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Leafy Wall posted:God, I've been smashing my face into Impossible Ironman again now that the dlc is out and I've had three tries that went 5+ months only to get outgunned by the aliens. All my Captains die off and I never get higher ranks. Then the rookie death spiral happens and I'm back to scumming Gatecrasher. Any tips? Especially on Research/Facility building. I feel like I'm getting psychics way too late (around late month 5 or so) I'm doing this (except with commander/iron man), I even had a moment of doubt, went and started a vet/ironman game and I've had 2 deaths total the whole run and I'm a month or so away from winning. I still haven't figured out what I'm doing wrong but I have the same exact problem you do, I'll be doing great, then have 1 or 2 bad missions in a row and that's the beginning of the end.
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Jul 13, 2016 00:18
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For the record, yes, the Icarus armor causes Archon panic.
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Jul 13, 2016 00:24
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Loel posted:I really want to like this mod, but stunlancers break the hell out of it. Hope you like being stunned the entire missioN! Yeah, sorry man, I need to get back into figuring out the cause and effect for stuff like this, been held off of modding due to family stuff, pain in the rear end given the DLC release.
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Jul 13, 2016 00:30
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For all the experimenting ... uh, this game is REALLY loving LONG, no? Especially with the DLC? Seems to be taking me 20+ hours for a single playthrough...
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Jul 13, 2016 00:37
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Thanks for all of the advice on the mods! I can already tell how useful the new buttons are.  I started my first game with the goon character bin too. Looking forward to killing all of you.
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Jul 13, 2016 01:30
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Pretty cool how at no point since launch was the whole "modular buildings have blocked line of sight for you but completely open line of sight for all enemies in the game" thing leading to every squad in the game activating because they're on a roof and gently caress you if you think you're stopping that gatekeeper. At least no one died. e: Also mildly annoying that the ufo that triggers for doing the forge mission attacked me 1 day before the defense matrix finished. e: Bradford I have five other actually leveled and equipped soldiers and a giant robot stop sending squaddies you rear end in a top hat RBA Starblade fucked around with this message at 04:57 on Jul 13, 2016 |
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Jul 13, 2016 03:49
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Shakill OReal posted:Mods I wouldn't recommend a first playthrough without: Also Stop Wasting My Time I dont use any now unfortunately because they are all a bit broken after the latest patch. SWMT straight up doesnt work now. Evac All once left a guy behind for me when the timer was at 1 turn, so they were lost. Overwatch All cheats with the rulers & lets you take multiple shots at them
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Jul 13, 2016 04:16
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RBA Starblade posted:Pretty cool how at no point since launch was the whole "modular buildings have blocked line of sight for you but completely open line of sight for all enemies in the game" thing leading to every squad in the game activating because they're on a roof and gently caress you if you think you're stopping that gatekeeper. At least no one died. Have line of sight bugs actually gotten worse? At several points recently I've been able to see the enemy, and they have seen me, through several walls. I did a VIP extraction where the VIP was locked in a car, but the car was apparently see through so she immediately activated and just walked out like the doors weren't even there. When I did the Blacksite, the whole facility had illusory walls so I got to shoot up the entire security detail before opening a door.
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Jul 13, 2016 04:31
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I haven't had any issues with LOS. My issues are more being utterly screwed over by RNG. I had two code-blacks today because of panic chains. It's really hard to recover from losing 1-2 people when the rest are in panic mode and give the aliens a free turn.
