X-Com 2 confirmed...trailer

[GreenGoo]

Alien commander threw a grenade on the gatecrasher mission. That surprised me.

[GreenGoo]

Also, someone mentioned a "don't got time for that" mode that speeds things up, so I'll take a look at that. This game is even worse than the first one for drawing out each action with animations and cut scenes.

Here are a few time savers:
Stop Wasting My Time
Instant Avenger Menus
Quick Reload
Evac All

Installed.

Fingers crossed one of these speeds up the time spent sitting around in the skyranger after a mission.

[GreenGoo]

Lol, I can't even get through gatecrasher without losing a soldier now. Activate ambush, enemy charges towards me, my guys miss, enemy moves towards me again on their turn, flanks and crits someone. It's almost comical how far they travel from the time the ambush happens to when they crit one of my guys.

[jztemple2]

Fingers crossed one of these speeds up the time spent sitting around in the skyranger after a mission.

Ah, there is a workaround for this... but it comes at a price. If you press the Caps Lock key you can end that sitting in the Skyranger. The catch is that supposedly sometimes it can cause the game to crash, which means you'd have to reload your last save or autosave and replay the last turn. I've never had it crash on me when I used it, but YMMV. This hint came from the developers when the game first released, but not "officially".

[GreenGoo]

And finally make it through gatecrasher, only to have reinforcements called in right behind me on a 6 turn timed mission after encountering the first pod.

That all but guaranteed my inability to reach the hack point in time, since there is always at least 1 pod that activates when you get in range. So I had 6 turns to kill 3 pods (assuming there wasn't a 3rd pod in the map) and move approx. 3 turns worth of sprints.

Yeah, not happening, barring magic of some sort.

[coopasonic]

Decided to go straight to commander/ironman.

I'm confused. I thought you were having trouble with Veteran? The usual reaction is not to increase the difficulty.

[GreenGoo]

Playing more veteran will just teach me to beat veteran. Playing commander will give me practice beating commander.

In any case, my first com/iron went well. I figure I'm just too impatient right now and am taking risks I shouldn't/wouldn't if I was less tired/less impatient.

I'm just writing out my frustration because I think it's funny.

[GreenGoo]

So I created 2 avatars of myself last night. One in my mid 20's looking cheesy as hell, and one current age looking like a doofus because the toque/beanie is kinda goofy looking. I mean, they are fine, and a little more distinctive than some of the randomly generated soldiers, but nothing special either.

I'll probably put them on dropbox and make a post in the avatar thread just in case anyone is still looking for designs.

I think I'll make a "cool" soldier tonight. Not related to me, I'll just see what I can do with all the parts in the designer. The random generator loves pony tails, bandanas and the brushed up hair design, so those are right out.

I started a new com/iron last night and managed 2 flawlesses on the first two missions (1 is gatecrasher). I then lost a promising grenadier on the next mission which sucked. It was timed and I was pushing. In fact I evac'd my 3 + vip on the last turn surrounded by enemies. Finally I managed to do a retaliation mission with only 4 soldiers, only 1 of which was injured. I rescued 4 people and then finished all enemies which resulted in 10/13 saved. Yay. Considering my team was all corporals and 1 squaddie and there were faceless, I'm pretty happy with that performance.

So things are moving along again.

[GreenGoo]

Escort missions are now my nemesis. Had to restart multiple games after getting crushed on an escort mission. Just successfully did a rescue/escort with 2 of my soldiers literally standing adjacent to the extract zone when time ran out. These missions are so freakin' tight, timewise. If you don't steamroll the enemy while pushing forward, you're in deep trouble. Any sort of maneuvering that doesn't involve moving towards the goals results in someone being left behind, at best.

[GreenGoo]

I've got 2 commander/ironman games going. The first one has made it to the first ship raid. I'm a little stressed on that one since I had taken a lot of injuries right before. It didn't help that there was no UFO searching for me at the time. Just, boom, defend ship mission.

The second one was going fine until a squaddie got psi-panicked and for some freakin' reason threw a grenade into his own unit, damaging 2 and lighting one of them on fire (who promptly died). First time I've had that happen and it did not make me happy. Because I'm awesome I still managed to finish the mission with only that one loss and 1 injury.

[GreenGoo]

So things have been going well for me lately. I've got powered armour and plasma beam sniper rifles, 1 each of WAR, EXO, Spider and Wraith suits. Attrition is quite slow, and except for a few times when injuries reduced my fighting strength by scary levels, things are going positively.

