XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - Now talking about the new WOTC Long War Mod

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sat Oct 20, 2018 7:24 pm

I'm in June and still haven't been able to move my Templar faction influence. Not sure why that is, although I have not moved onto their continent yet, so maybe that's it? I can still use their HQ for scanning though, so I'd be surprised if I needed to have contact with the continent first.

Things are going ok. I'm still taking a ton of damage each mission, but healing is pretty fast in wotc and I have a decent stable of soldiers so I haven't been left hanging just yet. I haven't lost a soldier in awhile, so maybe I'm improving? The soldiers are definitely improving, so maybe that's all it is.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sat Oct 20, 2018 11:35 pm

There is something wacky about the mission auto-saves. I have autosaves for turn 3,4 and 5, but I'm missing 6 and 7. I'm on turn 8.

On the one hand, I'd be seriously pissed if I were prevented from recovering from a squad wipe because the save system screwed up. On the other, it prevents heavy savescumming. The truth is I ate a grenade and just generally did poorly, but I was willing to accept it and move on. Unfortunately I forgot purifiers can explode, and I had 3 guys standing beside him when he did. I'm pretty sure he was the last enemy. I just wanted to go back 1 turn and move away from him first. It was a brain dead mistake, but even then it only cost the life of 1 of my dudes.

I don't really care, and my next game is going to be ironman probably anyway, but I could see it being fury inducing for some people.

Fardaza · Post by **Fardaza** » Sat Oct 20, 2018 11:46 pm

GreenGoo wrote: ↑Sat Oct 20, 2018 5:36 pm Seriously considering a black market mod that tells me what corpses are used for and how many I need for the use. Trying to figure out what's safe to sell and what isn't is a pain.

Is there a mod that does that? I just looked online for a list.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sun Oct 21, 2018 12:18 am

Fardaza wrote: ↑Sat Oct 20, 2018 11:46 pm
GreenGoo wrote: ↑Sat Oct 20, 2018 5:36 pm Seriously considering a black market mod that tells me what corpses are used for and how many I need for the use. Trying to figure out what's safe to sell and what isn't is a pain.
Is there a mod that does that? I just looked online for a list.

I believe this mod does it

black market usage

Author claims it works with wotc. I guess I'll find out.

edit: Works great. Creates a new icon on the item line that provides mouseover information on what you can build with the corpse, and how many corpses per item. You can also set it to only show you stuff that you've researched, or to show you everything. There is a 3rd setting "obfuscate" which I assume tells you that there are things the corpse is needed for that have not been researched yet, but doesn't tell you what those things are.

ColdSteel · Post by **ColdSteel** » Sun Oct 21, 2018 9:37 am

It's late July in my current game and last night I took out the Assassin in her stronghold. It was a tough mission but no tougher than some of the others I've had. The assassin herself was actually pretty easy once my reaper spotted and marked her. I ended up with my best ranger injured and everyone is really tired which will keep them out of action for as long as being injured would. Time for the B team to do some work. Next up is the hunter but I need to locate his stronghold first so more covert ops to do.

Does anyone know how to get more of the resistance order cards? Not the slots, the cards themselves? I can't find that info online anywhere. I have a bunch of crappy cards and I'd like to get more choices for stuff to slot in.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sun Oct 21, 2018 3:18 pm

Late July in my game too.

More resistance cards are definitely gained by covert ops. You also get more cards when you improve rank of influence with each faction. Actually I'm only pretty sure, not 100%. I don't know if there are other sources, like missions or whatever.

I've been late dealing with the Avatar project, so I've had it counting down on me twice. The problem with that is the counter doesn't reset. The next time I'm at full Avatar Project the counter will start where it left off last time, so you get less and less time to deal with it if you wait too long.

That said, a covert op knocked it back once and the first facility assault knocked it back a second time, but that's twice it has been at full so I think the counter is down around 6 days.

The assassin has full knowledge of our location, so I'm expecting an Avenger Assault any time now. The internet is split on the mission. Some say it's fantastic bit of fun and others find it a chore and still others find it stressful and dangerous. We'll see. I think I'm gonna make a defense grid just in case (assuming I've unlocked it. Not sure on that). edit: Nope, not unlocked.

I've put off going after the Assassin, or even discovering her hideout yet, so I need to get working on that asap in any case.

Psilab is finally up, but I had to actually spend cash to recruit a rookie to put in it, since I had trained everyone to at least squaddie in the GTS. That annoyed me. Word on the street is to put standard combat intelligence dudes into Psi-training, as they have few AP to spend anyway, and psi-operatives don't use AP. I think.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sun Oct 21, 2018 3:47 pm

PSA: Build the Psilab and the Shadow Chamber on your power coils. Fully upgraded they use more power (but are free on the coils) than you gain by building a power plant on the coil.

