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Psion
Dec 13, 2002

eVeN I KnOw wHaT CoRnEr gAs iS
so like, nobody's commenting on amanasleep's namechange to apoplexy? did i miss the boat on this one?

because immediately calling someone a liar because their experience with a mod doesn't match yours is loving stupid and makes you look like an rear end in a top hat, even if it turns out you're :airquote: right :airquote: about why they had to dash for a shitload of turns in a row

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Maluco Marinero
Jan 18, 2001

Damn that's a
fine elephant.
I wasn't gonna say anything, but calling people a liar about what they experienced from a randomly generated gameplay experience where even the devs haven't quashed all the bugs or seen all the permutations seems a little presumptuous.

Psion
Dec 13, 2002

eVeN I KnOw wHaT CoRnEr gAs iS
that's a much more polite way to put it and I probably should have put it your way. but I wrote what I wrote :v:

Node
May 20, 2001

KICKED IN THE COOTER
:dings:
Taco Defender
Ok, surely there is a beginner's guide to LW2 somewhere? I've read the stuff in the archives, but I really don't have any feel for how I should set up Havens and how big my squad should be to safely take on a mission. I can deal with combat and choosing perks, but the management non-understanding is burning me out.

I know it's been discussed in this thread throughout various posts, but its kinda hard to find a center of information from that.

Node fucked around with this message at 06:07 on Mar 5, 2017

Apoplexy
Mar 9, 2003

by Shine
Oh, man. There's been an update to the LW2 recreation of Show Me The Skills that adds weapon upgrade icons. Fuckin' best change ever. And, Node, I'll help ya out as much as I can. *I* do the following with my Havens: First Haven, all intel for a long while. You want missions and you want them good, not about to expire. Research Radio first thing and then spread out to two other regions ASAP. (This is my play, some people (xwynns) choose to focus on a single region entirely from the start until it's liberated. I feel that's too constricting on resources and mission availability)) You'll probably want to do a mission or two for intel rewards to accomplish that; one of the missions that crop up early should be FIND A LEAD with ONLY an Intel reward. Do that. It's a Liberation-starting mission and that's required to win. If you see FIND A LEAD and the reward is Intel and an Intel Package, that's a Point of Interest-spawning mission that will give you anything from bonus power to resisty comms to supplies to intel to a MEC to help out on haven missions, et cetera. REALLY good as well, but not integral to the mid-game being accessible. Once you have multiple havens online, you can start flipping them from 100% Intel to 100% Supplies. Once you have every soldier, or near abouts, on an infiltration, that's when you flip those havens over to resourcing operations, until your squads all free up again. How big to make each squad? Depends on the mission. You can pretty easily do most Extremely Light missions with 4-5. Once you start seeing ADVENT's strength in a region rise, you'll start seeing Very Light and Light and so on as the baseline and you'll want more troops in each squad sent on a mission to ensure you don't get jacked by multiple pods at once. There're some missions you can accomplish entirely through stealth, like Jailbreaks and Extract VIP from Cell (only cell, the vehicle ones will require fighting a pod at the vehicle and the Extract VIP from City ones are pure combat). On those missions, even if they pop up with 2 days remaining, you can almost always accomplish them with a single Shinobi specced in stealth, the left side of the tree. Also of note, experience is divvied up among squaddies nearly-equally based on the mission's population count at start (pre-reinforcements), so, say you have an Extremely Light mission that has 10 days remaining on it, you might actually want to take some extra hands on it just to ensure they gain experience. Entirely up to you in that case. Also of note, you can recall a squad from infiltration at any time, if something more important should come up. And Intel points can be spent to make a mission significantly easier through the infiltration-boosting mechanic. You'll eventually be able to do the math on a mission when it pops up as to whether or not you'll be able to infiltrate a squad of appropriate size with or without the intel boost, but for now, just assume anything under 3-4 days is hosed.

