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

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killbot737
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by killbot737 »

I'm trying out the legacy missions now and after the first two I'm just going to assume that every shot/grenade my squaddies take is going to do the minimum possible damage, and even less so against vipers (dodge 3 times my ass!).
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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Totally reasonable assumption.

If it helps, I do the same thing. Also, nothing can dodge a 100% chance shot.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by GreenGoo »

Started the 4th series.

Hilarious. complete stealth, no LoS, unlock door, stealth gone, but no LoS so no active pods yet, turn ends. 2 patrols wander into LoS immediately even though I had been in that position for 2-3 turns with no one around. We mad dash it around corner to get out of LoS, Stun lancer gives chase, kills prisoner.

Maybe the 2 patrols just happened to wander into LoS the turn after we give up stealth, then activate, but I have my doubts. I guess I just need to take that into account next time.

Anyway, failed the 4th series on the first mission. Not great.

edit: Second attempt, exact same thing happened, except this time I took a different route, and the patrols honed in on us in completely different places than I was in last time. This time instead of being inside the building on the 4th turn, the patrol climbed 2 rooftops, crossed them, then dropped down to reveal one of my guys who was so far out of LoS before the patrol started moving that I'm amazed that the patrol had enough mobility to reach him.

Annoying.

Mission basically made sure I had to fight my way out despite taking precautions. I'm sure some people managed to stealth it, but I'm not willing to try different iterations. Ended up killing 2.5 pods, leaving a 1/2 dead sectoid when we extracted. Without some major luck on enemy shots it would have been much different, but it ended up flawless no thanks to my play.

Next mission: Shen misses a 77% and 91% hack. Damn it. Muton throws a grenade quote blind unquote at 2 soldiers and a prisoner that he has no LoS to. My Reaper then misses a 90%+ shot at close range. Whee. Having absolutely no choice, I melee attack the Muton with a wounded Bradford. He cuts the Muton's head off, which is no small feat, since Mutons don't appear to have necks. For anyone who's not aware, Mutons have an innate parry/riposte to melee attacks, more often than not escaping undamaged while damaging the attacker. I guess he got some of that black, black luck that seems to be going around. 3 wounded. Shen had 1 hp left. Sloppy sloppy.

Next mission: Miss a 66% hack. I don't think she's made a hack that required a roll once yet. Try to be clever, activate all 3 pods at once, full of berzerkers, commanders and a light MEC (AoE explody damage), Priest and Stun Lancer, all advanced.

2 Berserkers go berserk? and go after the closest units, which are advent. Never seen that happen before except for panicked units. They both miss, because of course they do. Ok, I see why the game reported no soldiers lost in It Came from the Sea. Bradford doesn't die, he just goes unconscious. This is a bigger clusterfuck than any previous archive mission to date, and that includes my activating a pod on the last move of my turn only to have them blow up my cover and expose me to 2 other pods.

2 soldiers down, 1 commander still alive with 8 hp, miles away and no way to reach him this turn. That's how spread out we had become. For the record, the commander decided to mark and shoot at someone who was in low cover, despite there being a target completely flanked and closer for him to shoot at. AFTER the commander did that, another advent moved and killed the exposed soldier, almost like he knew what the rolls were going to be ahead of time. Almost. :x I'm pretty grumpy, but I'm going to finish anyway despite every fiber of my being telling me to start the WHOLE THING over, right from square one, mission one. Just terrible play. Holy shit, there's a 4th pod! I had dashed everyone because I thought it was just the commander left. I might not have a choice in restarting. 2 purifiers stood close together and I had 2 grenades. I then face tanked a shieldbearer's shot out in the open. Mission complete. 2 dead (game says Bradford doesn't count, but we know better), 2 injured (face tank was injured on the last turn) 1 unwounded. Bah.

Next mission: Other than another bullshit (this is absolutely the game screwing with me. I did nothing wrong) double activation and a couple of wounded soldiers, nothing to report. I'm not saying it's impossible to activate a single pod at a time, but I am saying that there really shouldn't have been any chance for a double activation. A patrol that was moving around nice and slowly and was pretty far out of LoS decided that now was a good time to dash their full movement into LoS, then gain even more movement from the activation. Traveling essentially 1 dash and 1 move in a single turn, just because. Bah.

