|
I dont get the complains about beagle yeah he whines about some annoying aspects of LW2 but on the whole he seems to be enjoying the tactical challenge
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 00:16
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 7, 2024 22:34 |
|
|
I'm really really struggling on Veteran Vanilla  Just had another guy killed while pushing to meet an objective (flashbanging did not help this time, he still got hit) and I failed it and it's a Dark Event so I get half supplies now plus another Dark Event. It was a terminal hack one and I took along two technicals but for some reason, I had to go round and into the building instead of hacking it from outside. There was a pod near my entry point, up a street, another waiting in front of a building and another by the entrance plus reinforcements. So I had to fight through 4 Stun Lancers, a MEC, 3 Troopers, an Officer, a Viper and a Sectoid and get in the building and hack the terminal in eight turns. How? I've failed 2 of 8 missions, lost 6 guys. I have 1 Sergeant, 4 Corporals, 3 Squaddies and 2 Rookies. Squad size 5, mag weapons and standard armour. How screwed is my campaign? Also is there a rule of thumb you use for when to bail? In XCOM1 your best soldiers were so much better than lower ones and the geoscape set up that you could screw yourself long before game over, I don't know if XCOM2 is the same that way. e: I beat Enemy Within on normal fairly easily so I'm struggling to adapt to XCOM2 rather than being new to XCOM generally. e2: Just had another thought, I'm still rotating my soldiers heavily the way I did in XCOM1 where better armour meant they could take lots of damage without taking time out wounded so you could end up with 6 super soldiers and a bunch of rookies. I guess now that's not true I could take my best available guys more often since they'll naturally end up rotating out with injuries if that makes sense? Walton Simons fucked around with this message at 00:59 on Feb 1, 2017 |
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 00:16
|
|
|
Generation Internet posted:I actively hate xwynns obnoxious commentary but I'm still enjoying watching his series more than Beagle's because he knows what he's doing and has fun playing the mod. It feels like Beagle is just forcing himself to play and isn't really having much fun with it which drains a lot of the entertainment out of it. Like watching Beagle declare that the flamethrower is completely worthless when xwynns has used it many times to take out entire pods at once. To be fair, xwynns has been playing a build where the flamethrower correctly had step out behaviour and improved ability to go around cover whereas beags is playing with the original release flamethrower which does not have that tremendous buff.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 00:31
|
|
|
Also I agree with Beaglerush about the timers. I like the timers, it's good to prevent overwatch creep being the best strategy on every mission and it makes for some thrilling mission ends. But at the same time, the timers are tight enough that you can't do stuff like say 'hmm the cover up ahead looks bad, I want to pull back and approach from another direction' or 'ok the aliens scattered there. Bad cover and a high risk of revealing if I move forward to engage them there, might pull back and hunker down / overwatch in smoke this turn to bait them into being the ones to come forward' because if you aren't consistently moving towards the objective you're going to take a huge risk of failing the timer and flat out losing the mission. So you're losing a bunch of tactical considerations because of the timer. The timers only have to be a few turns longer and all of a sudden you do have some time on the clock to consider those kinds of plays. And it still serves the purpose of stopping you from overwatch creeping everywhere. And you still can have extremely tight endings to your missions, but now it's because you chose to spend extra turns earlier in the mission, not because the map was generated such that you have to take every blue move towards the objective in the straightest line to the objective because otherwise you fail. It's just noticeably bad to have them be so tight.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 00:53
|
|
|
lazorexplosion posted:Also I agree with Beaglerush about the timers. Part of that is Long War making the maps gently caress-huge without increasing the timers. I've had several that require 9 turns of double moving just to get to the objective which is loving stupid.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 00:58
|
|
|
I think beaglerush is going to run into similar issues since he has more-parcels mods running - they usually include some really big things that end up pushing the target further away from the start location, and the timer doesn't take that into account. I really hope he doesn't burn out too hard before getting to the GW campaign it sounds like he really wants to do.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 01:11
|
|
|
Walton Simons posted:I'm really really struggling on Veteran Vanilla You're playing vanilla, but you said technical which is a LW2 thing, but i'll go with you're actually playing vanilla So, you want a specialist with you and grenadiers, basically every mission you should have 2 grenadiers, and your specialist should (mostly) be going down the hacking line. Blow up the building around the hackable thing and then hack it remotely with your specialist, easiest way to handle short timer hack missions like this. Keep your guys in high cover (as is the usual) and just push up so you can blow up guys+walls with your grenadiers, hack the thing, then do cleanup.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 01:11