I write that because all I've done is complain about stuff and I'm here to do it again, but I thought you should know about the positive stuff so that it doesn't seem all negative.

Can I just say that indirect fire mortars that strip armour, take out cover AND destroy the structural integrity of building roofs so that the unit falls and takes falling damage can go to hell. I realize this ability is specifically designed as cover removal and/or to counter height advantage, but every time a soldier in perfect tactical position gets completely destroyed by artillery fire I want to rampage.

[GreenGoo]

And just after writing that, I took a grenade from a commander with 1 hp that dropped 3 people, killing one of them. And then it took me 8 turns to kill 2 pods and 1 turret because the RNG screwed me pretty hard on rolls. After shooting the enemy vip (there was no way I was going to be able to carry him out), I lost another soldier (my only psi-op) because I had no choice but to over extend to try to reach the extraction point. With 2 turns left, it's questionable that I will get anyone out.

Which pretty much ends the game for me. I'm still amazed how a few missed 80-95% chance shots completely derailed the mission, then cost me some lives, then cost me my squad then cost me the game (probably. I'll see if anything is salvageable, but probably not). The cascading effect of a few missed shots at the right (wrong) time is unreasonably catastrophic.

Not that I'd change a thing, it's just somewhat shocking to semi-carefully move a chess piece, and when the carnage stops, realize you've lost the game from that one or two tactical combat moves.

I'm in powered armour with beam sniper rifles, haven't even seen a sectopod yet, and I've still managed to lose. Ouch.

edit: Hah! Got the senior sniper out. Mission success! 1 wounded 5 dead. The gear alone I left behind makes the game pretty much unrecoverable.

[NickAragua]

Doh!

Yeah, that's the one problem with the recent X-Coms that I keep harping about. If you lose a mission and get an elite squad killed, you're pretty much screwed and it's game over. The originals, a couple of minor mistakes / crappy RNG rolls wouldn't necessarily sink a mission, and a mission failure would necessarily sink the whole game.

[Lassr]

Doh!

Yeah, that's the one problem with the recent X-Coms that I keep harping about. If you lose a mission and get an elite squad killed, you're pretty much screwed and it's game over. The originals, a couple of minor mistakes / crappy RNG rolls wouldn't necessarily sink a mission, and a mission failure would necessarily sink the whole game.

Yep, I make note of the name of the save before the disaster, then press on, if it unwinnable then I got back and reload.

[GreenGoo]

Playing Ironman because I like how it keeps me from save scumming, which has been a problem for me in the past.

I managed to scrap up enough cash to buy 2 captains. I got them back to back because the new supply drop was right then which also refreshes the recruitment inventory. I had to take a rookie into a retaliation mission, and despite getting everyone just pounded repeatedly, I had 2 medics with a total of 8x7hp heals, so everyone lived.

Which means I'll keep pressing on until I lose another squad or 2-3 of my senior guys.

So far the war continues. Pretty happy about it.

[GreenGoo]

And a complete wipe on the next mission, against only 2 pods. 1 of those pods were 3xcodices, which of course split into many more, disabled everyone's weapons and despite disabling the heavy MEC on turn 1, by turn 3 had begun to systematically destroy the entire building I was taking cover in.

It's hard to imagine it going worse. Not sure if I was just careless, but I had little choice but to activate both pods at the same time because the objective was being destroyed at 10 hp per turn. Not sure what was hitting it, but that is a TON of damage.

On the plus side I get to start a new game, which I enjoy. That is once I get past the gatekeeper mission. I HATE that mission now just because I have to get past it before playing the actual game.

edit: Ok, I have 1 sniper left, and she just used her face off skill, which allows her to fire her pistol once at every visible target. She fired 8 times, recording 3 kills, using a mag pistol. That was fun.

edit2: Holy shit, the next turn she used lightning hands, which gives her a free pistol shot. She shot a codex, bringing it down to 1 hp, which promptly teleported beside my sniper, who was sitting in a psi-vortex. My sniper then grappled out of the vortex and out from under no less than 4 overwatches. She then used her free reload to reload her beam sniper rifle and then snipe another codex with 8hp for 9 hp of damage, killing it. Unfortunately the sniper bit the dust on the enemy turn when 2 troopers hit her behind low cover (edge of roof), but not before the psi-vortex exploded and killed 1hp codex.

