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I personally shuffled my team anyway (probably too much so, to be honest) and rarely ended up with an A-team, just a bunch of mediocre soldiers. Fatigue times were still too harsh.
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Jan 13, 2017 04:10
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Chef Boyardeez Nuts posted:The Avenger is pretty cool and all but picking up the rebellion to airlift these six assholes to Australia seems a poor use of resources. Nah, you have to stay mobile to prevent Advent from attacking. It makes sense to move the entire HQ so you can swoop in, accomplish your mission objective, then just get the hell out. If the Skyranger was faster and carried more crew it would make sense to have a less mobile command center, but without just stealing a UFO that's not an option. It's just not a fast vehicle since it's basically a box with thrusters.
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Jan 13, 2017 04:25
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I'm on my second or third mission and conceal isn't working in a way that I understand. I thought if you stay out of the red tiles you'll be fine, but I'm trying to move my squad on top of or around a building and I keep getting spotted outside of red tiles. I'm not moving through red tiles I just get spotted and I can't figure out why. Do turrets have some sort of sensing bullshit I don't know about? Here's a picture. There are two troopers behind the van with the VIP in it. There's a turret kind of in the middle of everything. And there is a sectoid and I think another trooper on the far end of the map. The area with red circles + X's in them are the areas I'm getting spotted in. Is the game bugging out or is this a hidden feature I don't know about?
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Jan 13, 2017 05:31
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Wildtortilla posted:I'm on my second or third mission and conceal isn't working in a way that I understand. I thought if you stay out of the red tiles you'll be fine, but I'm trying to move my squad on top of or around a building and I keep getting spotted outside of red tiles. I'm not moving through red tiles I just get spotted and I can't figure out why. Do turrets have some sort of sensing bullshit I don't know about? Here's a picture. There are two troopers behind the van with the VIP in it. There's a turret kind of in the middle of everything. And there is a sectoid and I think another trooper on the far end of the map. The area with red circles + X's in them are the areas I'm getting spotted in. Is the game bugging out or is this a hidden feature I don't know about? You can't see the red tiles for units none of your units have vision on. Its likely you're running into detection range of a unit you didn't statt your turn in view of. Turrets have a detection range about them much like Advent towers if you're trying to run past one of them
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Jan 13, 2017 05:35
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You might be loudly opening a door or jumping through a window in your pursuit downward, which breaks Concealment.
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Jan 13, 2017 05:35
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I'm not breaking glass or kicking open doors so it must be a unit on a neighboring roof or something. WELL THIS IS ANNOYING! I'll just have to change my plans.
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Jan 13, 2017 05:42
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Wildtortilla posted:I'm not breaking glass or kicking open doors so it must be a unit on a neighboring roof or something. WELL THIS IS ANNOYING! I'll just have to change my plans. Usually, you can tell which unit sees you as it pops up with a "Unit Revealed" or something like that. I know I've had a few surprises that did not work out the way I wanted in the last few missions I ran, but if they were really bullshit, I could find the few squares I shouldn't go to and not go there. They were usually civilians hiding near windows. 
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Jan 13, 2017 05:49
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Maybe its the old grognard in me, but I'm possibly the only guy who likes more RNG in my XCOM (but will never, ever play that LongWar hot mess). I seriously think that both XCOM reboots over-stress the importance of 100% actions, probably just by including the possibility of 100% actions being a thing in the first place. EG, in Xcom 2012, rockets had a 80% hit rate - and they where fine! But with things like flanking shotguns, explosives, super-accurate colonels, etc, the new XCOM games play much more discretely, which imo is a shame. Taking 80% shots should be the default action, rather than the result of loving up. Maybe I should go reinstall TFTD and enjoy the buttrape, hrm.
