XCom2 opinions

I realised now why Marbozir and Chris Odd can play the game on legendary...
The frost bomb in the dlc is crazily over powered.

Oh, I'm not in the mood to fight this group now, let's freeze them.

What a difference it makes.

I restarted without the notoriety mod again after not being able to field a good team for a difficult map screwed me.

I feel like that dlc is a must to play on high difficulties and difficult mods.

Henrique are you playing with the dlc ?


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Pladio said:

I realised now why Marbozir and Chris Odd can play the game on legendary…
The frost bomb in the dlc is crazily over powered.

Oh, I'm not in the mood to fight this group now, let's freeze them.

What a difference it makes.

I restarted without the notoriety mod again after not being able to field a good team for a difficult map screwed me.

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I never heard of this mod before, I suppose you're using this one: Squad Notoriety. From the mod's description, I take it makes the game a bit more difficult than it already is

Pladio said:

I feel like that dlc is a must to play on high difficulties and difficult mods.

Henrique are you playing with the dlc ?

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Yes, I started playing XCOM 2 again with both Shen's Last Gift and Alien Hunters activated. But I will refrain from using mods that rise game's difficulty (eg: A Better Advent, A Better AI, Guerilla War, this Squad Notoriety, among others). At very least, I'll refrain from using them on this 2nd playthru of mine.

But then I hit a particular XCOM 2 nuisance, one that the game should have dealt with right after it was released: "How to effectively draw soldiers from our character pool?" Since I finished the game long ago and I never touched it again (until now), I thought this "issue" had been fixed. I even created a thread on Steam's discussion forums to ask that.

Otherwise, why bother designing a roster of RPGWatch members if they won't appear with the classes I chose myself for them?

And another lesser issue: I can't seem to make the mod "Free Camera Rotation" to properly work here. I can live without it; I wouldn't like but I can.
EDIT: Dumb me! Somehow I forgot LW Toolbox has a setting to set camera rotation. Being so, I will stop using Free Camera Rotation.

Note: I updated the post where I list the mods I am using.

There's a mod for the character pool thing, actually. Load from character pool: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=618960429

Just change the name of a character that has the right profession to match one in the pool and has a nickname unlocked, push the button, and POOF! I've got this mod but I haven't actually activated it yet.

henriquejr said:

I personally wouldn't think of that, Marios. As I said above I finished XCOM 2 only once, playing vanilla, way before the 2 DLCs came out (Alien Hunters and Shen's Last Gift). And I didn't feel noob
Naturally, on my 2nd playthru I am more than eager to use some mods, but you shouldn't feel like a noob or something.

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Hehe, no worries, after several dozen turn-based war games, I feel at home in such environment!

BTW, I postponed my starting X-COM 2 because I started getting trashed when playing higher difficulty in Mordheim: City of the Damned (which you should really play if you haven't) and I needed to get back at them!

Haha, this is an amazing start !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOI11iDbGoI&list=PLj_Goi54wf0frL4I5Qjksy44_-S6iBrlK&index=1

ROFL!! Start at about 6 or 7 minutes in.

Zloth,

Are you sure that panicked soldiers in Long War just hunker down? I am asking this because I'm using the whole 1st set of LW mods, and I got a soldier panicked by a Sectoid and this very soldier opened fiire against some enemies (luckily he didn't open fire at my squad), instead of just hunkering down. Go figure!

Unrelated note:
Has anyone seen (and tried to use) this mod: Gotcha Again?

The modder says "Gotcha Again is a complete remake of the popular Gotcha mod. It was made since the authors of the original Gotcha mod does not seem to be maintaining their mod anymore, and there are some bugs that needed fixing (false flanking and spotting indications).
This mod offers all the functionality of the original Gotcha mod as well as some extra ones plus multiple sets of icons to choose from for the objective-arrows."

I'm using the old "Gotcha (Flank Preview Evolved)" and I've seen people talking about this mod's bugs and "false positives". Maybe I subscribe to this new Gotcha mod, I just wanna know if anyone here is already using it at the moment.

henriquejr said:

Zloth,

Are you sure that panicked soldiers in Long War just hunker down? I am asking this because I'm using the whole 1st set of LW mods, and I got a soldier panicked by a Sectoid and this very soldier opened fiire against some enemies (luckily he didn't open fire at my squad), instead of just hunkering down. Go figure!

Unrelated note:
Has anyone seen (and tried to use) this mod: Gotcha Again?

The modder says "Gotcha Again is a complete remake of the popular Gotcha mod. It was made since the authors of the original Gotcha mod does not seem to be maintaining their mod anymore, and there are some bugs that needed fixing (false flanking and spotting indications).
This mod offers all the functionality of the original Gotcha mod as well as some extra ones plus multiple sets of icons to choose from for the objective-arrows."

I'm using the old "Gotcha (Flank Preview Evolved)" and I've seen people talking about this mod's bugs and "false positives". Maybe I subscribe to this new Gotcha mod, I just wanna know if anyone here is already using it at the moment.

Click to expand...

The LW mods are not the same as the full LW2 mod. So functionality is likely to be very different.
I am using the LW mods too for now and the panic is random. I actually find it funny most of the time, but I had not had one happen like Tobias Batch in Chris Odd's mission above.

I am still using Gotcha Flank Preview Evolved, but I may try the other one once I finish this playthrough. Let me know how it is for you.

I'll probably will try this new Gotcha mod, since I'll restart the campaign again once I stop making new soldiers to fill up my ranks Not that I got too far, I was in the 3rd mission or so.

