really her strength, and it's more about her ability to combo down any major threat with nearly 100% hit rate.>shoot/spit poison>tongue and bindturn 2>release (free action) - now the enemy is adjacent to you and out of cover>shoot (crit)>shoot (crit)It's a combo that costs no resources and has a near 100% hit rate. You're basically just a souped up Blueblood that also gets ridiculous base dodge, movement speed and a kissable face
>>737721448Hell yeah
>>737746576because they all used to be humans and the particular human they used as base material to make the Assassin was already a weeb, and none of their conditioning could get that particular trait out of her all of them are living out their fantasies, which is how the Elders keep them under control "you do what we want and you can continue living your little power fantasies"
>>737735242stab u
Unironically as you upgrade to tier 2.
>>737746512In the same vain as how burning works, they're also useful for stopping enemies from throwing grenades and using abilities like the stun baton, as well as restricting their movement. They fall off hard though, definitely. Most enemies become immune to them which is a shame. I've very rarely used them to kill psi zombies if I can't get a good angle to kill a sectoid too, but that just opens them up to trying to shoot you next turn.
>>737746576>congrats on besting me, in fact, I hope you beat all the aliensabsolute kino death scene desu
>>737746512>soft cover is basically no coverPretty sure it stacks with cover and sometimes shit's gonna go south and a dude isn't going to be positioned ideally. The real reason they're not that useful in XCOM2 is the specialist gets aid protocol for those situations and mimic beacons are busted.
>>737746829yeh you're right they stop regular stun lancers from stun lancingbut not advanced ones because you'll never ever hit one with it since their movement range is "entire god damn map good luck fucker"
>>737746915True, the only other use I know of is flashbanging the codex to stop it from splitting and teleporting. You can sort of do the same thing to the avatar but you have to use Templars void conduit ability instead. Flashbangs are useful, but you have to know what enemies are immune to it and what abilities get stopped by them.
>>737746609Flanking spots encourage the AI to reposition, right? Is there anything else to take into account, like tile proximity? I'd love to take advantage of this more frequently but typically flanking spots that I can get to with my Skirmisher that are also close enough to avoid a steep aim penalty are also spots where the Skirmisher is close enough to the enemy pod that they'll probably get flanked and/or focused the following turn. I rarely ever leave my Skirmisher close to a pod as a result.You've absolutely convinced me to try out Whiplash, I'm kind of excited now!
>Tease tftd>never comes out>make some bullshit>team diesfucking whyI love underwater atmosphere so much more than overworldstarting with shitty harpoon and dart guns and upgrading to gauss and Sonic weapons would've been so cool
>>737742837The chosen are a mixed bag because I encountered the Assassin first and she was a pain in my sides. She at least killed 7 soldiers in my honestman.Warlock was the last one I encountered and he rolled some weaknesses I was easily able to exploit and 2 tapped him every map.The alien rulers are way too unpredictable and the Berserker Queen can create some "That's Xcom baby" moments where they slam the ground and somehow take out the second story of a different room where my soldiers are and take a lot of fall damage.
>>737744041Maybe I should do a Troubleshooter playthrough with permadeath...
>>737746576>her sword is called katana>is clearly not a katanatruly the ken-sama of ayyliens
>>737747319>Flanking spots encourage the AI to reposition, right? Is there anything else to take into account, like tile proximity?Flanking means they will run wherever to not be flanked, yes. It all depends on the situation. Generally I like to flank, kill somebody and disable the rest with flashbangs or suppression. Often the rest are so neutered they either die or miss.>Proximity Situational but I tend to play point blank unless there's an absurd number of enemies. I don't know why but it almost always works out. Especially since bursting down a guy and having to dodge one is more important than having a safer position but letting 2 guys take a shot imo.Just be careful about activating extra pods.
>>737690203>vanilla xcom>hard
>>737749447God bless you and have a wonderful night, anon.
>>737690203slightly off-topic before i play xcom 2, should i play the first one before i play the sequel?
>>737749970Do a Legendary Ironman run then hop straight into XCom 2 after that for ludonarrative harmony.
>>737750030uhm no thanks im a casual gamer unironically. is it really that hard?
>>737690203When you unlock psionic characters and all of a sudden you have guaranteed hits on a cooldown
>>737750061Yes, the hardest difficulty will really kill you very quickly.
>>737750128can you please let me play it on easier difficulty? any reason why you're forcing me to play on hard????
>>737750160Yeah, the story of XCom 2 has you losing in XCom 1.
>>737750061>im a casual gamer unironically. is it really that hard?I've been using a computer since I was 2 years old. I've played a LOT of games in my life, old and new.XCOM games are some of the most frustrating games I've ever played. If you play improperly on the harder difficulties, you will be wiped very, very quickly.