|
|
|
I'd like to see timers expanded more mechanically, similar to how officers work. Also if they were only on about 40℅ of missions instead of however many now, and with some element of the True Concealment mod (maybe at 150% infiltration the squad gets true concealment)
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 01:40
|
|
|
Just run True Concealment and cut the timers in half, then grab the suppressor and Spec Op knives mod. Don't let Long War be the only rear end in a top hat playing the game.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 02:09
|
|
|
Amish Ninja posted:Anyone know if True Concealment works with LW2? Also, if there's a detailed explanation of how stealth works that would be super helpful to know about. So far I've gathered that the game will display red eyes in certain spots to indicate where someone *could* see you when you don't have line of sight into a building or whatever. It also shows you red eye tiles on the ground when you can spot a patrol, which I take it is their field of vision. It seems like a troop can spot you easily even if you're in full cover within their sight range, and I think I've had civilians sell me out (been spotted outside of the range of enemy patrol fov when I was trying to approach slowly to set up and open the fight favorably). Not sure how to deal with civilians when they're between you and your objectives but want to get the drop on advent. Can you kill them without attracting attention? Now about the red eye spots on the ground. Number one thing: If you move into or out of any red square, you will be revealed. There's no "could" here, it's 100%. However, if an enemy moves close and effectively puts a red square on top of you, you will stay hidden as long as you are in cover against that enemy and stay still. So if you have True Concealment and end up in such a spot, you can just stay still and pass the turn and hope the enemies patrol away. However, if the enemy moves around the cover and flanks you while you're in their sight range, you'll be revealed. As for civilians, I suppose you could kill them with a flamethrower since that's pretty quiet.  They have very short view range though, so they can easily be snuck past if you're careful. You don't need to be in cover to stay hidden as long as you stay out of the red squares. Problem is, view ranges of enemies you can't see aren't displayed, so with some bad luck you can blunder around a corner and into someone's sights.Also jumping through windows and kicking doors open (moving straight through them without opening them first) will blow your cover. You can open doors silently if you move next to them and open them with the specific command. Nordick fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Feb 1, 2017 |
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 02:10
|
|
|
Some doors. Opening the doors to Advent-contorlled buildings, like their guard towers, still seems to reveal you.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 02:13
|
|
|
I don't know. I just can't get into this game. The old game had enemies that were scary, but had a bit of character and weaknesses. Take the old thin man. He had scary aim and poison, but he was pretty fragile. The new snake dudes have enough HP that I need about 3 hits to kill them reliably, plus a mean poison cloud, and a bullshit melee grab AND constrict. In my third mission yesterday I had the first squad call reinforcements into my rear arc. Out came an officer and two stun lancer. All my overwatches missed, and then the lancers managed to cross the visible screen and kill two of my men...half the squad...in one turn. It seems like the game is using difficulty as flavor. I am just not into it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 02:19
|
|
|
Walton Simons posted:I'm really really struggling on Veteran Vanilla XCom2: The Movie will be written, directed, and produced by Michael Bay. Grenade aliens. Grenade cover to shoot aliens. Grenade walls to not have to go around them on your way to shoot aliens. Buildings are not obstacles if you still have grenades. If you're out of grenades, you should be taking more Grenadiers. quote:There was a pod near my entry point, up a street, another waiting in front of a building and another by the entrance plus reinforcements. So I had to fight through 4 Stun Lancers, a MEC, 3 Troopers, an Officer, a Viper and a Sectoid and get in the building and hack the terminal in eight turns. How? It's hard to know what's going wrong since it sounds like you're both losing guys to rushing too fast and running out of time. I wonder if you're freaking out over the timer and running face first into pods at the end of your turn, or activating multiple pods at once, both of which could land you in multi-turn firefights that kill your guys and run out your clock. Look at the objective at the start of a mission and realize that you can probably get there from the starting zone in no more than 3-5 yellow moves. Add a few turns for the actual fighting, and you should rarely have any problem reaching it. The timer really just exists to make you not blue move->overwatch your entire squad across the map, which was pretty much always the correct way to play EU.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 02:28
|
|
|
