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

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

Post by GreenGoo »

Alrighty, thanks.

I haven't played in a couple of days. I was too tired and when I'm tired I make mistakes. Sure I can reload but mistakes are frustrating enough to hinder my enjoyment of the game.

I have the Katana and Shotgun, but I still need to research them to use them. I should probably have them ready when I go alien leader hunting, but I don't know that I will.

The randomized continental bonuses are all pretty terrible this game, so I don't feel a strong need to put in the effort to trigger them, which also means I have been neglecting my resistance contacts. I think I only have 4 total and it's early September.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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GreenGoo wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 2:02 am 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.
Apparently building the skulljack then skulljacking a commander and killing the codex that spawns is worth a 2 pip reduction on the Avatar bar. I had no idea and was just going about my missions. I actually got lucky because skulljacking the commander was not a priority and I very easily could have put it off for awhile.

Instead, I stopped the countdown and saved several days from disappearing from the timer. Meanwhile my covert op is proceeding and that will bring it down another 2 pips.

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

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Leveling Sparks is hard. They also take forever to be repaired, at least on Legendary. It's like 1 mission per month, 2 if you're willing to send them out damaged

The game is almost too busy with all DLC active. I just researched plasma rifles and I still haven't unleashed the Alien Rulers yet. I mean, yeah, I've been putting it off, but I also almost always have something else that's more pressing. Missions come pretty regularly and even with 25+ soldiers, I often have 15-20 tired, wounded, on covert ops, being bonded, removing negative traits (haven't had any in awhile) and other things of that nature. You really can't afford an extra mission with extra wounds and extra tired, especially if you're worried the Ruler will kick your ass.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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Finally got around to doing the Nest mission, which is the first Alien Hunter mission. It doesn't scale, and while it looks like it would be challenging with ballistics, it certainly seems doable.
Spoiler:
I think I took 1 point of damage from a squeeze before fighting the Viper King. Hilariously I had no idea what was coming, except I did know that the rulers get to 1 action for every action you take, but otherwise I had no idea about powers/abilities/weapons whatever. Which was great, because I triggered the King with Bradford while leaving my entire team clumped together on a stone plateau. The king immediately frozen 5 of us for 2 turns leaving Bradford to fight the King and his minions solo for both turns.

Turns out it wasn't so bad, and by the time my guys thawed, the King was already pretty damaged. I scared him off and he ran through his portal before I could finish him. Now that I've seen the encounter I'm sure I could kill him before he escapes next time. Probably.

But now he's free and roaming, which means the rest of them are free and roaming too. I don't actually know how many rulers there are. I know there is the Viper, Berserker and Archon. Not sure about the rest.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by GreenGoo »

Probably not news to anyone who has already played through the Alien Hunter content, but early on you get a scan mission that gives you the AH weapons. They are actually pretty awesome at the start of the game. Even the boltcaster with only a clip size of 1. It has a bonus to aim which makes a HUGE difference at the start of the game.

Anyway, you can't upgrade those until you've done the Alien Nest mission. Once you do that, each weapon has an upgrade to tier 2 (Gauss) and tier 3 (plasma) tech. Unfortunately you have to pay a not insignificant amount to upgrade each weapon separately, so it is expensive.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by GreenGoo »

Can someone explain to me why shieldbearer's shielding protects against burning and/or poison? Worse, that it protects even if the target is already burning/poisoned when the shielding is applied. I.e. the poison is already in the alien's body before the shielding exists.

Wtf. That cost me like 3 soldiers eating a grenade that they didn't have to.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by GreenGoo »

So, I got cocky and greedy, setting up an ambush on an arriving reinforcement, including dropping a bladestorm ranger in the middle of it.

Of course the reinforcements contained a purifier, which exploded, damaging 4 soldiers, but luckily killing no one.

Did I learn my lesson? No I did not. I'm quite sure I will do it again. It's too much fun to stop.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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GreenGoo wrote: Sat Nov 17, 2018 6:51 pm Probably not news to anyone who has already played through the Alien Hunter content, but early on you get a scan mission that gives you the AH weapons. They are actually pretty awesome at the start of the game. Even the boltcaster with only a clip size of 1. It has a bonus to aim which makes a HUGE difference at the start of the game.

Anyway, you can't upgrade those until you've done the Alien Nest mission. Once you do that, each weapon has an upgrade to tier 2 (Gauss) and tier 3 (plasma) tech. Unfortunately you have to pay a not insignificant amount to upgrade each weapon separately, so it is expensive.
The obnoxious thing about those is that if the guy carrying one bites the bucket and you end the mission by evacuating, you better scoop the body up. Otherwise, you may just wind up losing the weapon.