Next mission: Just got capacitor discharged by a shadowbound Shen. God damn it I am sucking today. Total clusterf**k. Everyone got out but the last guy moved his last tile just onto the extraction pad on the last turn of the timer. 5 wounded. 1 mission to go. Taking a break to do some chores. Back later.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by GreenGoo »

I'm guessing the soldier skills are randomly picked for Central Archive missions? It seems like they sometimes have skills from 1 side of their tree and then skip the next one that synergizes and have the skill from the other side.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by GreenGoo »

With no timer on the last mission, I took my time, killing all but the last pod without injury. I was in the final chamber focused on a badguy on one side of the room and didn't even see there was a door on the other side, let alone that it was open. That's just me not paying attention. Final pod activates as I kill the badguy and the pod gets a full turn. 2 mind controls later, a flash bang, a teleporting bad guy, and 4 soldiers injured when all is said and done. Most for 3 or less damage, but it all counts, so...yeah. Mind controlled dude dropped a grenade on herself and Shen, which is about the least amount of damage she could do without taking a shot missing completely, but it still irked me, as I got 2 wounded soldiers out of it, not one.

According to the bar, I was just shy of gold anyway, which is 250,000. I guess it's supposed to be hard, but honestly most of my lost points were from poor play on my part, not necessarily from tough scenarios. It's a little frustrating to think that if I had just as many wounded soldiers, but no one died, I'd have had a gold medal. Oh well.

Look at those injured soldiers. :roll:

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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by GreenGoo »

Decided to try Legendary for my next playthrough, no ironman. Nothing but false starts so far. I really have no idea how to handle mind controlling 10 hp Sectoids. It takes 2 soldiers not missing and doing max damage just to kill one, if there is no crit. It would take all 4 soldiers making their shots to kill it if they all did minimum damage.

That's pretty tough. I tend to stay on the rooftops for the first mission, but that's only low cover. While it does increase aim, it's a coin flip whether they take a hit or not. 2 coin flips and a soldier is dead.

I need to see how other people do it. Presumably with flanks, but you better make sure all the other pods are dead first, otherwise things'll get messy.

The answer is, push push push. Be aggressive, get as close as possible with the entire squad before activating, using LoS blocking terrain hopefully, grenades for cover destruction and 100% chance to hit. Advent don't get range bonuses (not sure about penalties) so they have the same chance to hit at medium range and point blank range. Might as well get Xcom range bonuses for point blank, but don't bet everything on that shot hitting.

Such a crock. Sectoid moves up while 2 soldiers are on overwatch, just in range to mind control but somehow neither soldier gets a shot off. There is literally no way to do this as a player. If you move into sight range (needed for mind control) while an enemy is on overwatch, you get shot at. Sectoid is at max range with another unactivated pod *right* behind him. I wouldn't care so much but the Aliens are supposed to play by the same rules as Xcom, most of the time. If Sectoids had 1 extra tile sight range, I would at least know it was possible to do what he did. There is no way to even move forward, let alone flank without activating the other pod. I can tell because the game sometimes reveals units it shouldn't on the alien's turn. So I'm stuck at max range with a mind controlled Xcom, IN overwatch (because he was mind controlled while in overwatch, natch), with a grenade. I have another soldier literally point blank range. I get that this is Legendary, but that's just more hp for them, less for me, and bigger pods. Not this kind of magic.

Moved my max range dude and ate the overwatch, which missed. Grenaded Sectoid cover (couldn't reach him though). Shot him from elevation but minimum damage, no crit to flanked Sectoid. Moved last guy, 66% shot that would kill, but miss. Mind controlled guy runs and stands beside a soldier, drops grenade on both of them. Which is good, because a flanked crit would kill him. Sectoid moves into cover, shoots low cover dude for 3 damage. I grenade the cover and him to death.

Just 1 more pod, but it's the commander pod and 3 guys at 1 hp each.

Activate pod. Flank commander, minimum damage, no crit. Blow up his cover. 1 hp left. Shoot him down, 2 troopers to go. Trooper hits a 30% shot on 1 hp dude in high cover. Awesome. Get to do this all over again. Damn it. Finish off 2nd last guy with a missed 74% flank and a hit 81% flank. Dodge a 50% while in low cover, flank him at point blank range with 3 soldiers. First shot crits and ends it.