In LW2, is there any reason I shouldn't bum-rush each new area ASAP and set them all to a mix of supply and recruit until they're at a large-ish resistance, then switch them over to supply full-time? And then whenever I want to move areas, just set whichever area I'm in to intel 24/7? I ended up restarting my campaign a few times since it was starting to get bogged down tactically so i never really got beyond lasers and had an opportunity to Liberate one of my two regions. Is having a wide range of areas that you're not actively scanning in going to end up biting me in the rear end, or is it, like sat-rushing, pretty much optimal? Basically, can someone give me the brief rundown on effective Haven management (besides stick a soldier in each ASAP)? e: And yeah, some mission timers are absurdly tight even on Veteran LW2. Tight, with huge maps. On the plus side, I really like how they made low-level soldiers far, far more likely to bleed out. I've had some pretty intense mission endings having to evac soldiers, something I never really did in vanilla. They either flat-out died or I was so far ahead of the curve that nobody got hit. Ravenfood fucked around with this message at 02:39 on Feb 1, 2017 |
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 02:31
|
|
|
Nordick posted:As for civilians, I suppose you could kill them with a flamethrower since that's pretty quiet. :vv: They have very short view range though, so they can easily be snuck past if you're careful. You don't need to be in cover to stay hidden as long as you stay out of the red squares. Problem is, view ranges of enemies you can't see aren't displayed, so with some bad luck you can blunder around a corner and into someone's sights. Specifically for LW2, any of those civs can be faceless even if no faceless dark event has happened and pop (breaking your concealment of course) if you end any soldier's action within a blue move of them so you know, good luck (or just be willing to load saves when lw2 does bullshit like that or having vipers patrol into you and do a grab-on-activation)
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 02:32
|
|
|
Ravenfood posted:In LW2, is there any reason I shouldn't bum-rush each new area ASAP and set them all to a mix of supply and recruit until they're at a large-ish resistance, then switch them over to supply full-time? And then whenever I want to move areas, just set whichever area I'm in to intel 24/7? I ended up restarting my campaign a few times since it was starting to get bogged down tactically so i never really got beyond lasers and had an opportunity to Liberate one of my two regions. Is having a wide range of areas that you're not actively scanning in going to end up biting me in the rear end, or is it, like sat-rushing, pretty much optimal? Recruit is loving worthless. I can put 8 resistance members on it and still not pull in a new resisty dude in a month. Just wait around for missions to rescue 2-4 of them at a time.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 02:48
|
|
|
Apoplexy posted:Recruit is loving worthless. I can put 8 resistance members on it and still not pull in a new resisty dude in a month. Just wait around for missions to rescue 2-4 of them at a time. Recruit is important b/c it's how you get rookies, but you don't need a lot
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 02:50
|
|
|
Out of 13 rebels, I keep two on recruit, which brings in about 2 rebels and a few rookies each month.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 03:08
|
|
|
Ah, I forgot about the rookie factor.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 03:20
|
|
|
Jake fix you're gamez! But really I am using a 21:9 monitor and things are funky. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 03:52
|
|
|
Beaglechat got me wishing for Guerilla War's reinforcements-replace-timers stuff added as an option in Long War. I imagine it would take a lot of work to get it playing nicely with the infiltration mechanic... but that would be amazing. I loved playing without timers- right up until I hit the first Blacksite mission which just felt impossible once the reinforcements were coming in 2-or-3 at a time.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 03:53
|
|
|
Gyshall posted:Out of 13 rebels, I keep two on recruit, which brings in about 2 rebels and a few rookies each month.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 03:56
|
|
|
I feel LW2 timers are very generous, the worst I got is when there are 3 turns left, compared to vanilla where you had to get a perfect engagement and then you could only get away with 1 turn left. Now I play on Veteran, and shootouts could probably take longer on higher difficulties, it's hard to say. Except when the objective is in a van, that's a different scale of bullshit. LW2 also adds a fair share of non-timed missions so it balances out.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 06:16
|
|
|
Veteran gives you extra turns.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 06:19
|
|
|