I should mention that to add to the hilarity, the troopers that killed her were reinforcements (which came when she was already 1v8, making it 1v11) that dropped behind her, flanking her. She certainly went down swinging. If even one of the troopers missed, she could have retreated from the roof edge, used a medkit (I don't normally have kits on my snipers, but I had an extra kit and no specialists to wear it, so threw it in the sniper's backpack) and perhaps lived a few turns more.

Oh well. Made it to the end of July, which is the farthest I've made it on commander/ironman so far.

[coopasonic]

And a complete wipe on the next mission, against only 2 pods. 1 of those pods were 3xcodices, which of course split into many more, disabled everyone's weapons and despite disabling the heavy MEC on turn 1, by turn 3 had begun to systematically destroy the entire building I was taking cover in.

Just in case you weren't aware, disorientation (a flashbang) prevents a codex from splitting.

[GreenGoo]

I wasn't aware specifically, but I did know it interrupted and/or prevented special abilities. I often use them to interrupt mind control or zombie creation, mostly. In this case there were 3 and I don't bring that many flashbangs. Obviously the goal would be to focus 1 down before moving on to another otherwise you get multiple splits in a single turn but that's not always an option due to teleportation immediately after splitting can put them out of reach. Or overwatches firing on the "wrong" target.

[Paingod]

The Codexes are the biggest reason to carry Flashbangs in the early to mid game, as well as stumping Vipers. I detest dealing with them, and work hard to avoid letting them split more than once (if at all).

Extra notes on them:

Spoiler:

• Removes Overwatch from enemies.
• Kills Psi-reanimated corpses if used on the caster animating them. Releases friendly mind-controlled soldiers if caster is caught in radius.
• Grenadier's Volatile Mix adds 2 damage to the grenade
• Flashbangs apply the Disoriented debuff to any enemy units caught in the blast radius.
• Prevents use of most special abilities - Stun Lancers will not use their blades, Officers will not use grenades, Mutons cannot even counter-attack in melee, if Disoriented. Psionic aliens cannot use any Psi during Disorientation either, resorting to using their primary weapon for the duration. Also, a disoriented Codex can neither teleport nor clone itself.
• An Andromedon can still use its Acid Bomb even when disoriented
• A Shieldbearer can still use its Energy Shield ability even when disoriented
• An already Disoriented unit that enters Overwatch will not have that Overwatch removed by another Flashbang
• Also causes any friendly solder caught in a Snake hold to be released
• Ineffective on robots

[GreenGoo]

Solo codex are not nearly the scariest thing on the field. It was just that there were 3 of them, my ambush was terrible, they all split at least once, they all teleported into flanking positions, and while I did disable the heavy MEC, he was back in action long before I had dealt with the split codices plus troopers. Troopers (even commanders) aren't too scary, except at this point in the game they are all advanced or whatever and can crit you in high cover.

It was just a terrible ambush that started me off on the wrong foot. If the 10 hp damage per turn to the mission objective hadn't spooked me, I probably could have taken the 2 pods without a loss (or just taken them 1 at a time). I didn't know how long the objective could stand up to that kind of fire so I wanted to get the attention of whatever it was that was hitting it. As it turns out, I never even saw it, let alone got to shoot at it.

[GreenGoo]

Lol. So sick of moving forward 1 square to increase my shot percentage or using my sword only to aggro 1 or even 2 more pods just out of sight.

It's a complete gimmick designed to punish you for being too aggressive, which is fine I guess, but the timers are there to punish you for being too defensive. The two combined are obviously more challenging, but it artificially limits your tactics.

I'm not exactly saying that I would want any of it changed, it's just incredibly frustrating to inch forward even 1 tile and get another 3 enemies on you, especially if they have special abilities that weren't on the battlefield before you aggro'd them, so you didn't take those abilities into account when moving your squad. The new pod gets a free turn, often against seriously out of position soldiers, vulnerable to the special abilities.

Sure, I should be a better tactician and anticipate things like this, but it's soooo artificial. I mean, I'm not being more tactical so much as I'm exploiting meta-game knowledge with how the game spawns and places alien pods. Yay?

Obviously when things go well I'm all smiles and rainbows, and when things go south I get frustrated. Just assume this post is the immediate effect of my morale taking a hit as my tactical situation becomes more "challenging".

[GreenGoo]

I'll just note that even with the time saving mods installed, I'm still alt-tabbing out during all the little animated scenes (like when reinforcements arrive).

In the first one I moved/renamed all those scenes (like interceptors launching) so the game would just skip that animation. Hopefully something similar will work on this game.