Apoplexy
Mar 9, 2003

by Shine
Oh, there's a reason I didn't mention Recruit or Hiding: They're pretty much worthless outside of a few situations. Recruit takes too long to accomplish anything; I can stick 10 resisties on recruitment and it'll take a full month to get the haven up to 13 members. Sucks. Hiding is only valuable when you really want to protect the haven from retaliation. Also, those haven advisor slots, always have them filled with a soldier of highest rank possible, though even Squaddies will even make do. I find Shinobi to be extremely awesome on Rendezvous missions and, since they're only situationally valuable on a mission, it's great for leveling them up without wasting squad slots. Until they get up to about Sergeant, at which point they're usually expert swordsmen.

Apoplexy
Mar 9, 2003

by Shine
Oh, and I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be presumptuous, it's just that I've played LW2 longer than any person on SA could, thanks to a combination of Adderall and joblessness. I started the hour it was launched and haven't stopped yet. So my saying that those sorts of maps just don't exist seems like it'd be a perspective to listen to on the matter. If you're using additional map packs, yeah, there's some hosed-up situations you can end up in. I know I was getting maps far too SMALL for actual feasible stealthing on Jailbreak missions until I disabled the offending map pack. I can't imagine the opposite not being the case: You have a map pack installed that is utilizing plots far too large for the intended map size.

And, no, I'm not this Amana person. I just don't post much and don't mean to sound like a dick when I do, it's entirely accidental. I have issues.

fridge corn
Apr 2, 2003

NO MERCY, ONLY PAIN :black101:
Adderall is a terrible drug

Nix Panicus
Feb 25, 2007

Charlotte of Oz posted:

So Beags has some good advice from last month at PC Gamer on Shinobis and Technicals. How're you all building your Gunners and Rangers? There's a lot of good perks in the tree and I have decision paralysis.

I built one overwatch Ranger and they were pretty great, right up until the end game when lots of things had Lightning Reflexes and Tac Senses and built in defense and Rapid Reaction just stopped pulling its weight. They can be powerful midgame though I guess. Really Rangers don't bring anything great to the table except for overwatch, and overwatch creeping is possibly the most boring way to play the game. I know people sing the praises of walk fire and stacking aim or whatever, but Combat Protocol from a specialist doesn't even roll dice. Or Hail of Bullets from a Gunner. Or a grenade. Or lots of other tools. The question isn't just 'can I make this soldier good?' but 'what could I have brought *instead* of this guy'. Rangers are just kind of mediocre at everything and only really shine at overwatch, and overwatch doesnt give you a real 'active' tool to 'solve' a bad turn or take ground.

Gunners, on the other hand, are absurdly good at every role except stealth and hacking. I prefer taking active skills, like hail of bullets or saturation fire, over making area suppression better. My general goal is to not allow the AI to take actions, rather than give them a chance to take actions through suppression or overwatch.

Node posted:

Ok, surely there is a beginner's guide to LW2 somewhere? I've read the stuff in the archives, but I really don't have any feel for how I should set up Havens and how big my squad should be to safely take on a mission. I can deal with combat and choosing perks, but the management non-understanding is burning me out.

I know it's been discussed in this thread throughout various posts, but its kinda hard to find a center of information from that.

Put everyone on intel to begin so you get missions with good timers on them. You'll get jailbreaks in low vigilance regions that are way more efficient than recruiting. Vigilance is a hidden stat that tracks how noisy XCOM is in a region. Every mission you *win* adds 1 to vigilance, except for ADVENT retaliation missions (those add 0). ADVENT strength flows into a region based on its vigilance stat until strength=vigilance. Vigilance naturally decays by 1 point every week, but ADVENT strength can take awhile to move around and equalize. Doing a 'get ADVENT attention' mission spikes vigilance in an area by 4. Don't do those until you have a strong grasp on the strategy layer. And even then theyre rarely a great idea. Youre going to be relying on selling corpses and doing missions for supplies for quite a while. Id recommend not putting anyone on supplies until your third or fourth region (where you don't plan on doing missions). Also once you liberate a region you should put rebels on supplies there.