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Jan 13, 2017 06:31
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Serephina posted:Maybe its the old grognard in me, but I'm possibly the only guy who likes more RNG in my XCOM (but will never, ever play that LongWar hot mess). I seriously think that both XCOM reboots over-stress the importance of 100% actions, probably just by including the possibility of 100% actions being a thing in the first place. EG, in Xcom 2012, rockets had a 80% hit rate - and they where fine! But with things like flanking shotguns, explosives, super-accurate colonels, etc, the new XCOM games play much more discretely, which imo is a shame. Taking 80% shots should be the default action, rather than the result of loving up. From my experience with the two, that's largely a product of the vastly reduced squad size in EU2012. In UFO and EU2012, weapons tend to hit approximately as hard when you're on roughly even footing with the aliens (guns and sectoids, plasma and mutons). However, when you've got a dozen or so guys to use (and lose), individual misses and losses aren't nearly as big a problem. When you're working with 4 rookies who, together, can take out 3 aliens a turn at best, any loss in damage output is a much greater problem. It's a whole different feel, and the ability progression system enforces it with making everyone valuable in ways that make losses hit even harder. The solution for the dissatisfied is, of course, squad size, base accuracy, and enemy force edits. (Disclaimer: I never got very far in UFO)
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Jan 13, 2017 06:47
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Actually in Vanilla XCOM 1 Rockets had a 90% accuracy rate, which is then boosted even more when your rocketeer gets obscene amounts of aim.
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Jan 13, 2017 06:48
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Serephina posted:. Taking 80% shots should be the default action, rather than the result of loving up. I wouldn't say you're alone in this honestly. Maybe I just remember the first game too well but for me 80% is "eh, good enough, take the shot" rather than "oh god abort abort reposition for next turn". That said I actually think XCOM 2 encourages this mindset (at least better than EU/EW did) through time pressure - it may offer the TOOLS to make things a certainty but you won't always get to deploy them and eventually you have to be okay with that.
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Jan 13, 2017 06:53
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Jabor posted:Of course XCOM 2 solved it in a much more player-friendly way by just giving you backup high-level soldiers as mission rewards and purchases, but the LW way was good too. Those mercs never felt as cool as the guys you lost though. All in all it was a good mechanic, by allowing a bigger squad and having fatigue, it basically allows the to increase the difficulty level without having RNG deaths a catastrophic game ending event. Vanilla XCOM always got way too easy in the end since they couldn't ever ramp up the difficulty enough to put your Colonel level characters at risk. At the same time Long War was just too much of a slog with too many game ending traps. Didn't religiously follow the air war guide? Fail. Didn't pay attention and have a veteran squad get close to being wiped. Fail. Didn't balance out training new recruits with boosting veteran squads XP? Fail. And the fail came after 20+ hours of grinding.
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Jan 13, 2017 07:24
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Chef Boyardeez Nuts posted:This is my first Xcom experience, so could someone explain what Long War did? I presume it created a lengthier campaign, but I'm curious about what made it good and bad. I just lost a big post on this, but suffice to say that LW two problems, the first one being a flaw that a great number of competently made tactical video game mods have - atomized design. Basically, a heavy weapons guy in vanilla EW could spec most of his abilities on rocket tier and still adequately serve the machine gunner role that his rejected ability choices beefed up. But instead of a heavy guy who can do several things, LW creates three classes who can only do one thing well (do relatively dependable AoE damage, destroy enemy cover, provide suppressing fire / soften or lock down a single target). This has several knock-on effects for the rest of the game. You are given a wide choice of contextually useful classes and an even wider variety of consumables that are vital to getting the edge in a very specific situation. If you didn't bring the right tool with you to a mission, not knowing in advance what you needed, you're in for a world of hurt. This, to me and many others, is bad design. It's a circular argument: Specialized tools are needed to get out of specialized crises, you need specialized crises to make specialized tools useful. Call it "one lock one key" design. A very common fuckup in tactical game modding. The second major flaw in LW is that there are far fewer variables to fiddle with in making aliens scale in power over time, the way that new equipment tiers and discoveries smooth XCOM progression through the campaign. You basically have the type of enemy you're facing, how many of them there are, and how much punishment it takes to kill them. That's it, and the game's enemy assets were made specifically with a vanilla playthrough progression in mind. If you want to add challenge to squads as they become living Gods of war, you just crank up enemy numbers and enemy health. Beyond a certain point you're fighting dozens of mutons at a time, each with the health of an EW sectopod. It gets tedious quickly. Especially when explosives don't hurt that much anymore. Basic Chunnel fucked around with this message at 08:55 on Jan 13, 2017 |
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Jan 13, 2017 08:52
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i'm reasonably sure they did scale in power outside of health although i don't remember the details
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Jan 13, 2017 11:33
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Tollymain posted:i'm reasonably sure they did scale in power outside of health although i don't remember the details They got perks when the alien's research progressed. Noting more fun than every Chrissy pod leader having lighting reflexes!