Of course, there's a "buildable alien hunter weapons" mod, but those cost a pretty penny.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by GreenGoo »

The same applies to weapons with mods on them.

But I'm not playing ironman and this game I just save on turn one and if I don't like how the mission goes, I restart it.

So far I haven't let anyone die without restarting.

I have carried unconscious soldiers onto the evac pad though, at least once.

With the addition of the Legacy DLC the Alien Hunter weapons are not as important, especially past tier 1, but they are still good, and fun.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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First encounter of the Berserker Queen was on a timed rescue the VIP mission, so that sucked. However, I managed to make it though without losing anyone although the Queen escaped as well. Unfortunately one of my last actions was to shoot at Commander hiding behind an already damaged van containing the VIP. Van exploded taking a Ranger and the VIP with it.

So the mission was basically complete and I managed to fubar it anyway.

Second try, I gas dot him her, things are going well, he's she's just about at 1/2 health, I expect him her to run, then my specialist executes him her with a superior repeater (15% chance).

So freakin' sweet.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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Archon Ruler showed up on a timed hack mission. It was also a savage sitrep, which at this stage of the game is almost too easy, as everything is melee focused and I can dish out so much ranged dps that most things don't survive their activation turn, and definitely not charging through overwatch. I kicked their asses so hard that I made a stun lancer retreat into cover and overwatch. Lol.

Then the Archon. He dropped some serious explosives on my 2 elevated snipers, doing damage AND dropping them for more damage, but I managed to keep them alive. Dropped a fire bomb on him then hit him with poison ammo, so he was taking dot damage the whole time. Not much though. Often only 1 dam per dot. Did enough damage to scare the Archon off, then frost bombed him which gave me 1 more shot at him before he left. Assuming I can survive his devastate (blazing pistons but only 1 soldier can get out of range in time) I should be able to kill him next time.

I'm not sure, but it looked like he started with 140-180 hp and 4 armor. That's a little nuts.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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The Warlock is working on an Avenger Assault activity, which I don't really want to do, so I should be going after him, but I need a Templar to remove the chance of a soldier being captured, and since my Templar always seems to be injured or tired, I went after the Hunter. I do have a covert op underway to delay the assault. I hope it works.

Since I've researched Plasma, the game is farther along than it was for the Assassin. The pod sizes are bigger, and filled with tougher aliens. 4 of my soldiers ate a grenade when I couldn't quite finish off the last Trooper of a pod, and when I opened a door there were 4 berserkers right on the other side. I managed to kill 3 of them and most of the 4th before they took a turn even though they have like 30hp each, but the last one got a hit in and it hurt.

So unlike with the Assassin, I took some damage before heading to part 2.

I actually lost part 2. I'm not sure how it happened, except that the Hunter kept getting flanked crits and leaving my soldiers to bleed out. I was down to 4 before I knew it, and while I put up a good fight after that, I eventually ran out of dps as each of the 4 were incapacitated over time. It was actually a really good fight, and I put the Hunter back into his resurrection chamber multiple times with just those 4.

Anyway, I reloaded and shored up the weak points of my play and it went pretty smoothly. So now 2 chosen are dead.

The second I was out of the mission a guerilla op started and it had the Viper King on it. I had already damaged him from before, and while he did manage to hurt a couple of soldiers, he died before he had a chance to finish anyone off.

So 2 Chosen (Assassin, Hunter) and 2 Rulers (Viper, Berserker) are down.

The length of time it takes to research and build things means that I have probably 2-3 months left in the game if I want to make armor out of the rulers, research all Chosen weapons, upgrade the cannons and sniper rifles and melee weapons, and build some powered armor (which I have researched, but the cost to build is 600+ supplies).

I could probably finish it in a 1.5 months if I just went straight for the story missions/tech. But I want to see the Ruler content so I'll just keep on keeping on until I get everything.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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Codex gate mission was tougher than it had any right to be, because I forgot to bring even a single medikit, and the Chrysalid poison dot never stops ticking. I had to tank every Chrysalid with my Spark, and while they missed as often as they hit, the Spark was pretty beat up by the end. It didn't help that the Warlock kept sending spectral zombies at me, which slowed me down.

It really shouldn't have been that hard, but it was. Anyway, just wasting time while my research team does its thing.

Powered armour is 600 supplies on Legendary. Tier 3 Spark armour is 250 supplies just by itself. I don't remember what the Serpent armour cost, but it was at least 200 supplies or a single suit. It actually holds up even at tier 3, so getting it at tier 2 or even 1 would be pretty sweet.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by GreenGoo »

mothereffing Andromedons and their mothereffing armor and acid blob.

