ysbreker

XCOM 2

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Are there any negative consequences of delaying the black site mission besides the avatar bar increasing? I decided to wait until I had magnetic weapons, finished it without a scratch.

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I think doing it later means that later enemies will appear. I first attempted it early on and went up against Vipers, the second time I waited until I had magnetic weapons (good call by the way) and went up against Mutons and those big robot arseholes.

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Are there any negative consequences of delaying the black site mission besides the avatar bar increasing? I decided to wait until I had magnetic weapons, finished it without a scratch.

I wouldn't take too long about it. I got absolutely slapped having left it too long

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By the way what difficulty are y'all playing on?  I'm on normal currently, but even there I'm rarely getting shots with a greater than 50% chance to hit without really exploiting the mechanics, and have lost 1 or more soldiers on almost every mission.

 

What do you mean by exploiting mechanics?  Like blowing up cover with grenades?  I usually won't take a shot that's below 65 percent unless there's just nothing else useful I can do.  In the early game, with only 3 shots per weapon for most guns, every miss isn't just a wasted action, it also quickly contributes to another lost action in the form of a reload.   Everyone gets a grenade except my medic.  The grenadier has two, so that's 4 grenades in the early game.  Those are almost exclusively reserved for cover busting to give other soldiers better shots. I don't even need to catch the enemy in the explosion, I just want the cover gone.   My rangers usually only shoot from flanked positions.  My ranger is out on the edge of the rest of the team, so that when they flush the next pod of enemies, the ranger can advance pretty easily into flanking positions.  Since snipers start with squadsight now, my snipers ascend the first elevated position they can find and stay there until they have to advance forward.  I do have one Pistoleer sniper now, who advances with the team and her job is to finish off wounded enemies.  She can fire her pistol twice per round (3 now, just got the next perk, and maybe 4 if she gets fired at).

 

 

 

I really like that the pistoleer sniper is a more legitimate option now.  The old sniper had the one perk for pistols, which was useful in

early game but a waste in late game.  With a dedicated pistol tree now, it feels a lot more like the sniper is two different classes.

 

Actually, I feel that way about the Ranger too.  I'm just starting to get one up the cloak path (because the sword is so good my first 2 rangers both too it).  I can see how being able to re-enter concealment and the concealed bonuses can really swing a mission. 

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Oh boy. I just did something with my Ranger that went SO wrong. It's a mechanical thing but I'll put it in spoilers.

 

I tried to attack a Muton with a sword. Turns out they can counter that! Took almost all my Ranger's health off and knocked him unconscious.

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What do you mean by exploiting mechanics?  Like blowing up cover with grenades?  I usually won't take a shot that's below 65 percent unless there's just nothing else useful I can do.  In the early game, with only 3 shots per weapon for most guns, every miss isn't just a wasted action, it also quickly contributes to another lost action in the form of a reload.   Everyone gets a grenade except my medic.  The grenadier has two, so that's 4 grenades in the early game.  Those are almost exclusively reserved for cover busting to give other soldiers better shots. I don't even need to catch the enemy in the explosion, I just want the cover gone.   My rangers usually only shoot from flanked positions.  My ranger is out on the edge of the rest of the team, so that when they flush the next pod of enemies, the ranger can advance pretty easily into flanking positions.  Since snipers start with squadsight now, my snipers ascend the first elevated position they can find and stay there until they have to advance forward.  I do have one Pistoleer sniper now, who advances with the team and her job is to finish off wounded enemies.  She can fire her pistol twice per round (3 now, just got the next perk, and maybe 4 if she gets fired at).

 

 

 

I really like that the pistoleer sniper is a more legitimate option now.  The old sniper had the one perk for pistols, which was useful in

early game but a waste in late game.  With a dedicated pistol tree now, it feels a lot more like the sniper is two different classes.

 

Actually, I feel that way about the Ranger too.  I'm just starting to get one up the cloak path (because the sword is so good my first 2 rangers both too it).  I can see how being able to re-enter concealment and the concealed bonuses can really swing a mission. 

being able to re-enter stealth is great for scouting. As is mind controlling enemies.

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I've put about 20 hours into it now and I am really really enjoying it. There's some annoying things still, like line of sight that makes no sense(Vipers frequently use their tongue through walls) or some suspect chances to hit an enemy that will make me quit in annoyance but I'm always back 30 minutes later. Those moments are almost forgotten though with everything else that there is.

 

Note: There's some mild spoilers here.