And so it begins. The Assassin is at my doorstep. No defense matrix. 2 days ago I had the most injured and tired soldiers ever, but somewhat fortuitously I decided to scan (the first time I've scanned at *any* HQ) at the Templar HQ for the increased healing time, so things might not be as bad as they could have been. edit: It's pretty bad. Almost everyone is still tired, if not injured and tired. Most of the injuries are only 1 or 2 hp though, so it's probably still doable. Not sure what tired does, except make soldiers more prone to panic and vulnerable to psionics, maybe? We'll see.

I'll let you know how it goes.

ColdSteel · Post by **ColdSteel** » Sun Oct 21, 2018 4:13 pm

GreenGoo wrote: ↑Sun Oct 21, 2018 3:18 pm Word on the street is to put standard combat intelligence dudes into Psi-training, as they have few AP to spend anyway, and psi-operatives don't use AP. I think.

Yeah, too late. I put my only rookie genius in there figuring it would work like the rest of the game does. Boy, I'm pissed at the waste.

What I'd like to do is create a small mod to the Psi Lab that reduces training time for a Psi troop by an additional 5% for every intelligence level they are above above standard intelligence. This would stack with the scientist deduction if you have one staffed in the lab.

Above Average - 5% training time reduction
Gifted - 10% training time reduction
Genius - 15% training time reduction
Savant - 20% training time reduction

This way there would be some benefit to your troop's intelligence in Psi school which I think makes sense and removes the inconsistency that Firaxis created here. Otherwise, as you say, you'd always send your dimmest troops to the Psi lab. Plus, I think it would also help get some Psi troops into the field before the end game. Right now Psi is kind of just tacked on and not really much of a part of the game until, suddenly, it is.

Does anyone here have any XCOM modding experience?

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sun Oct 21, 2018 5:45 pm

I panicked when I saw how many dudes were visible and started hucking explosives all over the place. Chrysalids made a mad dash for my formation and I had to prioritize them when I didn't want to. I accidentally blew up the tree my cpl. sharpshooter was standing behind and I lost her on turn 3. That made half my guys go nuts because they were so tired. I was able to get it under control however, and I've killed over 20 guys now, plus a couple of heavy mec hacks. Cheesing the big gun with stealthed dudes and my lone surviving sharpshooter slowed down the countdown to death, and killing 3 of 4 of the little guns has made it so that I just need to clean up the enemy units. I can still see another 15 or so, some of which have activated but then lost sight of all my guys. They seem to be looking for me but I'm so far away now that they are basically running in circles.

I'm probably gonna cheese a few key enemies (the priest, for sure. He stasis'd a heavy mec I hacked and it lost the hack status. That's not gonna happen again if I can help it) and then start killing pods. So far I haven't had to reload, although losing my 2nd sharpshooter really slowed me down a lot.

I've been pulled away from the keyboard a few times so I haven't been at the mission full time. I should be able to finish it in 40-50 mins I figure, depending on caution and hack success.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sun Oct 21, 2018 6:11 pm

Ok, I call bullcrap. The enemy was assaulting our high ground, lots of targets for them, high threat, I had hit them several times, I had a stealthed reaper and ranger almost against the side of the map, with the ranger more than a full run away from the enemy. First, codex teleports right near my reaper, which gives him los to a 2nd ranger even farther away than the reaper or stealthed ranger, about twice as far as the high threat soldiers. There was no reason for the codex to teleport there. Worse, EVERY enemy turns from the combat they are engaged in and runs straight at the codex discovered ranger. One of the enemies runs right into my reaper, who is revealed. One of the enemies who hadn't moved yet flanked her and killed her.

The entire thing was basically a frontal assault on my high fortification, then a hard right 90 degree turn then a full sprint away from all the guys shooting at them to chase the recently seen ranger. Most of the enemy couldn't even fire on him AFTER they sprinted towards him.

I might give the random teleporting of the codex a pass. I mean, not really, but maybe. But to have every single ai unit reprioritize a soldier out of their range, far to the side of where they can literally see and attack other soldiers of mine? I'm not sure what kind of ai would do that, but damn if they didn't run straight over my reaper.

It wasn't that they targeted stealthed dudes that they had no reason to believe were there, it's that the codex "randomly" teleports away from combat right into the LoS of a ranger that I basically had in the corner of the map. Once he was spotted, every single unit went after him, bypassing a large number of targets to go after the ranger, despite the fact that they were *still* in range of all my dudes who they could have fired upon, instead choosing to sprint, leaving them still out of range for next turn.

I'm save scumming that. No way I'm eating that kind of crap if I don't have to.