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Jul 13, 2016 04:35
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Leafy Wall posted:God, I've been smashing my face into Impossible Ironman again now that the dlc is out and I've had three tries that went 5+ months only to get outgunned by the aliens. All my Captains die off and I never get higher ranks. Then the rookie death spiral happens and I'm back to scumming Gatecrasher. Any tips? Especially on Research/Facility building. I feel like I'm getting psychics way too late (around late month 5 or so) Psi troops are very strong but perhaps the issue is you're getting them too early--on this play through its the end of December and I haven't bothered to take my psi trooper out of training yet. There are different ways to play it, but psi is expensive in terms of both time and resources, especially in the first couple of months. You need mag weapons when you start seeing mutons or very shortly after. My building strategy/order: 1. GTS - you need that squad size upgrade ASAP, but put your first engineer on excavation. There's no point in rushing construction on a GTS until you have a high enough rank to purchase the upgrade. If you get lucky with a 2nd engineer early have him assist construction. You can always pause excavation and assist if you only have 1 eng, but if you stick him right on it from the get-go you'll have it finished well before you have the levels for squad size upgrade. 2. AWC - need to be able to reduce those wound timers ASAP. Hidden abilities are just gravy. 3. Power - you'll need this 3rd at the latest. You can actually build it 1st or 2nd as well depending on your starting layout. I like my GTS and AWC in the top corners with power in the middle top so you can maximize a workshop in the square below it. It's cheap and you'll need it early anyway. If you build it first or second just set it and forget it, don't bother assisting with an engineer. It will be finished well before if you need it. 4. Resistance Comms - the doom counter is filling up and you need to start expanding to hit blacksites and grow your income. 5/6. Proving Grounds/Workshop - which one you build first depends on the doom counter, how many blacksites are within easy reach, cash on hand, and how many engineers you have. Have a high counter/blacksites on the other side of the globe/swimming in engineers? Build the proving ground, you're gonna need to be able to skull jack a motherfucker sooner than later. If the opposite is true, get that workshop up first to boost your supply/alloy income. 7/8. Shadow Chamber/Psi Lab - both on power coils if possible. Same as above--doom counter/blacksite issues, go shadow chamber, if not (and you've got the supplies) go psi first. Add/expand power relays/Comms as needed. Research typically goes: 1. Modular weapons 2. Alien Biotech 3. Resistance Communications 4. Resistance Radio 5. Mag Weapons (usually takes around 30 days at this point) If you're swimming in intel and have access, rush this research from the black market. Otherwise it should hit right around muton time. 6. Gauss weapons 7. Advent Officer Autopsy (then any instant autopsies if you have them) Next 3 can be in any order really 8. Muton autopsy - advanced grenade launchers, plasma grenades in the proving grounds (if its already up and running) is a big power boost 9. Advent MEC breakdown - gremlin upgrades are awesome for reasons listed below, improvements to aid protocol, hacking, and combat protocol 10. Faceless autopsy - mimic beacons are nice get-out-of-jail free cards, but I tend to build these later than I used to because of frost grenade(s) 11. Hybrid materials 12. Plated Armor - rush this one through black market if you can afford it/if its available 13. Alien Encryption - can be bumped up if you need to reduce the doom counter by building the shadow chamber and progressing the story Proving grounds: The special ammo is nice, and one of each type is useful even early. Don't waste time on experimental grenades early, stick with regular grenades and then plasma as soon as you can. Get bluescreen protocol sooner than later. 2 exo suits and one spider is generally all I make until the tier 3 stuff. Acid grenades/bombs help later with sectopods. The rest is 'meh'. GTS: Get squad size upgrades as first priority. Vulture as soon as you can afford it is awesome. Wet work also helps since it takes so much time to level soldiers in legendary. Get the rest when you have disposable income, starting with Integrated Warfare/Biggest Booms/Cool Under Pressure/Hunters Instinct, probably in that order. Last thing. Specialist are loving boss. Everyone talks about how great Grenadiers are (and its true) but Specialists don't get enough love. Here's why they're great: They have the 2nd highest aim growth after Sharpshooters. Aid Protocol is a loving lifesaver. With a level one Gremlin, its equivalent to low cover if a soldier is in the open and +20 defense helps trivialize Stun Lancers, Advent Officers, and other nasty Ayys. It gains +10 defense per Gremlin level and the cooldown is low. Possibly one of the best skills. Combat Protocol is also great. Guaranteed damage that bypasses armor and double damage on mechanical enemies. Invaluable, especially early. It only gets better from there. But here's something I've yet to see anyone else bring up--they get your first round of weapon upgrades from each initial tier of research, make sure you have at least 2, even 3, leveled Specialists. Grenadiers are great but when you get first get mag weapons, your specialists and rangers are the only ones to immediately benefit with their primary weapons. When you get to plasma, its only the specialists (you can equip plasma rifles on your rangers but its generally not worth it compared to the shard gun). They are the ones that get an immediate boost in power from weapon research and they have really good aim. You can get mag/plasma rifles pretty early/cheaply. Leverage that advantage while you have it. Upgrades are expensive on legendary, it may be awhile before you can upgrade the primary weapons for your rangers, sharpshooters, and grenadiers--even if you did the research. wuffles fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Jul 13, 2016 |