 

The way the World Map part of the game works now is far more enjoyable than in XCOM for me. In XCOM it felt like I was failing, you were losing support places were going into chaos it felt like I was doing a bad job. Now it feels like I'm not doing enough and it motivates me differently in the game. I feel less pressure overall but more pressure in certain situations. So day to day it's all ok I'm researching things contacting new regions but then when you see the Avatar countdown getting close to 12 it's panic mode and I'm desperately upgrading my power to upgrade my comms to reach a new group to attack the new base that I found out about from the research project that I had replace whatever else I was doing at the time. t's incredibly exhilarating when there's all these things going on and I prefer the bursts of panic rather than the sustained panic that I felt in XCOM.

 

With the Tactical Missions the big change is the way most missions have a time limit on them now. Most of the time this makes sense, there's a relay we need to activate and the enemies are trying to destroy it, someone is being transported and we have a shot at rescuing them, I get that these things have a time limit. Then there's the times when you have to rescue someone from a prison and after 12 turns there's a forced retreat, even if you spend the first 3 turns concealed so no one even knows you're there. So that kinda annoys me but they're there so I'll deal with it. The added time pressure really makes you play differently, overwatch isn't something you use very often because you're either trying to make too much ground to get to an objective in time or else you're firing a shot every turn because you are massively on the offence now, which makes sense. In XCOM you were defending Earth, now you're the one attacking Earth. Early on you'll probably play a bit sloppily until you get into the mindset of being rushed and you'll breath a sigh of relief when you get a mission with no timer. I think it's going to be fairly divisive, I don't mind it too much but I think there's a few too many missions with timers.

 

For the actual battles, in terms of how you play things haven't changed an awful lot. Concealment changes things but you're usually out of it early on in the mission because staying concealed is suicide as once you're revealed all the enemies start to converge on your position so you're going to be really up against it. It works really well if you have a soldier who can remain concealed or re-renter concealment, they're perfect for scouting the map and combined with squad sight can be a really good way to safely take out targets from a distance. I'm happy with the less punitive approach to explosives, previously there was a reason to not use them and I ended up not bothering with them unless I really really needed them, Now they're a great way to take out cover and to make mince meat out of a group of enemies. I like this because they feel like they have a place now without being incredibly overpowered, they feel like a utility item that also work well at damaging enemies if the opportunity arises. The addition of the flash bangs is also very nice.

 

What surprised me the most is that I was dreading the Vipers after seeing them in the previews but really they're a walkover, they're rarely any trouble and the odd time they manage to grab one of my soldiers they're usually dead in the next turn.

 

That's about all I can think of now as far as mechanics go, I love it. I'm on my toes and completing some missions feels like a real victory. I was 10 on the Avatar countdown thinking I was done, but two missions later and it's down to 7 and I think I have a fighting chance again.

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What do you mean by exploiting mechanics?  Like blowing up cover with grenades?  I usually won't take a shot that's below 65 percent unless there's just nothing else useful I can do.  In the early game, with only 3 shots per weapon for most guns, every miss isn't just a wasted action, it also quickly contributes to another lost action in the form of a reload.   Everyone gets a grenade except my medic.  The grenadier has two, so that's 4 grenades in the early game.  Those are almost exclusively reserved for cover busting to give other soldiers better shots. I don't even need to catch the enemy in the explosion, I just want the cover gone.   My rangers usually only shoot from flanked positions.  My ranger is out on the edge of the rest of the team, so that when they flush the next pod of enemies, the ranger can advance pretty easily into flanking positions.  Since snipers start with squadsight now, my snipers ascend the first elevated position they can find and stay there until they have to advance forward.  I do have one Pistoleer sniper now, who advances with the team and her job is to finish off wounded enemies.  She can fire her pistol twice per round (3 now, just got the next perk, and maybe 4 if she gets fired at).

 

Exploiting might not be the right word, but for the most part my success seems to hinge on whether or not I knew something was going to happen and prepared for it.  I find myself rarely responding to situations dynamically with any success.  Success usually means my having failed the mission once and reloading a save or having my initial ambush take out an enemy or two.  The really big thing I noticed is that the mission layouts themselves are dynamically generated, so in a few cases I would fail a mission, reload a previous save to try and get a better squad together (bringing some mind shields for example) only to have a new mission layout generated that made it a cake walk.  I think it's partially a function of there not being many of the mechanics being available in the early part of the game, so all you can really do is shoot or throw a grenade, and the greater variety of enemy abilities.  The reason I mentioned the difficulty is that they seem to be throwing a lot of mechanics at you pretty quickly, and the enemy variety ramps up to the point where encountering a new mob almost always results in a reload.  I'm not sure if this is more or less prevalent on different difficulty levels, or if enemies are less likely to use certain abilities.