I played that extremely strongly especially only pulling 1 pod at a time but that mind control from max. range screwed me hard. I'm actually pretty amazed I managed to kill the Sectoid without pulling the last pod, for all the good it did me.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by coopasonic »

GreenGoo wrote: Mon Nov 05, 2018 1:37 am I need to see how other people do it. Presumably with flanks, but you better make sure all the other pods are dead first, otherwise things'll get messy.
ChristopherOdd has several Legendary Ironman playthroughs available on YouTube: vanilla, modded, Long War2, WoTC, WoTC modded, etc.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by GreenGoo »

coopasonic wrote: Mon Nov 05, 2018 11:07 am
GreenGoo wrote: Mon Nov 05, 2018 1:37 am I need to see how other people do it. Presumably with flanks, but you better make sure all the other pods are dead first, otherwise things'll get messy.
ChristopherOdd has several Legendary Ironman playthroughs available on YouTube: vanilla, modded, Long War2, WoTC, WoTC modded, etc.
That's interesting, because I stumbled across one of his Central Archive Operation Lazarus missions on Youtube (this is after I played it. I played all missions blind) and thought he was making a pile of mistakes just from the little I watched. I literally thought to myself "this guy is a hack, not gonna learn anything here".

That said, if he's completely Legendary Ironman he's a better man than me. I'll take another look.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by GreenGoo »

Been looking for a WotC tech tree. Doesn't matter what form it's in. Website, mod, jpeg. Whatever.

If you guys find one could you let me know? Thanks.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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Every tech tree I can find doesn't include all of WotC. There's one on Steam, but it is incomplete.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by GreenGoo »

Yeah, found lots of xcom 2 vanilla trees. Weird.

Moved Xcom 2 from the platter drive to the SSD. Phew. That's a HUGE difference.

Started my Legendary run. My plan is to save on turn 1 of a mission and if I don't like the outcome, I have to restart it from turn 1. Multiple stage missions get a save per stage. My first retaliation was just 4 guys with pea shooters. THAT took a lot of tries. Missed an 88% sword swing on what would have been the last move of the mission. Luckily he was only injured afterward.

It looks like all build, research and training times are doubled for Legendary, so that should be a new, possibly unpleasant experience. Not sure about costs mostly because I wasn't paying attention.

I forgot to equip the Legacy weapons for my first 4 missions. :( Those bonuses make a huge difference at low rank levels.

I now have the Alien Hunter weapons.

I turned on double timers just because this is my first Legendary run ever, and a little less pressure is welcome.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by GreenGoo »

Huh. Just got the Nick of Time achievement, which carrying a bleeding out soldier to the chopper. That's weird, only because I used to spend a lot more time dealing with bodies when I first started playing Xcom/Xcom 2. I would have sworn I had brought a bleeding out dude to the choppa before. Guess not.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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Legendary missions are resulting in first time flawless (or intentionally tanking a single hit) results or squad wipes. Nothing in between.

I have Gauss weapons now in May and I'm still afraid to start the SLG or AH DLC. I've started pushing harder to Assassin intel as I want to take her out before she gets much more powerful, but my highest ranked soldier is only Lt. so I only have a 5 man squad still.

I don't know but I assume that the amount of exp. needed to rank up is also increased on Legendary. I'm coming back from successful missions with a full squad of Sgt's and no one levels. I'm doing my best to use covert ops to get to Captain but on Legendary everything takes longer, so even with an Engineer in the Resistance Ring I can only get a few missions per month, and there are other priorities. I have well over 500 supplies sitting on the strategic map that I haven't bothered picking up as I can't spend it on anything. Excavating takes anywhere from 30 to 90 days, depending on how many engineers it lets me put on it. I actually built a Lab as my 3rd room because proving grounds was not available. I'm doing ok without an infirmary but it's starting to get uncomfortable with how many guys are out getting some much needed rest vs. who's fresh and ready to go.

There was a very difficult period where I was transitioning to Gauss and advanced troopers started showing up. Stun Lancers have 9 hp which means you can only kill them 1/3 of the time with 2 hits from a base rifle. 2/3 of the time it takes 3 shots. And that's if they all hit. So most of the time (during the transition) it takes 3 of my 5 soldiers just to kill a single Lancer. A single pod was a challenge. If I pulled 2 pods it was brutal.

It's all doable of course, but man, things can go wrong in a heartbeat. I'm in no way ready for Legendary Ironman and probably never will be.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by coopasonic »

When I played Legendary I save-scummed the living hell out of it, using save/load to scout... I also think I did it before WoTC. I don't want to face the chosen on legendary.

