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Sexual Aluminum posted:Man, I am getting my rear end kicked in Long War. I tried my usual strat of rushing carapace armor, or whatever the equivalent is called, is that still a valid strat? Should I go right for lasers? Floaters and Seekers are kicking my rear end. Guys, don't raid early large landed UFOs unless you want to get your rear end kicked, or you think you can handle it.
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Jul 7, 2014 21:06
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From my experience, more firepower saves more people than better armor. After all, they can't shoot you when they're dead.
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Jul 7, 2014 21:06
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ArchangeI posted:From my experience, more firepower saves more people than better armor. After all, they can't shoot you when they're dead. Dead aliens make the best armor.
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Jul 7, 2014 21:26
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Ravenfood posted:Guys, don't raid early large landed UFOs unless you want to get your rear end kicked, or you think you can handle it.  Ravenfood posted:Lasers, then air tech is a decent path. So is reversing the order, but you'll want both of those before armor.
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Jul 7, 2014 21:28
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It is completely bullshit that Exalt get to use grenades when you hack a relay and it is water-proof justification for savescumming :/
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Jul 7, 2014 21:52
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edit: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ After you hack remember to flashbang/suppress/poison the Rocket and grenade guys on the Exalt side. Chem Grenades are amazing against Exalt since it will effectively stop them from doing anything for multiple turns including grenades and rockets. The can't even reload after being hacked without taking damage.Tin Tim posted:Glad to hear that because that's actually what I'm doing/planning right now. Also, get labs. Much more important than before! I'm going to disagree here. It's actually pretty easy to get a steady stream of new scientists just from filling Council requests. If you build a bunch of labs and research too quickly, you will find that you can't really afford all the shiny new tech you have, and you will have less cash to spend on it because you bought labs (and more power for them). The only reason I can see to build labs in the early game is if you are trying to rush a particular tech (and skip lower techs) like Gauss Weapons or Psionics or higher tier Body Armor. Even then you will need Workshops to be able to afford all that stuff. IMO the most cost effective approach is to get ahead in the air war ASAP, because Satellites and Interceptors are very expensive to replace, and because every UFO kill generates more resources. The flip side of this is to get tactical advantage so you can have more successful missions (especially landed missions which are often the only way to get intact Computers and Engines). The most cost effective improvements for that are: 1. OTS (Squad Size 7 and Officers): Easy to get these if you aren't shy about buying plenty of rookies. IMO you should buy 5 rookies whenever you have fewer than 7 rookies. 2. Weapons: Beam Lasers are a big investment early but worth it. Don't forget to get advanced Beams right after that so you can get Laser Cannons on your Interceptors. 3. Foundry + Asia: This lets you afford all those great Air War projects, plus some other goo stuff like Scope Upgrade and Ammo Conservation. 4. Armor: The early armors are a bit too expensive for the upgrades they give. If you need more protection I might suggest making some Reinforced Armor items which give +1 HP and +1 DR. So I would hold off on Armor research until the end of the summer and then rush to Mobile Power Armor to get Aegis and Banshee, which you should outfit your whole squad with. Along the way you can make a few Phalanx to add Grapple to the squad. Everything else is strictly optional until you get the early game under control, inluding MECs, SHIVs, Psi, Gene mods, and upper tier weapons. Edit: No doubt that they are effective. My point is that during the early game with 2 labs you will research way more stuff than you can effectively make use of in the first few months. You will be better off putting that into buying some of those shiny guns you just researched. 400 spacebux will outfit your entire team in beam lasers and more. vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv amanasleep fucked around with this message at 22:12 on Jul 7, 2014 |
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Jul 7, 2014 22:01
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Two labs is 400 dollars (not counting costs in energy) and increases your speed by fifty percent. Labs are awesome.
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Jul 7, 2014 22:03
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MrBims posted:It is completely bullshit that Exalt get to use grenades when you hack a relay and it is water-proof justification for savescumming :/ It's a justification for savescumming the first turn it happens, but once you know it, roll with the punches the AI deals you!