ColdSteel · Post by **ColdSteel** » Sun Oct 21, 2018 8:13 pm

I don't like the codex enemy because they're basically a little RNG that can mess you up quick by teleporting to the wrong spot, as you encountered. Plus, if you just damage them, they split into 2 codex and the copy teleports, which is even worse.

I've started equipping my snipers with bluescreen ammo and making it a priority to one-shot them when they appear on the map. They're machines so the bluescreen rounds plus the sniper rifle does a lot of damage to them. I had one pop up in the final battle with the Assassin last night and my sniper with bluescreen ammo one-shot it immediately. I try to park my snipers centrally in battles and get them elevated if possible. My best sniper has by far the most kills and it's not even close.

PSA:

Spoiler:

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sun Oct 21, 2018 11:01 pm

I don't really have any issues with the codex, although in this case it was a weirdly random teleport, but I can deal with that. What was really galling was the stampede towards the newly discovered but still miles away ranger.

In any case, here's what the armory looks like now that the Avenger is safe (but for how long?!).

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Mon Oct 22, 2018 1:37 am

GreenGoo wrote: ↑Sat Oct 20, 2018 7:24 pm I'm in June and still haven't been able to move my Templar faction influence. Not sure why that is, although I have not moved onto their continent yet, so maybe that's it? I can still use their HQ for scanning though, so I'd be surprised if I needed to have contact with the continent first.

This was it. Once I made contact with the resistance on the continent with the Templar HQ, I immediately had a "hunt the hunter" covert op that will increase my influence with the Templars.

There are so many things I would do differently in my next game, and this is one of them. I spent months with no covert orders for Templars because I didn't have medium influence with them yet.

So my guys recovered just enough to take on a supply mission with the lost and the Hunter. Things went well and only my reaper got wounded. I face tanked a lost just so I could grab an extra crate. 2 of my guys were cpls and 1 was a rookie, so they all level'd.

The problem is that the Avatar meter just maxed out again, and while I do have 1 facility available to be raided, all my guys are either wounded (still from the avenger defense) or tired (from this mission and the avenger defense). I'm really scraping the bottom of the barrel here. No hero classes available, no stealthed ranger available, and a bunch of low ranking guys. I might take Mox with a mind shield, would should prevent him from going nuts (pretty sure mind shields protect against all panic-type effects as well as mind control etc), but he'll be so worn out afterward I'm sure he'll have a negative trait.

I have 6 days until the Avatar project completes. I'm pretty sure I can do the facility unless we see the next tier of aliens show up. I'm in predator armor and everyone has gauss, although we've been like this for awhile. It's only a matter of time before Sectopods start showing up.

I might actually lose this game, despite save scumming like a mofo.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Mon Oct 22, 2018 2:00 am

Bit of a daft question, but I'm not 100% sure of the answer and I can't find anyone detailing it anywhere. Which probably means it's obvious but I'm overthinking it (or just dumb, I guess?)

What does the Templar's skill Overcharge do?

Paingod · Post by **Paingod** » Mon Oct 22, 2018 7:32 am

GreenGoo wrote: ↑Mon Oct 22, 2018 2:00 amWhat does the Templar's skill Overcharge do?

I honestly didn't know and went to find out. It adds a 33% chance for each hit with Rend (the basic melee attack) to generate 1 Focus by itself without killing anything. I don't know if it stacks with the other effects. Sometimes my Templars get +1 Focus for a kill, then +1 Focus immediately for a dropped Orb. I tend to use them as either spellcasters or "last hit, get the kill" because of this.

I admit I don't use Templars regularly; they're my least favorite of the new three classes in WotC.

I finished my Legacy runs last night and am taking a little breather with Rimworld for a bit. It was a fun trip, and while the the payout of the last mission was awesome, I need a break.

So the complete list of Legacy Rewards is...

Spoiler:

I'm not sure how these play into the achievement to beat the game with Legacy gear. I've done the last mission with basic gear (Who Needs Tygan?). It sounds like the same concept, only visually different. Do I need to wear the armor and helmets, too? Just the guns? I'm probably going to wait for more info online to emerge before chasing that one.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Mon Oct 22, 2018 8:44 am

My Templar has spent most of his time on covert ops, going after mobility bonuses. He's at 16 mob right now which is 2/3*16=10.66 tiles in a straight line, which doesn't seem like much but it's huge. Everyone starts are 12 mob, which is 2/3*12 = 8 tiles. That's 2.66 (decimals matter on diagonals/rounding apparently) extra tiles per move, or 5.33 extra for a sprint. The last mission he went on he killed 5 guys in the same turn with Reaper after I softened them up with grenades and shots. The next turn he grabbed an about to be airlifted chest, killed someone on his second move, then grabbed another chest with his free cover move. He also has parry if needed. He has his dodge up to 44 now, which is 44% chance of half damage if the ai chance to hit is less than 100%.

