ysbreker

XCOM 2

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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.

 

I'll keep that in mind, I've generally been restarting my campaign when I hit 2 bad missions in a row, but I do (usually) save the before I quit out in case I want to go back. That Avatar gauge starts filling real fast though when you're failing missions.

 

Where is the permanent upgrade to newer weapon types located? Is it a proving grounds thing or something? I've gotten to magnetic weapons twice and never seen the option.

 

Edit: The worst pod i've run into so far is a two Stun Lancers and one Sectoid. If you accidentally pop that one at the end of your turn, that's possibly 3 people unconscious/mind controlled with little chance to block or avoid. It really sucks.

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One of the things I really have to remind myself of a lot in this game is that unless the mission timer is getting really low already, I probably shouldn't be moving one soldier ahead when most others have already spent  their turns. Sometimes you really can't avoid running into new enemies at bad times though, like when you're trying to flank somebody or they're just in a bad position, like several enemy groups pressed up against the back wall of a building somewhere.

 

The permanent weapon upgrades are found in Engineering, there's a tab where you buy items like grenades and medkits, one for armor upgrades and one for new weapons.

 

I've mostly been sticking with upgraded standard grenades since they seem to offer the best mix of shredding armor but also destroying cover. I tried using acid and fire bombs instead for a while, but normally I try covering multiple enemies with grenades thanks to the increased radius on grenadiers, and with these it's hard to get their effect to reach several aliens when they are behind cover.

 

The fact that I'm focusing so much on getting rid of enemy cover could potentially screw me over at some point though. Very frequently I'm left with areas where there's not a lot of good spots to move up to after I bombed the hell out of the enemy, and a few times now I ended up laying waste to the building I had to climb for evac, so I had to go around it to find a different ladder and that was cutting it close with the timer. It's so satisfying though when you blow the floor out from under enemies to make them take extra fall damage.

 

I'm a little disappointed that mind controlling an enemy breaks concealment, although I guess it would have been way to complicated to create a system for acceptible/inacceptible moves while trying to blend in among an Advent patrol. Still, now that I have a good psi operative it's really useful getting an enemy under my control to scout ahead. I especially like the ones in the big daddy suits for that, they're tanky enough to draw enemy fire for a while and you can make them just charge through walls to destroy cover.

 

Pro tip though: When you manage to keep one of these alive throughout the entire mission, make sure you evac the person controlling them last. Understandably, they recover after that person is gone and if you still have people near them that might be bad news.

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One of the things I really have to remind myself of a lot in this game is that unless the mission timer is getting really low already, I probably shouldn't be moving one soldier ahead when most others have already spent  their turns. Sometimes you really can't avoid running into new enemies at bad times though, like when you're trying to flank somebody or they're just in a bad position, like several enemy groups pressed up against the back wall of a building somewhere.

 

The permanent weapon upgrades are found in Engineering, there's a tab where you buy items like grenades and medkits, one for armor upgrades and one for new weapons.

 

I've mostly been sticking with upgraded standard grenades since they seem to offer the best mix of shredding armor but also destroying cover. I tried using acid and fire bombs instead for a while, but normally I try covering multiple enemies with grenades thanks to the increased radius on grenadiers, and with these it's hard to get their effect to reach several aliens when they are behind cover.

 

The fact that I'm focusing so much on getting rid of enemy cover could potentially screw me over at some point though. Very frequently I'm left with areas where there's not a lot of good spots to move up to after I bombed the hell out of the enemy, and a few times now I ended up laying waste to the building I had to climb for evac, so I had to go around it to find a different ladder and that was cutting it close with the timer. It's so satisfying though when you blow the floor out from under enemies to make them take extra fall damage.

 

I'm a little disappointed that mind controlling an enemy breaks concealment, although I guess it would have been way to complicated to create a system for acceptible/inacceptible moves while trying to blend in among an Advent patrol. Still, now that I have a good psi operative it's really useful getting an enemy under my control to scout ahead. I especially like the ones in the big daddy suits for that, they're tanky enough to draw enemy fire for a while and you can make them just charge through walls to destroy cover.

