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CrazyLoon posted:Hopefully, in XCOM2 the condition to researching alien corpses could be: "You have to have one soldier pick it up and lug it around, or take it back to the Skyranger, in order to get the option of dissecting it back at base." Or at least, that would be a cool thing to mod in for the realism folks anywho. It seems like a number of mission types still have kill everything as a win condition, it'd be interesting to do away with that in a mod and make it so no matter what you're gonna be outgunned with escalating reinforcements. Couple that with having to physically collect things could make for some interesting strategy as long as it doesn't get too repetitive hucking poo poo across the battlefield.
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Jan 29, 2016 23:09
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Sharzak posted:How come people are so hyped for this? Is it purely based off of the last one? I liked the last one, only finished it once though. People are acting like this is going to be earth-shattering. The new XCOM is a rare entry in turned based strategy/tactics that captured the spirit of the old game, had enough complexity for the grognards and approachability for the more 'average' gamer. It is a true one of a kind game that hits a particular niche exceedingly well, despite all of its flaws. It has enough depth that it could be the only game you play and you'd still be improving for years, which for a single player game is real rare. Given all this, XCOM 2 is the developers of XCOM no longer just reimagining an old experience, but pushing it even further, and seeming to do so fully aware of all the flaws of Enemy Unknown/Within. If you're in the niche of people who loving love XCOM you're bound to be hyped.
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Jan 30, 2016 23:17
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When you trigger the enemy they scatter, so instead of needing cover, what you really want to avoid is an activation with half your movement already spent. That's why you try to limit the scope by tailing your front runner.
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Feb 1, 2016 22:29
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Deuce posted:Friends In Low Places certainly gets tougher due to its early arrival, greater pod size, and patrols. The key is to retreat back to the high cover gravestones at the very back and camp out, trying to lure just one pod at a time. Also, bring rockets. Friends in Low Places feels like an absolute trap first time around. Move forward even slightly, activate 3 pods and get hosed by Acid 'suppression'.
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Feb 3, 2016 05:43
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FlyingCowOfDoom posted:Cheers mate! Zone 1 Supremacy, however I'll be working Friday so eh.
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Feb 3, 2016 22:41
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Game is real loving good. Loving the timed missions, I like that the optimal play is to setup quickly and play aggressively. Commander difficulty is going pretty well, although on a supply raid (untimed mission of course) I overextended with a blademaster and drew too many pods, getting wiped. I fully expect to make mistakes and lose the campaign but it's feeling real enjoyable, and I really like that the game is balanced around winning some and losing some. One thing I'd like to find a way to mod in is better save game management, auto save is good and all but save games should group by campaign or something, allowing you to name a campaign and also see the latest state of the campaign when you're loading up.
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Feb 5, 2016 23:59
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My Commander is going not too badly, just beaten the first black site near flawlessly, two pods decided to walk together in concealment so a single Plasma grenade got to shred 2 ADVENT, 1 muton & 3 vipers with the rest of the team ready at CLOSE RANGE?! to pick up the pieces. The campaign felt pretty touch and go for a while, had some bad near-wipes, especially a disastrous first encounter with a MEC on a VIP mission that lost me my best of all 4 classes. I was able to pull it back by making sure to choose easier missions and ease my Rookies/Squaddies back into things, and then tier 2 weapons and armour started coming in, at this point I feel a little ahead on equipment. Really, it feels like the game is punishing, but it's far more tolerant of wiping missions than the original, where it didn't take much to tank your campaign. I've actually found the retaliation/terror missions pretty straightforward as well. Faceless aren't too bad, because I tend to focus on controlling ground rather than rescuing civvies. If you do your best to secure enough of the map that you know you can keep 6 civvies alive, then it's just a stand up fight with no need to risk a faceless activation, and when they do activate you've got enough room between you anyway. Games good y'all, feels pretty balanced. If you feel you're getting your rear end handed to you try to keep in mind the basics, stuff like: - don't use up all your moves when revealing ground so you can react to enemy activations - do unsafe stuff first, long flanks, long reaching scouts into unknown ground, you're going to need to do it because of timers and stuff, but if you do it right it really frees up your movement because you'll be able to dash behind space created or react to threats with the full strength of your turn. - flank to known ground, expect to possibly unclear activations if you try to flank towards unknown ground. - creating flanks by destroying cover with grenades risks less activations, it's safe, just be mindful to keep enough around for all engagements on the mission. - check everyone's hit percentages before taking shots so you can max out your odds - have backup plans even for potentially 'sure' things, so avoid flanking dangerously if it's unnecessary - leave the guaranteed moves 'til last (unless you need it to break over watch or something), Combat Protocol, a sure fire grenade that you've already range checked ( if you get good rolls on other shots you might just be able to take the guaranteed action somewhere else) - use hunker down, smoke and aid protocol. If you have only one 40-50% to take you have no guarantee of stopping anything that's going to happen the next alien turn, so you may be better off mitigating that turn rather than rolling the dice on your turn - efficiency is your greatest concern in timed missions, and is a good mantra to live by regardless, your turns should be achieving something with every move that puts you positively towards the goal, scouting, killing enemies or limiting their options (through debuffs, squad buffs, movement control) - plan your movement as far as practicable on timed missions, you can see the general lay of the land, use battle scanners to get more of it, you need to be double moving fast through your plan so the inevitable contact doesn't run down the clock forcing you to take even more risks
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Feb 7, 2016 03:38
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K8.0 posted:You fix bad core mechanics by entirely replacing them, not with lovely bandaids. That's concealment, and it's far from a lovely band aid. Combined with all the extra tools you have, Phantom, Re-conceal, gremlin scanning, if you can't scope out the lay of the land and move across it with relative confidence you're not using everything that's available to you.