He's solid, but no bladestorm unfortunately.

I grabbed the skirmisher equivalent of bladestorm, but he misses as often as he hits, which kind of defeats the purpose of the skill. I'd still take it again, but it's a lot less effective than the ranger bladestorm, probably because the ranger has at least 1 skill, maybe more that add to his melee chance to-hit.

The Reaper is the least interesting to me. She just scouts and finishes off anything she can kill in 1 shot, which allows her to stay stealthed. I do use her tactically when the time is right. As I said I used her to grab chests and outrun the lost chasing her. I used her to face tank a lost while grabbing a chest rather than stealth and escape. She has her uses besides forward spotting, but not many, or often.

Paingod · Post by **Paingod** » Mon Oct 22, 2018 8:52 am

Reaper is a top-tier Ranger skill... You must have lucked out and gotten it as one of those "Cross-Trained" hidden skills that sometimes pop up. I think that if I had a Templar that could chain-kill, I'd probably like them more...

Your subsequent Templars may not be as awesome...

GreenGoo wrote: ↑Mon Oct 22, 2018 8:44 amThe Reaper is the least interesting to me. She just scouts and finishes off anything she can kill in 1 shot, which allows her to stay stealthed.

I think Reapers are game changers and don't like leaving home without one. They allow you to ambush group after group of enemies by dragging them into Overwatch fire on their turn after pulling them with a Sniper, and their "spotted" zone is 1 tile around them, meaning even a bad move isn't likely to kill you. During the Legacy missions, my Reapers were invaluable for planning ahead, and I loved dropping a Claymore mine in the midst of a group, and then detonating it with a Plasma grenade from a Grenadier. Double-bang, often leaving even strong enemies with 1/3 of their health. On the missions where I had Remote Start, it decimated enemies using explosives/barrels/cars/trucks for cover.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Mon Oct 22, 2018 8:58 am

Paingod wrote: ↑Mon Oct 22, 2018 8:52 am Reaper is a top-tier Ranger skill... You must have lucked out and gotten it as one of those "Cross-Trained" hidden skills that sometimes pop up. I think that if I had a Templar that could chain-kill, I'd probably like them more...

Your subsequent Templars may not be as awesome...

Reaper and Bladestorm are both Xcom skills that show up for Templars. Each hero class only has a handful/pool of Xcom skills that are randomly generated for that hero. It's highly unlikely to miss both of those skills, but if it ever happens, I will seriously consider killing/dismissing that Templar and getting another one until I get one with at least one of those 2 skills. Both those skills show up in the lower ranks for Templar. I think Reaper was at the sgt. rank for my Templar. I don't know if it can only show up for that rank or if it can show up later too. I'm pretty sure the pool is randomly generated AND randomly assigned a rank that it unlocks at.

That said, gifted/genius/savant soldiers can be at least as effective as Hero classes, and sometimes more so depending on how they're built. No one is going to be a better spotter than the Reaper due to increased mobility while stealthed and decreased detection radius, but that's just one job. It's a very important job, but it's one dimensional. Don't get me wrong, you can use her for other things, but top end soldiers with extra skills via AP can be overpowered too.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Mon Oct 22, 2018 9:12 am

Paingod wrote: ↑Mon Oct 22, 2018 8:52 am changers and don't like leaving home without one. They allow you to ambush group after group of enemies by dragging them into Overwatch fire on their turn after pulling them with a Sniper, and their "spotted" zone is 1 tile around them, meaning even a bad move isn't likely to kill you. During the Legacy missions, my Reapers were invaluable for planning ahead, and I loved dropping a Claymore mine in the midst of a group, and then detonating it with a Plasma grenade from a Grenadier. Double-bang, often leaving even strong enemies with 1/3 of their health. On the missions where I had Remote Start, it decimated enemies using explosives/barrels/cars/trucks for cover.

Reapers are game changers, but only because spotting is so important on the higher difficulty levels and no one does it better. It's hard to believe we made due with rangers before this, but we did.

I forgot about remote start. That has been insanely effective a number of times. I'm less impressed with the claymore, mostly because I didn't boost it's damage early on. It's still useful, but hardly a mission critical skill. I'm not a huge fan of *any* single use skill, but I find this one to be mediocre most of the time. I don't think it gets any other damage increase (no boost from plasma grenade research, advanced explosives) besides that early skill, but admittedly it is HUGE at the time you get it. i.e. early game. Like I said, I didn't take it, and while I don't regret it, I missed an opportunity. Getting the skill now would be a waste of AP, imo.

Whiplash on the other hand, has turned a dangerous situation into a cakewalk multiple times now for me.