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Jan 13, 2017 11:36
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Bulbo posted:They got perks when the alien's research progressed. Noting more fun than every Chrissy pod leader having lighting reflexes! surprise covering fire is also a good one
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Jan 13, 2017 11:47
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You guys know you can see the enemy perks in LW?
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Jan 13, 2017 14:20
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the biggest problem with Long War was the loving clown car missions in Xcom 1's tiny maps. Some missions had like 40 EXALT idiots pouring out of a tiny gas station every time you moved an inch. The maps just weren't built for it and also the fact that a campaign is 80 hours long even with the Less Long War option. this is a little unnecessary still, even Jake Solomon now considers the vanilla game a "tutorial" for Long War, it's a good mod despite a number of issues even if you (understandably) don't like the changes it makes
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Jan 13, 2017 14:37
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Long War made the game a lot longer and bigger, but it made some questionable design choices here and there to accommodate it. Every campaign took for loving ever due to crazy research times and build requirements, interceptors sucked even worse and you would routinely have to load a base up with, like, 8 of them (instead of the 2 or so that most people would build in the base game, since air combat was never a major part of the game and pretty spectacularly un-fun), psionic experience points took an insanely long time to accrue and basically -required- you to get early psionics and then spam them until the end game, RNG was introduced on a lot of elements that didn't have it before and in most players' opinions, shouldn't have it (cover destruction, explosive damage, rocket aim) and the aliens all received massive, massive buffs as time went on. On the other hand, what folks often seem to forget is that Long War breathed a hell of a lot of new life into XCOM, and for good reason. For all the things it did frustratingly wrong, it had a lot of very good aspects too. It massively expanded perk and equipment options, allowing for unprecedented degrees of customization that really did make each soldier feel unique. It defined classes much more narrowly and split their roles up amongst multiple new ones, which meant soldiers couldn't do as much, but it compensated by generally making them much, MUCH better at the things they did excel at. The fatigue mechanic forced you to not just rely on one particular A-team but instead split your focus up amongst a much larger roster, which made the game feel bigger and grander, didn't punish the loss of a single soldier so goddamn hard, and made you value your elites more (because, again, the greater degree of customization meant they weren't quite as interchangeable.) It also seemed to hit a very sweet spot where the game was very challenging for just about everyone except Beaglerush, without feeling unfair or frustrating, which is a tough balance to strike. If you can do what I did, which is get a buddy who also likes Xcom and swap a save file back and forth with him every other mission or so, then I strongly recommend Long War. It was always fun comparing our strategic priorities and swapping stories of what we'd done on our turns; I was always annoyed by how highly he prioritized armor upgrades when I had been saving up for weapons, and he was endlessly confused by my fixation on getting as many live captures (which are a lot more beneficial in Long War than the base game) as possible. It's definitely a slog and not without its many frustrations, but unique and fleshed out enough that it can still be a blast.
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Jan 13, 2017 14:44
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I'm not "good" at Xcom by any means, but I'm finding Xcom 2 way easier in the ground game than the first game, though it took me longer to get a handle on the geoscape economy. I was brushing like 9 or 10 on the Avatar meter before I caught a real break my first playthrough. However, my team has largely been the same since the first mission, aside from some scrub that got booted for a SPARK. I am looking forward to getting silly with mods next playthrough though. I really hope we see a proper DLC campaign like Enemy Within soon.