Building a radio towers increases output in the region by 20%. Liberating a region increases output by 20%. Adding an engineer increases supplies by 20%. Adding a scientist increases intel generation by 20% (AND THAT SCIENTIST DOESN'T DO ANY RESEARCH, SAME WITH PUTTING THEM IN THE AWC/PSI LAB). The Avenger counts as 4 rebels on intel when it scans in a region. Adding a soldier adds *1* effective rebel to recruiting, and a % multiplier to recruiting based on their rank. Soldiers also look for Faceless. Higher ranked soldiers are better at finding Faceless, Officers and Psi are better than regular soldiers for this. The chance for any new rebel (from *any* source, even hack rewards) to be a Faceless is 16% (32% during the DE). I think its guaranteed you have Faceless in your first haven. All income modifiers stack multiplicatively.

The hiding job doesnt generate any income or do anything at all. Instead those soldiers don't count for drawing in retaliations. You need 5 rebels on one job to draw a retaliation for that job, so 4 rebels on a job is safe. BUT Faceless add 1 rebel's worth of 'noise' to all jobs. So 4 rebels on recruiting and one Faceless in the haven *isn't* safe. Each *type* of retaliation has a cooldown of a few weeks before it can happen again. But if you have 10 rebels on recruiting and get a recruiting retal, then swap them all to intel afterwards you can get an intel retal immediately.

In the mid/late game its a good idea to keep rebels on intel even if you don't plan on doing missions in a region, because the passive intel income is hugely important. You need hundreds of intel to contact the last few story mission regions and datapads give diminishing returns. You don't want to have your MSgt A-team with full Coil (plasma is a luxury, you can win with coil) stall out and lose to the Avatar timer because you need 240 intel to get to the last Network Tower.

Oh yeah, the Avatar timer is running from the first day, but its hidden until you liberate a region. The more noise XCOM makes through completing missions, the slower the doomclock ticks. Basically, if Global Vigilance (viglance in all regions) > Global ADVENT strength (check resistance command, the middle button on the hologlobe map for total ADVENT legions and doomclock penalty), the doomclock runs slower and Avatar facilities are less likely to get built. If Global Strength >= Global Vigilance then the doomclock ticks at full speed and additional Avatar facilities (past the first 3) get built that speed the doomclock up even more. Never be too quiet. But I think you only need like 2 missions per week, since vigilance decays at 1 point per week per region, to keep up with normal ADVENT strength. Anything above that, or hitting troop columns/supply raids/liberating regions should put vigilance > strength.

The game *heavily* favors having an A-squad that does story missions, ADVENT HQs and troop columns/supply raids and several small Shinobi stealth teams. Getting enough money to outfit a reasonable B-team is just very difficult on higher difficulties and isn't that rewarding, considering how many missions can be stealthed and how easy stealthing is once you get the hang of it. In general, get comfortable with squads of 8 for the 'big' story missions (infiltrating 10 is time prohibitive, even with all the perks/GTS upgrades/officer training, at least in my opinion), 10 for supply raids if you feel up to 0% infiltrating them - which breaks the economy if you can pull it off, and 1-3 for everything else. I like 2 man squads with 1 shinobi officer and 1 specialist for stealthing missions. You can go solo shinobi but its super risky and not as flexible, and the time savings going from 2 to 1 isn't that great. Shinobi officers are great on stealth teams because you can use Oscar Mike and Command to give VIPs extra movement without breaking stealth. You can also move a specialist into hack range, hack, then Command them to an EVAC zone.