Trying to do an ambush mission with 3 soldiers, which should be a cakewalk, and it is, until an Andromedon survives to fight back (because 4 armor) and then blobs 2 of my soldiers for 9+ damage each, plus DoT. It seems excessive for a single attack with no aim requirement.

At the same time, most attacks I can just face tank and shrug off, so I guess I shouldn't complain.

Still, only 3 soldiers (better than the usual 2!) and no ability to shred armour is not enough to kill them before they can hurt me and in some cases, kill me with a single attack.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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Well, they finally had this one on sale for half price. 35.5 gig!
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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dbt1949 wrote: Wed Nov 21, 2018 6:24 pm Well, they finally had this one on sale for half price. 35.5 gig!
Welcome to 2018. As smoove notes, games regularly have "patches" in excess of 20 gigs. Like, weekly patches.

I agree, it's nuts.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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GreenGoo wrote: Wed Nov 21, 2018 5:40 pm mothereffing Andromedons and their mothereffing armor and acid blob.

Trying to do an ambush mission with 3 soldiers, which should be a cakewalk, and it is, until an Andromedon survives to fight back (because 4 armor) and then blobs 2 of my soldiers for 9+ damage each, plus DoT. It seems excessive for a single attack with no aim requirement.

At the same time, most attacks I can just face tank and shrug off, so I guess I shouldn't complain.

Still, only 3 soldiers (better than the usual 2!) and no ability to shred armour is not enough to kill them before they can hurt me and in some cases, kill me with a single attack.
The answer was to keep my sharpshooter and ranger out of range and out of sight, then let my fortressed Templar sit in melee range doing 2-4 damage (after armor) then parrying the return attack, turn after turn until it turns robotic and loses its armor and defense.

I needed to keep the other 2 soldiers nearby though, to support when a Lost swarm showed up. Tedious, but effective. Ended the mission with zero damage taken.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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Another timed mission, another Alien Ruler. That said, it seems like the missions where a Ruler spawns have slightly weaker aliens in general, so I crushed the mission aliens. I saw some weird behaviour from each of the Rulers which makes me think the code that allows them to take an action after each of the player's actions is riddled with bugs. I'm not going to go into details, they just seem weird.

The Archon had the most HP left after the first fight than either of the other two, so I expected a tougher fight, but the devastate attack didn't work very well, as I moved 1 soldier, and another that got hit had untouchable active (i.e. no damage from next attack after making a kill) and the 3rd soldier only took 2 damage and was stunned (I have no idea how/why that happened. Last time it hurt badly). The Archon picked up another soldier, but hitting him with the next attack again got him to drop the soldier without doing anything with her.

In any case, there are only 3 Rulers I have since found out, and all 3 are dead now. I have snake armour and berserker armour, but I won't have archon armour for awhile.

I just completed the final covert op to allow assault on the Warlock, so I should have all 3 Chosen and all 3 Rulers dead after my next play session.

I'm so far from having all the storyline research done that I'm still months away from finishing the game though. I could ignore all the extra content like researching the Chosen weapons and Ruler armour to speed things up but I want to see it all at least once, and this game is a good candidate for it.

My self imposed rule of saving on turn 1 and then having to restart the entire mission if I don't like how it turns out (i.e. limited save scumming) has turned out well. There have been a few times where I really, really wanted to save a mission in the middle of it, but I never did. It has resulted in some frustrating missions where I make it right to the very end and then screw up and lose a guy, meaning I have to play the entire mission more than once, but I still feel it's more challenging/satisfying than just saving every turn. I fully admit that playing the first 25% of a mission then replaying it is much easier than playing Ironman, but it's still better for me personally than just reloading the previous turn's autosave.
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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 22, 2018 12:13 am I saw some weird behaviour from each of the Rulers which makes me think the code that allows them to take an action after each of the player's actions is riddled with bugs. I'm not going to go into details, they just seem weird.
Pretty sure the weirdness I'm seeing is related to the changes they added to their behaviour when WotC was released. They were "nerfed" a bit to reduce how often they get to move. Things like reloading no longer give the Rulers an action. So sometimes they'd move and sometimes they wouldn't. Also, when normal aliens are activated but out of LoS they move around, do stuff. When an activated Ruler is out of LoS they don't get their actions like they would if they had LoS. So essentially the Ruler will alternate actions with the player, except for when they are completely out of LoS, at which point they simply stop doing anything. i.e. they only get an action if they see you taking an action. If they can't see you taking an action, they do nothing.