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Jan 13, 2017 14:45
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Backhand posted:On the other hand, what folks often seem to forget is that Long War breathed a hell of a lot of new life into XCOM, and for good reason. For all the things it did frustratingly wrong, it had a lot of very good aspects too. It massively expanded perk and equipment options, allowing for unprecedented degrees of customization that really did make each soldier feel unique. It defined classes much more narrowly and split their roles up amongst multiple new ones, which meant soldiers couldn't do as much, but it compensated by generally making them much, MUCH better at the things they did excel at. The fatigue mechanic forced you to not just rely on one particular A-team but instead split your focus up amongst a much larger roster, which made the game feel bigger and grander, didn't punish the loss of a single soldier so goddamn hard, and made you value your elites more (because, again, the greater degree of customization meant they weren't quite as interchangeable.) It also seemed to hit a very sweet spot where the game was very challenging for just about everyone except Beaglerush, without feeling unfair or frustrating, which is a tough balance to strike. I disagree on nearly every point here. They achieved greater customisation by nerfing base soldier capabilities and moving them into perks, just as you can see from the long war 2 screenshot earlier in the thread. Base capability: soldiers can hit with heavy weapons. Now you need a perk to do that. The result is that your soldiers feel less competent. Same thing with equipment. It added a lot of small items, then made sure that if you didn't bring the right one you'd feel it. It feels like item tax, not customisation. That all spells frustration to me, not "challenging but fair". Hopefully the broader mod community in xcom2 can take bits of good ideas out of long war 2 so I can play with some of the new toys without having to cleave to this unfun slog design aesthetic. (After trying to for a while in xcom ew, I stopped playing rather than deal with trying to modify long war to my liking)
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Jan 13, 2017 17:20
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Is it possible to mod in XCOM 1's combat music to 2? 2's combat music isn't bad, but 1's music is so loving good.
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Jan 13, 2017 17:34
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Also Long War design isn't going to mesh well with 2. 2 gives a lot of enemies 'unfair' advantages and evens it out by giving you powerful panic buttons and fallbacks. Things like Codexes being able to teleport to flank+shoot, Vipers being able to pull you out of cover and wrap you etc work with the 'aliens as dangerous miniboss' design but get loving crazy if you clown car it. You can already see this in things like A Better Advent which is tough even for 6-8 normal soldiers.
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Jan 13, 2017 17:37
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Wildtortilla posted:Is it possible to mod in XCOM 1's combat music to 2? 2's combat music isn't bad, but 1's music is so loving good. I haven't used it, but there is a mod on the workshop that lets you use other soundtracks, and I think one of those people have added is Xcom 1's. I know I've seen Mass Effect's. edit: Here marshmallow creep fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Jan 13, 2017 |
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Jan 13, 2017 17:43
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I enjoyed Long War a lot but I did modify it a bit. I basically nerfed the air war significantly, which of course has knock-on effects since you can devote more resources elsewhere. I had a lot of fun with it though, more than with Vanilla EW, which I enjoyed as well.
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Jan 13, 2017 17:55
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I still think the air game was the worst part of base EU/W and LW's insistence on making it even worse was baffling. Yeah, give me the prompt to scramble my jets but I'm not supposed to because I'm supposed to know that this UFO is super powerful...  e: I'm sorry. I know I bitch about LW a lot. It's just...it could be so much better if the modders weren't grognards. 
Bogart fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Jan 13, 2017 |
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Jan 13, 2017 18:11
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The good news is there's no air game in XCOM2 for them to gently caress around with. The bad news is there's the Avatar progress timer.
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Jan 13, 2017 18:41
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Ornamented Death posted:The bad news is there's the Avatar progress timer. Ugh, I can think of a whole bunch of stupid grognardy stuff that might happen in the name of "realism". Like instantly losing the game if it maxes out, but the game is balanced such that you'd need to seriously overextend to keep it below the "might randomly lose your campaign at any point" zone.
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Jan 13, 2017 18:44
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I don't really trust the LW guys to make a top-to-bottom well designed mod, but they were given the full modding suite at a very early point and so they can and likely have made more radical changes to the base mechanics of the game. We might not have a timer. But yeah I agree with Zore, the base game is only just balanced so that the big "you've gotta be loving kidding" moments (namely, using the skulljack for the first time, usually when you're in the middle of tough firefights rather than the end) can be survived. LW's nerfing fetish is probably going to make those ridiculous.