I have the game installed for a replay, but I just can't stop playing monster hunter and RDR2.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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coopasonic wrote: Thu Nov 08, 2018 10:45 am When I played Legendary I save-scummed the living hell out of it, using save/load to scout... I also think I did it before WoTC. I don't want to face the chosen on legendary.
I'm seeing a distinct tendency to be incautious on my first few scouting turns, as I can always reload, right? That's annoying me because I really don't want to play like that (personal preference) so I try not to do it on the first turn or 2 of a new mission at least.

There was an assassination mission where I could not avoid activating 2-4 pods in the span of 2 turns. It was weird, like they all had overlapping patrol patterns and were only ever isolated from each other for a single turn, if that. At one point I hugged the map edge and pulled the closest pod from the corner of the map. I still ended up with a second pod somehow. With lots of reloads and Reaper scouting I can say with some conviction that the pod that you are supposed to kill almost always "patrols" away from you when you spot them even without activating them, and other pods "patrol" towards you/target pod at this time as well. So "not activating" is not the same as "not aware of you", at least not for assassination missions. I concede that it just might be patrol path algorithms designed to create this behaviour, but that's not how it feels after watching the behaviour of the pods multiple times from scratch (reloads from turn 1).

So far the Chosen have been the easiest part of Legendary, at least compared to Commander. I don't think they scale at all. At least not in the first few months. I'm better at fighting them than I was in my first game, so maybe that's all it is.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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GreenGoo wrote: Thu Nov 08, 2018 10:54 amThere was an assassination mission where I could not avoid activating 2-4 pods in the span of 2 turns. It was weird, like they all had overlapping patrol patterns and were only ever isolated from each other for a single turn, if that.
I've seen enemy pods clump up before if you don't activate them in due time. Sneaking around, scouting things out, and then dealing with them seems to give them time to cluster. Usually around an objective. :hawk:
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by GreenGoo »

Interesting. A nearly wiped out pod will often retreat to another pod and become part of that pod, if their will breaks.

I've also seen 2 pods group together and move as one, in other peoples' videos. That's probably the behaviour you're describing.

I really hate waiting, and will rarely hit end turn just to get my skills off cooldown even if time is not a factor, so I don't see that behaviour much.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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coopasonic wrote: Thu Nov 08, 2018 10:45 am I have the game installed for a replay, but I just can't stop playing monster hunter and RDR2.
I've returned to XCOM: Enemy Within. I love both games, but I find EW to just be more fun. I've got 763 hours invested in the second game, but I've decided it's just too much thrown in for the sake of enforced complexity. There are simply too many options to make it fun for me.

There are parts I love such as: covert ops, respecing soldiers at the base as the game progresses, more varied maps, the Steam workshop mods. But it all seems too fiddly and at times overwhelming. There are often too many things to decide between. (And don't get me started on The Lost. I get an extra free shot because...why?) This complexity is X2's greatest strength, but also its greatest weakness. To me at least, it's just not as fun. I was practically addicted to EW, as my 1,662 hours would suggest. I don't feel that same compelling urge to play X2.

Here's a link to an article that expresses a lot of what I feel. https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2 ... 4d89432441

I just defeated the alien base commander and am waiting for the retaliation! :D
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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I think my issue with EW is that it was pretty much the same game every time, like almost literally. I am not sure I could go back. I can't remember specifics now but there were also quality of life changes in 2 that made a difference. Really, I think I am just ready for the next XCOM.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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Fardaza wrote: Thu Nov 08, 2018 12:32 pm I've returned to XCOM: Enemy Within. I love both games, but I find EW to just be more fun. I've got 763 hours invested in the second game, but I've decided it's just too much thrown in for the sake of enforced complexity. There are simply too many options to make it fun for me.
I wouldn't go as far as to say that it doesn't make it fun, but the sheer amount of things you have to keep track of can get overwhelming, and it's all "front-loaded". Within about three or for missions, you get hit with Chosen, Lost, covert ops, base-building, territory control, avatar project, alien rulers, your guys getting captured, etc. This makes the beginning of the game overwhelming. The mid-game is pretty awesome as you start to get a handle on all that's going on, and then the end-game gets real sparse, as you eliminate the Chosen and rulers and knock out the obnoxious alien facilities contributing to the Avatar project, and the only reason to send guys on covert ops is to get some XP for rookies.

It's a shame, I'd love to see some kind of mechanism that gets introduced near the end-game just to mix things up.