So why not have several 8 man squads like you did in LW1? Its too expensive mainly. Your gear goes out with the infiltrating team, so you need a full set of stuff for every squad. It also doesn't really give you much advantage. You need a strong squad of 12 to storm the final mission. Everyone else is superfluous. And on most missions even with 100% infiltration trying to brawl with 5 man squads vs 4-5 strong ADVENT pods is going to go poorly for you because of the noise mechanic and yellow alert moves; plus the sheer amount of HP enemies get means finishing a pod off quickly enough to not get overwhelmed by patrols/reinforcements *and* beat the timer becomes increasingly unlikely. And even if you wanted to do small squad brawls theres no real reward for doing so. You don't get salvage on most missions, and even bringing home a half dozen elerium cores from loot drops really only offsets the cost of the gear you put on that squad. The game just doesn't really offer any incentives to do 5 man brawls except for 'its fun', although the fun kinda dies when half the pods are the same boring ADVENT or Muton pods you've been fighting for the last five months (midgame alien variety sucks balls). Lastly, theres no real penalty for not doing a mission. In LW1 skipping an abduction spiked panic while skipping a landed UFO added research or supplies. Skipping missions was generally pretty bad. In LW2 theres no real downside to skipping anything but retaliations. Like, even if you counter a DE its just going to pop up again later, so you can really only delay those. If you skip a supply raid ADVENT gets to move a point of strength, but they add strength faster than you can kill it off the map anyways. And skipping a guerrilla op has no consequences at all. Don't like the time left on a mission? Ignore it, it'll pop again later. Don't have a team available to rescue that scientist? Eh. There'll be other scientists. As long as you do enough missions to slow Avatar and prevent facilities from being built (the first 3 facilities that add to Avatar always get built, the 4th on only get built if XCOM is too quiet) while progressing the story you're fine. Theres no real pressure to ever have more than one super squad and maybe some second stringers to replace casualties and go on retals.

There are always exceptions. You can 10 man 0% infiltrate a critical mission you discovered with only hours left on the timer, or send a cobbled together suicide squad with your old gear on a mission and just kinda hope for the best, but in general 'optimal' play is one A-squad and several 2 man stealth squads.

Also, search for Joinrbs on youtube. He has a series of videos that go through the dumb obfuscated spreadsheet bullshit you need to know about the strategy layer

Nix Panicus fucked around with this message at 10:45 on Mar 5, 2017

Nix Panicus
Feb 25, 2007

fridge corn posted:

Adderall is a terrible drug

Adderall is a great drug, if a bit strong, if you actually have ADHD. It slows down and calms the mind and body. Pretty much exactly the opposite of what happens when a regular person takes it. Non-ADHD people should not take Adderall.

Apoplexy
Mar 9, 2003

by Shine
It certainly seems to help me out a ton in being able to focus. Also, thanks for the good write-up on the strategic layer there, that should help Node out a ton.

Apoplexy fucked around with this message at 10:28 on Mar 5, 2017

Dongicus
Jun 12, 2015

DARK EVENT: Advent assembles en masse to destroy XCOM'S Adderal supply centres.

MikeC
Jul 19, 2004
BITCH ASS NARC

Psion posted:

so like, nobody's commenting on amanasleep's namechange to apoplexy? did i miss the boat on this one?

because immediately calling someone a liar because their experience with a mod doesn't match yours is loving stupid and makes you look like an rear end in a top hat, even if it turns out you're :airquote: right :airquote: about why they had to dash for a shitload of turns in a row

For the record, it was at release, within a week. I had already found most maps to be pretty big. I had an extract mission for a Scientist and it was a 14 turn timer IIRC. After the map loaded I checked out the target rescue and extract point and it was drat far. Long story short, even with some pretty big risk taking only 2 of my 6 guys made it out, got close to the scientist but he was hidden in a building where the doors were on facing away from the extract point and I didn't have C4 to blow a hole in the wall. The 2 operators that did make it out was a 2 man group I sent to beeline for the scientist.