>>737715958>>737716135I love that. XCOM is all about reverse-engineering the aliens' tech and throwing it back at them. But SPARKs are just not as viable as the ADVENT MEC since their purpose is different. ADVENT has no trouble with expandable machines not bothering with cover and flanking your guys and blowing shit up for chip damage - Devastating! But if we do the same thing, we're down precious resources and we lost a unit. Wish there were more examples like this in the game.
>>737715958you need to get the field repair perk or they just die, but when you hit hunter protocol everything is right with the world
>>737734234Yes. WoTC requiredTons of mods too
>>737707128>>737719817they just fucked up the perma death with chimera squad and the setting was new and original ZOG.but with the shit show that has been civ vii firaxis is done, they still haven't even fired the project leads
>>737744439first time I attacked her base, I lost, because the aliens got an upgrade and this was the mission where I saw the new aliens. even worse, you couldn't retreat from that mission
>>737690203The game becomes a cake walk after you kill the first chosen.
>>737747319>Is there anything else to take into account, like tile proximity?I don't know if they modified the behaviour in long war, but in base XCOM 2 (and EU) the AI will freeze up if they're surrounded and flanked from multiple sides. The AI can't figure out where to run to be safe and it sometimes skips over the turn entirely. It's not worth relying on it as a strategy but sometimes it's funny to see it happen.
>>737752214it's part of the game design. you're supposed to struggle while slowly gaining the upper hand. ironically, the long war mod makes the game a struggle, no matter how much tech progress you made
>>737749970The first firaxis XCOM is technically non-canon, in XCOM 2 you failed to defend earth and were beaten pretty quickly. You can play it if you want, but it's a lot more punishing than XCOM 2 is in my opinion. The second game gives you a lot more equipment and abilities that can get you out of trouble and the game is balanced around you taking scrappy fights. Legendary/impossible is a different story, but commander difficulty (2nd hardest) is the most fair challenge in my opinion.
>>737750061it was pretty tricky on the default difficulty for me in the beginning because it's just a mechanically dense game but it's still manageable if you save and reload as needed. if you look up what to build and research that can make a huge difference but that's also taking part of the game away in a sense
>>737752397Xcom 1 being punishing hardly matters when it’s genuinely hard to lose anybody because of overwatch creep. Yeah, retraining a dead colonel is hard, good thing they will only die by a freak twist of fate.
fuck you guys, now I want to play xcom again.
>>737753090No one could've foreseen this developement, though it is intriguing
>>737753090I get obsessed with it and replay it every 3 months or so. Sucks that XCOM 2 peaked and we've gotten nothing since.
>>737753494What are you talking about? You got XCOM Legends! Play it now on your mobile!
>>737753494Every time I replay it I get reminded that I don't like the aesthetics of the t2 and t3 weapons. Is -4 damage that big of a deal in the long run? Not really, but I do still make a point of giving myself an extra weapon mod slot on the conventional weapons to even it out a bit.
How viable is rushing psionics in wotc?
>>737754221Depends on the difficulty but on commander you can comfortably do it, you probably need to rush t2 armour and then proving grounds immediately after that to stay competitive though.
What went wrong?
>>737690203The key to these games is to not to use strategy, play it safe, and use cover.What you want to do is the most game-brained stupid movements to make sure the enemy never gets the opportunity to do anything.So basically shoot from the longest distance possible, use grenades to take them out the second you see them, and do the most damage possible every turn.If the enemy ever gets the opportunity to even attempt to shoot at your dudes hunkered down behind full cover, you've failed and might as well start over.
>>737754981>epic game store exclusive>soldiers are at a terrible middleground between old XCOM and nu XCOM where you need to invest a lot of resources and time into them and they're expensive to recruit but get instagibbed by basic nigga aliens all the time
>>737754981Alien designs look like shit
I've wanted to play Xcom 2 for some time now. What difficulty do you guys recommend? I do have experience in some tactical games, last ones I played were triangle strategy and 3 house on maddening difficulty.
>>737757308Play WOTC not vanillaCommander is well balanced but X-Com's difficulty assumes you already know the right build order and tech trees.
>>737757308Normal, get your bearings first
>>737713039>>737718152>>737726167>>737744439>>737690203i fucking hate this Destiny aesthetic they started shitting out in 2
Is there a mod that removes the chosen? I can't stand these special snowflakes, their bullshit moves and their endless talking anymore
>>737760432just don't play wotc?
>>737760432The expansion ruins the feeling of the game. Instead of a game about soldiers it's now Marvel Superheroes and Villains + soldiers.
>>737755143the key to these games is playing them, instead of talking out of your ass
>>737755143If you want to get away from the "1turn" gameplay I highly recommend Beta-strikeThis also make the game so much harder it's unreal, this shit is kicking my ass 3 months in
>>737760432Disable the DLC
Terror from the deep is the only hard xcom game
They got me out there fighting Palantir
>>737763232ok grandpa
I made Crius in Xcom 2 but the long war stuff gets rly drawn out and buggy
>>737760432>>737760670Whether or not you like the Chosen (personally I think the early game would be too easy without them), there's no question that WOTC is vastly superior to Vanilla X-com 2.Vanilla XC2 is worst than the previous game.