 

Pro tip though: When you manage to keep one of these alive throughout the entire mission, make sure you evac the person controlling them last. Understandably, they recover after that person is gone and if you still have people near them that might be bad news.

 

One thing that XCOM2 is good at, is moving a character up right next to another character, only to have them see an alien's foot through two windows and trigger a pod, but I also make the mistake of moving my last solider ahead every once in a while. I'm trying to break myself of the habit. It's tough when you've got a constant time limit.

 

Oh, if you buy magnetic rifles in engineering, you get them for everyone? I had no idea. Is it the same for ammo types? I was looking at how much those cost and thinking it was for one soldier, that explains a lot.

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Oh, if you buy magnetic rifles in engineering, you get them for everyone? I had no idea. Is it the same for ammo types? I was looking at how much those cost and thinking it was for one soldier, that explains a lot.

 

it *mostly* seems to be that things that are core equipment are infinite, and things that go in the utility slot are finite (there are probably exceptions to this). 

 

I've honestly been save scumming building some things to get a look at what they are to decide if I want to keep them or not.  I figure that's the kind of stuff a manual would have told me at one point in time and I shouldn't be guessing about the outcome. 

 

 

Edited to add: I like that the stun lancers are kinda suicidal.  It makes sense for at least some of the enemy troops to not particularly care about their safety if they can hamstring their opponent, given the whole implant in the head thing. 

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The game doesn't communicate some of this stuff super clearly. Anything you buy in the weapons tab gives you an unlimited supply, same for the armor tab, except those nanovests or whatever they're called, which you buy individually. All the projects from the proving grounds room also only give you individual items to give to soldiers, you need to repeat their experimental ammo stuff a few times to get different results and even more often to get multiples.

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interesting, playing pseudo-ironman, I haven't wanted to take a risk on that sort of stuff to just see how it works. I guess maybe I should follow you lead Bjorn and save and goof around with some of the tools out there.

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Oh, if you buy magnetic rifles in engineering, you get them for everyone? I had no idea. Is it the same for ammo types? I was looking at how much those cost and thinking it was for one soldier, that explains a lot.

 

Wait, what? Seriously? Wow and here I was wondering why the resource cost was so high. I'm a lot closer than I thought to outfitting my team then.

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The game doesn't communicate some of this stuff super clearly. Anything you buy in the weapons tab gives you an unlimited supply, same for the armor tab, except those nanovests or whatever they're called, which you buy individually. All the projects from the proving grounds room also only give you individual items to give to soldiers, you need to repeat their experimental ammo stuff a few times to get different results and even more often to get multiples.

 

I really wish it were more codified. I was thinking last night how absurd it is that three scientists spend five days thinking about magnetic weapons, report their findings, and immediately the engineering team is ready for full-scale production. If I were to suggest an alternative, it'd be that research only unlocks proving ground projects that were all one-offs, but after you'd completed a proving ground project once, it'd unlock it in the engineering screen, giving you the choice of continuing to produce items singly at the proving ground for low cost (and risk them being lost) or paying a large sum to engineering to make them infinite.

 

It's not a perfect alternative, but the current uncertainty about what projects produce infinite items and what you're actually going to get from the "experimental XXXX" projects is unacceptable. It remains very, very silly that you can lose your one medkit on a mission and not be able to afford a new one, when you literally have a frickin' heli-carrier with a medical wing treating your mutilated soldiers.

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Also, I am super excited to see what the modding community does with this game. There are a lot of little decisions about the game design that bug me, and I am sure that is true (but a different set of things) for most other people, and it makes me happy thinking about how people should be able to fine tune that experience.

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Also, I am super excited to see what the modding community does with this game. There are a lot of little decisions about the game design that bug me, and I am sure that is true (but a different set of things) for most other people, and it makes me happy thinking about how people should be able to fine tune that experience.

This mod already exists: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=617892322

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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!