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Jul 7, 2014 22:07
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Should I feel bad reloading a game where I a panic chain started due to a glitch leading to squad massacre? I used CD to destroy the tree a muton was hiding behind, but then it was still shown as having full cover and everyone missed.
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Jul 7, 2014 22:20
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EmmyOk posted:Should I feel bad reloading a game where I a panic chain started due to a glitch leading to squad massacre? I used CD to destroy the tree a muton was hiding behind, but then it was still shown as having full cover and everyone missed. You should probably stop playing xcom! How dare you!! Did you actually destroy the tree, or was it just cut in half? It isn't a bug if it is still there but shorter - it will still give full cover.
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Jul 7, 2014 22:22
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MrBims posted:You should probably stop playing xcom! How dare you!! There was like a red blotch on the ground where the tree used to be? My main question I suppose is was it a glitch or my poor understanding of collateral damage.
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Jul 7, 2014 22:25
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I need to play on the most recent beta, but I'm swinging back around towards starting in Asia and doing your damndest to snag NA as fast as possible. The Asia bonus is just too good to risk missing out on, while the NA bonus is easily made up. Plus, Asia's poor funding of countries is actually a plus: you don't feel bad using your first three sats to cover NA, then immediately using the bonus to fill your interceptor coverage. edit: In LW. Ravenfood fucked around with this message at 01:02 on Jul 8, 2014 |
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Jul 7, 2014 23:40
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I use rockets pretty sparingly or to soften up targets first, because I'm always so obsessive about losing corpses/weapon fragments. I guess that's not such an issue in Long War, since it's got so many more missions and thus more chances to pick up resources, not to mention the foundry projects that improve salvage.gradenko_2000 posted:I think I might give Long War another shot with the Cinematic Mode thing just to get a feel for everything. I liked the mod in concept, but I'm also a big babby who couldn't stand the drastically different grenades and aiming and air combat.
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Jul 8, 2014 00:47
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So how long is Long War? Vanilla X-Com was kinda trying my patience by the end, is this significantly longer?
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Jul 8, 2014 00:48
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StashAugustine posted:So how long is Long War? Vanilla X-Com was kinda trying my patience by the end, is this significantly longer? The name is Long War. Take a wild guess, ha ha.
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Jul 8, 2014 00:55
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Actually, I've heard a lot of people saying Asia is the best starting continent, though I've traditionally backed Africa just for those spacebucks. Anyone have insight?StashAugustine posted:So how long is Long War? Vanilla X-Com was kinda trying my patience by the end, is this significantly longer? 1. Both XCOM and the aliens tech up more slowly. Research and production take longer, but you'll be fighting lower level enemies longer than usual. 2. There are way more missions. I got about as many UFO encounters in the first 3 months of this game as I did in my entire vanilla XCOM run. Really makes you realize how much 'free time' the original game gave you between missions.
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Jul 8, 2014 00:58
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Vib Rib posted:Actually, I've heard a lot of people saying Asia is the best starting continent, though I've traditionally backed Africa just for those spacebucks. Anyone have insight? The pro start in LW is Asia, build 3 sats and 1 uplink. Then move all 4 interceptors to NA, leaving your original sat unguarded. Aliens will naturally shoot it down, leaving you with 3 free sat slots, which you use to pick up NA before April 1. Then after the first you buy more interceptors at a discount (and your existing ones qualify for the maintenance discount. Not a guaranteed strat because sometimes they won't shoot down even an unguarded sat in March.
