ysbreker

XCOM 2

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http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-02-11-a-single-button-press-skips-loading-screens-in-xcom-2

 

It looks like the loading takes so long because the game is diligently preloading every texture used in the next scene. If you skip too fast you'll get some of Unreal's patented texture pop, but it's worth it to get out of the Skyranger in any reasonable amount of time.

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I have really been liking the procedural map generation. I am pretty sure I have played the same base map twice, but enough pieces were in different places that the map played differently. Really speaks to replayability.

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I was tooling around with the SDK last night, I found a couple of interesting (and sometimes hilarious) things. What's really cool is that you can run a debug version of XCOM 2 for testing mods, which lets you set parameters for procedural maps and watch them be generated. The downside is that if you watch it enough you'll learn how the pieces fit together which might ruin the surprise on your first playthrough. I think there are also some other spoilers in there regarding unit types/plot characters that can show up in missions.

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I wonder how hard it would be to bring all the classes and enemies from the first game into this one? Would love to fight new and old sectoids at the same time.

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There's a bunch of quality of life improvements on the steam workshop already, along with some extra cosmetic stuff, which is nice. Unfortunately none of the stuff i subscribe to is actually downloading :'(

 

Edit: just verified cache after trying to get em off the workshop manually and that seems to have fixed it

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There's a mod that adds a button to put all remaining soldiers on overwatch, and it's basically all I ever wanted.

I feel like I would hit that by mistake. There is also one to extract all. I found that extract is always bound to 3 and you can tab through your soldiers so you only have to watch one animation.

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There's a mod that adds a button to put all remaining soldiers on overwatch, and it's basically all I ever wanted.

 

Yes!!

 

It also really bothers me how the game keeps selecting characters who I've already moved once, but am waiting to put in overwatch till I've moved everyone.  It makes it more annoying than it needs to be to find the characters I haven't moved yet.

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So I discovered that if you wait long enough (not that long really) you can complete all the autopsy research stuff immediately. That is really going to simplify the decision making for me in terms of what to research.

 

I think my starting build now in terms of the base building stuff is always going to start workshop --> proving grounds --> power relay --> resistance comms. I'm not sure what to build after that, probably either psionics or guerilla tactics.

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I had no idea how much of a game changer researching armor is. I've been putting it off, and I was also desperate for cash and sold all my Trooper corpses, which rarely show up in missions these days. I guess that's another thing to be careful about if and when I need to restart again.

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I barely had enough Trooper corpses to build the first tier of armor as I had sold them off as well.  That likely could have been a run killer for me. 

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Haha, is it only me or does everybody use these... pauses when.... thinking about the.... right words to use in this game? Especially the... mysterious old friend.

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I feel like I would hit that by mistake. There is also one to extract all. I found that extract is always bound to 3 and you can tab through your soldiers so you only have to watch one animation.

Actually instead of going through all the animations it plays them all simultaneously, just staggered out a bit so it looks a bit more natural. I use it just cause I like the look of it over watching all my squadmates but the last disappear as I tab through them.

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Lil' pile of rocks on top of the boulder pile in the mid-ground on the right.

 

OMG A MOD THAT ELIMINATES PAUSES AND MAKES BRADFORD SHUT UP Stop Wasting My Time

 

This mod has measurably improved my feelings about the game, which I already really liked. Central did not whine at me a single time on my most recent retaliation mission.

 

Armor patterns look significantly cooler on predator armor. It's noticeable.

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I'll be installing that mod next time I play!

 

A few things I learned tonight:

 

1)  Wet Works (+25 XP from kills) is retroactive.  I had three soldiers rank up to Major after taking it.  I had delayed taking it as I assumed it would be most valuable for squaddies and I hadn't been ranking up lower level soldiers (I'm pretty sure it was not retroactive in EU)

 

2)  I was just flat out wrong earlier, anyone can Skullmine from full sprint distance (they cannot skulljack, in fact, I haven't had the skulljack option come up at all tonight, I'm not sure what the requirment is, or if you have to start your turn in melee range, or what).  This makes slapping some movement mods on a Specialist really valuable if you're trying to pick up some Intel.

 

3)  Bizarrely, Rangers have a very strange interaction with Skullmining though.  This is weird enough that I'd assume it has to be a bug.  If you skullmine an enemy with a Ranger and MISS the attack, you can still move or attack once, even if you had to sprint to reach the enemy.  I am assuming this might be related to the skill Implacable that lets you move one more time after a kill, but that skill does not allow for another shot.  If you successfully hit and kill the enemy with the skullmine, then Implacable works as expected and you can just move.  It's only on a miss that you get a free attack. 

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I barely had enough Trooper corpses to build the first tier of armor as I had sold them off as well. That likely could have been a run killer for me.

That actually happen to me this play through. I never managed to build the mid tier armour having sold all my troopers, just went straight to the 3rd level. It really meant I went aggressive mid game, my entire strategy became "kill them before they can get a shot off". Turns out that's a pretty viable strategy at that stage of the game.

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Multiplayer is not well done. Tried with one Thumb and wasn't able to play. Tried with a friend and had some serious lag time between him moving and me seeing it and vise versa. Its a cool concept, being able to mix alien and xcom units creates some really fun tactics. I hope someone mods the ability to train aliens into the campaign, would love to play single player with just Stun Lancers. Payback!

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I sat down to play a bit more of this today, and I'm really enjoying the tactical battles but I find the strategy layer to be incredibly frustrating to deal with. The flow of the UI seems to have taken a step back from Enemy Unknown, where I find myself having to constantly bounce in and out of menus to accomplish basic tasks. It seems like they wanted to preserve too much of the presentation from EU, and it really gets in the way. I think that presentation made sense when I was concerned about adjacency bonuses, but this time around I find myself spending more time than I want to just watching transitions between menu screens, just to see enough information to make decision. I can appreciate the aesthetic choices for things like the strategy map, but it seems to me that the design for this had changed significantly enough from EU that it really needed to be considered differently than it is.

The strategy map in particular doesn't really show you anything you can't see easier or more clearly elsewhere, and the real time nature of it tends to cause situations where I see a number of popups back to back regarding unrelated objectives which really breaks the flow of the game. i was put off by this a little bit in EU, but now that I'm considering a wider array of information with more overlapping timetables and positioning being a factor it's all the more frustrating. I almost wish they went with something like a calendar view or more of a civilization style turn system that would serve me a handful of toasts on the day they completed so I could parse them as I wish. Instead I end up going to the strategy map with maybe a 1/10th of a day to go on my current objective, scanning for a bit, seeing a toast, dismissing or stepping through it, scanning for half second or so, seeing another unrelated toast, handling that, and so on. It's more the fact that the game presents so much information to you at a time, then demands you deal with it all in sequence, and doesn't clearly indicate when certain objectives will end that I'm having a hard time with.

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