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Jul 13, 2016 04:52
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drat this last avenger defense was brutal. There was almost nowhere on the map you could actually see the disruptor from, I had to get within movement range of it. Just barely made it out! At the last turn a heavy mec shot their missiles at me; luckily no squaddies panicked, and also luckily, Bradford finally realized I had another psi-op and sent her through. She probably saved a squaddie's life by using Insanity on an officer.Lotish posted:Have line of sight bugs actually gotten worse? At several points recently I've been able to see the enemy, and they have seen me, through several walls. I did a VIP extraction where the VIP was locked in a car, but the car was apparently see through so she immediately activated and just walked out like the doors weren't even there. When I did the Blacksite, the whole facility had illusory walls so I got to shoot up the entire security detail before opening a door. It seems about the same as at launch to me, that was just one of the worst it's been. My favorite was a squad getting alerted then clipping through the top floor to the bottom, which my whole squad could see through the roof. quote:Psi troops are very strong but perhaps the issue is you're getting them too early. There are different ways to play it, but psi is expensive in terms of both time and resources, especially in the first couple of months. You need mag weapons when you start seeing mutons or very shortly after. How strong are they with the basic amp? I've never gotten them before advanced psi amps. RBA Starblade fucked around with this message at 05:44 on Jul 13, 2016 |
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Jul 13, 2016 05:01
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RBA Starblade posted:How strong are they with the basic amp? I've never gotten them before advanced psi amps. Depends on what you get at the start and within 2-3 levels. Something that relies more heavily on will (schism/dominate) probably won't be so great, but if you get something like Fuse right out the gate you can have all the fun giggling as enemies start exploding with no will roll to save them.
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Jul 13, 2016 05:25
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I suppose I should mention that Jade Star is doing a Let's Play of XCOM 2, including the DLC content.
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Jul 13, 2016 05:38
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I started a game and I thought the country with the blacksite was red because it was locked until I made contact with the other countries first. So I maxxed out my contacts without realizing I was able to contact India all along. I can't make contact with India until I build a new comm relay which is taking forever. I'm starting the 3rd month and I've had 0 opportunities to get a 2nd engineer. Now I'm getting locked missions that I assume I'm automatically failing. Is my campaign completely hosed or can I still salvage the situation?
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Jul 13, 2016 08:21
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Missions are locked because they're in countries you haven't contacted, too. You don't fail them, they stay there until you do them, they're all story or alien facility missions (I think those are the only ones that are locked...). You haven't done anything irreparable but if you want to restart and make better decisions now that you know what to expect, this is probably a good time because I don't think there are any similar scenarios you can put yourself in later. Except for maybe not having enough power. deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 09:10 on Jul 13, 2016 |
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Jul 13, 2016 09:06
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As long as the Avatar Project isn't like 2 pips from completion you could probably turn it around. The big fuckup on my first attempt was not using the Engineering facility (if you're unaware, make sure you build it next to buildings like power and/or comm. relays -- you need buildings surrounding it that accept at least 4 engineers worth of staffing -- it'll double the effectiveness of two of your engineers). Even with it I barely managed to scrape together enough engineers this play-through. You can build it on the sides if you plan well, but if you put it in the centre column, you have more flexibility.
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Jul 13, 2016 12:11
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Oh what the gently caress I had a terror mission and I hit escape at the mission loadout screen to check something and now the mission disappeared.
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Jul 13, 2016 12:22
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Yeah, reload for me. I find that aspect of the Geoscape to be really awful and poorly thought out.