Jag · Post by **Jag** » Mon Oct 22, 2018 10:53 am

Just got Reaper on my Templar. It showed up at the 2nd highest tier, Major maybe? Haven't used it yet, but it looked like an OP talent if used properly.

Maybe it's because my Reaper and Templar are bonded

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Mon Oct 22, 2018 11:11 am

Jag wrote: ↑Mon Oct 22, 2018 10:53 am Just got Reaper on my Templar. It showed up at the 2nd highest tier, Major maybe? Haven't used it yet, but it looked like an OP talent if used properly.

Maybe it's because my Reaper and Templar are bonded

Ok, well that explains that then. Which is good, because it means I still might get bladestorm on my Templar, as he's got a couple of ranks to go still.

Each point of focus means an increase in damage, which nicely offsets the reduction in damage per kill for Reaper, at least for a little while. I'm telling you, mobility 15+ with Reaper means he can run across the screen and back again, killing everything in sight as long as you soften them up a bit first.

Personally I try to have my bonds complement each other, because one of the most frequent uses are to give an AP to the other bondmate. When one is a cpl and the other is a colonel Templar (for example) with Reaper, well, it's an easy decision who gets the extra AP.

I find a Reaper has lots of time on his hands, as I almost always keep him in stealth while the other five kill each pod, so he can probably give up an AP to the Templar. I would avoid a Skirmisher and Templar bond like the plague though. They'd almost never have an opportunity to help each other.

ColdSteel · Post by **ColdSteel** » Mon Oct 22, 2018 12:26 pm

Reapers and Remote Start are insanely good together. On my last Supply Raid mission I parked the rest of my team at the edge of the map in stealth and then took my Reaper around and killed most of the Advent forces and a bunch of the Lost with Remote Start and her 2 claymore mines.

The Advent don't start marking and picking up supply crates until your team breaks stealth so you can take all the time you need to do this. I also had the Reaper explore the whole map to see where all the crates were and mark every enemy.

There was a Spectre and two Sectoids at the other end of the map and after Remote Start took out half the health of the Spectre, my Reaper one shot him (and thus stayed in stealth). She has a superior laser sight and talon rounds equipped and with the skill that increases crit chance with every stealth kill, her crit % was around 80%. That Remote Start caused a Lost horde to appear and attack the Sectoids, so they lost health before they could kill them all. The Reaper killed them both as well. She had earlier taken out 2 other Sectoids with Remote Start and a claymore.

Finally, after the Reaper was though doing as much damage and killing as many as possible, I sneaked the rest of my team into position to attack the remaining Advent troops. There were only 3 left. An Archon, Priest and a Mek. They were clustered together just inside a building so I had my Grenadier lob in a plasma grenade to shred armor, do damage and destroy their cover. Then one of my Rangers tossed in a gas grenade which poisoned the Archon and Priest. My Gunslinger had Kill Zone up and everyone else was on Overwatch. On the enemy turn the Priest took poison damage and died from it. The Mek died to Kill Zone. The Archon dodged all my overwatch and Kill Zone shots (I hate those things) and attacked my specialist. However, since he'd been gassed, his hit % was way lower and he missed so he was an easy kill on the next turn.

I already had other stealthed troops and the Reaper parked near crates on the map so after my attack brought all but the Reaper and other Ranger out of stealth, I was able to mark a bunch of the crates on that turn. I ended up marking the rest of the crates and killing the all the Lost on the map pretty easily.

The Reaper would mark a crate (thus leaving stealth) and then run over near an Remote Start location. The nearby Lost would run over after her and then on the next turn she'd run to the next crate, mark it, pop back into stealth and then use Remote Start to kill the Lost that had followed her over to the explosive. Rinse and repeat.

This was all tremendously fun and satisfying. I ended up killing all the enemies in the mission and getting every crate. I got a tremendous amount of goodies from that including supplies, elerium, alloys and weapon mods. Note that when you kill the last enemy on these missions, it ends the mission and you automatically get the remaining crates.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Mon Oct 22, 2018 12:33 pm

ColdSteel wrote: ↑Mon Oct 22, 2018 12:26 pm Reapers and Remote Start are insanely good together. On my last Supply Raid mission I parked the rest of my team at the edge of the map in stealth and then took my Reaper around and killed most of the Advent forces and a bunch of the Lost with Remote Start and her 2 claymore mines.

That is awesome. However it is my experience that you can rarely get more than 2 remote starts that do anything in a mission, and even then it's not enough to kill armored units. Even so, with claymore and remote start, I'm not surprised you can kill an entire pod with the combination.

My gauss wielding Reaper can only kill in 1 shot about 1/2 of the lost that spawn now. She just does not do enough damage. Which means she mostly needs to avoid the lost rather than cull them. Combine the extra hp lost have now with remote starts and/or claymores, and you must be spawning lost the Reaper can't kill by the swarmload.