I think I'm ready for "Terror From the Deep" now. Or maybe skip that and go straight to "Apocalypse." Without the real-time BS.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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It would be interesting to see a new version of TftD with z-axis fighting right off the bat or how'd they adapt the new system to the environment.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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I was doing the Legacy bank mission (5th/1st set), and I accidentally activated 3 pods at the same time through late-turn positioning, the relative small size of that map and judicious use of volatile mix plasma grenades! Revealed lots of high HP soldiers and a sectoid. Oops! :) Still came through very well, managed to pull back quickly and the closest guy was a blademaster w/ the burning blade enhacement so the mobs were sad when they tried to engage with him.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by GreenGoo »

First run at a recent retaliation mission had me activating over 100 hp of enemy at the same time. I reloaded. :D

PSA: Don't let your soldiers be mind controlled when there are resistance soldiers actively shooting things.

PSA: Regular grenades don't do enough damage to explode cars. The cars light on fire and explode the turn after.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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So...meet the VIP and escort him out mission. My 5 man squad spawns in a corner of the map. VIP is on the edge of the map, so the majority of the map is on my left. It's a Lost mission. Heading straight to the VIP (because I'm literally on the border of the map, going around for no apparent reason makes no sense and on any other map is likely to meet with multiple pods) and I run smack into 3 snake pods on top of each other, followed by back to back Lost swarms.

That's a squad wipe on Rookie, let alone Legendary.

Completely insane mission. There isn't even a way to cut my losses. Extraction zone is on the other side of the 3 pods. Of course I'm gonna reload, but holy crap, even with Reaper scouting that's an unreasonable amount of snakes. There is more than 1 snake per squad member, meaning that my entire squad could be bound in a single turn, with the other snakes spitting poison on them while they get squeezed to death. There's also a spectre because the snakes don't have enough crowd control or hp, so why not? Meanwhile Lost are eating ammunition and precious reloads.

Crazy.

Edit: Second attempt, I cheesed it a little. Ended with a flawless, all 3 npcs recovered.

Scouted past the lizards with Reaper. Summoned a Lost swarm by remote starting a vehicle on the other side of the snakes. Used squad sight at extreme range to hit and "activate" a snake pod. With an active Lost swarm and an active snake pod but none of my squad in visual range, I used the Reaper to watch the ensuing carnage as they went at each other. The 70% of Lost that targeted my guys took multiple turns to reach them, and by that time I'd thinned the herd considerably. The other 30% engaged and badly hurt the snakes over multiple turns. Once things had settled down some, I moved forward and cleaned up whatever lost and damaged snakes that were still standing.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by GreenGoo »

The only reason I haven't gone after the SLG DLC mission yet is due to a lack of Captain rank and so only a 5 man squad. Once that is done, it's onto the Lost Towers, followed by Assassin hunting (edit: You need a Major to complete the covert op for this), then I'll try my luck setting the Alien Rulers free.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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I finished the first series of legacy missions, so that's something.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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coopasonic wrote: Fri Nov 09, 2018 10:34 am I finished the first series of legacy missions, so that's something.
I kind of resented having to do them to unlock their items, because I really like the progress and leveling of the meta-game, but it turns out that the combat is compelling in it's own right, and I enjoyed doing them once I got started. It Came from the Sea in particular is a compelling retelling of the events that lead up to the Newfoundland mission from the first game. That mission is fairly iconic and well known to Xcom players, so it had a nice bit of nostalgia and exposition to go along with the combat.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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I have too many cooks. I have about 25 soldiers in my roster, 6 of which are Lts, none of which are higher than that. So I'm stuck at 5 man squads for now. On the one hand, it gives me some depth and breadth to allow me to take casualties and will recovery and still move forward. On the other hand, experience is being spread pretty thin. I think the former outweighs the latter, but it's still a bottleneck for now.

There has been exactly 1 covert ops mission that offered a promotion so far, and I sent guys on that one.

The early game weaponry from the Alien Hunters DLC have been quite useful. I heard lots of negatives about them but to me they are a nice boost without being OP. Except for the frost bomb which is pretty OP, even if I always save it for an "oh shit!" moment that usually never comes. Sometimes I use it to pin a Chosen in place long enough for me to pour damage into it. I think it just eats 1 action rather than an entire turn, but often that's enough.

The Legacy weapons from the Legacy DLC are awesome. It's like having 1 fully modded weapon of each type, at each tech level. That's a huge deal while you collect your own mods, or if you have a lot of bad luck in finding them.