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I haven't found re-entering stealth to be as useful as the raw damage output of a fully upgraded combat-focused Ranger. Then again, I've had more than a few instances where I get "spotted" when a character moved nowhere near an enemy or their field of view, so I haven't been engaging with the system as much as I should. Seconding thepaulhoey that it's functionally impossible to run an entire mission on concealment, because it's impossible not to get spotted eventually and once you are all the patrols you ever sighted during the stealth phase will converge on your position whether they're still in range or not. You can easily lose a mission for yourself by waiting too long to break concealment, not because you're out of position but because you'll just have too many enemies to fight at once, and that takes a while to get used to.

 

I've been impressed by the leanness of the resource model, although part of that has been me not knowing how important it is to prioritize rebel comms for the first month or so. Once you get a couple regions locked down, especially if one of those is South America with its "all in" bonus of twenty percent more supplies, the game shifts but not in a way that makes you feel like you've broken it. It is very odd (but not entirely unpleasant) for me to be rolling in elerium cores and alien alloys and just waiting for the monthly supply drop to put them to any use. It certainly makes me pounce on those "supply convoy" missions...

 

I also like that they've slimmed down a lot of the equipment upgrading... for the most part. In some cases, you're upgrading your entire supply line so it gives you infinite gauss rifles instead of infinite sniper rifles, which is great, and then you spend less on per-soldier sidegrades like the EXO suit. What I don't like is that you go to the same screen for both of these; it's way too easy to think that you're getting infinite EXO suits or poison ammo, only for it to be a one-off project instead that's not really worth the time and resource investment at the moment.

 

I agree that the timers are a good addition, philosophically, but there are probably too many and the invariable limit makes some missions vastly more difficult than others. There was one VIP escort that had the target locked in a high-difficulty van over four screens away through a heavily-built urban area, then the extract point three more screens away from that, on top of a three-story building. My soldiers barely shot their guns, mostly running past enemies because I didn't have the time to engage, and I still had to leave one guy behind because two aliens on overwatch deprived him of one turn to move (on a side note, I wish there were rescue missions to get back stranded soldiers, so much). I also generally enjoy the obfuscated timers like the terror missions, but the requirement to save as many civilians as possible and kill all the enemies means that you mostly ignore the former in favor of the latter.

 

Finally, I have one sniper on my team, she's a colonel, and I think that I'm literally in love with her. She's got the bob and the aviators and she's never been hit in combat. I'm a bit disappointed that Matt Lees' description of characters getting different stat boosts based either on never getting hit in combat or getting hit and weathering it was largely the confused passion of an overactive imagination, but I still pretend it's the case with Lucy "the Baroness" Robinson.

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I've just remembered some other things after reading your post.

 

Yes, the new weapons and other items are confusing regarding if they're a once off or not. I always find myself checking to see if it's infinite or finite. Anything from the proving ground seems to be finite and most from the Engineering department are infinite, I think other than the nano scale vest they're all infinite. So far anyway.

 

I also had one unbeatable map. I had to access a control point in 8 turns and it was in a train carriage. It took about 4 to get there and there was 3 enemies inside, 3 outside on one side and 3 outside on the other side. Tried a few times from different angles and there was just no getting in there, I always got shot to pieces on the way in.

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At least reloads don't eat a full turn anymore so, if you're not moving, you can fire non-stop.

I've played a few campaigns about three months in. The problem I'm having now is that once I have one bad mission, more seem to follow immediately. I'm making sure to send a mix of rook and vets in now that I know where to recruit them, so it's not like everyone else on my team is crappy or anything. I can't tell if it's just me going into tilt, or if I've hit a difficulty break point that my setup just isn't good enough for, or if I just have bad luck.

Anyway, having a lot of fun now that I don't have to replay the tutorial over and over again.

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I definitely felt that a few months in there seemed to be a string of tough missions one after another and if you had a team of rookies then things could go bad fast. I'd power on through though, I genuinely thought my campaign was toast and then my fortunes turned quite fast due to some upgrades and story missions.

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Most of the time, I only use concealment to sneak up on the first enemy group I can find and land a good grenade on them while they are still clumped together. When a timer is in play, I definitely don't want to spend too much time setting up the perfect ambush, but even in other missions grenades became the standard opening seeing how important it has become to shred armor on the beefier enemies early on.