Pretty sure that accounts for most of the weirdness I was seeing.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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PSA: There is no discount for Tier 3 Alien Hunter weapons if you tech to Tier 2 first. I.e. if you are at T1 and you can go to T3, there is no benefit for going to T2 first then T3 and in fact will cost you extra for no benefit. Which makes sense, I guess.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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Hey Paingod, did you get the Heavy Metal achievement? How did you keep track of which Heavy weapon you still needed to use vs which ones you had killed someone with?
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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The game begins to feel too easy by the end, even on Legendary, and then you get a mission where the pods are positioned in such a way, and their patrol patterns are overlapping, and the timer is short, and they have a heavy tank like a Sectopod or a Gatekeeper, and you just can't get past it without heavy damage or even death.

I realize you need a challenge at the end, but sometimes it's a bit ludicrous. I don't know how many times I've activated the entire map at the same time, and that's with being cautious. A wall gets destroyed providing LoS, or an errant shot blows up a car, or the activation indicator says the pod won't activate but it does anyway.

It doesn't help that I never take my best soldiers, because they are all colonels by now and I don't want to waste the exp on each mission, so I take some of the B and C teams (who are all still very good, really).

I'm not exactly complaining, I'm more like observing that he difficulty curve goes from too shallow to too steep randomly.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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GreenGoo wrote: Fri Nov 23, 2018 2:11 pm Hey Paingod, did you get the Heavy Metal achievement? How did you keep track of which Heavy weapon you still needed to use vs which ones you had killed someone with?
I didn't keep track ... I just played a lot and eventually got kills with all of them. It doesn't hurt to think of them as things you should use before ending a mission, and not something to keep and take home... I think that one spans all playthroughs, too. If you think you're close, but don't have it, try using the two versions of flame throwers, in particular the weaker one. Very likely those are under-utilized. They're the ones I don't bring by default because I don't like dealing with burning environments as I run around.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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Paingod wrote: Sat Nov 24, 2018 8:13 pm I didn't keep track ... I just played a lot and eventually got kills with all of them. It doesn't hurt to think of them as things you should use before ending a mission, and not something to keep and take home... I think that one spans all playthroughs, too.
This is good advice for any buffs/megaweapons. I think it's a gamer fault to save potions/scrolls/mega-cooldowns for boss fights, and we often never use them because of this. I know I do. Currently I have a WAR suit, a Berserker suit and a Spark, all of which can equip heavy weapons.

You're right, this one definitely spans multiple games. I've started a text file to keep track of everything. There are 7 heavy weapons (including heavy power weapons) and in this game alone I have made kills with 5 of them. The limiting factor is the random nature of "inventing" the weapons, and the elerium core count limiting the number of times you can experiment to get new ones.

I do not have a Blaster Launcher or a Shredstorm Cannon. I want to say that I have gotten a kill with the Blaster Launcher at some point in the past, but I'm not 100% sure. If I get lucky with experimentation, I may be able to finish the achievement all in the same game.

Up until now I really haven't cared too much about the 1 use per mission items. Grenades do similar work for terrain destruction although the ai very clearly takes radii into account when it positions its units, so you can rarely get more than 2 enemy units in a blast radius, and almost never 4+. That said, it doesn't seem to do the same thing with cone effect area, so you can often get 4+ units (assuming you activated 4+ at the same time) in a cone, like with the shredder gun or the plasma blaster.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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GreenGoo wrote: Sat Nov 24, 2018 8:38 pm I do not have a Blaster Launcher or a Shredstorm Cannon. I want to say that I have gotten a kill with the Blaster Launcher at some point in the past, but I'm not 100% sure. If I get lucky with experimentation, I may be able to finish the achievement all in the same game.
It was the Shredstorm Cannon, for the record. 6 of the 7 heavy weapons got a kill in my current game.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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Legendary costs are so high that despite buying every elerium crystal on the black market for the last 8 months, the end of the game is here and I can not afford the highest tier psi-amp (50 crystals) or the highest tier gremlin (35?). I can live without the gremlin. Without the psi-amp I'm not going to bother bringing psi-operatives on the last missions. I've even spent an entire month waiting for the black market to refresh and I still don't have enough.