 

If you can't take out a lancer at range, have someone on your squad stay on overwatch. You know they're going to move out of cover to come get you, so you'll have a better shot on overwatch that if they're behind full cover. This works twice as well if you have a ranger on overwatch with a shotgun waiting for the arsehole to come around a corner.

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Fastpost rundown of different research stuff:

 

Research Experimental Grenades & Ammo:

 

Allows creation of those items in Engineering. Building one creates one utility item that one soldier can equip for a mission. Building more allows more to be equipped. The model from XCOM:EU. Think of them like a medkit.

 

Research higher tech weapons and armor:

 

Allows fabrication in Engineering. The build cost is expensive, but once you build it all your soldiers get access to that tech (class restricted). These are permanent upgrades. The exception are the items labeled "vest", which act like utility items.

 

 

 

I'm not all the way through the game so it could still throw some curveballs. However, trying to just outline it so people don't get scared away from doing something the game doesn't surface. I know I shyed away from certain stuff I probably wouldn't have.

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Early on the Lancers can just destroy a mission. I got unlucky and had 2 troops get knocked out(not killed) by lancers and I was just totally screwed.

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Does anyone have an Xpadder profile for this thing? All the buttons work like EU but for some fucking stupid reason the anologue sticks don't work at all.... 

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I miss controller support a lot. Two things in particular bug me.

 

1) Right click to confirm a move, but everywhere else (such as aiming a grenade or something) right click backs out. This has caused me to move when I meant to cancel a bunch of times.

2) When trying to aim a long distance grenade, the arrow keys sometimes move the screen, and other times choose what skill you're using. Thankfully, this has just been an annoyance where I have to reselect the skill I wanted and aim again.

 

It feels like they had to really polish the XCOM UI to work with controllers and consoles, while this all feels a bit slapdash. 

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It's not a perfect alternative

 

I think I would generally prefer if XCOM just communicated this more clearly (same with how much time adding engineers to rooms will actually save and stuff like that).

 

As frustrating as it is to not be sure if buying these upgrades produces a single gun or stocks your entire armory, I can definitely see why they'd go for the latter. When your soldiers don't have to take turns using the same guns and armor as well as the same few medkits and special grenades, it limits the amount of min/maxxing through obsessive micromanagment the game allows for. It also means you can reach a certain baseline stat upgrade to keep up with the escalating difficulty. It's already pretty devastating to lose high rank soldiers and to then have to go back to using rookies, but at least if you can send those rookies out with high tech armor and weaponry, they stand a small chance. Imagine suffering a squad wipe and having to go back to rookies with standard issue pea shooters and wet tissue armor.

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I think I would generally prefer if XCOM just communicated this more clearly (same with how much time adding engineers to rooms will actually save and stuff like that).

 

As frustrating as it is to not be sure if buying these upgrades produces a single gun or stocks your entire armory, I can definitely see why they'd go for the latter. When your soldiers don't have to take turns using the same guns and armor as well as the same few medkits and special grenades, it limits the amount of min/maxxing through obsessive micromanagment the game allows for. It also means you can reach a certain baseline stat upgrade to keep up with the escalating difficulty. It's already pretty devastating to lose high rank soldiers and to then have to go back to using rookies, but at least if you can send those rookies out with high tech armor and weaponry, they stand a small chance. Imagine suffering a squad wipe and having to go back to rookies with standard issue pea shooters and wet tissue armor.

 

I just wish they'd have done it with everything, even utilities. Juggling one medkit around my different squads feels profoundly foolish and unthematic. Give me everything infinitely, with a greater cost, and let carrying capacity force the hard calls instead. With the weapon and implant drops, those are the things that are actually painful to lose when you leave a dead soldier behind, because I can't make more. If my Support dude dies with my only medkit, I go back to the Avenger and pay thirty supplies to make another one instantly. It's not an interesting moment and the mostly-pointless dichotomy between limited and infinite gear has contributed to confusion with literally everyone here. At the very least, put the vests under "utilities" because that's their gameplay function if not their objective purpose in that game.