The 3rd room I built was a laboratory. I didn't need an infirmary and there wasn't anything else to build at that point. It was a mistake. It's a noob trap. I personally am always going to need an infirmary because I almost always have someone injured, sometimes intentionally (or at least intentionally putting them in a position to be injured). The Laboratory ALWAYS has an inspired or breakthrough event on Legendary, because the time between those events is shortened by the Lab, plus the length of time to research something is doubled for Legendary. What this means is that you are ALWAYS tempted to pick the inspired/breakthrough rather than researching based on other priorities. For example, I have Psionics researched, but no way to build a psi-lab. This can result in some research bottlenecks. Obviously you are free to research what you want, but it's very difficult for me not to go with whatever is faster or new. As I said, noob trap.

Because of the time it takes to excavate on Legendary, plus the power requirements of the rooms, plus the noob trap of researching what's inspired, rather than what's needed, I'm at the end of June and still don't have a Proving Grounds built, or even started. That's been ok for now, but it's not optimal. I still don't have an empty room to start building it.

With the increased time for everything on Legendary, I am drowning in supplies. I'm currently sitting on 700+ supplies and that's with only 3 resistance contacts and after upgrading everything to Gauss.

Alien Alloys are a major chokepoint in Legendary. I have bought all the alloys the blackmarket has had to offer for the last two months and I still am short.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by Jag »

Saw this on Reddit r/Xcom. Thought it was cool

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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by GreenGoo »

Very cool.

That sword doesn't look nearly big enough to do anything.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by GreenGoo »

Doing the Black Site mission now, and there are literally 5 pods patrolling in front of the building. 5 distinct pods with their own patrol patterns, all of which are within sight of each other. In some cases 2 pods overlap each other.

Shooting a single alien will pull somewhere between 12 and 15 aliens (at least 1 pod is only 2 advent advanced troopers, so probably 14 aliens total).

I think I'll be hitting end turn for a bit, to see what they are up to.

edit: Remote started a forklift. Scratch one snake and one light MEC. Now that the hornet's nest has been kicked, 1/2 of them scrambled back inside the building (good!). 2 enemies down and team is still stealthed.

I also opened a door on an out building, got 3 people inside and closed the door right before a patrol would have spotted them. That was kind of cool. You don't get to do that sort of thing normally.

Also, 3 of the 5 pods were only 2 enemies each. So that was only 12 enemies total.

edit: Looks like a total of 16 enemies on the map, plus the Assassin, who made a grave mistake and I thank her for it. After the initial melee attack and daze, she moved out of reach. I couldn't get to her with anything. On her next move she took cover right beside most of my soldiers and then blinded them. My my turn I was able to move 4 soldiers to point blank range (she's brittle) and blow her up. Unfortunately this is the second time I allowed the bonus resistance fighter to deal the killing blow. If there are any exp bonuses associated with killing rather than just damaging, I've lost it twice now. The first time I didn't have much of a choice, but this time....damn it.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by GreenGoo »

UFO shot us down. 1st try, near perfect defense, then I got greedy, Reaper picked up item while stealthed, activated but unable to see anyone trooper randomly runs and stands right beside Reaper, followed by 2 flanked shots into her. Reload.

Unable to find the magic again, I have multiple restarts. The last, successful run has me eat 2 light MEC rockets, whereas the the first near perfect run had me kill all light MECs before the got a shot off.

I should point out that the beacon was on the other side of a building. i.e. no squad sight cheezing it.

Bit of a tough run back to the ramp. By the time I got everyone back, I was killing reinforcement pods of 4 enemies each, every turn, including priests that would often sustain so they could eat a precious extra shot the next turn.

Made it with everyone making it out eventually. 3 of 10 soldiers injured. Not so bad. 5 of 10 promotions, all of rank sgt or lower. :(

Low level ranger came away with a fear of stun lancers. No shit. those dudes are scary.

Takes 10 days to remove negative traits in Legendary. :?
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by GreenGoo »

Finally starting Shen's Last Gift, much later than I wanted to do. I have full Gauss and Predator armor. Should be fairly easy, as I hear it doesn't scale. If that's true, the 3 points of armor on every mech sure seems like it would be brutal for a ballistics only team.

Truth is, the game is far too busy with Alien Hunters, SLG and Chosen running around. Even with 25+ soldiers, it's hard to keep more than 1 team ready at any point in time, and you need to be able to handle all the regular missions the game throws at you too.