Here's how it happened. I built every single thing in the base game, the Alien Hunters DLC and the Shen's Last Gift DLC. I also waited on researching the Gatekeeper because I normally try to only do autopsies when they are instant and while I've killed a decent number of Gatekeepers, a lot of those were on evac missions, so I didn't get to keep the corpse. No autopsy, no psi-amp. No psi-amp, I spend elerium on other things. meaningless things. Like the tier 3 boltcaster. Which is awesome, but end game you need more than 1 shot because of the skills that allow more than 1 shot per turn, plus hair triggers, plus bonds giving extra actions, plus other things. It's a great weapon that really shines during tier 1 but then drops off as you tech up. With no way to put weapon mods on it, I don't think it would be overpowered to give the boltcaster 1 extra ammo per tech tier. 3 shots at tier 3 would just about put it on par with some of the other 3 shot weapons (that also have 3 mods on them. None of the 3 shot weapons are used unless they have an ammo clip mod by end game).

I think I'm going to have to do the end game mission without psi-ops and only tier 2 amp for my avatar. That makes me sad.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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PSA: Put a superior ammo clip and a superior repeater on your Reaper weapon. Get banish and it's cousin, devastate. Watch as you kill every unit in LoS with a single action (assuming some luck).
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

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Finished Legendary finally.

Waited an another entire month until a downed UFO mission came up so I could grab some elerium.

Final 2 parter mission went off without a hitch. No reloads, only lost 1 soldier on the second last turn. I didn't really mean to sacrifice her so it was a mistake rather than conscious decision.

PSA: Untouchable (no soldiers lost during campaign) achievement does not include the final mission. I.e. I received the achievement despite losing the above mentioned soldier.

The team I took (I had like 15+ Colonels by the end) was this:

Ranger (I forgot to equip the Assassin sword, or even an alien ruler axe. She was using the default fusion blade. Did fine anyway)
Sharpshooter (snake suit, hunter rifle/pistol. Rifle doesn't have enough shots imo. I'd rather give up something and get a larger clip)
Grenadier (used 1 of 3 grenades)
Specialist (really only there to top people up if I made any mistakes. Was never needed. Did hack several mechanicals to shut them down for 2 turns though, which was useful. Also built for repeated overwatch attacks with a repeater rifle for instant kills. Lots of multiple overwatch shots, no insta-kills)
Templar (there for guaranteed damage on far away targets behind heavy cover. Worked great. Psion storm is pretty cool, although no parry/momentum after, which was difficult to adjust to)
Psionic Operative (under utilized. Had the Warlock's rifle, was effective enough with it).

The truth is that by the end of the game, with battle intelligence giving multiple extra skills, Alien Hunter and Chosen toys, weapon breakthroughs, you are insanely over powered. Playing right into April of the next year also didn't hurt, because it gave me enough time to finish everything first, even on Legendary with the double times on research and building.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by GreenGoo »

Ready to start my Commander/Ironman game(s), but I'm torn about how to implement the DLC. Integrated sounds like has been tweaked to work better with WotC, but one of the benefits of the Alien Hunter weapons that they are received early, and are free (no build time or resources). Getting those weapons early ups their usefulness significantly. If I have to research them like you do in Integrated (10 days) and then build each one separately (time, resources, opportunity cost) they are a LOT less attractive. Like, why bother with them unattractive. I don't like that.

So on the one hand Integrated seems like the way to go. On the other, one of the key benefits (in fact the only benefit I found in my Legendary game) of early weapon access is removed.

I think I'm going to go with non-integrated. The missions are fun too, although your soldiers are completely f**ked up by the end of Shen's Last Gift because of the nature of the new fatigue system and multi-stage nature of SLG mission.

If you disable Lost and Abandoned then you start with a random hero class (but a rookie, which is weird. The don't start with their "starting" skills, just some of them) on your first mission. Also the Assassin's strengths/weaknesses are randomized (whereas they are always the same with L&A on) which adds some variety. If you start with a Reaper, the first mission is far easier than usual, as the claymore and second stealth are more than the mission is designed for.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by GreenGoo »

So anyone who has played PUBG with me knows I'm not particularly celebratory. Victories are taken in stride, knowing that losses will inevitably follow, and while pride is occasional taken in a particularly smart or skilled play, I rarely exclaim at my own success.

Tonight in my Commander/Ironman game I had to run a retaliation/terror mission with a squad size of 4, and the Assassin showed up. My soldiers have a maximum of 6 hp, with one having only 5. I was seriously stressed out already, as retaliation missions can go south in a heartbeat, and now I only had 4 soldiers and conventional weapons against a Chosen.

Wanting to win the mission I play to win, rather than just survive, and I overwatch creep forward, activating a pod and killing it successfully (this is when the Chosen spawned). I'm making progress and continue to overwatch creep, and of course activate a pod and get into it which is when the Assassin chose to make her presence known. None of this is should be surprising. It surprised me because I'm a dumbass.