 

It actually doesn't bother me that much, I just wish there were more thought in this specific aspect, because changing the weapons and armor has been an incredible convenience that detracts from none of the tension and ambiance.

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Design considerations on what things should be universal and what should be singular aside, I just don't understand why the UI doesn't clearly communicate which is which when you're building them. Both this game and XCOM: EU have the weirdest split of excellent UI design and awful UI design.

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I thought for sure Jane Kelly was going to die due to failing to kill three avatars with reaper (brought down the first in the chain to 1hp!). As the turn shifted to aliens, I suddenly got the achievement for killing three aliens in one turn using a single soldier, no explosives. I then watched all three avatars try to melee her as she bladestormed them all to deaths. Magnificent. 

I've seen almost all the enemies in the game but I think the codexs give me the most trouble. The gatekeepers and sectopods are really deadly and beefy, sure, but they're easy to manage and deal with. The codexs are extremely unpredictable and capable of some really nasty attacks. I would say that they're #1 priority for me, but even then they can potentially soak up three of my soldiers attention if the first hit isn't an instakill. 

That being said, grenades to provoke them into splitting up followed by a gunslingers faceoff killing them all is verrrry nice.

--Edit: Sectopods are my favorite enemy because they are hilarious. They're so loud that you'll always know they're on the map instantly, and if you miss that somehow the sounds of cover and buildings exploding as they patrol will do it. The first time one stood up to smash his head through the 2nd story floor and start shooting at my guys up there was incredible. 

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I thought for sure Jane Kelly was going to die due to failing to kill three avatars with reaper (brought down the first in the chain to 1hp!). As the turn shifted to aliens, I suddenly got the achievement for killing three aliens in one turn using a single soldier, no explosives. I then watched all three avatars try to melee her as she bladestormed them all to deaths. Magnificent. 

I've seen almost all the enemies in the game but I think the codexs give me the most trouble. The gatekeepers and sectopods are really deadly and beefy, sure, but they're easy to manage and deal with. The codexs are extremely unpredictable and capable of some really nasty attacks. I would say that they're #1 priority for me, but even then they can potentially soak up three of my soldiers attention if the first hit isn't an instakill. 

That being said, grenades to provoke them into splitting up followed by a gunslingers faceoff killing them all is verrrry nice.

I think its funny how achievements and promotions can spoil how a shot will turn out.

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Wow, mag rifles are pretty overpowered. I just got myself out of the most f'd situation, all my fault.

I sneaked all the way into the vial, but then agroed the robot in the very last room and had to deal with incoming pods on all sides. I somehow managed to kill everything coming in at me, grabbed the vial, but then when reinforcement drops came in I didn't get a single overwatch hit on any of them. Finally, I had stacked up on a door to get out to the evac spot, but it turns out it was a window that you can't jump through, so I had to run a quarter of the way around the building, under fire from both reinforcement squads, to finally get to evac. I had to run at least 4 enemy overwatches to make it out, no one panicked.

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Wow, mag rifles are pretty overpowered. I just got myself out of the most f'd situation, all my fault.

I sneaked all the way into the vial, but then agroed the robot in the very last room and had to deal with incoming pods on all sides. I somehow managed to kill everything coming in at me, grabbed the vial, but then when reinforcement drops came in I didn't get a single overwatch hit on any of them. Finally, I had stacked up on a door to get out to the evac spot, but it turns out it was a window that you can't jump through, so I had to run a quarter of the way around the building, under fire from both reinforcement squads, to finally get to evac. I had to run at least 4 enemy overwatches to make it out, no one panicked.

dont worry enemies will soon be upgraded and you will be wishing you had plasma weapons

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About the time mag weapons we falling off I was getting plasma weapons. Then I got the plasma lancer and my sniper became destroyer of worlds and then I had to go to work.

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So what about armors that you have to get in the proving grounds. That's not a global upgrade right, it's just one for one soldier?

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