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Jul 8, 2014 01:39
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MrBims posted:It is completely bullshit that Exalt get to use grenades when you hack a relay and it is water-proof justification for savescumming :/ Wait what version are you on? I was told that Amineri herself said hacking EXALT towers disabled their rockets and grenades now too since like beta 10. Oh god, all those times I left myself open to EXALT with the towers hacked, were they actually just too stupid to decide to rocket me? WHAT HAS BEEN HAPPENING Mr. Crow posted:Are you the same Beagle that makes the videos? If so, hah, watching your Impossible + LW videos infuriates me. On your first mission I can have the same exact setup with everyone on a building shooting down on guys in the open and 3/4 of them will miss, you smug bastard! But seriously, thanks for the videos and advice, they're helpful. All SPECs is what I was doing a week or two ago but found the same thing you did, that it hoses you when you have no A-Team in April/May. Hence the half-and-half strategy. Seekers: I almost always have an Infantryman with an Assault Rifle and a SCOPE who gets 50% shots on them even when flying, and a Rocketeer with SCOPE/Carbine for high accuracy shots. At the start of you revealing seekers, check you have a good rocket shot on them, then leave him till last. If the rest of the squad can't kill enough Seekers for you to feel comfortable, rocket them to hell. Obviously you're packing at least one Battle Scanner across your squad to reveal them once they've stealthed, but worst case if you don't have one, just throw a nade or rocket if you know where they are and it'll decloak them if it hits them. One piece of general advice I myself have been trying to remember - fall back early and often in difficult engagements or when caught in poor positions. More so than in vanilla, it is necessary to exercise good tactical sense and decide on contact whether you can win the fight in your current position or if you need to fall back and attempt to either lure the enemy to you or make a different assault. In vanilla this was a bad idea early because you could get overwatch camped by giving up ground, but in LW you start with Lightning Reflexes on every scout and have long range supression on the Gunner LMG setup + Battle Scanners to recon before you make a second advance. Point being, there are many situations where if you bug out in the first turn before Overwatches start getting set up, you could save everybody's lives. The difference between meeting Floaters while you're in half cover and falling back to full, Overwatching them as they fly in piecemeal, compared to thinking you can take them in the half cover and then having another pod fly up on you because you're on the frontline, the difference there is massive. Also, alien overwatch-advance strats (they fly up on you while overwatching to make sure you can't escape their advance) are common and quickly turn a "I can take this" situation into a "I'm about to be flanked unless I dash through three overwatches" situation. Sometimes it's better to be the early bird and dash retreat before that happens.
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Jul 8, 2014 02:15
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", sometimes are), but I seem to get hosed by Seekers if there is more than one unit visible at a time (even with falling back etc). Could be lack of beam weapons by then, as when I do hit, they block all of the damage seemingly 50% of the time or untrained soldiers. If it's just one unit, they're pretty trivial, stack everyone up behind a wall and overwatch, seeker uncloaks and promptly gets murdered, rinse repeat.
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Beagle posted:Wait what version are you on? I was told that Amineri herself said hacking EXALT towers disabled their rockets and grenades now too since like beta 10. It was just today, beta 13. Both regular and elites. Two beelined to my hacker to grenade him, and another sent a grenade at two people behind cover, on the turn right after hacking. Everyone else did the reload animation. MrBims fucked around with this message at 02:30 on Jul 8, 2014 |
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Jul 8, 2014 02:26
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I can't PC game for a while so I've had to postpone my LW campaign, but I'm white and middle-class enough to have a copy of EW on PS3 too. I'd like to make the campaign last a bit more, is a marathon run any fun? How does it work exactly?
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Jul 8, 2014 02:31
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Beagle posted:All SPECs is what I was doing a week or two ago but found the same thing you did, that it hoses you when you have no A-Team in April/May. Hence the half-and-half strategy.
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Jul 8, 2014 02:48
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Is there a limit to how many covert operations you can do in a month or whatever? My Scouts fit my playstyle much better than Assaults do so I'm going to use them as operatives instead, but I don't think I really need four agents to deal with EXALT.