She dazes a soldier and knocks him down to 1/2 health, and things are freakin' tense. I finish the pod and start working on the Assassin (22-25 hp, somewhere around there with weapons that do 3-5 damage each). She then summons a trooper (but only 1, she's young yet) and I swear at how unlucky I am. In the early game everything is weaker, so it's a numbers game rather than a tech or soldier skills game, and she just added a number to her side.

In any case, I managed to kill the trooper with overwatch shots (not bad, considering my soldiers can't hit a barn if it fell on them) and then go to work on the Assassin. I do have a freeze grenade and use it on my second to last attack. My last attack crits and triggers the 3+ attacks per turn bonus damage and down she goes.

I let out a loud "Yeessssss!" and then proceed to clean up the rest of the mission. A faceless activated when all normal aliens were killed, and I was in a poor position to do anything about it. The faceless knocked another soldier down by 1/2 before he was killed.

Still though, 12 of 13 civilians rescued, First appearance of a Chosen and the Assassin was defeated, no deaths, with only 4 soldiers, ironman. Damn right I was happy.

In retrospect, and not to diminish anything, but it was the added pressure of Ironman that made the victory so sweet. The mechanics of winning the mission weren't particularly brilliant or noteworthy. No 16% shot chance as a last ditch effort to save a soldier or anything. Just basic, competent play. Still though. W00t.

I will note that my tactical play continues to improve. Partly from learning how to exploit the AI mechanics better, and partly from making less mistakes, and less putting myself in situations where I need a hail mary to succeed.

Longer post than I intended. The entire point was supposed to be about how awesome it was to defeat the Assassin on a retaliation mission and how I surprised myself by exclaiming at my success.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by Paingod »

GreenGoo wrote: Tue Nov 27, 2018 11:38 pmStill though, 12 of 13 civilians rescued, First appearance of a Chosen and the Assassin was defeated, no deaths, with only 4 soldiers, ironman. Damn right I was happy.

In retrospect, and not to diminish anything, but it was the added pressure of Ironman that made the victory so sweet.
Would have been a great mission without Ironman. With Ironman, certainly cause to do a little happy dance. Nice work!
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by Fardaza »

GreenGoo wrote: Tue Nov 27, 2018 11:38 pm So anyone who has played PUBG with me knows I'm not particularly celebratory. Victories are taken in stride, knowing that losses will inevitably follow, and while pride is occasional taken in a particularly smart or skilled play, I rarely exclaim at my own success.

Tonight in my Commander/Ironman game I had to run a retaliation/terror mission with a squad size of 4, and the Assassin showed up. My soldiers have a maximum of 6 hp, with one having only 5. I was seriously stressed out already, as retaliation missions can go south in a heartbeat, and now I only had 4 soldiers and conventional weapons against a Chosen.

Wanting to win the mission I play to win, rather than just survive, and I overwatch creep forward, activating a pod and killing it successfully (this is when the Chosen spawned). I'm making progress and continue to overwatch creep, and of course activate a pod and get into it which is when the Assassin chose to make her presence known. None of this is should be surprising. It surprised me because I'm a dumbass.

She dazes a soldier and knocks him down to 1/2 health, and things are freakin' tense. I finish the pod and start working on the Assassin (22-25 hp, somewhere around there with weapons that do 3-5 damage each). She then summons a trooper (but only 1, she's young yet) and I swear at how unlucky I am. In the early game everything is weaker, so it's a numbers game rather than a tech or soldier skills game, and she just added a number to her side.

In any case, I managed to kill the trooper with overwatch shots (not bad, considering my soldiers can't hit a barn if it fell on them) and then go to work on the Assassin. I do have a freeze grenade and use it on my second to last attack. My last attack crits and triggers the 3+ attacks per turn bonus damage and down she goes.

I let out a loud "Yeessssss!" and then proceed to clean up the rest of the mission. A faceless activated when all normal aliens were killed, and I was in a poor position to do anything about it. The faceless knocked another soldier down by 1/2 before he was killed.

Still though, 12 of 13 civilians rescued, First appearance of a Chosen and the Assassin was defeated, no deaths, with only 4 soldiers, ironman. Damn right I was happy.

In retrospect, and not to diminish anything, but it was the added pressure of Ironman that made the victory so sweet. The mechanics of winning the mission weren't particularly brilliant or noteworthy. No 16% shot chance as a last ditch effort to save a soldier or anything. Just basic, competent play. Still though. W00t.

I will note that my tactical play continues to improve. Partly from learning how to exploit the AI mechanics better, and partly from making less mistakes, and less putting myself in situations where I need a hail mary to succeed.