However, it worked out for you and that is truly awesome! It's one of the things that makes Xcom 2 great.

On my last supply raid I think I got 9 of 12 crates, but the hunter was being a pain and 2 of the crates were behind him on the other side of the map, so..that's life, I guess. The Hunter is easily the least threatening of the 3, although I haven't taken a squad full of mind shields against the Warlock yet. So far though, he mostly just summons guys for me to shoot.

ColdSteel · Post by **ColdSteel** » Mon Oct 22, 2018 12:55 pm

GreenGoo wrote: ↑Mon Oct 22, 2018 12:33 pm That is awesome. However it is my experience that you can rarely get more than 2 remote starts that do anything in a mission, and even then it's not enough to kill armored units.

You don't need to kill them with Remote Start, just weaken them enough that you can finish them off with your Rifle from stealth. Remember that although the Reaper rifle doesn't do a lot of damage they have a pretty high crit chance when firing close up from stealth and flanking. You can add a lot more to that with Soul Harvest, a laser sight and talon rounds (if you get lucky and get Tactical Rigging like I did). With other skills like Blood Trail and Needle, they can do a surprising amount of damage. And of course Banish can kill any enemy boss in one turn by itself.

GreenGoo wrote: ↑Mon Oct 22, 2018 12:33 pm However it is my experience that you can rarely get more than 2 remote starts that do anything in a mission

That's mostly true except the Supply Raid missions have a TON of Remote Start explosive items on them. They're everywhere. The Retaliation missions have a lot as well. The missions where you have to capture or kill an Advent VIP? You can just Remote Start the vehicle that the VIP and all the bodyguards are standing around. Sure, you miss getting the Intel from capturing the VIP alive but at least it makes for a mission with no injuries.

Paingod · Post by **Paingod** » Mon Oct 22, 2018 1:06 pm

ColdSteel wrote: ↑Mon Oct 22, 2018 12:55 pmBanish can kill any enemy boss in one turn by itself

*Depending on circumstance and boss health

I've had it not kill things a number of times...

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Mon Oct 22, 2018 1:14 pm

ColdSteel wrote: ↑Mon Oct 22, 2018 12:55 pm You don't need to kill them with Remote Start, just weaken them enough that you can finish them off with your Rifle from stealth. Remember that although the Reaper rifle doesn't do a lot of damage they have a pretty high crit chance when firing close up from stealth and flanking. You can add a lot more to that with Soul Harvest, a laser sight and talon rounds (if you get lucky and get Tactical Rigging like I did). With other skills like Blood Trail and Needle, they can do a surprising amount of damage. And of course Banish can kill any enemy boss in one turn by itself.

Fair enough. I built my Reaper for support, which is probably why I think they are 1 dimensional. I do not have Soul Harvest or Blood Trail or Needle. I did get tactical rigging though, and bought it.

I have been unlucky with extended mags, so my Reaper definitely cannot kill any unit in the game with 3 shots from banish. She doesn't even have the +2 armor piercing, so she does pitiful damage against anything that hasn't been shredded yet. The base crit chance on a Reaper is pretty terrible, which is why Soul Harvest exists. It's awesome that you've built her to remove that failing.

It's my opinion that even with all the skills I didn't take, there are other units that kill stuff better, which is probably why I built her for support. Sure I can't stealth around killing an entire mission without activating a single pod, but honestly that sounds terrible. I can't imagine the Long War mod leaving that mechanic as is.

I don't think it would be much fun for me to solo entire missions from stealth. I already feel that spotting for squad sight snipers without activating the pod is complete cheese. I can't imagine what it would be like to just cruise around in stealth with little to no threat. I know it sounds like I'm being critical. I'm not. How anyone finds their fun in the game is up to them, so I'm actually happy you are having a great time and the idea of a super Reaper solo'ing missions is very cool! It's just not for me.

I no longer feel that the Reaper is one dimensional however. Lesson learned there.

ColdSteel · Post by **ColdSteel** » Mon Oct 22, 2018 1:30 pm

Paingod wrote: ↑Mon Oct 22, 2018 1:06 pm *Depending on circumstance and boss health

I've had it not kill things a number of times

Yeah, I should have specified that it will kill them as long as you have the optimal weapon mods (superior laser sight, superior extended mag, superior repeater) plus talon rounds. 6 shots with high crit chance plus a 15% chance of an outright execute on each shot from the repeater should equal a dead boss about 100% of the time. Depending on how your Reaper is build, results will vary. I've build mine for extreme damage. I was able to kill the Assassin the other night with Banish no problem with 3 shots left over.

GreenGoo wrote: ↑Mon Oct 22, 2018 1:14 pm Fair enough. I built my Reaper for support, which is probably why I think they are 1 dimensional.