IMO they basically did timers in Xcom2 as badly as they could possibly be done. Not because timers are bad per se or the goal behind them being wrong, but that they implemented them in such an obnoxiously heavy handed manner that they are incredibly divisive, dictated the design of basically the entire game, and shifted the gameplay away from the actual gameplay listed on the back of the box. If timers are something a player isn't really into, then Xcom 2 is a pretty lovely game because you either beat the timer or: gently caress YOU. Zero subtly. Zero granularity. Zero carrot and 100% stick. Combine that with constantly threatening the player with that stick in an environment with hidden information about randomly generated missions and maps, and then giving them RNG based attacks. Then when said stick is eventually applied, and potentially applied capriciously, to the player it is applied directly to a significant portion of something the player has put potentially an entire work week worth of their free time into building up. The other problem is that the aliens and Xcom can not under any circumstances have appreciable variance in how they interact. There is literally no time for it. The player must charge headlong into the aliens, the player must kill the aliens in the expected amount of time, the aliens must not act in any way that prevents the player for killing them quickly. Failure to adhere to the timeline for ANY reason means the player is railroaded into engaging in desperate or risky actions due to the binary nature of the timer. So it is little surprise one of the complaints about Xcom 2 is that it kinda feels like ability spam to create first turn kills. Of course it does, because it essentially HAS to be. Even when missions don't have timers, you are still left with Xcom and Aliens that were designed to naturally interact in a very limited manner, so that is how they will interact even when the timer isn't ticking. The final, and potentially most egregious problem is that Xcom 2 isn't actually about killing aliens. It is about beating the timer and killing aliens takes time, so killing aliens is actually a bad thing for a significant portion of the time spent playing the game. It is fine and reasonable to want to have a mechanic that encourages forward movement and interaction with the game. An implementation that creates railroading and makes the act of doing the gameplay listed on the back of the box stressful and unpleasant ain't that fine and reasonable thing to want. The thing that gets me, is that meld was such a better attempt at a timer system. It was subtle, granular, involved carrots, often involved multiple chances at a can per mission, baited the player into interacting with it instead of threatening the player, and was willing to quietly let itself out the back door when the player missed the timer because they got too busy fighting aliens in a game about fighting aliens.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 06:30
|
|
|
Party Plane Jones posted:Veteran gives you extra turns. yeah,
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 06:33
|
|
|
Cyclomatic posted:IMO they basically did timers in Xcom2 as badly as they could possibly be done. actually, now hear me out here: mission timers are good
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 06:36
|
|
|
Yeah I'm actually digging the timer changes in Long War and think it's a good implementation of them, but I also fully admit that I'm not tooling around on Legendary.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 06:38
|
|
|
Cyclomatic posted:The thing that gets me, is that meld was such a better attempt at a timer system. It was subtle, granular, involved carrots, often involved multiple chances at a can per mission, baited the player into interacting with it instead of threatening the player, and was willing to quietly let itself out the back door when the player missed the timer because they got too busy fighting aliens in a game about fighting aliens. Actually it didn't. It simply made me feel bad whenever I didn't do the headlong rush to make sure I got every can of meld. And everytime I did do the headlong rush and my guy got killed getting the meld, I told the game to gently caress off about such an arbitrary mechanic since Enemy Within didn't have nearly as many tools as Xcom2 gives you with respect to saving your guys and giving you fun and powerful tools to extract your guys out of dangerous situations.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 06:44
|
|
|
MikeC posted:Actually it didn't. It simply made me feel bad whenever I didn't do the headlong rush to make sure I got every can of meld. And everytime I did do the headlong rush and my guy got killed getting the meld, I told the game to gently caress off about such an arbitrary mechanic since Enemy Within didn't have nearly as many tools as Xcom2 gives you with respect to saving your guys and giving you fun and powerful tools to extract your guys out of dangerous situations. The point is the Xcom 2 timer system is a million times worse about everything you just listed.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 07:03
|
|
|
if you're talking about impossible/legend difficulty or whatever perhaps that is closer to true but on commander down in vanilla xcom2 there was no problem with achieving the turn count on any mission in my experience. Once you adjust to the fact that it isn't xcom1 you're sweet. Added to that: Long war 2 gives you officers which can boost turn count requirements which is super good and cool. I wouldn't complain if they added a blanket +1 or +2 turns to each mission's base count either on all difficulties to be honest which would help before you get officers. Cyclomatic posted:The point is the Xcom 2 timer system is a million times worse about everything you just listed. that's your opinion, i find the turn timers exhilarating and are the thing xcom2 improved on most from the original
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 07:16
|
|
|
Yeah if you are talking about legendary difficulty I could see the timers leaving little room for screw ups but they are surprisingly well balanced on commander. I generally finish VIP missions with 4 turns left and guerrilla ops with 2 or 3 which leaves plenty of room for bad rolls or mistakes in general. Plus failing a few guerrilla ops in a play through is fine. Failing a VIP mission is a bit worse but you can get all your guys back eventually.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 07:23