[TheMix]

I used the advice someone posted (possibly coop). I tried to keep one of my rangers stealthed as long as possible. Well, not in the early missions.... I needed everyone (and the xp). But later on, I'd use a ranger to scout and try to keep him/her stealthed as long as possible. That helped with not popping additional pods.

I also ran without timers for the most part. I like the play, but don't really want to make it really difficult.

[GreenGoo]

I used the advice someone posted (possibly coop). I tried to keep one of my rangers stealthed as long as possible. Well, not in the early missions.... I needed everyone (and the xp). But later on, I'd use a ranger to scout and try to keep him/her stealthed as long as possible. That helped with not popping additional pods.

That's paingod's advice from the first game (+DLC?, I'm not sure). Yes, I do that as much as possible.

Amusingly I've started 2 games now (since my little rant above) and lost both of them (well, I gave up since things went poorly, early) when my team wiped on some basic mission. Usually involving mind control or zombies where the sectoid was out of reach. This is before mindshields and with only 4 soldier squads. The amusing part is when my hit percentage is 80, 90 or 100%. Which of course means I hit nearly every shot I took, and in both I took quite a few shots (+grenades).

Obviously the game is about more than shooting aliens, but when you're up near 100% and you still wipe...I don't know what that says, but it feels like it should say something.

I also ran without timers for the most part. I like the play, but don't really want to make it really difficult.

I feel like I need about 1 extra turn for the perfect balance of challenge and obtainability. Sometimes 2 turns.

And then you run an early escort mission and finish with 5 turns left. Or you run an early escort mission and wipe with 4 turns left and miles to go to the evac. My tactical play is much better than when I posted when of my earliest whines, but I still have a long way to go. Basically understanding what to expect from the ai for each alien type, for the most part.

[Stuie]

Obviously the game is about more than shooting aliens, but when you're up near 100% and you still wipe...I don't know what that says, but it feels like it should say something.

I think it says you're doing a excellent job shooting the wrong targets.

Of course I'm kidding without knowing how the missions played out.

There's a twitch streamer I enjoy watching who is playing through Xcom 2 for the first time, and it's funny watching him not learn/adapt as he goes. He keeps moving too far into the fog and then comlaining about how many aliens groups pop up. He also doesn't seem to understand that the mission difficulty keeps ramping up, so caution is always necessary. He's also playing with a limited pool of soldiers based on viewer raffles, so he seems to be handicapping himself and then not dealing well with the results. Oh well - it's fun to watch! LOL

[coopasonic]

I used the advice someone posted (possibly coop). I tried to keep one of my rangers stealthed as long as possible. Well, not in the early missions.... I needed everyone (and the xp). But later on, I'd use a ranger to scout and try to keep him/her stealthed as long as possible. That helped with not popping additional pods.

That's paingod's advice from the first game (+DLC?, I'm not sure). Yes, I do that as much as possible.

Yeah, I never really used scouting in Vanilla. I just dealt with it the consequences playing ironman and save-scum-scouted when playing legendary.

[NickAragua]

My approach is that it's actually ok to fail a timed mission. It's not like in Enemy Unknown, where if you fail a mission there's a good chance you start losing sponsor countries. Here, it's well, maybe you get a dark event or lose a territory or something. Big whoop, you can get it back. What's not ok is losing a full squad of elite veteran badasses and their unique equipment.

So, I would say, be cautious anyway. Take your time wiping out enemy pods, and don't worry about blowing up low cover to get at the aliens behind it - you don't want to be using that anyway.

I think coop mentioned this earlier, and I agree with him, the sword is just not that great. It's cool when it works, but the reality is, if your guy whiffs or triggers a pod, now he's in a world of hurt with no way to get back.

[Fardaza]

I feel like I need about 1 extra turn for the perfect balance of challenge and obtainability. Sometimes 2 turns.

And then you run an early escort mission and finish with 5 turns left. Or you run an early escort mission and wipe with 4 turns left and miles to go to the evac. My tactical play is much better than when I posted when of my earliest whines, but I still have a long way to go. Basically understanding what to expect from the ai for each alien type, for the most part.

This is my first post here on OO. So I thought I'd just jump in.

After suffering through most if not all of the things you've been talking about, I added a mod. It allows you to change the timers. I added 4 turns to all timed missions. This is just enough to breathe, reload, and continue on.

I also edited the ini file (?) to give all my soldiers 1 extra hit point. This keeps them from being one-shot critted in the early going.

I enjoy the game much more now! I've played over 300 hours after over 1500 hours of the first game!