Yeah, I also use my 2 Reapers for support a lot, depending on the mission. And if they did nothing but scout and mark all the enemies on the map so they're always visible, that alone would be worth it. My first Reaper (a Captain now) I've bought almost every skill for and therefore she can play any role from support to damage. She has a level 3 bond with my best sniper and they therefore have 2 free extra actions per mission, which by itself is worth a lot.

Interestingly, I just found out that bonded pairs placed on covert ops missions reduce the length of the mission by one. I sure wish I'd known this before now.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Mon Oct 22, 2018 2:01 pm

Huh. I had assumed that you could only have 1 per hero class, only being able to replace them if they die. Obviously I have not raised my influence enough to be able to hire more, so I never realized you could hire more.

On the one hand, you can have reapers built for both. I tend to do this with regular classes just because.

On the other hand, what's to stop you from building a squad of 2 reapers, 2 skirmishers and 2 templars? Or 6 reapers? Increasing costs per hire?

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Mon Oct 22, 2018 2:12 pm

GreenGoo wrote: ↑Mon Oct 22, 2018 2:01 pm On the other hand, what's to stop you from building a squad of 2 reapers, 2 skirmishers and 2 templars? Or 6 reapers? Increasing costs per hire?

Additional "hero" classes are harder to come by but generally you are better off splitting them on different teams/missions unless you are cheating by disabling the tired mechanic.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Mon Oct 22, 2018 2:55 pm

coopasonic wrote: ↑Mon Oct 22, 2018 2:12 pm
GreenGoo wrote: ↑Mon Oct 22, 2018 2:01 pm On the other hand, what's to stop you from building a squad of 2 reapers, 2 skirmishers and 2 templars? Or 6 reapers? Increasing costs per hire?
Additional "hero" classes are harder to come by but generally you are better off splitting them on different teams/missions unless you are cheating by disabling the tired mechanic.

Sure. Only take 3 Reapers on each mission built like Coldsteel did. Rotate them. Game over. The fact that the GTS bonus for Reapers is +20 Hack is just icing if you want to do something interesting with the hacking mechanic, although personally I doubt I would *ever* buy that bonus.

I'm going to assume that there is either a hard cap on covert ops for new heroes, or a soft cap where the chances are so low that you are unlikely to get more than 1 or 2 extra of each class a game. Anyything else doesn't make much sense from a game design standpoint, unless your goal is to make players feel invincable. As I said though, late game genius/savant soldiers can rival the heroes, but that's assuming you don't have a genius or savant hero.

Jag · Post by **Jag** » Mon Oct 22, 2018 4:55 pm

ColdSteel wrote: ↑Mon Oct 22, 2018 1:30 pmInterestingly, I just found out that bonded pairs placed on covert ops missions reduce the length of the mission by one. I sure wish I'd known this before now.

You have to train up their bond level to be able to do it. I think it is bond level 2 or 3. I was going to do a covert op for another hero class, but the 8 day timer with high level soliders is too much right now. What if the Chosen attack again?

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Mon Oct 22, 2018 11:23 pm

PSA: Templar HQ does not decrease recovery time for tired or shaken soldiers.

Just bought a superior expanded mag at the black market for my Reaper. Banish should be a little more scary now.

Took a quick look at other peoples' analysis of the will mechanics. The basics are:

1) all combat events have a chance to reduce will. Some (most, in fact) are guaranteed to reduce will. Even seeing an enemy for the first time has a chance to reduce will. Each civilian that dies has a 100% chance of reducing your will by 1.
2) It appears that no combat events increase will. You can't for example heal a squadmate and have his will increase (you would think you'd get a bit of a morale boost from not being at death's door any longer, but no).
3) Will reduction is a fixed amount (as opposed to percentage based). So higher will means you can stay in the fight longer, you get tired less often, less likely to panic, etc
4) Will recovery from resting is percentage based. So while a high will soldier potentially has more will to recover, he should recover at the same speed as everyone else. i.e. you are not penalized during recovery for having a high will but more will drained. You *do* recover more will per day than lower will people.
5) Tiredness/readiness is based on current will/max will, so even though you recover more will per day, you still recover at the same rate as everyone else.