|
|
|
I actually started up LW2 before deciding to go back and do a complete vanilla campaign, and I had no issues with the timer in the first 4 missions, where as vanilla almost always throws out one that is basically impossible unless I start running past live aliens because I can only bring 4 soldiers and that's not enough damage output to kill what's blocking my path.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 08:27
|
|
|
MF_James posted:You're playing vanilla, but you said technical which is a LW2 thing, but i'll go with you're actually playing vanilla Oops, I meant specialist instead of technical.  I'll take two grenadiers in future. What are the rules regarding whether you can hack something or not? I could see the terminal, Bradford gave his line about it being the thing I need to hack so I pressed my guy up against the window and was surprised to see that I couldn't hack it. I though the rule was if your specialist can see it, you can hack it. Avasculous posted:XCom2: The Movie will be written, directed, and produced by Michael Bay. Grenade aliens. Grenade cover to shoot aliens. Grenade walls to not have to go around them on your way to shoot aliens. Buildings are not obstacles if you still have grenades. If you're out of grenades, you should be taking more Grenadiers. I will take more grenadiers and try to get the armour with more pockets. I didn't run into any guys at the end of my turn on this mission or multi-activate. I moved up my first guy and then brought the others up as suggested. I looked at where the objective was but as above when I got there I couldn't hack it from the side I approached from. Should have taken more grenades and blown up the wall. My mission was pretty much: Turn 1: Get on roof on way to terminal Turn 2: Take out first pod with ranger + overwatch Turn 3: Move a bit further, throw battlescanner revealing Advent on the road between the buildings I'm on and the building with the terminal in a bit further than a yellow move away Turn 4: Move up so I don't slam into them on a yellow move Turn 5: Start fighting them, take out all but the MEC, take some damage but no deaths Turn 6: Kill MEC, move into the space outside building with the terminal in, ready for my specialists to move in. Get warning about reinforcements coming in Turn 7: Overwatch ready for reinforcements, take out all but one and mop him up with my first move. Move one specialist up against the window ready to hack. Can't hack. Oh dear. Turn 8: Run my other specialist round the side, hoping to get a chance to hack, reveal a pod (they must have been just out of reach of an earlier battlescanner), can't kill it in one turn, dude gets killed and we run out of time. So in hindsight, more grenadiers and one specialist? I took two specialists because I just knew that if I got into trouble any Stun Lancers would run though all my guys to knock out my only specialist.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 09:51
|
|
|
^^^ Get Gotcha. It adds a little symbol to objectives so you can tell what is in range of a hack. Also is good in general. A Better Advent 2 has traumatized me. Why would you give Advent Close Combat Specialist. I'm going to cry. This triple Berserker retaliation mission is hell. Berserkers just break maps too, everything is so buggy. kater fucked around with this message at 10:17 on Feb 1, 2017 |
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 10:14
|
|
|
I swapped down the veteran and I now have a turn to kill things, so i'm just going to play on that. Playing on commander I kept getting maps that my soldiers couldn't double move to the exit in time (seriously, the maps are too big), which was annoying me because I had to keep restarting. I was playing with random stats off and I suppose that playing my guys with smgs and less equipment could work, but having to write off a soldier for a mission because he's landed and can't get to the loving exit in time is silly.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 10:39
|
|
|
kater posted:^^^ Get Gotcha. It adds a little symbol to objectives so you can tell what is in range of a hack. Also is good in general. This looks really helpful, thanks!
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 11:16
|
|
|
I still enjoy Beagle's videos but he's always been very spotty on update schedules. One week he'll upload 5 videos in as many days and next week he'll do 2 in total. If he was more consistent or had a set schedule I could get invested in it a lot more, xwynn isn't as fun as beagle but at least he's got like 20 videos up since 1.1 hit.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 11:32
|
|
|
Someone posted about a mod recently that adds a button to remove all weapon mods from unequipped weapons, but I can't find it at all. Any help? e: Also are there continent bonuses in LW2 and if so, what are they? Fajita Queen fucked around with this message at 13:52 on Feb 1, 2017 |
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 13:48
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 7, 2024 22:34 |
|
|
The Shortest Path posted:e: Also are there continent bonuses in LW2 and if so, what are they? Yeah there are, you get them the same way (research towers -> control everything in a region and build enough towers). I think they're randomized like in vanilla, though presumably the one that lets you re-use weapon mods isn't in the pool.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2017 14:00
|
|