XCOM 2

[Wooben]

I had to do that mission where the UFO catches you the other day, and it was brutal.

 

 

I know it looks like I did well but it took me many, many, many attempts to get through this.

 

 

And you don't get to keep any of them...

[Dewar]

Wow, speaking of a difficulty spike, I went from only ever seeing one Codex to having two pods of 2xCodex 1xAndromedon (which I hadn't even seen yet.) Funnily enough, I passed up a very difficult mission to take the difficult one instead, so I can't imagine what the harder mission would have been like.

[aoanla]

Somewhat spoilery question I have to ask, having finally seen one:

 

Do the Avatars (and to a lesser extent, the Codices) remind anyone else strongly of the Men (final form Process) from Transistor?

[Bjorn]

Man, this is not a game for me to play when I'm tired.  I finally just gave up on a mission last night I was making so many mistakes on it.

 

I also had my first "Serial ended on a grazing shot" moment last night when my sniper shit his pants, grazing the first shot on what should have been a round of killing four Archons plus  trooper.  Jesus, what a clusterfuck that ended up being.  Nobody died, but my psychonaut was bleeding out and my grenadier and ranger were both down to just 3HP.  I didn't have a medic with me (because I've been trying to run without one), so I had to call in a skyranger and have my grenadier carry out the psychic.  Which left me with 4 solders, all of them injured.  Got through the rest of it, but it was tense as fuck.  Fuck archons, I hate those guys more than any other enemy. 

[Deadpan]

I'm sure you'll soon be introduced to another enemy that can grab that special place in your heart. But yeah, Archons are really annoying around the time you encounter them, they are so durable and fast, and their dodge chance is so high that sometimes I'd have a full squad on overwatch and they could still fly in unharmed.

[Bjorn]

I'm sure you'll soon be introduced to another enemy that can grab that special place in your heart. But yeah, Archons are really annoying around the time you encounter them, they are so durable and fast, and their dodge chance is so high that sometimes I'd have a full squad on overwatch and they could still fly in unharmed.

 

The most recent new enemy I've encountered is a:

 

Floating Cthulu/Pokemon ball that has Psionic powers.  So far it hasn't been bad, as the few I've run into have been able to be taken out on the first round.

[Codicier]

oh don't mind me i've just psychicly took over two aliens and killed 2 and severely wounded another all on my own.

 

 

It's not like Psi-Ops is incredibly overpowered or anything, I mean it's not like you could solo a mission with one, oh wait...

 

 

Yes you can
Although that run was lucky in several places I still think even if things had gone wrong i would have come out fine considering all the fall back stuff a fully skilled psi-op has.

 

I think it was Cordeos who suggested it in slack but i'm currently wondering if just psi-ops with a few personal healer specialists would work for the "beat the final mission in conventional gear achievement"

 

 

 

 

 

[Dewar]

Wow, I haven't played with any of the psi-ops yet. I'm not sure if I'm behind, or just had the wrong priorities. There was a little while there that I literally had nothing to research except plasma weapons, but I didn't have enough elerium. 

[Bjorn]

I put off my psychonauts for a long time because I assumed it would be like EU, and NOPE!  They are to 2 what high level snipers were to 1, but with none of the hassle of having to level them up.  If you get Domination as one of your early training options, they immediately become one of your most powerful units.

[Bjorn]

Does anyone know if your Will score has any affect on your Psi powers?  I've had a personal mod for higher Will on my fav psychonaut because I thought it might, but ultimately a movement mod would be more useful for lining up a good null lance if it doesn't. 

[Gwardinen]

Does anyone know if your Will score has any affect on your Psi powers?  I've had a personal mod for higher Will on my fav psychonaut because I thought it might, but ultimately a movement mod would be more useful for lining up a good null lance if it doesn't. 

 

I think it does, because the advanced psi emitter thingy increases the Will of the soldier when equipped.

[Cordeos]

I think it does, because the advanced psi emitter thingy increases the Will of the soldier when equipped.

http://xcom.wikia.com/wiki/Psi_Operative_%28XCOM_2%29

"The success of psi attacks is only affected by the operative's Psi stat - which is increased by using upgraded Psi Amps - and not Will. Will is only a factor when defending against psi attacks, and improving Will (such as through a Personal Combat Sim) will not increase the operative's Psi rating. In short: Psi = Offense, Will = Defense."

[Gwardinen]

Ah. Is Psi also shown on the stats screen or do the amps just provide a boost to Will as well? Because I swear I saw a number go up when I equipped the better amp.

[Wooben]

Beat a veteran ironman run! Turns out the secret to success is to just build and use as many mimic beacons as possible. those things are crazy good at keeping your soldiers alive.

[Codicier]

Nice Wooben! was that your first complete run or did you do a practice run on a lower difficulty first?

 

So do we all take the post credit's sequence to mean the next expansion is going to be a Terror from the Deep remake (that or Pacific Rim )?