Longer post than I intended. The entire point was supposed to be about how awesome it was to defeat the Assassin on a retaliation mission and how I surprised myself by exclaiming at my success.
That kind of stuff is why I keep playing XCOM, both EW and WotC. It's such a great feeling when you pull it off!

Does anyone else cheer when Central starts talking to you at the end of a mission? After killing what I hope is the last alien, I find myself saying, "Talk to me Brad!"
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by GreenGoo »

No, I tend to say derogatory things to the main characters when they start talking. Not sure why, outside of being a hateful person. Familiarity breeds contempt, or something.

It's a cool thing to do though. I can totally see the appeal.

I recently had another 4 man mission (GTS not completed yet, was second room built instead of first) that was on a timer. It had reinforcements drop in, triggered by absolutely nothing. No dark event, no in mission event like hacking the station or grabbing the VIP. Just...kill the first pod, boom, reinforcements. It was also rated as "difficult" not "very difficult" and I ended up killing 12 aliens by the end. That's the equivalent of 4 pods, or early game, almost 5 or 6 pod equivalent since some of the early game pods are only 2 aliens in size. It just seemed an extreme number for the end of March with only 4 soldiers (not that this changes how the missions spawn, just saying). I finished it without any losses, although a couple of injuries that were unfortunate and will take awhile to recover from. I've since started on the infirmary (3rd room built).

Not sure if psi-zombies or spectral troops count toward the mission total at the end. I'm pretty sure that summoned normal troopers/stun lancers do.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by GreenGoo »

So I'm coming off that Retaliation mission high, and now have Gauss shotguns and rifles and a 5th squad member. I'm feeling confident.

I'm doing my first supply mission (it's the crate pickups one), having bought alloys on the black market earlier to get my shotguns/rifles asap.

I see a small pod and knowing that the crates don't start getting picked up until my squad is revealed, I decide to scout a bit, see if I can find the other pods. I move in an L shape instead of on the diagonal to move from 1 corner on the map in the direction of the opposite corner. The first pod is following me. Huh. Well they can't patrol across the entire map, can they? I keep moving, keep moving. They continue to move on the diagonal and are getting closer. I finally spot a second pod as I overwatch creep, and surprising exactly no one, that's when the first pod moves into range and activates because it makes sense for a pod to traverse the entire map to keep me in LoS despite my squad being in conceal.

When the second pod activates on the same turn, the Officer shoots instead of running for cover. Ok, maybe commanders have a chance to do that, maybe. There is a dark event that gives that chance to the aliens, but maybe the Officer has it by default. It seems to me that it's incredibly rare, but I might have seen that before from an Officer. That's when the Stun Lancer fires and hits the same target as the officer, knocking out my Templar who is now bleeding out.

To be clear, my entire squad was in overwatch when 1 alien pod breached my conceal range and activated. When I was revealed, the second pod activated and on their activation turn, shot at me twice. To the best of my knowledge, that's not supposed to happen.

So my confidence collapses. My overwatch killed 1 of 5 aliens (a snake) leaving an Officer, a Stun Lancer and 2 Purifiers. So it's 4 on 4. I don't have a lot of options, and choose to use my 2 rangers to melee murder the officer as neither has run and gun yet. This leaves my rangers out of cover, but it was a gamble to reduce their numbers as quickly as possible. Standing in cover while the Officer marks then shoots at me and the stun lancer gets the mark benefit is almost equally likely to kill one of my guys, so I gamble and force a kill on them first, If that explanation is clear. My personal morale has dropped through the floor at the loss of my Templar (bleeding out).

I completely forget purifiers have fire grenades. He drops one on top of my rangers, reducing them to 1 and 2 hp respectively, and lighting them on fire. If my morale was low before, it's completely shattered now. The Stun Lancer runs right past them to hit and disorient my grenadier, leaving him with 2 hp (he could have killed either ranger, so thank goodness for small miracles). So now I have 4 soldiers, 1 of which is at 1 hp and 2 are at 2 hp, with 2 purifiers and a stun lancer still alive. The first purifier has panicked because his snake dude buddy is dead, and retreats. Phew.

I run and hunker down with the rangers, saving their lives, but taking a full turn to do it. I flank the stun lancer with a magnetic rifle and a tier 1 repeater and execute him! 1 purifier left and 1 running away.

Not sure what happens next, but eventually I take a couple of bullcrap shots with the shotguns from range at the purifier in cover and hit him anyway, causing him to explode. Specialist stops the Templar from bleeding out, then heals the 1 hp Ranger back up to 5 hp.