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Jan 13, 2017 18:49
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Line of sight is so strange in this game. I keep getting shot at and shoot through buildings. I'd it possible to see LOS? Like how does my unit know to shoot through the roof of the building she's standing on and through a wall to hit an advent soldier on ground level? Through a roof and wall! I don't understand this game. Never did figure out why I kept triggering pods last night. I ended up crawling all over the map and never found anything that was out of sight. So far my assessment is: games fun but I like xcom more.
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Jan 13, 2017 18:57
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As you hover over tiles, look at the enemy unit you want to shoot. If your soldier will have LOS on the enemy (and vice versa) a red crosshair will appear by their HP bar. Simple as that.
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Jan 13, 2017 19:01
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Tbh it feels like line of sight is bugged or something. I've noticed multiple times that sometimes a guy is in LoS, but if I have another character take an action, or if I reload a save they will no longer have LoS. This seems to align with times when the guy having LoS is strange in the first place ie he has sight through a wall or a cliff face or at an impossible angle. I'm pretty sure it comes down to the game rules not playing nice with the level geometry.
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Jan 13, 2017 19:02
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dyzzy that is the gotcha mod which is admittedly such a good and fundamentally helpful information mod it's entirely excusable to forget it isn't part of the base game
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Jan 13, 2017 19:50
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Tollymain posted:dyzzy that is the gotcha mod That functionality is in the base game. Gotcha shows you when you're flanking.
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Jan 13, 2017 19:55
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Tollymain posted:dyzzy that is the gotcha mod gotcha only adds to the existing functionality to show when you're flanking lol
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Jan 13, 2017 19:58
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I both think Long War has troublesome elements I don't like as well as being a superb mod and my preferred way of playing XCOM. I'm weird.
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Jan 13, 2017 19:58
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Re: LOS issues, I've been trying out a .ini tweak suggested by a Long War dev for that:for XComGameCore.ini posted:[XComGame.XComWorldData] And like I haven't really had LOS issues that much beyond certain parcels so I don't really see that much of a difference so far, but I presume that setting is basically "use multiple CPU threads to build a level or just one?", which I can see causing wonky LOS issues; hopefully someone else will be able to confirm/deny it helping them.
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Jan 13, 2017 20:21
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The thing that gets me with the way the game does LOS is when you come to cover on an edge on your first moves and don't spot anything then when you move someone down you find an enemy or civilians on the tile right below where your guy was standing, you think they'd train XCOM soldiers to look down.
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Jan 13, 2017 20:25
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pun pundit posted:I disagree on nearly every point here. They achieved greater customisation by nerfing base soldier capabilities and moving them into perks, just as you can see from the long war 2 screenshot earlier in the thread. Base capability: soldiers can hit with heavy weapons. Now you need a perk to do that. The result is that your soldiers feel less competent. This has nothing to do with challenge but with meaningful choices. One issue with vanilla Xcom 1 and 2 is that most items end up being good vs better, once you figure out the best combination you never have any reason to change it. Xcom 2 tried to address this by randomizing what you get but you still just re-rolled until you got what you needed. In other words, you'll probably get an excuse to bring something else than 3 grenadiers and a stealth ranger to missions from now on.
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Jan 13, 2017 21:50
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Bholder posted:This has nothing to do with challenge but with meaningful choices. I think the gist of the problem is that they feel like everything in Long War is hyper-specialized to the point where if you didn't bring X specific class or Y Specific item to counter Z specific threat, the punishment is too severe. Encouragement to change up loadouts and squad makeups is one thing, but when there's too much stuff to choose from and it's all *needed* for certain situations, you're left having to guess which situations you'll run into, leading to frustration when you guess wrong and get no-lubed for it. Having not played Long War myself, this is merely my interpretation of what I've seen talked about so far.
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Jan 13, 2017 21:59
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