 

Upgrading your entire weapon stock instead of building individual guns feels very welcome, not only because it reduces micro-management a little when you don't have to shuffle your limited supply of guns around all the time (on top of your limited items) but also because it limits the amount of valuable equipment you can potentially lose on a wipe. It's already pretty disheartening to lose an experienced soldier with a decked out gun and one of those combat sim stat upgrades, so I guess the game doesn't want to punish losses too hard by also taking your base damage away.

 

Also, weapon upgrades! I'm pretty far into the game and didn't get a lot out of them for a while, in part because I lost some along with the soldiers who fielded them, but also because the process of getting them in the field is kind of inconsistent (and I rarely have enough intel to spare to buy any). but I got some nice ones lately and at this stage they really give you a considerable boost. My most badass sniper not only gets extra aim and a chance to instakill enemies, but two free reloads per mission, and when you combine that with the ability where in one turn she gets to shoot again and again so long as she gets a kill with every hit, that's nine shots in a single turn potentially.

 

I was in a pretty bad civilian rescue mission lately where most of my good soldiers were wounded and I couldn't even bring a full team. My best medic and my only psi operative ended up unconscious with a sectopod and friends on top of them, but that one sniper, one a hill at the edge of the map, took care of everything on her own without a scratch. Camping like that I still failed the mission, but at least I didn't lose those people and the equipment on the dead rookies.

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This game is so, so good. I love almost all the changes they made to it from the first one. I never knew what I really needed in my life was actual time limits to force me to move fast. I would like maybe just an extra turn on the counter in general, or maybe a way to delay the time limit inside the map somewhere but it's not that big a deal. 
 

I lost all but one of my soldiers to a VIP extraction. Seeing that one lone soldier in the sky ranger was kinda gut-punch moment. Later on I got a random extraction mission and manage to rescue the captured Jane Kelly. I changed her personality to twitchy to reflect her time in captivity. 

Does the game randomly add scars to gravely wounded soldiers? I had one soldier who didn't have any scars when I got her and now has a big burn on her cheek, but I can't remember adding it myself. 

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This game is so, so good. I love almost all the changes they made to it from the first one. I never knew what I really needed in my life was actual time limits to force me to move fast. I would like maybe just an extra turn on the counter in general, or maybe a way to delay the time limit inside the map somewhere but it's not that big a deal. 

 

I lost all but one of my soldiers to a VIP extraction. Seeing that one lone soldier in the sky ranger was kinda gut-punch moment. Later on I got a random extraction mission and manage to rescue the captured Jane Kelly. I changed her personality to twitchy to reflect her time in captivity. 

Does the game randomly add scars to gravely wounded soldiers? I had one soldier who didn't have any scars when I got her and now has a big burn on her cheek, but I can't remember adding it myself. 

yes it will add scars as your soldiers take damage

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Thematically, this feels so much stronger than XCOM:EU ever did.  As much as I love that game, there were elements of it that always felt really off for what it was trying to present, like the black market.  The market makes a lot more sense in this game, and I doubly like that there are always things in demand, versus the occasional odd thing someone wants in EU.  I sold some pretty nice stuff I would have preferred to keep one month because they were all in demand and I was desperate for supplies to get my Gauss Rifle built and a couple of rooms constructed.

 

The ACW room (whichever one lets you respec, something like that), seems potentially awesome, bringing in a bit of the Training Roulette into the regular game.  I just got it built, and the very next time someone leveled up it was my primary sniper who picked up an ability to add +3 damage to one shot.  Haven't seen another upgrade yet, but it ensures you want to continue leveling up rookies for more than just backups. 

 

Speaking of Second Wave options, that's at least the second time one of the SW ideas has made its way into this game.  Flanking doesn't appear to be as binary as it was in vanilla EU, some version of the aiming angles option is present.  I only notice it when I'm fairly close, so it might be dialed back from the second wave option, but I always felt that system made more sense than the flanked/not flanked system.

 

I am super not missing satellites.  Maybe the comms system has flaws I haven't experienced yet, but being able to start a game and not feel like I have to spend the first 2 months with a laser focus on getting sats up is really nice. 

 

So far, the enemy that scares me the most is the

 

Faceless Ones.  I've only fought a few, but their ability to obliterate your cover is really intimidating.  Their AI seems either dumb, or intentionally not as aggressive as it could be though.  Both times that I've had one destroy my cover, it was the final turn of their movment, whereas had it been the first, that soldier would have been toast. 

 

I forget that in the canon timeline, since Earth was overrun in a few months lots of the later game enemies and weapons wouldn't have been experienced by this world.  Mutons were a rumor.  Laser and Plasma weapons weren't developed.  Psionics weren't researched and developed. 