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Feb 7, 2016 05:47
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What exactly is the disoriented debuff. in my second commander play through (iron man cause I'm a masochist who wants to git gud) things are going fine til the stun lancers come out, and then cover destruction plus shots starts to get less effective as they can take a real beating. I think next time around I may just need to be way more ready to evacuate for that little period in between stun lancers coming in and magnetic weapons, as they just wreck me when they come in right now and it's setting back otherwise good campaigns. Maybe a flashbang will help with their move range & hit chance, rather than relying heavy on cover destruction. Edit: was typing this while those new posts came in, I'm definitely going to go harder on flashbangs next time around to control these stun lancers. Maluco Marinero fucked around with this message at 01:11 on Feb 8, 2016 |
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Feb 8, 2016 01:08
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PantsBandit posted:Haha yeah, and there were like 5 guys defending him. 3 of whom immediately peaced out as soon as they heard sirens. The real answer is because then there'd be no game, but otherwise let's explain it away by saying they need to move the Commander close to combat zones to properly make use of them, cause otherwise you'd stuff them in a black site under 50 sectopods.
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Feb 8, 2016 01:22
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Coolguye posted:ok well i've done that and i cannot build or prototype them The Autopsy Notes reference unlocking a Foundry Project for it, can remember what it's called.
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Feb 8, 2016 09:20
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Pingcode posted:'Plasma Grenades', appropriately enough. That would make sense. Plasma Grenades are also a HUGE game changer. They dish out damage and do cover destruction like nobody's business, so if you're into scorched earth with lots of grenadiers it'll turn em into absolute monsters.
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Feb 8, 2016 09:41
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I restarted on Commander Ironman after getting a feel for the game, and this run has been going great. To be honest I'm probably making better decisions in tactical because they're permanent, which means I've only lost 2 soldiers, both in a pretty hectic retaliation mission that saw me way more overextended to make sure I don't lose too many civvies. The biggest changes I've made are: - build order, I can't remember it all but roughly GTS, Comms, Power, Proving Grounds, Workshop (Middle 3rd station, which is letting me clear the bottom power coil). At this point I've had to make some temporary power relays to tide me over until the bottom power coil finishes, but I've also been able to drop a lab and AWC because I'm swimming in supplies... - don't scan poo poo I don't feel I need, to be honest I feel that's the biggest trap on the early game if you're not familiar with the early game. I prioritised expanding over near everything else, I think research order was Modular Weapons, Alien Materials (maybe), Resistance Comms. I then expanded ASAP to my Contact limit, building radios when it made sense. - bring 2 flashbangs to every early mission, which has allowed me to completely neutralise the early period where stun lancers are strong Those things, and generally careful considered play in tactical has left me with only two casualties, and a very strong A & B squad which is just wrecking right now. The alien victory timer running, but also 2 facilities and the black site in spitting distance so I reckon I'm about to take the squad advantage into the late game as long as I don't flub these missions. The quick expansion has massive benefits by the way, you get more supplies (so you can afford your tier 2 and buildings without selling a thing), you also get more guerilla ops available to you, so you can actually choose useful rewards that fit in your geoscape strategy, whether you're hurting for personnel, Intel or supplies. I'm backing up the ironman save just in case ( got hit by a geoscape bug where scanning would never finish because there was a dialog on the avenger screen) but that cleared so I'm good to carry on. Commander difficulty definitely feels like a short quick progression compared to legendary, feels really important to hit the curve fast given the speed of enemy progression.