EDIT: I also noticed the panic effects (with LW mods, not the LW2 ones) are still random as much as they were in the vanilla game.

Another small mod worth taking a look: Drone Reveal Animation.

This is a mod which makes you wonder why this feature wasn't implemented in LW Alien Pack (it requires either LW Alien Pack, Long War 2 or A Better Advent 2).

I got a real interesting character in my Long War play recently: a sniper that was able to train Run & Gun. I re-trained her so she could learn snapshot, which means she can hit the Run & Gun, dash from one rooftop to another, then shoot like an assault character! She's gonna be fuuuuuuun!

Zloth said:

I got a real interesting character in my Long War play recently: a sniper that was able to train Run & Gun. I re-trained her so she could learn snapshot, which means she can hit the Run & Gun, dash from one rooftop to another, then shoot like an assault character! She's gonna be fuuuuuuun!

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Give her a spider suit too

Grapple is fun to jump from building to building.

Just updated the list of mods I am currently using.

Another recenlty released mod I am keeping my eye on: No Full Cover Grabs

Because, as most users say, it is very annoying to have your soldier, who is protected behind full cover, suddenly becoming defenseless when a Viper decides to yank him/her from God-knows-where.

I haven't installed this mod yet because I'll wait for one or two more fixes. RealityMachina is one of the great XCOM 2 modders around.

henriquejr said:

Another recenlty released mod I am keeping my eye on: No Full Cover Grabs

Because, as most users say, it is very annoying to have your soldier, who is protected behind full cover, suddenly becoming defenseless when a Viper decides to yank him/her from God-knows-where.

I haven't installed this mod yet because I'll wait for one or two more fixes. RealityMachina is one of the great XCOM 2 modders around.

Click to expand...

I don't know. I think that's something to plan for.

Fighting vipers makes it more interesting and you need to use flash bangs to stop them from using their special abilities.

The ai already is usually weaker than you so it makes sense for them to have this ability to offset simple positioning ....


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Flashbang grenade does that? My grenadiers never fired flashbangs, I always prefer the explosive kind.

Flashbangs are wonder weapons! They can't move as far, their aim is bad, they can't use grenades (I think - I know my own soldiers can't), and no special abilities. They don't work on the robots, though.

The tongue thing doesn't seem that bad to me. When you soldier gets yanked in you can still shoot the snake with no chance if hitting your own soldier. They only lose a hit point per turn (and it comes off ablative armor first in LW2) and, once you free them, they are often in a great spot to flank enemies. The poison, on the other hand... ouch.

Anyone want to explain LW2 to myself - esp this inflitration thing. Also how large can a group be - it seems like 8 but sometime it isn't - hum… i found hte base game trivial to understand but this LW 2 is kind of like ocnfusing. Also i can stand right infront and fire point blank and miss (miss a lot); but they don't seem to miss much.

Also when you make contact with a new region there is "haven: #" what is haven ? What does the number represent (the unmoded game would display $$$ from a region but LW2 does not do that).

you said:

Anyone want to explain LW2 to myself - esp this inflitration thing. Also how large can a group be - it seems like 8 but sometime it isn't - hum… i found hte base game trivial to understand but this LW 2 is kind of like ocnfusing. Also i can stand right infront and fire point blank and miss (miss a lot); but they don't seem to miss much.

Also when you make contact with a new region there is "haven: #" what is haven ? What does the number represent (the unmoded game would display $$$ from a region but LW2 does not do that).

Click to expand...

First of all when you make contact with a region you gain control of its haven. Haven is a base for rebels and the number next to it represents the number of rebels you control. You can give them 4 commands: Supply (they gather $$ but it's a meager amount until you liberate a region), recruit (they recruit more rebels), hiding (hiding lowers advent's vigilance-the more rebels you have active in one region the more troops and attention from advent (which is also sort of represented by advent strength) and finally intel-collects intel and more importantly allows you to spot all sorts of missions early. This is very important because it's connected to the infiltration mechanics. The sooner you spot (scan) a mission the more time will be at your disposal to infiltrate a larger group of soldiers. You can send up to 10 soldiers on regular missions but higher the number bigger the infiltration time penalty.

I hope this helps a bit. LW2 is a great mod and they are still working on new patches.

There's a LOT to learn about! See here: http://ufopaedia.org/index.php/Category:Long_War_2

Infiltration is on that list. When your haven discovers a mission you'll have some number of days before it must be done. (The more folks on intel the earlier you'll find them so, at least in the first months, put them ALL on intel!) The more days you have, the more people you'll be able to bring along. There are a lot of things that can play with infiltration time like soldier class, officer skills, soldier skills, and suppressor add-ons to your weapons.

Be sure to get your infiltration to 100%! The number of enemies ramps up pretty quickly and it will take longer to get evacuated. You can actually go over 100% but there's little benefit to that early on in the game. The game will pause when a squad gets to 100% but there's no message so, if you're scanning away somewhere and the game pauses for no reason, it's probably because one of your squads somewhere hit 100%.

Some folks like messing around with this feature. A lot of people will take just a Shinobi and maybe one or two people to tag along for the xp so that infiltration happens very quickly then they try to stealth the mission. You also could take a full squad, not bother with infiltration or the mission goal, start the evacuation as soon as the mission starts, and play it like a shooting gallery. I'm not so sure that's a good policy as most of your xp comes from completing missions and you probably won't be able to pick up much loot but it might be a fun change of pace.

Finally, you can trade intel for infiltration. I think it doubles whatever you're at so, if you're at 50% it will pump you up to 100%. If you're at 100% it will take you to 200%. If you're at 200% it will be a complete waste of intel points.