I creep around, grabbing the occasional crate, but mostly hunting. I keep my full health specialist up front, followed by the 5 hp ranger. The other 2 are way back and always in full cover, despite no active pods. Eventually I find and kill the remaining aliens, crapping my pants the entire time.

Mission complete with something like 6/13 crates, 4 wounded soldiers out for 3-4 weeks, and no deaths and a bunch of loot.

The reality that I didn't lose anyone has yet to fully kick in. It still feels like the mission was a disaster, even though no deaths, several promotions, and a decent amount of loot.

The mission went from over confident to omgwtfbbq to NNnnoooo! to please please please to phew! followed by holy crap, the mission was actually a success.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by Fardaza »

GreenGoo wrote: Fri Nov 30, 2018 1:26 am The mission went from over confident to omgwtfbbq to NNnnoooo! to please please please to phew! followed by holy crap, the mission was actually a success.
:clap: Nicely played Sir!

I love your AARs. Keep em comin.

I'll have to catch up on Tuesday. My wife and I are taking a 3-day cruise to Ensenada for our anniversary. May the aliens continue to die until I get back.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by GreenGoo »

Fardaza wrote: Fri Nov 30, 2018 1:44 am
I love your AARs. Keep em comin.

I'll have to catch up on Tuesday. My wife and I are taking a 3-day cruise to Ensenada for our anniversary. May the aliens continue to die until I get back.
Hah. I actually worry that my disorganized stream of consciousness recollections are annoying people. I often use threads about specific games to essentially blog random thoughts of the game as I play. It's not an organized official attempt at an AAR, nor is a huge amount of time spent trying to be interesting. I'll leave details out, I'll put too many in, I'll get tired mid-post and simply stop, leaving the conclusion of the events dangling.

I'm happy to hear that you enjoy reading what I write. I'm not fishing for compliments, but like I said, I was worried that spamming a game's thread with these random thoughts and game experiences might be offputting and/or annoying. Positive feedback allows me to mostly stop worrying and just go about what I was doing.

So thanks for the nice words and just as important, thanks for relieving my concern that I'm spamming this thread too much. That was actually bugging me more than I'd like to admit.

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

Post by Paingod »

GreenGoo wrote: Fri Nov 30, 2018 2:06 amI was worried that spamming a game's thread with these random thoughts and game experiences might be offputting and/or annoying. Positive feedback allows me to mostly stop worrying and just go about what I was doing.
Have you seen the gaming forum? It's filled with people replying to themselves and updating us all about what's going on... It's why we're here. :D

I, for one, enjoy hearing about your successes and failures. I may not say much, but I do appreciate you posting them. I hope others like hearing about mine.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by GreenGoo »

Sure, but I'm verbose, I've had people demand I stop posting in other forums because they are tired of listening to me (in their defense, the things I write in the other forums are not fun game related things), and the gaming forum is pretty quiet compared to the other forums, making my constant verbose posts stand out even more.

I didn't think I was annoying people, I was concerned I might be.

I'm very glad that you and others are enjoying what I write. I will continue to do so. It helps to know that others are reading along out of interest.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by Paingod »

GreenGoo wrote: Fri Nov 30, 2018 9:02 amI've had people demand I stop posting in other forums because they are tired of listening to me...
People in other forums are dumb. :mrgreen:

Keep with the details, man.
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Re: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - A new war? A new thread!

Post by GreenGoo »

Paingod wrote: Fri Nov 30, 2018 10:29 am
GreenGoo wrote: Fri Nov 30, 2018 9:02 amI've had people demand I stop posting in other forums because they are tired of listening to me...
People in other forums are dumb. :mrgreen:

Keep with the details, man.
Well no, sometimes I agree with them, but my point was that that idea is often in the back of my mind when I write. In this case my writing is somewhat self indulgent blog/diary entries that may or may not be interesting for others to read.

In any case, I've over communicated. I'm happy that people are reading and enjoying. I do it in the hopes that it's true, so it's great to hear that it is.

Again, not fishing for compliments. It's just nice to know that you aren't just writing into the vacuum of the internet, but even more important to me personally, that I'm not annoying people with my constant, often rambling verbiage.

It's all good. I've over communicated is all. Thanks for the kind words. I plan to continue writing little descriptions of how my games unfold, in this thread and any other game thread that I play. If some people enjoy that, that's awesome!

I play much less frequently when playing Ironman, because being tired or careless through repetition and familiarity can pretty much end the entire game on a single mistake, if it's a big enough one. If anything interesting or good to know happens, I'll report back here.
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