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Feb 8, 2016 22:44
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I do think a lot of people who play this game have severe misconceptions about how strategy and planning work both in this game and in the real world. Very few things are 100% certain which is why you plan with fail safes, you keep sure things in your back pocket and work through the options you have. If you play this way (and you can even with a turn timer) then you can keep a lot of troops alive and the bad rolls just don't matter as much. Your job is to make the odds as favorable as possible before you start rolling the dice, if you don't bad things happen.
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Feb 9, 2016 02:19
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RBA Starblade posted:I like how if you murder enough aliens Tygan just goes "gently caress it we have so many bodies we can do this autopsy immediately". I think those immediate projects are actually research credits from doing other projects, because they always kick in after completion of something else. (Or maybe I'm just missing cause and effect here)
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Feb 9, 2016 02:22
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RBA Starblade posted:It pops up a messing telling you that you killed enough aliens you can do so. Research credits just cut the time in half. I got faceless and sectoid research done instantly for example. Ah okay, I don't read good, I see the green button and I mash it good.
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Feb 9, 2016 03:08
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Number 1 Sexy Dad posted:Sorry if this has been covered somewhere already but if everything else is equal, do overwatch and fire have the same hit probability? Standard overwatch has an aim reduction (not sure how much), concealed overwatch has no reduction.
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Feb 9, 2016 03:10
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Away all Goats posted:Cause I start carrying flashbangs, gas, acid grenades, etc ASAP and those are kind of wasted on walls. The Grenadier gets that, Demolition, it competes with suppression and afaik is prone to miss or not work so well. I haven't tried it much cause grenades are so much more thorough.
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Feb 10, 2016 06:43
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Ciaphas posted:
Eh, it's fine if you take due diligence to back poo poo up. If you don't, well, that's a lot of time to throw away.
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Feb 10, 2016 06:50
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please don't play Ironman
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Tae posted:Beagle just posted spoilers for his legendary vanilla run. Yeah, and i think it was like 80% flawless to boot.
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Feb 12, 2016 02:40
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My commander ironman run got sidetracked a bit. I got totally wrecked by the avatar from the codex skull jack. I did it on the Codex Portal Mission, everything was kind of okay but then the avatar withdrew to the portal, which going in blind I didn't realise would spawn a Gatekeeper when I approached it. Then I lost my primo Ranger to mind control and had to put him down, then stabilised and revived him from bleeding out, and then his rapid fire on the Avatar missing completely while everyone else was similarly ineffectual. One turn later chryssalids unburrow and kill the ranger for good this time. My gunslinger gets mind controlled and I decide that's all she wrote, pop the evac volume and I'm out. I was woefully unprepared with scans for the Chryssalids and anything for the avatars. What actually works on these guys, I'm not gonna be able to touch the game for a week or so but I'm hoping flashbangs have some effect on locking these guys down, or is it just really important to have Psi around to counteract their own bullshit?
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Feb 13, 2016 03:08
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Internet Kraken posted:Witches are completely immune to flash bangs so don't bother. They also teleport after every hit which makes killing them a massive pain. However, attacks that consist of more than one hit like rapid fire don't trigger their teleport until the second hit, making them very effective. My ranger became the designated witch hunter for the end game, as critting on both shots took out most of their health bar. Yeah right, I was on the right track but my dice rolls were not in my favour and I was in way over my head on that mission. I don't think Revival pulls you out of mind control (although might be worth double checking, would've gone a lot differently if it's the case and I did that), I wasted my Ranger because otherwise he would *definitely* kill me with his turn, he just happened to survive to be stabilised. Mind control gets removed you get someone to bleed out although obviously that's a bit drastic.