I got filtered by XCOM 1>get to base invasion>I'd only invested stuff into a few soldiers>they die>left with all the shitters>they die immediately>save is fucked due to this>stop playing
>>737749970Yes, play EW.
Shame Chimera Squad's modding scene died at birth, honestly fixing how ugly mutons are and replacing the mandatory characters with standard player-made creations that can die would already make it much more interesting. Firaxis should have at least tried with an expansion that fixes all the issues people had with the game instead of the vidya equivalent of jumping off a bridge.
it's crazy how they made an entire DLC just to have a TNG reunion episode
>>737765525I'm glad Marvel killed their studio.XCOM3 would have been dogshit.
>>737765725Its insane how hard Firaxis turned on the playerbase after 2020. As if they went "yeah no fuck them we know better now" because they clearly took feedback from the base game to WOTC. I don't understand how they couldn't just either refine their experiment or just move on to XCOM 3 instead of the mass suicide option of Marvelslop, fuck whoever thought that was a good idea.
>>737766240Well, they don't pick the projects they make, they are still owned by 2K, right? 2K got a contract with Disney to make a Marvel game, they put Firaxis in charge and they had to make it.
OH NO ITS HIM
>>737765672kind of based desu
>>737766330Jake Solomon going on Forged in Fire of all places to shill Midnight Suns was so fucking funny to me
>>737766338>Equip mindshieldsNothing personnel
>>737766459>Goes from Xcom kino to capeslop to his self owned studio closing without producing a single game
>>737767025Wasn't his self owned studio making some AI slop metaverse sims rip off?
>>737767069I know it was a sims like but If it had AI shit in it then lmao.What a fall from grace.
>>737745612>>737744105>>737743802>>737743161Actually curious now, how did boomers deal with losing their highest ranked guy in UFO def or terror from the deep?Probably not as big a deal in nucom win because iirc the main benefit of oldcom ranks was morale bonuses not really stats.
>try to beat LWOTC mod on Legend + Ironman>a dozen failed campaigns, some restarts on gatecrasher, some fail on first HQ assault, some push to September and fail from misplayed key missions>even install lewd soldier outfits for additional motivation, but continue to fail>want to stop but the thick-jawed german youtuber aces every mission and this pisses me off>finally have a campaign going that looks like it's headed for victory (despite getting avenger defense 4 fucking times holy shit)>kill all the chosen (they're all lame except hunter who is bae because at least he's funny)>make it to the final mission>go on holiday for a week overseas>come back sleep deprived and tired, try to play the mission, start throwing in the final room fight against the avatars>guys dying like flies, looks like i'm not going to win>rage uninstall this dogshit mod and this dogshit gamei'll try again in a year or so
>>737768209I forget why I stopped playing last timeI think something like I encountered an alien ruler in the same mission as a point and I got giga ambushed by an avatar or something? I vaguely recall getting absolutely owned on everyone
chosen were saturday morning cartoon villains
>>737754981Aren't most upgrades locked behind faction rep in it? And you can't make every faction happy every time or something?
>>737768472I think alien rulers lost me a run too, the snake guy that freezes your entire team with some AOE attack.It's the biggest gripe I have with the mod, you really have to know how everything works in advance, or you'll get destroyed because you forgot to click Inspect Enemy that one time
>>737768209um bro you DO know that if you fail the final mission the game lets you retry even on ironman, right??
>>737766338hello my good neighbor, do you have a moment to talk about THE ELDERS
>>737768758WHATi did notwhatever I probably savescummed a start-of-turn misclick somewhere on mission #46 anyways (honestman)
sorry if im retarded but im in the late game now i think, just fought my first sectopod but id say its still almost as tough as in the beginning. i have multiple colonels in my squad and plasma weapons and warden armor but enemies still feel like theyre really resilient. is it a must to put scopes and shit on every single rifle? it says theyre single use so i dont want to waste them on low tier equipment
>>737768932yeah it applies to all missions that end the game if you lose, like avenger defense and chosen avenger assault
>>737768497yeah and its kino
>>737763232Terror from the Deep is such a slog. That's the real problem. It's tragic we didn't get a new one, because otherwise it is pretty cool.
>>737768497I wish they were able to lean more heavily into the pseudo-nemesis system they had with the Chosen.Also surprised no one ever made a mod with a 4th Chosen.
the description says shotgun but does that work with the rifle i got from the snake chosen? i think its called arashi. thinking about grabbing this one cause other options dont seem super good
>>737765672I wish they got a couple more cast members to fill out the resistance voice roster. At least get us a special Templar character.