After scouting the interior of the building and finding no doors to the extract point with 4 turns to go, I decided to cut my losses and just run for the pickup. They had spent 12 of 14 turns double moving. The 4 guys who had to fight the one patrol I couldn't sneak around didn't make it, 2 of them were within 5 or 6 tiles after I sacrificed half the combat team to stall.

Was it a direct straight line 12 double move from spawn to extract? No. But with enough buildings and having to climb and try to end turns in cover, the 2 guys that did make it spent 12 turns double moving. Maybe not always maximum distance but I had made them go for the objective as soon as possible. I guess if I was willing to just run through buildings and lose concealment right from the get go I could make it in 10 and maybe give myself enough time to rescue the guy as well?

So yes I guess a more competent player could have figured it out right from the map load that you couldn't take any extra time at all to make a more stealthy breakout but stuff like this was part of the reason why I stopped playing LW2. The enlarged maps didn't necessarily make for a better experience. For the record I have completed Commander Ironman on Vanilla successfully and loved the timer missions so while I am not streamer pro at this game, I feel I am reasonable competent.

Lima
Jun 17, 2012

Psion posted:

so like, nobody's commenting on amanasleep's namechange to apoplexy? did i miss the boat on this one?

because immediately calling someone a liar because their experience with a mod doesn't match yours is loving stupid and makes you look like an rear end in a top hat, even if it turns out you're :airquote: right :airquote: about why they had to dash for a shitload of turns in a row

Nah amanasleep would've chastised him for not being psychic irl and know which small items to bring in advance.

Apoplexy
Mar 9, 2003

by Shine
And the answer to that question is 'a flashbang'. Always be banging.

MikeC
Jul 19, 2004
BITCH ASS NARC

Apoplexy posted:

And the answer to that question is 'a flashbang'. Always be banging.

So any time spent in combat is wrong for those missions?

Jenny Angel
Oct 24, 2010

Out of Control
Hard to Regulate
Anything Goes!
Lipstick Apathy
I just got my first AWC skill on my Commander Ironman vanilla run, Killzone on AJ "Phenomenal" Styles, a Phantom-specced Ranger. Two questions:

1) Is Killzone useful on a Ranger, or does it only make sense with longer-distance, more passive classes?
2) If it's not good, is it possible to retrain it to another random cross-class skill at the AWC, or is that one permanent?

Node
May 20, 2001

KICKED IN THE COOTER
:dings:
Taco Defender
Killzone on a ranger would suck. The shotgun has range penalties, and the cone from Killzone starts out small, due to it being a, uh, cone.

Lima
Jun 17, 2012

Yeah that's the worst class to get KZ on. It'll be good on reinforcement beacons but not much else.

FairGame
Jul 24, 2001

Der Kommander

Yeah. It's a bad skill for a ranger. Also I think you need two action points to use it.

Could still be useful on a ranger with phantom and conceal on untimed missions, I guess. Get yourself two separate high damage ambushes, maybe.

But ranger shotguns are good for critical hits. And only a specialist can crit on overwatch.

I mean, at least you didn't get one of the many useless grenadier skills that are completely awful on a non grenadier.mthis one at least has theoretical uses.

E: I'm actually not sure if killzone shots are treated like overwatch shots or not. If you land a crit, I guess you'll know.

Node
May 20, 2001

KICKED IN THE COOTER
:dings:
Taco Defender
All of my rangers keep getting awesome AWC abilities like Shredder. Rapid firing a Sectopod or Gatekeeper with a Shredder is too drat good.

Sapozhnik
Jan 2, 2005

Nap Ghost
:stare:

That uh

That final battle in Shen's Last Gift is certainly some poo poo

for month one

What. I am so glad I wasn't playing on Ironman.

swimgus
Oct 24, 2005
Camlin bought me this account because I'm a Jew!

Sapozhnik posted:

:stare:

That uh

That final battle in Shen's Last Gift is certainly some poo poo

for month one

What. I am so glad I wasn't playing on Ironman.