I wanted to do the Assassin much earlier than this, but you need a Major, and I still don't have one. I'm at the end of July and exactly one covert op gave a promotion as a reward. My Lts and Cpts are seeing a ton of combat, but they just aren't getting the experience they need, I guess.

The Assassin is about to attack the Avenger, and there's nothing I can do about it, except wait for it to happen. :(
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by GreenGoo »

Not sure if people care about spoilers or not. I guess I'll put everything in a spoiler tag and you can decide for yourself.

Shen's Last Gift:
Spoiler:
PSA: Shen has 4 heals, not 3. Her heals do 6 hp. Not sure if advanced medikit would help her, I didn't have it researched yet.

Part 1:

Made it through the first 2 pods, but after hacking one of the MECs and seeing the other MECs zoom in on it, I assumed that was going to be everyone's target, so I pushed hard with my troops to make up some ground and it backfired. Had a MEC explode right in the middle of 4 soldiers. I didn't like that, so restarted.

Made it through the first 3 pods without damage, but I managed to eat an exploding mec on two of my soldiers before getting everyone up the elevator. Only 3 damage each, and I have 6 heals (only base 4 hp heals though, at least on my medkit) with Shen and my own Specialist, but it annoyed me. I guess I misplayed it, but I'm playing through.

Part 2:

I admit I had some idea of what was coming in Part 1. I had no idea what was going to happen in Part 2. Everything went perfectly until I had Shen evac second last before moving her hacked MEC first. Shen leaving the map dehacked the MEC, and my solo ranger ate an explosion, which exposed her, then ate some gun fire. She took the elevator out, finishing Part 2, with only 2 hp left. That said, I still have 6 heals left. I have no idea if Part 3 will give me time to use them however.

Part 3:

Healed ranger back to full using 1 of Shen's and one of my own Specialist's.

Part 3 is mostly a damage check. Shen hacked the 100hp 6 (I think) armour Sectopod shutting it down. Everyone just poured damage into it, with several people throwing standard grenades that did 1 point of damage and shredded 1 point of armor. It woke up and got a shot off, hitting Shen but not for much. It took another shot at someone but missed. I had a frost bomb ready to shut it off again for a turn but I didn't need to, as it went and stood beside an explosive generator. It actually took 2 shots to blow up the generator which annoyed me. The only time I wasn't doing damage to the Sectopod was the initial hack to shut it down, and again when I shut down a MEC with my Specialist, which was a waste of time and actions, and when that same Specialist hit the generator for the minimum 5 of the 5-7 damage Gauss rifle he had. The generator had 6 hp.

100 hp is a LOT of hp, even with all armor stripped.

With a full squad and predator armor and Gauss weaponry, it was less about completing the mission and more about doing it without taking any damage. As mentioned I took a few hits and in fact almost lost my Ranger. I only reloaded once I think, in Part 1. I definitely didn't reload in Part 2 or 3. I actually saved my sniper's free reloads through Part 1 and Part 2, only ever taking 2 shots total before the Sectopod. I didn't need to do that, but I didn't not need to do it either, so...yeah. He's the only one who didn't get a promotion because of it. I now have my major though, so I can go after the Assassin, although I'm pretty sure she'll get to attack the Avenger before I reach her stronghold. I was wrong, no Major.

Enjoyable series of missions. With some foreknowledge I'm confident I can do it a bit earlier, although how you'd do it with ballistic weapons I have no idea, but people do it apparently. I made some mistakes based on ignorance of the missions, and some tactical mistakes. My tech meant those mistakes weren't very costly though.

I now have a shiny new Spark. Yay.

And 5 shaken soldiers. The missions were designed before fatigue was introduced, and the 3 missions back to back pretty much ensure your team will be shaken and unavailable for probably a month after.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by GreenGoo »

Just ran a retaliation mission where I pulled the entire map at once and missed every shot for the following two turns, including several 90+%. No Ironman for me.

...reload.

Oh, and the warlock stayed at the back of the map (i.e. unreachable on the other side of the alien wall of doom) throwing exploding spectral zombies at me in the middle of the 13 aliens I was fighting.

Edit: Ok, fuck that mission. After several failed attempts, I managed to squeak by with 4 injuries, the bare minimum 6 rescued civilians, and over 20 kills in a mission that contained zero lost. It was a mission from hell and I'm fairly sure it was cursed too. I don't know how many 90+% shots I missed in the final "success".

eff that effing effer of a mission.