[Paingod]

I used the advice someone posted (possibly coop). I tried to keep one of my rangers stealthed as long as possible. Well, not in the early missions.... I needed everyone (and the xp). But later on, I'd use a ranger to scout and try to keep him/her stealthed as long as possible. That helped with not popping additional pods.

That's paingod's advice from the first game (+DLC?, I'm not sure). Yes, I do that as much as possible.

Yeah, I never really used scouting in Vanilla. I just dealt with it the consequences playing ironman and save-scum-scouted when playing legendary.

I still haven't gotten into Long War, but I lived on Scouting in Vanilla+DLC's right up to the last mission. It was rare to get into a fight I wasn't expecting or planned for, making those situations more tense. Having that forward scout eliminates the accidental adds to a fight and keeps things sane. Yes, it limits your firepower somewhat, but later on a Ranger can re-stealth once per mission, so you still get to use them for a couple fights and benefit from their scouting everywhere else. I also abused the hell out of the Stealth mechanics in XCOM: Enemy Unknown, working out the best ways to use the Mimetic Skin.

My big thing was to move up my Ranger as far as they could safely go in their first action, into reasonable cover. If that didn't open up a fight, I'd spend the second action moving up into good cover - not high cover, but surrounding cover. The Ranger needs to not get flanked in order to not be seen, so wedging yourself in the 90º gap between a tree and a rock meant enemies couldn't simply spot you as they passed by on their way to attack the rest of your team.

This kept the frontline moving up as far as it could each turn, and meant I could take full advantage of the best cover around a fight - or opt to pull them to me at my discretion. The net result was that I was usually right in line with the timers and only had them cause problems a handful of times. It kept the tension on, but it didn't kill me or cause me to panic (except in those few cases, where the best I could do was toss a Mimic Beacon or two and have everyone try to make a break for the evac point).

Later on, I did a lot of double-scouting, with the Ranger going to the most likely dangerous spot, and then move up a distance runner (Specialist) to a parallel area who would scout as far as they could and then pause with Overwatch as their second action.

[Archinerd]

I feel like I need about 1 extra turn for the perfect balance of challenge and obtainability. Sometimes 2 turns.

And then you run an early escort mission and finish with 5 turns left. Or you run an early escort mission and wipe with 4 turns left and miles to go to the evac. My tactical play is much better than when I posted when of my earliest whines, but I still have a long way to go. Basically understanding what to expect from the ai for each alien type, for the most part.

This is my first post here on OO. So I thought I'd just jump in.

After suffering through most if not all of the things you've been talking about, I added a mod. It allows you to change the timers. I added 4 turns to all timed missions. This is just enough to breathe, reload, and continue on.

I also edited the ini file (?) to give all my soldiers 1 extra hit point. This keeps them from being one-shot critted in the early going.

I enjoy the game much more now! I've played over 300 hours after over 1500 hours of the first game!

Welcome Robot!

[Archinerd]

I still haven't gotten into Long War...

I've bounced off Long War 2 a few times now for various reasons. Campaign length & tedious squad management are my main complaints. What I think I'd really like is a Long War LITE or one with a bit more configuration that I could play with.

I'm now playing a mod set built around three mods; Reinforcement Missions, Delayed Evac and Carry Corpse. All three are by the same author and the intent is to make XCom feel like a guerrilla force. Get in, accomplish the objective and get out before Advent floods the area with reinforcements. I'm having a lot of fun with it.

In addition to some quality of life & UI stuff I'm using a few other mods to replicate as close as I can the tactical bits I liked from Long War. Better cover, grenade damage fall off, tougher buildings, Long War Alien Pack, SMGS & Lasers.

I'm also using ShadowOps that replaces the 4 vanilla with 4 new. I don't like the Long War soldier classes, but I wanted something relatively balanced that was more interesting than the vanilla classes.

Squad sizes are also bumped up to 6, and I've added Notoriety and Squad Cohesion mods to give some balance and a reason to take more than the same 6 guys.

[NickAragua]

Yeah, I think I'm going to wind up in the same boat. I don't really want a game that takes 120 missions to finish. Really, I just want a couple more guys on my squad so that a single tactical mistake (or bad RNG roll) doesn't end the mission (and the game).

[Archinerd]

Oh, and I don't know if this is a mod conflict or intentional but I found out last night only my Dragoon Class (Heavy Weapon / Gremlin Support class) can hack. This includes objectives. I kind of like it, because I Have to protect the guy with the Gremlin if I want any hope of completing the mission. Makes for some tense situations.