 

Regarding the Psi situation i think what the wiki says is spot on with what i've experienced so far the only thing i wondered about while playing was "do psi stats effect those abilities which do dmg & will is used for those abilities based on mind control & effects" in other words does will effect the same things offensively that it does defensively, but everything dmg based uses psi?

I'll prob try doing some testing to find out at some point, thematically it would be cool if it did but probably the more simple thing will turn out to be true 

 

I'm now starting to think about planing my next run, and since I'm expecting commander Ironman to be tough as old boots I was thinking "should i have a upgrade path laid out in my head?" but then i started to wonder if the new strategic layer is weighted significantly enough that the best approach on higher difficulties will be to grab advantages where the game hands them me & try to capitalise on them rather than using a more strict approach.

 

Instinctively my 1st play through has made me think the key early elements i want are (in reverse order of importance) 5 man squads, psi ops & the first armour upgrade. so maybe i should just aim to get those 3, but not worry too much about the order they arrive in?

[parrythrust]

Regarding the Psi situation ...

Never say that to a Patriots fan.

[Bjorn]

Beat a veteran ironman run! Turns out the secret to success is to just build and use as many mimic beacons as possible. those things are crazy good at keeping your soldiers alive.

 

Yeah, early Mimic use seems like it would be one of the most valuable tools in the arsenal for getting low level soldiers leveled up.  It's saved me who knows how much damage taken even on the normal difficulty. 

[Wooben]

Took me a few attempts. Ended up going through the game on rookie just so I could learn what to expect from the various missions/enemies, as well as to survive long enough to find out which late game toys to go for.

[sclpls]

So one of my favorite things to do in this game is mind control an Andromedon, and have it run through walls as needed. Creating walls with its basic movement is a real thing of joy for me.

[Gwardinen]

So one of my favorite things to do in this game is mind control an Andromedon, and have it run through walls as needed. Creating walls with its basic movement is a real thing of joy for me.

 

Yeah that's pretty great. In my last mission I managed to mind control a Gatekeeper, and it was hilariously unstoppable.

[Nappi]

I'm leaning more and more towards buying this game. What is the current performance situation? I understood that the game was quite buggy and glitchy upon launch. Has there been any significant patches yet?

 

Also, how brutal is the between-missions gameplay (basebuilding, upgrades, etc.)? I.e. is your campaign totally fucked if you make a couple of mistakes early on?

[Sorbicol]

I'm leaning more and more towards buying this game. What is the current performance situation? I understood that the game was quite buggy and glitchy upon launch. Has there been any significant patches yet?

Also, how brutal is the between-missions gameplay (basebuilding, upgrades, etc.)? I.e. is your campaign totally fucked if you make a couple of mistakes early on?

With regard to the performance issues I'm afraid the answer is 'it depends'. It works fine of my rig (i5, 8GB RAM, GTX770) but I don't think that's much of a guide. Unfortunately the game is buggy - I've had several gameplay issues. However it's not stopping me playing the game and I personally am prepared to put up with it. It has made me very wary of starting a game in ironman mode though.

As for the game itself I personally find the strategic layer (I.e. When not in combat) to be significantly more relaxed, forgiving and less constrained than in the first game. However your first play through expect to spend most of your time it in not having a clue what's going on and feeling distinctly overwhelmed. It throws a lot of information at you and does nothing at all to explain what it all means.

Try not to let that get to you. You'll have it all figured out mid game and if you are an experienced XCOM player playing on Veteran you should still have time to formulate your strategy and get to the end of the game.

[Nappi]

Thank you for the clarifications. We have close to identical specs, so performance shouldn't be an issue. Shame about the bugs, though.

 

Good to hear that the strategic layer is more forgiving this time around. I played the previous XCOM on normal difficulty and beat it on my first playthrough. I'm not the type of gamer who would happily start a new campaign after learning 10 hours into the game that he is completely ruined because he did not focus on getting satellites into the orbit early on. Because of this, I read a bunch of guides on how to get started with the strategic stuff before starting the campaign. This did not spoil the experience for me, and I will probably do the same in XCOM2 too. 

[I_smell]

Wow I wrote a short review, and then noticed it was exactly the same as above!

 

I had a consistent crash-to-desktop when I entered a certain mission... but there was a solution on the Steam forums that helped.

 

I had a bit of trouble understanding how the game worked in the first couple hours. Am I spending TIME time right now? Am I earning supplies for this? Is "intel" a resource I should be spending, I don't get it??? In that part of the game, I did screw up my builds to a sad degree and started again. If your good soldiers die, it can be a downward spiral.

 

However, since I figured out the game's mechanics, I've lost missions and bounced back from it a couple times and really enjoyed the game.

[Dewar]

Personally, I haven't had any game-breaking bugs, just a lot of oddities, weird temporary hangs, camera not looking at the right thing, etc. It does just take a while to do anything though, long loads, long turn timers. Some of that is fixable through mods, but other bits are just coded into the game to be cinematic, or other glitches in the engine.