Oh, and I needed a clean mission because the Assassin is almost upon us and my A team is shaken from SLG dlc mission, and the rest are on covert ops, recovering from injuries, just your everyday tired.

I checked, and I have 2 soldiers above Sergeant that I could use to defend the ship, and one of them is tired. The rest are that rank or below. I think the 6th would be a rookie. I am so effed if she shows up before the infirmary works its magic.

edit: Ok, Assassin made almost no progress towards raiding the Avenger, so everyone has pretty much recovered. Still no Major so still no Chosen mission, but I do have a Major in the pipe, with a Capt. on a covert op mission with a promo reward. It's for a PCS. :x
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by killbot737 »

I have a Q about Shen's Last Gift. I got the all-inclusive X2/WOTC/all DLC version of the game. My first game I started was WOTC with "integrated" dlc. I haven't run into this mission (I'm getting close to the end of the game afaik) yet. But I can create SPARKs. So if I do the integrated thing with WOTC does the mission not trigger?

I did run into the rulers at random as well, are there also specific missions where you're supposed to meet them too? All three together on one map would be impossible at any difficulty, though. You'd have to do the two-squad thing like on that one mission, and even then I doubt you'd come away with no casualties.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by coopasonic »

Integrated gets rid of the specific missions. Also, the Alien Ruler start quest does not pit you against all of them at once.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by GreenGoo »

Correct. Integrated means you get all the toys/aliens from the dlcs, but not the missions.

As you noted, sparks are available in the proving grounds, the alien hunter weapons are available right away, and the rulers start at a black site facility. Once you go to the facility they are set loose and can start showing up all over the place

If you want the dlc missions, choose not integrated.

Edit:. Coop's got it covered 3 mins earlier.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by GreenGoo »

Assassin down.

Not much to tell. I seemed to have reached her at the perfect tech/chosen power level because I walked through part 1 without a scratch, no one got a shot off.

2 of my soldiers ate a grenade before the Assassin spawned in part 2, so that sucked, but it was only 3 damage and my guys were between 9 and 12 hp, so it wasn't serious by any means. Once she spawned I completely destroyed her. I think she lasted 2 turns and that's with me killing her two summoned troopers as well. Just barely killed the stasis stone before she respawned. On legendary she respawns on the 3rd turn, not the 4th like commander. Destroyed both spectres that spawned while I wailed on the stone, killing 1 before it could shadowbind, and the other before his shadowbound soldier could do any damage.

I ate a couple of Assassin melee attacks, but I had brought a Specialist with 3x5 hp heals so it wasn't noticeable.

It really was a cakewalk. It was late August, I had full Gauss with lots of attachments, and predator armor. I had no Colonels and only 1 Major, 3 Captains and 2 Lts. My Spark is too low level and had just recently gotten his butt handed to him, so he's out a full month in the repair bay if I don't want to use him damaged.

Unfortunately The avatar project is full and counting down. I had hoped killing the chosen would knock a pip off the bar, but no. I have a covert op underway to reduce the progress, but it won't complete until the project countdown is 1/2 way to zero. I can see 6(!) facilities, but none of them are in territories I have access to yet. Worse, I have a Dark Event doubling intel costs, so I can't even contact a new region because it's too expensive.

Once I get this under control, I'm going to get access to a region with a facility and leave it until the bar is full again, then immediately assault the facility. After I have access to the region but before I assault the facility, I plan to see what all the fuss is about regarding Alien Rulers. I'm trepidatious, but the longer I leave it the less I'll profit from defeating them.

I have 2 psi-operatives in training, but on legendary it takes at least 2 weeks to gain even the lowest ability, and about 3 weeks to gain the higher ones. That's a lot of time spent training.

Like I said, I'm at a sweet spot in terms of tech vs. game progression. I am working on plasma rifles so when the game jumps in difficulty again I will be ready to increase firepower with it.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by Newcastle »

GreenGoo wrote: Mon Nov 05, 2018 2:57 pm Been looking for a WotC tech tree. Doesn't matter what form it's in. Website, mod, jpeg. Whatever.

If you guys find one could you let me know? Thanks.
Look for a mod called "WC_LAByrinth". Its pretty good. While not a real tech tree, it does show what will open up if you research something. Give it a try. Has a lot of other neat bits of info as well.

Also finished the legacy 28 and overall pretty cool. Really liked them. Was kind of a thrill to try to rush through the missions to get the extra bonus points.
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