Yeah I just do that mission in July with good armor and plasma guns. Sparks kind of suck so I either skip that missoin entirely or do it when it's stupid easy and farm some promotions.

Serephina
Nov 8, 2005

恐竜戦隊
ジュウレンジャー
With the killzone ranger, your best use of it would be to give him a rifle instead of shotty, and turn him into a scout or swordsman. Gives him pretty good ambush use etc. Or just ignore the AWC perk, some of them are real lemons.

Pharmaskittle
Dec 17, 2007

arf arf put the money in the fuckin bag

Sometimes you just get a AWC perk that doesn't help that soldier and you just ignore it. If your assault gets a buff to smoke grenades, you just laugh and keep going.

FraudulentEconomics
Oct 14, 2007

Pst...
Everyone keeps on ripping lw2 sparks whereas I've loved mine. Have him kitted out with mostly defensive perks and use him to push positions and provide additional cover. Shredder Gun makes him great at busting a fortified position and he's accurate enough that his beefy gun can blow up unsuspecting ADVENT. Overdrive let's me reposition. Him quickly and still do something useful.

I use him and a Psi trooper on every important big mission and it's worked out great.

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

swimgus posted:

Yeah I just do that mission in July with good armor and plasma guns. Sparks kind of suck so I either skip that missoin entirely or do it when it's stupid easy and farm some promotions.

I'm happy with turning off both the activation missions for the DLCs, they're interesting the first time you do them but way too much of a slog to do every playthrough.

Jabor
Jul 16, 2010

#1 Loser at SpaceChem
Turning off the activation mission for alien rulers is definitely a recipe for a fun time.

Nix Panicus
Feb 25, 2007

FraudulentEconomics posted:

Everyone keeps on ripping lw2 sparks whereas I've loved mine. Have him kitted out with mostly defensive perks and use him to push positions and provide additional cover. Shredder Gun makes him great at busting a fortified position and he's accurate enough that his beefy gun can blow up unsuspecting ADVENT. Overdrive let's me reposition. Him quickly and still do something useful.

I use him and a Psi trooper on every important big mission and it's worked out great.

Sacrifice is where its at for SPARKs. A defensive SPARK with Sacrifice allows your team to recover from bad activations or aggressively take a position in a way nothing else in the game can. Hunter Protocol/Guardian/Cool Under Pressure is also good times because occasionally the SPARK will just empty the clip on an activating pod

Bremen
Jul 20, 2006

Our God..... is an awesome God

FraudulentEconomics posted:

Everyone keeps on ripping lw2 sparks whereas I've loved mine. Have him kitted out with mostly defensive perks and use him to push positions and provide additional cover. Shredder Gun makes him great at busting a fortified position and he's accurate enough that his beefy gun can blow up unsuspecting ADVENT. Overdrive let's me reposition. Him quickly and still do something useful.

I use him and a Psi trooper on every important big mission and it's worked out great.

Sparks also seem to benefit nicely from an officer with high aim and the lead by example ability. Their guns do monstrous damage in LW (and, with Overdrive, can fire multiple times) but it's limited by a low aim.

FraudulentEconomics
Oct 14, 2007

Pst...
Just making an odd sort of observation, I finished my second liberation and ran into bog standard (though upgraded to mostly elite) ADVENT and aliens. Shortly afterward I run a stealth extraction, and lay eyes on an Andromedan. Shortly after that, my first avenger defense with a Sectopod.

Do ADVENT bases just not typically carry any exotic alien types? I suppose I'll see more advanced aliens in blacksite related missions, but it just seems odd that a regional command outpost would have just basic mooks.

Also, SUPER PRO TIP: ADVENT generals and their ilk can be SKULLMINED. Go see what makes Sloth tick!