I currently have 2 soldiers that will take 5 days to recover from being tired.

soldier 1: 23/42 will - approx. 54% - 19 will missing
soldier 2: 27/51 - approx. 53% - 24 will missing

As you can see, they have approximately the same ratio of will/max. will, but with significantly different amount of missing will. Despite that difference, they both recover from tired status at the same time.

edit: I wasn't really tracking this but a quick glance shows that will recovery is about 7.5% per day when tired, which translates into 13.33 days to recover from zero will if it were possible to be at zero will and still just be tired, which I don't think it is. I think that the shaken state has a different recovery rate, but I'm not sure. I might even guess that you need to recover from the shaken state before your will starts to recover at all! Actually it appears that you do recover will while Shaken, but at a much, much slower rate than when just tired. I don't know what causes the Shaken state, but I assume it's dropping your will below a certain threshold.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Tue Oct 23, 2018 1:30 am

tl:dr

will depletion is much worse than being injured.
shaken = worst state
tired = second worst state
wounded = best state of the 3.
------------------------------------

reviewing my roster, it appears that it is much worse to have your troops shaken than to have them gravely wounded. You can often heal and be back in the fight in a matter of days, and if you add and engineer and scan at the Templar HQ, even faster. There doesn't appear to be any way to speed up recovering from Shaken (or even tired), which can often take weeks, if not an entire month.

I do not have the infirmary upgrade, so I don't know how that plays into the will recovery calculation, or even if it does.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Tue Oct 23, 2018 1:47 am

More Will review:

shaken: <33% will
tired: >=34%<=66%
good to go: >= 67%

This might be common knowledge for everyone. It wasn't for me so I'm writing it down in case it helps others.

You can lose a max of 33% will from seeing enemies. i.e. will loss of this type is capped.
You can lose a max of 25% will from civilians dying.

Obviously retaliation missions are rougher than many of the regular mission types, assuming you can't save everyone.

Paingod · Post by **Paingod** » Tue Oct 23, 2018 7:01 am

Huh. Interesting info. Always good to know the numbers driving it.

Tired/Shaken soldiers are dangerous on the field. When I was chasing the achievement for fielding a squad of them, it was a horrible mission.

ColdSteel · Post by **ColdSteel** » Tue Oct 23, 2018 8:16 am

GreenGoo wrote: ↑Tue Oct 23, 2018 1:30 am I do not have the infirmary upgrade, so I don't know how that plays into the will recovery calculation, or even if it does.

Unfortunately, it does nothing at all to help recover fatigue, only injuries. It helps wounds heal at a +100% rate with an engineer staffed. That makes the fatigue issues only more extreme.

What I'd like to do is not turn fatigue completely off, but to reduce it somewhat. I see you can turn it completely off with the config settings tweaks but I'm not sure if you can change the settings there to just reduce it (by say 50%). I can't find any info anywhere on that so I assume you can only turn it off completely, which is too bad.

ColdSteel · Post by **ColdSteel** » Tue Oct 23, 2018 8:54 am

Okay, I did a covert op and the reward was "the next facility you build is instant". However, after completion, when I build a facility it is not instant, it takes the normal amount of time. Am I missing how this works or is it bugged somehow? I am not happy about wasting a 5 day mission on this.

Jag · Post by **Jag** » Tue Oct 23, 2018 9:20 am

ColdSteel wrote: ↑Tue Oct 23, 2018 8:54 am Okay, I did a covert op and the reward was "the next facility you build is instant". However, after completion, when I build a facility it is not instant, it takes the normal amount of time. Am I missing how this works or is it bugged somehow? I am not happy about wasting a 5 day mission on this.

You sure it wasn't a specific facility? I've seen covert ops that lists the facility name as instant. Including ones I have already built.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Tue Oct 23, 2018 1:28 pm

Last night Mox gave his bondmate (a junior melee ranger) an extra AP and it won the mission for us. He had just finished crushing some codices and was out of position for the last few enemies. The ranger had just dash killed a berserker (David and Goliath achievement. Not particularly difficult, although somewhat rare-ish) and the extra AP allowed him to finish off a recently revealed Faceless that had already been shot once.

So my point is that for once the senior bondmate gave up an AP to the junior to good effect, and that the cpl ranger killed a berserker with his ionic sword, which was fun.

I know they changed berserkers charging when hit during Xcom's turn, probably because you could abuse it and ping pong the 'zerker back and forth between soldiers, but I have to say they are not nearly as threatening as they once were. I'd much rather 2 berserkers than 2 regular mutons now, for example. In the past it was really scary to have a 'zerker get in melee range. Now it's just not an issue.

ColdSteel · Post by **ColdSteel** » Tue Oct 23, 2018 6:41 pm

I took down the Hunter today so that's two out of three Chosen dead. His intelligence levels were getting too high for comfort and I really wanted his awesome sniper rife and pistol for my sniper anyway. The shotgun and katana I got from the Assassin have been fantastic.

The types of alien enemies I'm running into now are quite nasty. Sectopods, Andromedons, Gatekeepers, uggh.

Jag wrote: ↑Tue Oct 23, 2018 9:20 am You sure it wasn't a specific facility? I've seen covert ops that lists the facility name as instant. Including ones I have already built.

Apparently it was for instant clearing of rubble. Mystery solved.