[GreenGoo]

This is my first post here on OO. So I thought I'd just jump in.

After suffering through most if not all of the things you've been talking about, I added a mod. It allows you to change the timers. I added 4 turns to all timed missions. This is just enough to breathe, reload, and continue on.

I also edited the ini file (?) to give all my soldiers 1 extra hit point. This keeps them from being one-shot critted in the early going.

I enjoy the game much more now! I've played over 300 hours after over 1500 hours of the first game!

That's great advice and I may follow it if I start to get even more frustrated. Part of me wants to succeed at the game as it was designed, and the other part of me wants to have fun, so I'm conflicted

And just now I had a bit of an anomaly. Early missions have between 6 and 8 enemies, with 8 being rare. My very first mission after Gatecrasher? You know the one where you have a max of 4 soldiers? Well my 4 squaddies and 1 rookie just took on 13 freakin' baddies, including 3 sectoids who were more than happy to stay in high cover while raising all the dead I was creating.

I'm actually pretty proud I won it (albeit with only 2 survivors) because a) 13 freakin' bad guys! and b) after the first 8 or so I started playing looser assuming the map was "safe".

[GreenGoo]

edit: Sorry, bad mood, low patience.

[GreenGoo]

Lost my top sniper on an enemy vip run because I maneuvered 1 extra turn at the beginning of the map and the vip was not where I expected it to be. Instead of being on the bottom floor, she was on the middle floor of a 3 story building that you needed to either climb to the top of and drop down or run around the bottom floor and then up some stairs. The 2 mistakes meant I barely got my team out on time and my sniper was simply too far away trying to figure out how to reach the vip to reach the evac in time. If I had known I was going to lose the sniper anyway, I would have at least continued to the vip and assassinated her. Instead I lost the mission and the sniper.

Oh well, I should have known better than to try to use more of the map instead of beelining to the vip. I let the vip live because my sniper is worth more than the mission and I still thought I had a chance of saving the sniper. Annoying, but human error.

[GreenGoo]

Note to self, on commander, rookies have the exact same hp as damage from plasma grenades.

[GreenGoo]

Keep in mind I don't come into the thread when I'm awesome, so while listening to me complain sucks, I still think it's better than listening to me describe why I'm awesome.

So this last mission goes like clock work. Things are all falling into place. Sniper making his shots, overwatch hitting if not always killing, flanks are happening, mind controls are failing or being broken right away, awesome.

I hack the objective with only 2 aliens on the map, a regular trooper and a sectoid. I clip the trooper but don't kill him. Well reinforcements are called in, and it's 2 stun troopers and a light MEC. I'm slightly out of position when they arrive, in that I'm not completely ambushing them when they drop, but nothing to stress about.

Except everything that could go wrong does go wrong for me, and everything goes right for the aliens. A turn and a half after the reinforcements drop, I'm down 2 soldiers with another being panicked, yet another armed with an smg (with 5 aliens still up, 1 with 2 armour! i.e.he's not the heavy hitter I need right then) and my sniper (who's doing "ok". Hit the sectoid for 6 but it had 8 hp). By the end of the next turn, I'd lost, all soldiers down. Stun lancer of all things crit my elevated high cover sniper from max range, which was about the only truly outrageous thing to happen.

So this post isn't so much a whine about mechanics, me sucking, or even what I'd call especially unusual bad luck (in that it it's not unreasonable for all the ducks to be in a row for the aliens every once in awhile). It was just everything going right for the aliens and my own luck turning bad. Like dominoes pushed over with a single finger tip, the reinforcements systematically peeled the onion of my layered defense and once 1 soldier was exposed and killed, the rest followed because the support they were providing each other was removed, one by one.

It was actually a sight to see. I went from flawless with objective completed and 1 injured alien trooper and 1 sectoid (i.e. mission complete except for the clean up) still on the map to a complete squad wipe in 3ish turns.

And it ended that particular game. At least I have no interest in seeing whether I can recover from a complete squad wipe. It's been a large number of games since I've lost before even reaching mag weapons. Kudos computer. I wish I could do so much with so little in so short a period of time.

[coopasonic]

Just so GreenGoo doesn't feel lonely... I just finished my EIGHTH campaign (this one with the Long War 2 mod). 277 hours played. 5 hours shy of being my most played game on steam.

[GreenGoo]

As long as you don't tell me it was commander/ironman I'm thrilled for you. Otherwise I'm just jealous.