PlasticAutomaton
Nov 12, 2016

Artoria Pendonut


It's not just you, Andromeddons are just super rare for some reason. I've gotten many more Sectopod and Muton Elite corpses, and only gotten the Andromeddon corpses for the autopsy and Advanced Grenades. Really annoying since I want to make some holotargeter Mk. 3s.

Bremen
Jul 20, 2006

Our God..... is an awesome God

FraudulentEconomics posted:

Just making an odd sort of observation, I finished my second liberation and ran into bog standard (though upgraded to mostly elite) ADVENT and aliens. Shortly afterward I run a stealth extraction, and lay eyes on an Andromedan. Shortly after that, my first avenger defense with a Sectopod.

Do ADVENT bases just not typically carry any exotic alien types? I suppose I'll see more advanced aliens in blacksite related missions, but it just seems odd that a regional command outpost would have just basic mooks.

Also, SUPER PRO TIP: ADVENT generals and their ilk can be SKULLMINED. Go see what makes Sloth tick!

There are some static pods; for example, I think Ambush Troop Column always has an 8 advent soldier pod, and the liberation HQ mission has something similar with the general. I think the rest of the enemies in those missions is fairly random though.

Party Plane Jones
Jul 1, 2007

by Reene
Fun Shoe
Andromedons and Codexes and Archons are rare as gently caress in LW2. You're going to be fighting snakes and advent and Mutons forever.

Soonmot
Dec 19, 2002

Entrapta fucking loves robots




Grimey Drawer
I just started up after not having played since almost a year ago. When, exactly, should I run Shen's last gift because I don't have any soldiers with more than their first skill, no magnetic rifles and holy poo poo unending waves and then a goddamn sectopod with 80 health? I managed to get it down to 16 with only three characters + SPARK before it killed Shen and the mission failed. I can only imagine that the enemies increase in difficulty as you power up. Should I just wait until I have a bunch of hacker specialists trained up?

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
magnetic weapons are the edge you need to make shen's last gift a doable challenge. an extra specialist to pile on haywire and combat protocols is also neato burrito. you should not need more than that. the mission actually does not change at all as you get more baller.

Soonmot
Dec 19, 2002

Entrapta fucking loves robots




Grimey Drawer
Oh awesome, I'll just leave it alone for a bit then this new game

FraudulentEconomics
Oct 14, 2007

Pst...

Soonmot posted:

I just started up after not having played since almost a year ago. When, exactly, should I run Shen's last gift because I don't have any soldiers with more than their first skill, no magnetic rifles and holy poo poo unending waves and then a goddamn sectopod with 80 health? I managed to get it down to 16 with only three characters + SPARK before it killed Shen and the mission failed. I can only imagine that the enemies increase in difficulty as you power up. Should I just wait until I have a bunch of hacker specialists trained up?


Coolguye posted:

magnetic weapons are the edge you need to make shen's last gift a doable challenge. an extra specialist to pile on haywire and combat protocols is also neato burrito. you should not need more than that. the mission actually does not change at all as you get more baller.

This is correct, as is getting a shredder gunner and/or AP rounds on your damage dealers. Julian is deceptively weak but you're very prone to being overwhelmed due to the other poo poo. Stunning Julian for 2ish turns should be enough to either smash him down or prevent suicide MECs from blowing you up. Mag weapons are a very solid guideline, as they'll allow you to bust most of the basic mecs with one shot.

R0ckfish
Nov 18, 2013
-miss click empty quote oops-

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FairGame
Jul 24, 2001

Der Kommander

The most fun I've ever had in XCOM2 was going in blind to the Shen's Last Gift mission as soon as it popped. Squad of 4, none ranked higher than corporal.

Lily failed her first shutdown hack on Julian, which made him STRONGER. I managed to survive long enough to get another chance to hack several turns later.

Two squadmates died. Lily and Spark would not have survived another turn. My other specialist camped on roof with the bolt caster did some serious work (and also missed a couple 90% shots).

Was awesome.

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