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Jul 13, 2016 13:02
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It turns out that the Spark ability that increases explosive power and radius, also applies to the Plasma Blaster. So instead of a thin line of plasma, it's a huge beam three tiles wide.
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Jul 13, 2016 14:42
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many johnnys posted:It turns out that the Spark ability that increases explosive power and radius, also applies to the Plasma Blaster. So instead of a thin line of plasma, it's a huge beam three tiles wide. I definitely hosed up taking the punch.
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Jul 13, 2016 14:46
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teethgrinder posted:Yeah, reload for me. Speaking of the geoscape, I spent a huge amount of my first playthrough getting angry that my scanning/waiting for upgrade research would always get interrupted by some bullshit mission I had to go on (and that the game would yell at me if I tried to ignore for just one more day of scanning). I don't know if that's a result of the different in-game economy or what, but it's not something I really noticed happening in EU. Possibly because in that game, you're always low on some alien's corpse or other.
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Jul 13, 2016 14:46
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Lurdiak posted:Speaking of the geoscape, I spent a huge amount of my first playthrough getting angry that my scanning/waiting for upgrade research would always get interrupted by some bullshit mission I had to go on (and that the game would yell at me if I tried to ignore for just one more day of scanning). I don't know if that's a result of the different in-game economy or what, but it's not something I really noticed happening in EU. Possibly because in that game, you're always low on some alien's corpse or other. The difference is in EU you can just keep scanning and it won't immediately tell you to do it or bad things happen. In both games you can wait a few hours.
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Jul 13, 2016 14:48
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Finished the game. In retrospect. picking up the Make heals persist mod might have made things too easy. I ended up with a levelled B-Team but only because I shifted my main dudes out once they hit Colonel. Also, Psionics are completely loving busted. Holy poo poo. When I decide to go through again, I'm rushing Psionics so hard. Guess I'll finally get around to playing Long War now, seeing as I'm on a XCom spree.
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Jul 13, 2016 14:59
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RBA Starblade posted:The difference is in EU you can just keep scanning and it won't immediately tell you to do it or bad things happen. In both games you can wait a few hours. Are you sure you can (always) wait in XCOM2? I know there are the icons at the bottom of the globe, but I'm pretty sure certain missions just vanish from Geoscape if you don't immediately accept them.
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Jul 13, 2016 15:03
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Cynic Jester posted:Also, Psionics are completely loving busted. Holy poo poo. When I decide to go through again, I'm rushing Psionics so hard. If you can get away with it, it's really amazing to do. It's hard to rush them though without falling behind on other stuff in the short term. It takes time, a lot of power, a lot of resources, and in the mean time the aliens are still advancing, you're expected to keep expanding, and the avatar clock is getting up there.
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Jul 13, 2016 15:05
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teethgrinder posted:Are you sure you can (always) wait in XCOM2? I know there are the icons at the bottom of the globe, but I'm pretty sure certain missions just vanish from Geoscape if you don't immediately accept them. I've always been able to, but it's only for a short while.
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Jul 13, 2016 15:10
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teethgrinder posted:Are you sure you can (always) wait in XCOM2? I know there are the icons at the bottom of the globe, but I'm pretty sure certain missions just vanish from Geoscape if you don't immediately accept them. The expiry times are far lower in XCOM2 such that it's not really an option most of the time. If you want them visible: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=626589171
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Jul 13, 2016 15:11
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many johnnys posted:It turns out that the Spark ability that increases explosive power and radius, also applies to the Plasma Blaster. So instead of a thin line of plasma, it's a huge beam three tiles wide.
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Jul 13, 2016 15:45
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Ravenfood posted:Does this make it actually useful? Yes, the beam also destroys cover. My problem with plasma is that it's so narrow as to be useless, but combining Overdrive with a thicker plasma beam makes it much easier to line 'em up and lay waste. I'd put it above Shredstorm (on the Spark only). It's still not as good as the Blaster Launcher - nothing is. But if you've got a couple of WAR suits and a set of powered weapons, put the wide plasma beam on your Spark and assign Shredstorm and a Blaster Bomb to your troopers.