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Feb 13, 2016 03:26
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Y'know I thought this before the game came out, and I still believe this is true, although I'd want to beat the game convincingly on Legendary Ironman before actually trying to mod it. I think the game tonally and balance wise could really benefit from a mod that leans on the guerilla warfare side of things. What I was thinking is: - all missions except supply raids require evacuation, so Guerilla Ops, Council Missions, Retaliation and Facility hits all require evacuation, and they also are continually reinforced until you do. The idea here is you should have to scramble to get the job done. Time limits get you moving, but you usually only need one or two good pushes to get you to the objective and then it's clean up from there, reinforcements should ratchet up in intensity until it's unmanageable. Reinforcements should start shortly after you make contact, so you can do a lot of set up if you want, but you will be punished for trying to overwatch trap after your first management. - all supply raid missions (not just the UFO ones) have an objective that needs to be reached to prevent reinforcements coming, and if they do then the mission is an evac and bust because you can no longer secure the site. - possibly change the economy up, make missions where you secure the site be your primary means of getting supplies other than monthly income (which Retaliation missions increase), so Guerilla, Council & Facility all provide intel or human assets. - because the game will be hitting your squad much harder, I imagine there'll be many more injuries, maybe give Guerilla Training School the ability to rank up more than just Rookies provided the soldier has a proportionate amount of combat experience. Tether this to mission experience so kills aren't the be all and end all for ranking up. The thing I like about this is if you can pull it off in a balanced way, the objectives become the focus and abusive strategies become much riskier, because playing for time may indeed make the mission impossible to complete. I like that XCOM 2 has this great, quick EVAC option where you can just pop smoke wherever (possibly it might be interesting to balance this with a 1 turn delay so you can't fly as close to the sun as you can currently), but it feels like there are too many missions where it's possible and expected for you to kill all the enemies on the field. Anyway, it might not work at all, but I think it's an interesting way to change the game without actually changing TOO much about it.
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Feb 13, 2016 05:23
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Speedball posted:I'm amazed this isn't some sort of conflict of interest. Except it's not a review or even remotely considered as journalism?
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Feb 13, 2016 07:39
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Motherfucker posted:All you need to do to nerf mimics is make them as much a target as any other unit. Aliens will still target the out of cover fake soldier, but if your whole squad is standing around than one mimic won't save them from having their poo poo chopped into confetti by laserfire. I think it'd be great to make the mimic behave like how you'd need it to behave to be credible in multiplayer. The beacon is limited by the move distance of the player, looks like a real soldier, cloaks the thrower. Aliens target it like it is a credible soldier, which means don't run out of loving cover to hit it. Honestly that feels like one of the biggest issues with it, the AI by design loses its mind around mimic beacons.
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Feb 14, 2016 07:46
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Is it just me or is battle scanner and Scanning protocol restricted by LoS, as opposed to how they seem to work in Beagle's videos (which are prerelease I think) where they ignore LoS and let you scan a whole building. I've been getting a lot less mileage out of them than I expected because of it and makes chrysalis missions a bit hit and miss, scanning doesn't mean poo poo if the target was holed up in a bit of cover near the scan.
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Feb 19, 2016 02:16
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Harrow posted:I remembered reading somewhere that they're not blocked by walls and elevation in XCOM 2, but maybe that was misinformation. They definitely did work like that in Beagle's videos but they're from the prerelease build so I guess the got rebalanced back to needing LoS.
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Feb 19, 2016 02:51
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Finished Commander Ironman last night in pretty convincing fashion. I was backing up my saved every session but never actually ran into any save breaking bugs. Aside from a bad encounter with two Faceless on my second retaliation, and being caught between a Gatekeeper and an Avatar on the Psionic Gate mission, things went pretty well with not too many losses. I'd love more of the constant reinforcements while pushing towards the objective like the final room, it was actually a bit tamer than I expected it to be. I was well equipped and as long as you save the serious hardware for it, it feels like you can zone out the pods long enough to collect plenty of Avatar hits in splash damage. Do that enough and eventually they'll be in safer run and gun range for a rapid fire, so I'm pretty sure the whole engagement only lasted four or five turns.
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Feb 21, 2016 03:15
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MikeC posted:If I was had the inclination, I wouldn't just improve drop pods like adding more dudes or removing the flare marker. I would probably be inclined to change the entire gameplay structure to fit the stealth/guerilla theme more. I don't have any problems with the design of the game or how it plays out (I think this is a fantastic game) but I think if they were more adventurous, they would do something like the following. This is pretty much the mod I'd like to make once I've beaten Legendary Ironman and have a semi decent handle on balance. I think the last room of the final mission proves that it can be an interesting pressure to play under, and more than that, I think it proves how to do it. Reinforcements should always be where you're not, and active, and frequent, so that way you have to work around active pods that you can't just trap and kill in a single turn. I think you'd need squad size up to 6-8 to compensate, as well as GTS mechanics that help you maintain a diverse roster for the inevitable casualties, but I think more missions with a forced evac will make for far more interesting scenarios to play than the standard mission currently, where it's possible to own the map and also cheese out any mission without a time limit. Using weight of enemies to force 'playing to the objective' feels like it could be a very positive change to the difficulty, without needing to gently caress with the actual mechanics of combat too much.