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Wow this game is so stressful to play!

 

I like a lot of the changes although I miss the music from XCOM 1. The music for XCOM 2 seems way more bombastic and I'm really not feeling it as much. Also I wish the loading screens didn't take so long, although if that's the price to pay for the randomly generated maps then I suppose all is fair.

 

Other than that really loving the tactical variety. So far my favorite thing in the world is getting the perfectly placed flash bang.

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Spenny just got mind controlled and pulled a suicide grenade. I didn't even know they could do that.

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Well I'm loving it after a weekend of some pretty solid play. The tactical missions are mostly a joy, especially the 'snatch the advent VIP and get to da chopper!!!' Missions. I love those.

Couple of things concern me a little though - the comms relays seem to have taken on the satellite uplink and satellites optimal path of the first game - have I missed something? Space on the ship feels a lot more restricted and so I've been building other stuff I though was useful. I think I may have messed that up. Is it recoverable?

Also the bugs - shooting through walls is depressingly common and makes trying to work out angles from cover very difficult - getting dragged out by a viper through 2 walls is seriously annoying. I've also had more than one instant where I've moved someone once (not dashed) and their turn has ended. That's normally fatal, or near enough.

Don't neglect specialist grenades in the proving grounds. I have a grenadier who gets grenade bonuses, and when she lobs an acid grenade its 5 points of damage from the hit and another 5 the next turn. She took out 6 mutons in one shot with that baby my last 'terror' mission. Beautiful.

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You can upgrade the comms relay and assign engineers to it. I think I can get to a max of 5 or 6 by doing that.

 

Getting to the chopper is indeed awesome. There's nothing more intense than dashing for the extraction zone, carrying a guy while enemies in overwatch fire at you.

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You can upgrade the comms relay and assign engineers to it. I think I can get to a max of 5 or 6 by doing that.

 

Getting to the chopper is indeed awesome. There's nothing more intense than dashing for the extraction zone, carrying a guy while enemies in overwatch fire at you.

There are 16 total zones on the map that you need to communicate with. I think you can get there with two fully staffed comms rooms.

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Don't neglect specialist grenades in the proving grounds. I have a grenadier who gets grenade bonuses, and when she lobs an acid grenade its 5 points of damage from the hit and another 5 the next turn. She took out 6 mutons in one shot with that baby my last 'terror' mission. Beautiful.

The acid grenades are my favorite. Have you tried the specialty ammo? I am getting so many one hit kills with plasma weapons that it doesn't seem worth it.

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The acid grenades are my favorite. Have you tried the specialty ammo? I am getting so many one hit kills with plasma weapons that it doesn't seem worth it.

The EMP ammo/grenade is super good against Sectopods and Gatekeepers. Each hit has a pretty generous chance to stun robotic enemies, which lets you spend the turn cleaning up the rest of the pod.

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Wow this game is so stressful to play!

 

I like a lot of the changes although I miss the music from XCOM 1. The music for XCOM 2 seems way more bombastic and I'm really not feeling it as much. Also I wish the loading screens didn't take so long, although if that's the price to pay for the randomly generated maps then I suppose all is fair.

 

Other than that really loving the tactical variety. So far my favorite thing in the world is getting the perfectly placed flash bang.

 

I am literally humming the "mission prep" music as I read your post and write my reply. It's so very, very good to have this very uplifting freedom fighter jaunt playing while you put a boonie hat and aviators on a sad lady.

 

I have browsed around streams of people playing who are further along than I am in the game, and it shouldn't be surprising because EU was somewhat similar, but holy shit the intro to the game is just a completely different tactical experience than the mid and endgame experience. I have my soldiers in kevlar with slightly futuristic guns and a lil' hoverdrone shooting something that's basically opposing soldiers and gray aliens, and they have people completely encased in hover armor or I don't even know what shooting something that only barely resembles a firearm trying to kill a suit of armor that repairs itself. Just crazy.

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So far the enemy I hate the most (and bear in mind I haven't got very far because I had a guest staying throughout most of the weekend so didn't have much of a chance to play until last night. So the "newest" enemy type I've seen has been the Mutons) have been the advent soldiers with the stun batons. Most other enemies have some sense of self-preservation, but not these guys, and those stun batons can fuck you up.

 

Just unlocked the guerilla warfare center, or whatever it's called. I definitely feel like this game throws more enemies at you early on compared to XCOM 1, so getting that extra squad member unlocked has really relieved some pressure!

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