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Jul 13, 2016 16:21
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Sounds pretty great. I'd love for my Spark to stop being so lovely and level up, but that would require it hitting... ANYTHING. It's missed all 4 70%+ shots it's taken this mission, so I'm really wondering if it'll actually promote, or I have to drag its useless rear end on another mission.
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Jul 13, 2016 17:07
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I don't suppose I can use the AWC to respec my Spark, can I?
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Jul 13, 2016 17:12
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Crosspeice posted:Sounds pretty great. I'd love for my Spark to stop being so lovely and level up, but that would require it hitting... ANYTHING. You might have to feed it a bit. I had difficulty hitting things too, so I used height (since it has springylegs / rocketboots) and finishing dudes with the rocket. If you have any other Heavy or Powered Weapons, you can equip them without doing anything special with the Spark. Once it gets up there, it becomes a decent unit. But the starting Spark kind of sucks yeah. RBA Starblade posted:I don't suppose I can use the AWC to respec my Spark, can I? Internet says yes you can. I haven't tried though.
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Jul 13, 2016 17:36
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What speciality ammos do people use? This is the first time Im trying them, and giving everyone AP ammo has been hilarious 
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Jul 13, 2016 17:46
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Do EMP bombs not stun gatekeepers in their shells anymore? It just did extra damage last night.Loel posted:What speciality ammos do people use? This is the first time Im trying them, and giving everyone AP ammo has been hilarious I give my snipers bluescreen rounds so I can kill sectopods in essentially two actions; lightning hands then fanfire.
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Jul 13, 2016 17:47
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Loel posted:What speciality ammos do people use? This is the first time Im trying them, and giving everyone AP ammo has been hilarious I typically use dragon, bluescreen, venom and sometimes tracer rounds, I don't use the AP too much although throwing it on rangers has hilarious results, but I usually give rangers a grenade+mimic
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Jul 13, 2016 17:47
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For sharpshooters: I like poison rounds best. Fire rounds are really good too. Whichever I have. Equip with Bluescreen instead if I expect multiple robots (MECs, Heavy Mecs, Andromedons), or any Sectopods/Gatekeepers. Best gunner-spec grenadier gets Tracer Rounds, for Chain Shot.
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Jul 13, 2016 17:51
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RBA Starblade posted:Do EMP bombs not stun gatekeepers in their shells anymore? It just did extra damage last night. For any machine (including shelled gatekeepers), it's only a chance to stun.
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Jul 13, 2016 17:52
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Burning is really strong. It seems to do damage-per-round (the DoT) based on the attack that caused the burning status in the first place, so my Long War ranger who has a really beefy Grimy-modded plasma rifle causes burning DoT ticks of 5-8 damage. Having DoT effects like that just melts rulers. A grenadier with Salvo can dump a combo of two grenades onto the ruler, meaning you can get acid/poison/burning on the ruler, then have someone with special ammo (or a grenade of their own) add the final effect. With all their rapid turns, having those DoTs on them will kill rulers very quickly. It's really easy to set up as well since all you have to do is dump the grenades on them, no worrying about overwatch and turns and all that. Acid grenades are still my favorite though.
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Jul 13, 2016 18:08
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Colapops posted:Acid grenades are still my favorite though. Yeah acid grenades rule, I cry a little inside when it takes 4-5 cores before I get one, they melt off armor.. I believe 4 points of armor per grenade, and they will murder the poo poo out of anything that can actually take damage from them.
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Jul 13, 2016 18:11
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I like gas grenades if there are a bunch of Advent, otherwise I usually stick with regular Plasma Grenades. Acid used to be my favorite, but standard is much better at cover destruction. EMP again if robots, especially a Gatekeeper. The best thing in life is to have Salvo on a gunner-spec Grenadier, so you can pop one off and then use a chain attack to finish them.  I love grenadiers and I want to start a new campaign where the goal is to just have all grenadiers and sparks.
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Jul 13, 2016 18:21
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