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Feb 21, 2016 03:44
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Odobenidae posted:I found that you can fix the floors + ceilings being invisible or staying opaque bug by hitting either one of the number 1/2 keys for fire/overwatch once and then backing out, it works every time for me. All you need is something that changes you to the ground level camera, as that forces the transparency layers to reset. The firing camera is the easiest way to do that usually.
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Feb 22, 2016 04:02
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peak debt posted:If your dps can't keep up with the adds you need to get people that don't suck Yeah, you're turtling too much if you end up irretrievably outnumbered, at that stage of the game the only thing that should be stopping you from wiping 1-2 pods per turn is they're out of range, so close and engage. Maxed out psi troops have massive range on some abilities too though so you don't have to play particularly risky, just aggressively take ground with the blue move and murder pods with the gold.
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Feb 22, 2016 12:11
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dyzzy posted:There's a bit of hyperbole in there but yeah, considering the cost of pre-leveled recruits at HQ that's basically what's happening there Yeah, the whole point of only taking out your A team is you are trying to defer risk, the risk of losing this mission vs the risk of losing later missions. This risk is far greater in Legendary so you need to compensate for it, and it definitely changes the balance of the game to your favour in a big way if you're not forced to compensate with balanced rostering.
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Feb 26, 2016 00:53
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Moola posted:I used it thinking it would give the user cover too That said though, it is a way you could make a piece of high cover support WAR suits + 1, it's highly situational but could help if you haven't got enough high cover to go around.
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Feb 26, 2016 02:13
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Olive Branch posted:Try losing two soldiers behind a car on a VIP extraction mission because an ADVENT trooper's gauss rifle somehow lands on the car's gas tank and it immediately blows up. I'd rather lose a VIP than two soldiers. One of them was modeled on me, too. The rule for me is no cover on cars when pods are active on the map, no cover on cars when uncovering territory (in case you activate and get stuck on the car), no cover on cars period on missions where faceless are a possibility. They can activate and attack in the same enemy turn, and if they hit a soldier taking cover on a car they're almost guaranteed to kill when in Kevlar.
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Feb 27, 2016 21:44
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There is a bug where if a unit is knocked unconscious next to a car and is then carried clear, if the car explodes they'll still receive the damage from it no matter where they are. Whenever you're pulling a VIP away from a car, you want to try and pull the fighting away from that car because it can't get a single scratch on it.
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Feb 28, 2016 03:29
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Away all Goats posted:You can fix it by carrying the VIP away, put him down, then pick him again and the car explosion won't kill them. I didn't realise putting them down did a reset, makes sense. Although it wouldn't of helped when I first ran into it, as the turn I moved from the car was just a when it blew up, I felt absolutely robbed when I got a failure on capturing him after taking a bunch of risks to drag the VIP from the fire.
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Feb 28, 2016 03:39
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SynthOrange posted:Flashbangs are great against anything with special abilities. It cancels any already in use, like mind control, zombies, panic, debuffs aim and movement. It's great. Yeah, even later in the game, nothing really compares when it comes to area of effect denial of special abilities. That said though, it's kinda necessary that the ayyys live through the turn for it to be useful, so it makes much more sense in higher difficulties where a pod has a chance to survive a turn, and there are higher numbers of contacts in general.
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Feb 28, 2016 21:49
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Vargs posted:Incendiary bombs stop things from using special abilities as well, in addition to doing a poo poo ton of direct and DoT damage. If you want the movement speed reduction and extremely lackluster accuracy penalty, gas has got you covered. I just don't see a whole lot of point in flashbangs once you start getting other, better options. There are some situations where they'd be nice, but not enough to justify using one of your very limited utility slots. That's fine though, they're cheap and they serve their purpose at the pint of the game they're intended to.
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Feb 28, 2016 22:32
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Melanion posted:Can you evac after shooting if you're in the evac zone? I've got my full squad in the blue with a reinforcement pod hanging out nearby and I wouldn't say no to farming a promotion before bugging out. Evacuation is a free move so you can take it even after gold moves, so I imagine shooting and then evaccing will be fine too.
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Feb 29, 2016 00:29
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I gotta say I roll eyes a bit at how much people say is unfair from the aliens, when the poo poo you're given to work with across the entire game is not even close to fair. You can take free shots against an entire pod with a 3-4 turn cool down. Inflict 30-40 damage in a single action with no cool down. Proc a repeater that's guaranteed to kill regardless of health available. Infinite over watch with high aim. Serial. Ongoing concealment. Mimic beacons. Be unfair right back at em and roll with the punches. The game would be sterile if the enemy wasn't a credible threat even when you're getting comfortable.
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Mar 1, 2016 20:07
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