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Jul 8, 2014 03:58
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MrBims posted:Every citizen counts in terror missions, and on my current campaign I got mega-screwed on getting the Asia continent bonus when one country left after a successful terror mission where 0 citizens survived. Trying to salvage that, and it hurts. Finally I went for it and god it was a great decision. This mission was just 2 packs of Chrysalids (the second being small and without leader) and the rest was 18 zombies. Zombies loving everywhere. A wall of meat slowly converging on my troops. The two rookies and the spec I brought feasted on XP. Still had to sacrifice a SHIV when I was caught between the big pack of chrysalids and a 6 zombies pack. Only saved 4 civilians though. Doesn't matter, had fun. Mid July, haven't seen a cyberdisc yet but a mechtoid. I won't complain.
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Jul 8, 2014 04:59
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This is maybe a dumb and pointless thing to say, but is there any chance the thread title will update to reflect the expansion, like many strategy games here do? The only reason I care is because I'd like to nominate for the thread title XCOM: Enemy Within: XCOM Give it to Ya.
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Jul 8, 2014 05:57
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With the expansion having been out for ages, and Long War even settling down into a strong game in its own right, we're probably past due for a thread reboot. I also approve of that title, although a mention of LW seems pretty logical at this point.
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Jul 8, 2014 06:06
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Is there a mod that changes the amount of noise hover SHIVs make? I really like using them but even when they aren't selected it causes this horrible jet engine noise which just overwhelms everything else.
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Jul 8, 2014 06:32
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Dominic White posted:With the expansion having been out for ages, and Long War even settling down into a strong game in its own right, we're probably past due for a thread reboot. I also approve of that title, although a mention of LW seems pretty logical at this point. XCOM: Enemy Within: Thin Men Love You Long War Time
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Jul 8, 2014 06:33
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As usual, I'm happy to revamp the OP or spin up a new thread if you guys would prefer that. The last few times this subject has come up we settled on just some updates to the OP/FAQs being the route to take but if it's finally time to put this like 580-page leviathan to bed then I'll gladly do it.
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Jul 8, 2014 06:37
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What's the best way to improve my interceptors early on in LW? Raiders are kicking my rear end right now and even Fighters have decent odds of hurting my planes. I've done the Analysis of Scouts/Fighters/Raiders, but I'm not sure how much they help, and I can build boosts but they don't help with not being shot down.
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Jul 8, 2014 09:22
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Darkrenown posted:What's the best way to improve my interceptors early on in LW? Raiders are kicking my rear end right now and even Fighters have decent odds of hurting my planes. I've done the Analysis of Scouts/Fighters/Raiders, but I'm not sure how much they help, and I can build boosts but they don't help with not being shot down. IMO, rushing Laser Cannons ASAP. They're surprisingly cheap and quick to build, and they'll keep until Destroyers.
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Jul 8, 2014 09:55
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Also if you've been keeping up with the tech then grabbing the seeker autopsy unlocks a foundry project that reduces UFO aim. Kind of a pain to get since you have to research a few other techs in order to autopsy mechanical units, but its not that bad and well worth it. Less damage taken means less time repairing which means more UFOs shot down and more resources. As a sidebar, has anyone put the LMG class weapons to good use in Long War? They do incredible amounts of damage but no moving and shooting is such a downer. Even with the limited squad sight it feels like I'm back to babysitting squaddie snipers in Vanilla.
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Jul 8, 2014 11:07
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AtillatheBum posted:As a sidebar, has anyone put the LMG class weapons to good use in Long War? They do incredible amounts of damage but no moving and shooting is such a downer. Even with the limited squad sight it feels like I'm back to babysitting squaddie snipers in Vanilla. I use LMGs almost exclusively. They work especially well if you skill Gunners around them, and the Alloy Bipod becomes a straight upgrade. I wouldn't recommend anything else if Gunners are your main Berserker/Mechtoid killers. Regarding Gunners in general, and this might be a bug, if you get the skill that puts a Gunner into overwatch after firing, they fire on anything moving within their line of sight for the rest of your turn. It works like a longer-range Close Combat Specialist, and in the same vein, if you have an enemy trigger the Gunner's overwatch, then trigger someone else's overwatch, enough time will have passed that the Gunner's overwatch can trigger on that enemy again.