>>737771561Arashi is a shotgun that you get from killing the assassin chosen. That's a really good ability to combo with said shotgun. Also untouchable is clutch, don't underestimate it.
Okay you're making me want to play it again where's the collection link with lwotc and all the essentials etc
>>737757308Start at commander and play Ironman. If a bug happens it happens, it's OK, thats why you're starting on commander and not impossible. Just remember these five rules and you won't get rekt or salty like the retards in this thread:>Somebody important will get shot and die. Accept it up front and plan around it.>what happened before does not impact your chances of of success or failure the future>95% is not 100%>99% is not 100%>you can't shoot what you can't seeI envy you -- XCOM:EW and XCOM2:WOTC are 10/10 experiences on your first playthrough where you don't know what anything does. The tension and struggle are real.
>>737772516thx. some of my units have one available that hunkers down automatically if you do only movement and also the one that gives you an +aim bonus if you hunkered down on your prior turn. that seems like strong synergy, is it?
>>737773021That's actually a really solid combo I've never seen in my own game, good shit. I'd say the best thing I've gotten is bladestorm on a templar.
I beat it yesterday. It took me 360 save files and 200 days to unlock magnetic weapons and didn't unlock "beam" weapons. That was like a trial by fire especially against warlock in mid-game.Do I do the legacy missions now?
Snakes?
>>737774671on a plane?
>>737755143That's how I played. 5% chances to get crit and insta killed? Ability to disable my guy and create a shadow or whatever? How about I don't engage with the game at all and never see any enemy ability because I kill them in the turn they get activated? How about that?
>>737770651I like how much a slog it is
>>737770697They actually had playable Chosen rejects in the now-dead gacha game, doubt anyone will try to integrate them into the main game
>>737776130/v/ posters can't help but outthemselves as bad at videogames.xcom2 is a puzzle game and literally every situation can be easily handled, you don't need to do shit like this.
me?I mod my game to have 6 skirmishers with no fatigue meterwould you look at the time? IT'S TIME FOR MY TURN AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN...
>>737778010Yeah, I handled the dice roll by ensuring that the enemy doesn't get the chance to throw any dice.
>>737746576is there any fanart of her being a weeb? That the first thing I thought of. I kind of regreted killing her first because the other edgelord haven't been as fun to fight as her
>>737690203
Going back to pic but with the expansion for the first time, haven't played since I beat it on launch. Anything I should know besides armor being way better (icarus armor in 2 not actually letting you fly was a letdown compared to EU)?
>>737782382play long war
>>737782382the first long war was honestly an improvement on all points, I don't think I'd be able to replay original EU/EW without itbut other than that, EW was great in general but other than the mech suits being (obviously) OP and a big resource drain, nah, it's pretty much the same game
>>737782382don't listen to long war niggers, that mod is shit, takes like 100 hours to beat and thinks throwing impossible missions at you is the funniest shit
>>737690203I beat the game on commander ironman. Wasn’t even that hardMaybe you are just a shitter?
>>737767659>oh no, someone went down>anyways
>>737782382PLAY LONG WAR REBALANCE
>>737785208Legit.Plus if you were obsessive enough you could use the box to figure out what the black tiles were and waypoint the bomb the whole way.With nucom is there any fun mods? Already beat it a few times not looking for a grind, just something fun.
i sorta think Troi and Worf and Riker were the only ones who returned their calls when they wanted to hire the TNG cast members to voice some characters.well they obviously could've also gotten Wesley but who cares about Wesley?
>>737760432Hope you're still here retard, but you probably aren't so you sadly won't see thisSteam workshop has a mod that prevents the chosen from appearing outside of non-story missionsI forgot it's name specifically, but go on the workshop and look up "Disable chosen" and you should find it
>>737711383look ma I posted it again
>>737786884amalgamation classes along with all the addons easily makes xcom 2 my favorite. i love sending out squads of retarded niche units like a guy that dual wields riot shields or a guy with no weapons that can only summon/enslave xenos or a blood mage primary with sidekick tertiary (- maxhp but +hp to bondmate) who kills herself with one cast of her starting spell but buffs her bondmate hugely when downed or a magical girl who you can use another psycaster/fire to intentionally panic so she goes berserk or straight up explodes to salvage a squad wipe situation
>>737714664STOP THE SPACE BOATS
for me it's the snake ladies
>>737732591I personally use the ironman settingI haven't had saves wiped even while experiencing some crashes.
>>737790369leli think i forgot to save most of my posters
>>737690203I got raged out of this game because stupid design decisionsGet ready to extract kidnap victim Park extract vehicle outside to hopefully exit the same turn Grab victim "Lol fuck hold on this is a fire lane"Evac ship moves to other side for no reason Fucking die.Yeah, I'll stick to openxcom extended, fuck nucom