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Jul 8, 2014 11:26
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SCOPE or Laser Tech first (Vanilla Classic) ? Laser is like 16 days 
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Jul 8, 2014 14:38
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Furism posted:SCOPE or Laser Tech first (Vanilla Classic) ? Laser is like 16 days Don't you have to research Alien Weaponry (SCOPES) to research lasers anyway? Beam laser rush best strat worldwide, though, both in vanilla and Long War. Get those puppies ASAP and ruin Floater/Thin Man faces.
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Jul 8, 2014 14:45
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I think this run is dead? Doing Impossible + Ironman, just lost half of my A-Team in may and a giant ufo just blew up 2 of my 3 satellites. I'm staring at a Swarming Terror mission which is going to have alot of Aliens and I'm not sure if I can do it without my two snipers . It was going so well till that one mission where a suppressed Outsider managed to somehow snipe 4 people from max range  Edit: How reliant should I be on snipers in LW? They have been my bread and butter in LW since they rarely get injured, lets me pick off suppressed targets and generally deal alot of damage after I blow away the cover with my Sapper Engi. I take 2-3 snipers 1-2 gunners and Engi + assault in most kill missions but I'm wondering what strategy other people are running. Wassbix fucked around with this message at 15:03 on Jul 8, 2014 |
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Jul 8, 2014 14:52
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If you retake a country in LW that had a satellite, do you get it back? The airgame in LW is seriously brutal. I feel like I'm well within normal on the ground game, but I can't keep a single sat protected with 7 interceptors covering North America (using other bases to repair damaged ones). A single scout can mean your entire fleet is grounded for the rest of the month. If the sat gets shot down panic goes through the roof while I scramble to get a new sat launched to maybe keep the US from defunding me. That's usually the point where EXALT does a panic attack, because gently caress you.
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Jul 8, 2014 16:32
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Someone one-crit-kill me from across the map while I'm in full cover, because I forgot that items build all at once, not in a queue 
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Jul 8, 2014 16:48
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ArchangeI posted:If you retake a country in LW that had a satellite, do you get it back? I think this dynamic is still part of the learning curve of LW. It is frustrating to lose sats, but OTOH losing sats does not doom you to failure, just costs you money and build time delay. There is even a viable strategy built around intentionally not defensing your starting sat (because you can't lose your starting continent bonus) so you can launch 3 over the NA or Africa to pick up that continent bonus with only 1 uplink. If you rush Advanced Beam Lasers for the Laser Cannon the early air war turns around quickly as scouts and fighters require 2 interceptors max to bring down. This will hold you until you bring out Armored Fighters, which dramatically reduces repair time.
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Jul 8, 2014 17:21
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toasterwarrior posted:Someone one-crit-kill me from across the map while I'm in full cover, because I forgot that items build all at once, not in a queue How does one follow from the other?
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Jul 8, 2014 17:22
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I just finished my first Long War terror and that certainly was a hell of a ride. I counted about 6 Chryssalids and eventually just as many Zombies coming at me, along with 2 Floaters that I hadn't finished dealing with when I triggered this big pack. I ended up losing 2 guys with 1 seriously wounded over 18 aliens killed. The Infantry's Light 'Em Up combined with guaranteed crits (was that because I had Absolutely Critical on?) helped a lot in killing the Chryssalids quickly. Anyway, that's about 2 months into the game on Cinematic Mode and I'm finding it just about difficult enough without being frustrating. I'm finding uses for all the classes even with just the first-level perks and I'm having to play a lot more intelligently (read: carefully) than on my Normal vanilla runs. How many soldiers do y'all maintain? I had trained up all 25 to their first promotions but I still had to go into that terror mission with 3 fatigued guys. For that matter, what does fatigued actually do if you enter a mission with it? DStecks posted:XCOM: Enemy Within: XCOM Give it to Ya. Huh, so I wasn't just the one to break down to this song while playing XCOM. I approve!
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Jul 8, 2014 17:30
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